Michael Shanks
MP for Rutherglen · Labour · United Kingdom
“I agree with the hon. Lady absolutely that we are in a climate emergency. We all lived through a summer that demonstrated that more than anything we have seen. I have heard many people say it was the warmest summer on record, but in the future it will probably be seen to have been one of the coldest summers.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with my hon. Friend. I have visited Torness and met the incredibly skilled workforce there. What I find difficult about the Scottish Government’s position on jobs in Scotland is that they are willing to completely turn their back on the skilled workers in nuclear power, who are going searching for jobs in nuclear projects in Engla…”
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“She looked at the project’s expected benefits to the UK, including its contribution to energy security, employment, impacts on other energy infrastructure and other economic benefits, and carefully weighed them against the potential environmental effects, including the effects relating to greenhouse gas emissions.”
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“Let me be clear that that is a separate consenting decision. I am not making any comment at all today on the Rosebank decision, which will be made in due course. We are absolutely committed to tackling climate change.”
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“It is good to hear from the MP for my old home—he is my mother’s MP and a great champion for Ayrshire. Ayrshire has a critical role, and it could have an even more important role if we were to build new nuclear at Hunterston, which, if it were not for the objections of the SNP, we could be looking at much more seriously.”
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“My hon. Friend is a great champion for making sure that the transition has workers at its heart, both in his constituency and across Scotland. The developer estimates that there will be 27 direct jobs on the project, which is all that we are able to take into account with regard to the decision that I can talk about today.”
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“Let me say to my hon. Friend, as I have said to him repeatedly, we regret the process that was underway when we came into government and the lack of planning for the workforce in his constituency. Contrary to what he says, we have in fact invested a significant amount of money in supporting that workforce to find alternative employment, and we are continuing to spend money on developing the projects that will take advantage of the £200 million from the National Wealth Fund. Unfortunately, I cannot magic those projects up out of thin air, so we are doing everything we possibly can to support them. We have set up Great British Energy as a publicly owned energy company.”
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“He would turn his back on all those jobs, and it is absolutely shameful that his party would leave this country not more energy secure, but vulnerable at the very moment we should be building up our energy sovereignty.”
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“I am certain that the Prime Minister did not say that, because the truth is that although this decision is important for energy security reasons, it will do nothing to bring down prices. Prices are set on an international market, and no amount of extraction from the UK shelf will change the price—those are just the facts of the matter. It is important we do this. I say to the hon. Member and his party that we have never been a “turn off the taps” party in the North sea, but his party is for drilling for every last drop and ignoring the tens of thousands of jobs, in constituencies that it represents, that are currently relying on offshore wind and other technologies.”
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“Clearly, there is, however, a real issue in Scotland with the hollowing out of further education, which is the route for many of the skilled jobs we need in our economy, not least building the transmission system of the future, which needs highly skilled welders more than anything else. We need apprenticeships and further education, and I hope that the Scottish Government will invest even more in colleges across the country.”
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“My hon. Friend is right on his point about jobs, although I reiterate that direct jobs are often not the whole story with such projects, as there is a whole ecosystem around jobs. Skills is one of the most important things, and it is an area devolved to the Scottish Government. We have had a good partnership working on a lot of the transition support for workers. We have joint funded projects for North sea workers and will continue to do that because it is important that we match together the UK Government’s responsibilities with the Scottish Government’s responsibilities.”
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“I can give the hon. Member that assurance, but she does not need to wait on the new wealth fund; we have already committed funding to doing that. We published the North sea future plan, which charts a course for the future of the North sea, focused on not only oil and gas but the industries that come next and with the workers right at the centre of it. It is focused on how we provide the training support so that we can recognise the huge read-across from oil and gas skills into a lot of the other energy jobs and into defence and advanced manufacturing. We need to deploy those skills so that we can support workers the whole way through that process. We are already getting on with delivering it, and the North sea future jobs service should launch early next year.”
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“I encourage all his constituents to ensure they have accessed that fund as people will be starting to refill tanks at this time of year, but we are also doing as much as we can to support, through the warm homes plan, the decarbonisation of those households who, of course, have access to the electricity grid and so can take advantage of solar panels, batteries and heat pumps, and we will say more about that in due course.”
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“Both are important questions. First, I recognise the point my hon. Friend makes around energy independence. We do require gas in the system at the moment, so this decision is partly around how we increase domestic production. But the long-term energy security and our energy independence do not come from oil and gas, which we will always be a net importer of at this point on, and so we have to build a way to get us off that fossil fuel rollercoaster in the future. Secondly, my hon. Friend is absolutely right that off-gas-grid households have felt the significant impact of the war in the middle east as heating oil prices have skyrocketed. We very quickly put in place a fund to provide support for those households—much quicker than the previous Government did when Russia invaded Ukraine.”
