Here are the climate-related sections of speeches by MPs during the Commons debate ExxonMobil: Mossmorran.
19:34 Andrew Bowie (Conservative)
The Minister tells us that this was a commercial decision, and that the numbers did not add up. Er, yeah—due to Labour’s decisions. Honestly! He mentions the decline in the ethane supply in the North sea. He almost gets it. The Government’s destructive tax-and-ban policy in the North sea has led to disinvestment, and has undermined the petrochemicals industry and its ability to secure low-cost ethane. That is damaging our energy security, detrimental to our petrochemicals industry, and utterly devastating for Scottish oil and gas workers. The Labour party simply does not get it. Also, the carbon tax—£20 million per annum for the Fife ethylene plant alone—was crippling. We are suffocating industry in this country, and these are political choices.
Industrial emissions are mobile. If we decrease our domestic carbon emissions by crushing British industry, we are simply exporting our climate obligations and increasing reliance on imports of plastics, fuel, ceramics, glass, bricks, concrete and more. We must find a way to decarbonise without decimating our domestic industrial base. Simply forcing industry abroad does nothing to reduce global emissions; in fact, it does the opposite. The high cost of energy and this Government’s war on the North sea are killing industry in this country. We simply cannot afford this Labour Government.
This is not a just transition; it is anything but. This is the wilful de-industrialisation of the United Kingdom. The Government are offshoring carbon emissions and driving up reliance on imports, and British workers are paying the price. Will the Minister outline the support that his Department intends to provide for the workers at Mossmorran, and provide an update on the Nation Wealth Fund moneys for Grangemouth? Does he agree that British industry is at a competitive disadvantage, due to the crippling industrial energy costs, the jobs tax and the carbon tax? Will this Government finally see sense, see what everybody else sees, and change their policies on the North sea?
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19:37 Chris McDonald (Labour)
Finally, the shadow Minister can debate the nuances of carbon taxes if he wants to, but this plant exports all its product to the EU. To do that, the plant needs to ensure that the product aligns with the market in which it finds itself, which obviously has the EU emissions trading system. If it received relief in the UK, it would have to pay that tax to the EU. Does the hon. Gentleman prefer that that money comes to the UK Government or that it goes to the EU?
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19:44 Chris McDonald (Labour)
I agree with the hon. Member that at its crux there has been a failure of long-term planning in industry. We can see that when we contrast the two ethylene plants in Scotland. The plant at Grangemouth imports a lot of its ethylene from the US, which is in plentiful supply and comes at a much lower cost. That required a significant investment in the port infrastructure at that plant. ExxonMobil was aware that, in order to ensure that Mossmorran was sustainable, it would need to make a similar investment. It would have been possible for it to have made that investment some years ago, but at this stage, an investment of about $1 billion that would not come to fruition within the next five years is judged by the company not to be sustainable. Of course businesses require some certainty in order to invest; I made that point at Energy questions this morning. The certainty provided by our industrial strategy—in particular, this Government’s commitment to renewable energy technologies—is allowing investment to come in.
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Dave Doogan (SNP)
For the hard of thinking, those policies are: the carbon tax, at £20 million for Mossmorran alone; the cost of UK energy, which Labour cannot fix; the supply of ethane feedstock from the North sea; the energy profits levy, which this Government backs; the Government signalling an artificially accelerated decline in the North sea; and, of course, the national insurance raid on employers, taxing every job across the United Kingdom. This is industrial illiteracy and regulatory incompetence writ large. What does the Minister say to that?
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20:07 Kirsty Blackman (SNP)
We are seeing 400 jobs go, and we saw jobs go at Grangemouth. Is the Minister surprised that people in Aberdeen and the north-east of Scotland, who are arguing for a just transition and being promised 60,000 jobs five years hence, have no faith in this Labour Government?
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Chris McDonald (Labour)
The hon. Member mentioned, in particular, some of the policy situation relating to Mossmorran, and I refer her to the answer I gave a short while ago when talking about the impact of carbon taxes on Mossmorran arising directly as a result of the inefficiency of the plant. That is a consequence of previous decisions and a failure to invest in that plant. It ultimately means that the plant appears to be, in and of itself, not commercially viable. If companies that think they could make the plant commercially viable come forward, clearly we would want to work with such organisations.
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Ellie Chowns (Green)
Today’s announcement by ExxonMobil—a company that made £25 billion of profit last year—will be devastating for the workers, their families and the communities in and around Mossmorran. Does it not just show that ExxonMobil does not give a fig for its workers; it just prioritises profiteering? Does the Minister agree that the fossil fuel giants cannot be trusted to protect jobs or the planet? Will he commit to investing new resources to ensure a genuinely just transition in which the voices of workers are central to the debate, so that they are not left to the whims of these profiteering fossil fuel giants?
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Graham Leadbitter (SNP)
We are talking about 400 direct jobs at Mossmorran, more in the supply chain, hundreds more at Grangemouth and a thousand a month out of Aberdeen. Those are independently assessed figures and figures that we know from the statement today. As somebody whose father worked at Ravenscraig in the 1980s, I know very well the impact such things have on families. The Minister has talked a lot about commercial decision making, but it does not happen in a vacuum; it is done on the basis of the policy environment and legislative environment in which companies are operating. He is not addressing that key issue, which is making a just transition unviable as it stands. Will he address those points?
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20:23 Sammy Wilson (DUP)
The Minister says that he and the Government have no bias against the people of Scotland, but they certainly have not done very well out of this Government—1,000 jobs being lost a month in the North sea, and now today’s announcement. He attributes it all to a commercial decision. That commercial decision was made in a hostile economic environment. He has told us some of the factors there: carbon taxes imposed by this Government, lack of supply as a result of the reduction in North sea production, and the energy prices as a result of the increasing reliance on wind energy. The common thread through it all is the Government’s net zero policies. Why can they not be honest with us and just tell us that these net zero policies are robbing the United Kingdom of all its energy-intensive industries and that this will not be the last job loss announcement that we will hear in this House?
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Andrew Bowie (Conservative)
On a point of order, Madam Deputy Speaker—I promise I will not make a habit of this. I am a bit worried that the Minister may have inadvertently misled the House, because he said that in his earlier conversation with the chairman of ExxonMobil, Paul Greenwood, he had pointed to no policy decisions by this Government as reasons for closing the plant. I and other Members also had the opportunity to speak to Paul Greenwood today, and he did give four reasons for the closure. The first two—the market and the cost of running an old plant—were, he said, not policy decisions, but the third and fourth certainly were. The third was the carbon tax, which is costing that plant £20 million, and the fourth is the sharp decline in ethanol production in the North sea due to the accelerated downturn directly due to Government policy. Will you give me some advice on how the Minister might go about correcting the record?
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