Michael Shanks

First, can I just say what a contrast it is when someone rightly responds to this concerning issue in a serious way and does not talk down the industry? This is where the House should stand taller and recognise that that company is doing good work and that there are 2,000 workers out in the North sea right now carrying out their duties. We want to ensure that there is a viable future for the company, and we are doing everything that we can in that space. All the signs are that it is a growing, successful business, and we should recognise that and talk it up, not talk it down, as the Conservative party seems hellbent on doing. On the hon. Lady’s wider point, she is right to say that the future of clean energy involves tens of thousands of jobs across Scotland and hundreds of thousands across the UK, but that we need to ramp those jobs up as quickly as possible and ensure that people can achieve those jobs. We are doing what we can around looking at the skills framework, but we also ensuring that, through the investments we are making through Great British Energy, those jobs come forward much faster and that people are supported to move from jobs in oil and gas into jobs that have a real correlation in skills. We are picking this work up after the failure of the previous Government to have any plan. We are moving as fast as we can, and we will see more on that North sea plan in the coming weeks.