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“It is a well-timed question because I am joining the hon. Lady in her constituency tomorrow to speak to some of the supply chain businesses that will help build the Gwyndod power station and to visit the site where Gwyndod will be built. It is an important example of where the last generation of nuclear power can turn into the next generation of apprentices in this new power station, with the grandchildren of people who worked at the Wylfa power station before. It is a huge opportunity, and I want to work with her and the Welsh Government on ensuring that we get as much economic opportunity from the Gwyndod project as possible with the supply chain jobs in her constituency and across Wales.”
House of Commons21 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“I agree with what my hon. Friend says about the importance of investing in renewables. On his broader question about consenting decisions, every single individual application is considered on its own merits, with its own evidence base and its own consultation process. The Rosebank decision is separate from the Jackdaw decision. We have concluded the evidence stage and the Secretary of State will make a decision in due course.”
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“That is what the warm homes plan is all about. By devolving it to local areas, they can make their own local choices about what works for them.”
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“I agree with the hon. Lady absolutely that we are in a climate emergency. We all lived through a summer that demonstrated that more than anything we have seen. I have heard many people say it was the warmest summer on record, but in the future it will probably be seen to have been one of the coldest summers. We have to do something about that. I am fed up with hearing people say that we should just work on adaptation. We do have to work on adaptation, but we also have to do everything that we possibly can to stop the situation from becoming worse. That is why we are doing all that we can on an international level and why we are building renewables as quickly as possible. I agree with her that the cheapest energy for homeowners is the energy that they do not use, and that the more we can do to upgrade our homes in this country the better.”
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“We have made great progress, but there is a huge amount more to do to ensure we break the link with gas, to bring down people’s bills and to tackle the climate emergency, which is no longer some future threat but an ever-present reality.”
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“I will not comment on future decisions, but the decision I am outlining today is clearly taking into consideration environmental impact, and all other decisions will do likewise. The Labour party has a proud record of passing the Climate Change Act 2008 and setting world-leading targets. For those who say that Britain should shrink from the world stage, those decisions have been hugely important for driving the transition to clean power in countries across the world. We are not alone in doing this and we have to do that even more. With consensus across the political divide, we cut emissions enormously. I was there at the closure of our last coal power station.”
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“We have heard loud and clear that the standing charge is the most frustrating part of the bill for people, because it is not driven by the individual choices they make about energy use but by a fixed price on the bill. The challenge with gas in particular is that we want people to use less, but there is little incentive to do that if the standing charge remains the same. I do not pretend it will be easy: the standing charge still has costs that have to be paid for and the gas network still has to be funded, but the Prime Minister has committed to working through how we can make the standing charge fairer and encourage people to make decarbonisation choices for affordability reasons. That is important for all of us and, crucially, it will bring down people’s bills.”
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“That is the only long-term pathway to energy security and to tackling the climate crisis, and we are doing everything we can to get there as quickly as possible.”
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“I hear what my hon. Friend says. On her last point, we are absolutely seized of the fact that the wildfires and the impact that heatwaves have had on people’s lives is evidence enough, if anyone ever needed it—I know she certainly does not because she has been a champion on this issue for a long time—that we have to take firm action on tackling climate change. That requires us to design a pathway to get to net zero that recognises the fact that we will need oil and gas as part of that transition, and that there are lower emissions coming out of the North sea than otherwise, but balancing that against significant investment, which must be made as quickly as possible, in renewables, nuclear and other technologies that help us get off the fossil fuels on which we are currently dependent.”
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“I think the hon. Gentleman’s constituents will be very surprised when they reach to turn on their heating or their gas cooker that they do not rely on gas—a significant number of his constituents will rely on gas. We want to get off that gas supply as quickly as possible, but we will continue to require it for a number of years, so I hope that he can recognise why the decision is important for energy security. I agree with him about the fundamental point: contrary to any other noise around this, no new oil and gas drilling will ever take a penny off bills. It does not impact bills. It brings in tax revenue to the Government that we will invest in the clean energy that gets us off fossil fuels. Breaking the link with gas will bring down his constituents’ bills, but I agree that it will not directly reduce bills.”
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“We are doing everything that we can on that, but there is a lot more that we can do and I am happy to work with him on it.”
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“I am always happy to meet my hon. Friend and any other hon. Members from across the House who have experience that they want to raise or ideas about how we can do this. I chair the North sea future board, which has trade unions at its heart to bring the story of workers to the heart of the decisions we are making, not just because we owe that to those workers, who are powering the country right now and have done for decades, but because they are the critical workforce that will help us build what we need in the future. He is right to point to failed transitions—we will all have experience of that in our communities, but some more than others. There is a lesson from history that if Government do not actively engage in building the next part of the transition, we will not support those workers.”
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“The hon. Lady is right to point to that fact. We have renewables in the system, but we are not getting the benefit of the pricing, because the last margin unit that we need in order to meet our supply is often gas. That used to be 90% of the time, but it is now less than 60% of the time. We are making huge progress; since the closure of the strait of Hormuz, we have been saving £50 million or more a day on displaced gas costs, because of the renewables that we have built. We are going as fast as we can, but I cannot just pull a lever and make decoupling happen, because the marginal price setting is important to ensure that we can meet our supply every single day. We are doing everything that we can on that issue. It is a No. 1 priority to ensure that people feel the benefit of clean power coming through on to their bills.”
