Speeches by Shanks.

“The Labour party made a commitment that we would fully fund Great British Energy with £8.3 billion, and that has happened. I know not everyone in this Committee supported the creation of Great British Energy, but I think it is an incredibly important part of how we build investment in the future. It is also about sayin…”

“It is an important question, and I am very happy to say that getting to this point in our renewable power has been a collective effort. In fact, I think the consensus across most of the mainstream political parties has been critical to getting to this point, including the Scottish Government and the previous Government…”

“Our manifesto commitment came about because of our analysis in opposition of what the future of the North Sea looks like. We did not just put something in the manifesto without doing the work and why we are doing it. It was a deliberate decision to do that, based on the knowledge that is publicly available about the na…”

“Two things are worth saying. First, we have always licensed fields in the North Sea. It is an important part of how we have managed it to date, but as I have said in a number of my other answers, the North Sea is a declining basin. When you talk about an externality, I think the most fundamental one is that the geology…”

“Existing licences will remain in place. That is important to state. We are not going to rescind any existing licences. Of course, a lot of licences are returning to the NSTA, but we are not rescinding any licences. Fields that already have a licence can go through the consenting process, which we announced a few weeks …”

“I want to be quite careful not to summarise any of the consultation response we will issue, but I want to be clear that when we say no new licences to explore new fields, that will be our position. The exploration of new fields will not happen, but there are, of course, complexities in how licences are currently operat…”

“I cannot go into consultation responses that we have not fully analysed yet, but I will say categorically that the Government are committed to their manifesto commitment of not issuing new licences to explore new fields. What we want to do—and this is why there were detailed questions in the consultation—and how we ena…”

“We will publish a Government response to the consultation, which will summarise the answers. There are some specific things that will require some legislative changes. Some of that is quite technical in nature. The NSTA, for example, is still called the Oil and Gas Authority in legislation, so there will be some tidyin…”

“I am not at this stage, I am afraid. What we deliberately did with the consultation was broaden it out from a series of specific questions to a much broader conversation, and some genuinely open questions to stimulate conversation, about what the future of energy in the North Sea will look like. Core to that are some q…”

“I might ask Michael to come in on some of that. Your second point around material benefits is important. That is partly why it is so important that we now move forward as quickly as possible on building up investment in the jobs that come next so we do not lose that investment. The reason this is so important to this C…”

“Yes, absolutely.”

“There are two different points in your question. First, we have been importing from Norway for many years. This is not something new. The fields are different. It is important to say that the continental shelf produces different things. If we look at the licensing position, for example, less than 10% of the licences th…”

“I do not think it makes a material difference, in the sense that we do not own what is extracted from the North Sea. It is owned by private companies that trade on an international commodity market, at an international price that is not set by Britain, for anything that they extract from the North Sea. Although the rec…”

“I do not think it is. There is a natural decline happening in oil and gas, and that is just a reality, whatever way we want to look at it. We will need oil and gas for many years to come, and it is an important part of our energy mix, and it will be, but so too is our mission to move towards clean power by 2030. The tr…”

“First, we have been in government for less than a year. More than 70,000 jobs have gone from oil and gas in the past 10 years. This is not something that suddenly started in July last year. What we have seen is a failure over the last 10 years to grasp the opportunities of that transition. If I take offshore wind as a …”

“Good afternoon. It is a pleasure to be back in front of the Scottish Affairs Committee. I was a member in the last Parliament, so thank you for having me back. We need to look at the question of the transition in the wider context of what has been happening in the North Sea over the past few years and indeed decades; i…”

“I do not have an exact time, but it will follow. The sector plan was part of the industrial strategy. A series of actions will come from that. The workforce plan is an incredibly important part of it. It is partly what the Office for Clean Energy Jobs will be doing. The purpose of that is to bring together both the opp…”

“I think it is fair to say that we did not take any option off the table. We looked at a whole series of options, but the Government are not in the business of nationalising failing businesses. That is difficult to say, but it is the reality. A business that is losing tens of millions of pounds cannot be nationalised, w…”

“It is not something we are looking at now. The National Wealth Fund operates on the basis that it makes investments as part of crowding in private investment. The National Wealth Fund will have a role in whichever investors come forward to take advantage of that £200 million. The exact nature of that role is for the ne…”

“I think I need to be quite careful about my answer, because Unite has shared the report with the Secretary of State on a very specific basis. I do not think it has been shared more widely in Government at Unite’s express request, despite other Ministers asking to see it. I understand that other MPs have also asked to s…”