Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 15 December 2021
Nobody on the Labour benches is proposing to turn off the taps prematurely. However, we need to start learning the lessons of the past, including the lessons from the closure of our mines and, most recently, the lessons from a decade of missed opportunities in securing offshore wind contracts for Scottish manufacturing.
We need a bold industrial strategy that lays out how domestic manufacturing capacity must evolve to ensure that the growth in domestic renewable energy production begins to translate into new jobs in Scotland. That means that both Governments, instead of bickering, need to work together. For example, we should not be signing contracts for offshore wind farms without a proper plan for supply chain manufacturing and ambitious conditions in relation to job creation in Scotland—something that the UK Government missed recently when it came to its announcement on funding for renewable energy.
We cannot repeat the past failures to recognise the manufacturing benefits of renewables by now failing to recognise the emerging job opportunities from the tens of billions of pounds of decommissioning work that will be needed in the North Sea in the decades ahead.
Scotland’s fabrication and decommissioning industries should be supported by requiring a significant proportion of local procurement from oil companies operating in the UK continental shelf region. That is what a proper just transition is, supported by a just transition commission with statutory backing. The transition also needs to be a jobs-first, worker-led transition, with a relentless focus on securing meaningful, well-paid, unionised jobs that are good for people and good for our planet. That means a partnership approach—