Contribution
My Lords, His Majesty’s Official Opposition’s thoughts are with the 450 workers at Exxon Mobil’s Fife plant, who now face losing their livelihoods. That plant had been a cornerstone of chemical production in the United Kingdom for 40 years. These are skilled people—proud people—and whole communities are now wondering what comes next. They deserve our sympathy, of course, but sympathy will not keep an industry alive. This closure was not unavoidable; it is happening because of this Government’s policies.
The chief executive of the Society of Chemical Industry, Sharon Todd, put it starkly:
“Without further government action to address high energy costs for industry, and a greater consideration of the importance of fossil carbon for material feedstocks, industrial resilience in the UK is undermined and further closures are increasingly likely”.
What a verdict—and it is one that the Government cannot pretend they have not heard. We on these Benches have warned Ministers repeatedly. Industry has warned them repeatedly. Everyone who actually makes things in this country has warned them repeatedly.
But the Government simply will not listen, and the price of this stubbornness is being paid by workers, manufacturers and communities up and down the country. ExxonMobil is not alone; we are seeing exactly the same story in steel. Everywhere you look, energy-intensive industries are struggling with the same crushing energy costs, and the pattern is not subtle. The Government’s energy policy is pulling in the opposite direction to its supposed number one priority of growth. You cannot claim to have a plan for growth while presiding over some of the highest electricity prices in Europe. It just does not add up.
Only a few weeks ago, the US ambassador to the UK, Warren Stephens, warned Ministers that high electricity prices are deterring investment from the world’s strongest economy and our closest ally historically. Then we have ExxonMobil’s UK chairman, Paul Greenwood, who said that the company had spent months warning the Government about the risks to the plant, only to be ignored. He said that
“these are deliberate Government policies that are undermining us”.
When global companies start talking like that, something is seriously wrong.
This closure lands at the same moment that Make UK published a report warning that surging energy costs and cumulative taxes are threatening the future of Britain’s industrial base. Ministers have no excuses left. These are the results of decisions made in Whitehall: a slow-motion sustained act of industrial self-harm. Even Unite and GMB—hardly allies of these Benches—warned Ministers that their ban on new oil and gas development would devastate supply chains and destroy skilled jobs. When both employers and unions are saying the same thing, it seems that only this Government could fail to hear it.
And what exactly has this achieved for the environment? Nothing, because now we simply import more oil and gas instead of producing it ourselves. Meanwhile, the Minister in the other place, the Secretary of State for Net Zero, posts on X claiming that bills remain high due to fossil fuel dependence, yet Ofgem has confirmed that policy costs are the major driver.
Minister can no longer hide from the consequences of their own decisions. We have major international investors describing the UK as “mismanaged” and “uninvestable”. South Africa’s richest woman called Britain a “scary country”, saying that she
“wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole”.
When global investors are talking about the UK in those terms, something has gone profoundly wrong.
As we said during the steel debate a few weeks ago, high energy costs and new unemployment burdens looming from the Employment Rights Bill, plus scatter-brained and ideological policies coming out of DESNZ, are all squeezing the life out of British industry. Will the Government reverse their ban on North Sea oil and gas? Will they stop pouring unaffordable subsidies into wind and solar while heavy industry collapses under the weight of energy costs, or are they determined to preside over a full-scale de-industrialisation? British workers, British industries and British communities deserve a lot better than this; they deserve a Government who listen, support industry and understand growth, and the Government are failing on all three counts.