Meeting of the Parliament 11 November 2025
I am grateful to cross-party colleagues for their support for this debate. Signing a motion in Parliament does not necessarily mean agreement with it. Rather, it shows a willingness to debate, to listen and to test arguments that may not accord with one’s own views, and any debate on oil and gas can often polarise views. I am somewhat appalled that members of the Green party, so recently a party of Government and one that has called a debate on oil and gas for tomorrow, have not only refused to sign my motion, which I carefully drafted to avoid being divisive, but have not bothered even to attend to hear arguments that might challenge their ideology.
This debate is not about ideology; it is about the evidence contained in the “Striking a Balance” report from the Energy Transition Institute at Robert Gordon University. That is not a lobbying document or a press release; it is a rigorous, data-driven assessment of the future of the United Kingdom’s offshore energy workforce, and its conclusions should give every member pause for reflection.
The report warns that, without urgent co-ordinated action, the UK’s oil and gas workforce could shrink by around 400 jobs every fortnight for the next five years, which is the equivalent of losing the entire Grangemouth workforce every two weeks. It also warns that, if Scotland’s Government fails to pursue renewable energy at scale while continuing to let oil and gas decline, almost 30,000 direct employment offshore industry jobs could be lost by the early 2030s.
Those are not just numbers on a spreadsheet: they are people, families, mortgages and communities, especially in North East Scotland where one in every six people works directly or indirectly in oil and gas—a figure that is one in every 30 people across the entirety of Scotland.
On the economic point, I was told last week that Shell alone contributes £12 billion to the UK’s gross domestic product and accounts for 78,000 jobs, which means that this is not only an energy issue but an economic and social one.