Meeting of the Parliament (Hybrid) 15 December 2021
I thank you, Presiding Officer, and Liz Smith for trying to maximise the online viewing ratings for my speech. I will try not to disappoint.
There is clearly a sense in which this is groundhog day: we seem to have been having this debate, in some guise, weekly. I certainly do not begrudge that, given the urgency of the climate emergency and the importance of ensuring a just transition. In the amendment that I lodged, I sought to reinforce—as Colin Smyth set out in his speech—the need to secure the future of workers and communities and to deliver tens of thousands of good green jobs.
I thank Liam Kerr for his motion, which does not seem unreasonable on the face of it, although I am not entirely clear how far short of maximum extraction it would leave us. We need to accept that some of the resource will have to be left in the ground.
Even so, it is worth taking a moment to reflect on the current contribution of the oil and gas sector. There is no doubt that it has been economically significant, both in terms of gross value added and in terms of jobs. That is the case right across the country—perhaps more significantly in the north-east but, I argue, also in the Highlands and Islands to no smaller extent, proportionally. That adds further weight to the argument for specific attention being paid to a just transition in that region.
As Liam Kerr acknowledged, all the scenarios from the UK Climate Change Committee anticipate oil and gas accounting for up to or around 50 per cent of total cumulative energy demand up to 2050. That might reflect a marked reduction from where we are now, but it remains significant. It also underlines the need to bear down on demand and to avoid simply displacing domestic production with imports of more environmentally impactful products and more problematic security of supply.
People who work in the oil and gas sector recognise the need for an energy transition. Recent polling appears to suggest that there is a real appetite among those who work in the sector to see the transition taking place. The important thing for Government and its agencies is to make it as easy as possible.
There is an obvious read across to the needs of the renewable energy sector, but it would be overly simplistic just to say that that is where the transition will go. There will be many other sectors that can take advantage of the skills of people from the oil and gas sector. It is incumbent on Government and agencies to do more to raise awareness of options and to make the transfer as smooth as possible, including through any retraining or skills development that are needed.
We will happily support the amendment in Colin Smyth’s name; I am slightly more reluctant about Michael Matheson’s amendment. For the record, Scottish Liberal Democrats certainly do not, at this stage, welcome the Scottish budget, and not just because it clobbers local authorities across the country. It also falls short of helping us to meet our climate objectives. Questions have already been asked about what the £500 million energy transition fund is actually made up of and whether it will turn out to be more smoke and mirrors.
It would be helpful, in that context, if the minister or the cabinet secretary could set out the year 1 objectives for the £20 million that has been referred to. How many workers will actually benefit, and what are the predicted investments in future years? In the context of the UK Climate Change Committee’s recent criticism of the Scottish Government’s lack of detail on plans to achieve net zero, those and other questions become ever more crucial and central.
As I have said in the context of previous debates, the creation of new green jobs will be key in a just transition. We have had the promises before, but we cannot now afford to leave people and communities behind. Achieving that transition will require that plans be both radical and credible. We need to bring people with us, and that will rest heavily on credibility, including the credibility of people in the oil and gas sector. Change is unavoidable, but only with detailed plans and proper resourcing can there be any hope of achieving the transition in a managed way.
15:59