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“People should rightly feel that the Government have to do more, but one of the really important things to recognise is that we are making progress in climate action. We always need to do more, but people should not feel that there is absolutely no route out for us. If we can work together and build some more consensus, we can tackle climate change.”
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“I will say two things. First, we are absolutely clear that tackling the climate crisis is an absolute priority for the Government. It is vital for our national security, our energy security and our children’s futures, and we need to do even more. This decision is about the transition period, in which we will need oil and gas to build into where we go next, but that is not the whole story. The absolute clear direction from this Government is that in order to tackle the climate crisis, we have to break the link with fossil fuels so that we are not importing from other countries and driving up climate problems for future generations to deal with, but have home-grown, clean energy here in the UK. We are already making enormous progress on that.”
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“I often have to start with the refrain that energy policy is devolved to Northern Ireland, but there are points to make on two fronts. First, our interconnector with Ireland, which takes gas from Great Britain into Ireland, will benefit from the security of supply that we are delivering through this decision, which is important. Secondly, although I do not have responsibility for decisions on energy policy in Northern Ireland, we have said from the beginning that the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy will operate and invest in projects in Northern Ireland. I can confirm that the £2 billion we have set up today will be part of that picture and ensure that we can invest in projects in Northern Ireland.”
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“That is a really important question. As a former teacher, I used to teach pupils who would come to school worried about this issue, because they had seen things in the news and felt a sense of threat. That is why it is important that people understand that the Government are taking the issue seriously and are determined not to only tackle climate change at home, but to play our international role abroad, rebuilding some of the international consensus to make climate action a reality. Factual information is always really important in these debates—at times, I think that it might help in this House as well. People should seek out information about what we are trying to do and about the progress that we are making as a country towards decarbonising our energy system.”
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“Let me be clear that that is a separate consenting decision. I am not making any comment at all today on the Rosebank decision, which will be made in due course. We are absolutely committed to tackling climate change. There is no change at all in my commitment or the Government’s commitment to delivering the clean power mission and improving homes so that we can get off fossil fuels as quickly as possible, but the reality is that Britain will need oil and gas for decades to come as part of that transition. Today’s decision is about a particular project that helps us to get those things out of our own continental shelf. My hon. Friend is right to say that that will not bring down bills, but it will provide energy security benefits, jobs and investment coming in through tax receipts, which we are deploying to deliver more clean power.”
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“I declare an interest: I am a member of the GMB, and I am very happy to celebrate the role that it plays in this area. I am grateful to my hon. Friend for raising the matter of National Gas and the transmission system, because we often talk about oil and gas workers offshore, but I have met a number of those workers who help to get the gas to homes and businesses across the country. It is an incredibly skilled job, and I pay tribute to the work that those workers do. He is absolutely right; during the transition between what is here now and what comes after in the oil and gas industry, workers have to be right at the centre.”
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“She is right to raise the point about warmer homes and how we get more homes to use less energy. That is absolutely critical for our consumers to live in warmer conditions and to spend less on their energy bills.”
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“My hon. Friend is right to raise the issue of national resilience. That is front and centre in my mind as the Minister responsible for energy security and resilience, particularly as we go into the winter months. This decision is part of how we ensure that we can absolutely meet the standard that is expected for our gas supplies as we go into the winter—we will say more about that in the coming days. This decision is also part of the wider picture of the transition, because our long-term energy security and resilience cannot come from our being dependent on a fossil fuel that we will always be a net importer of. We have seen the price spikes that have been caused by a war in which we have no part, and they are affecting people’s bills right now. The long-term answer is the clean power that my hon. Friend talked about.”
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“My hon. Friend is right that the North sea is a declining basin—I have said that on a number of occasions. That is not going to be turned around by decisions that we make, but none the less, we were elected on a manifesto that very clearly said that we would “not issue new licences to explore new fields”, but would manage existing fields for their lifetime. This decision is on an already licensed field, so it is compliant with our manifesto, and the investment resulting from it will allow us to build the clean power that will get us off fossil fuels. It is about recognising that we have to do both—the long-term future comes from reducing our dependence on fossil fuels and phasing them out completely, but we will need oil and gas in the interim.”
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“Friend and others to make sure we are doing everything we can to support those industries.”
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“My hon. Friend is right to raise that point, and I know that my right hon. Friend the Business Secretary hears it. We are doing everything we can on industrial prices as well as domestic prices, but I know we need to do more. Breaking the link between gas and electricity prices is crucial for the electricity bills that those industries face, but I know that my hon. Friend is particularly focused on the gas they use. I have talked about phasing out gas; we have always been clear that a strategic reserve will be necessary for particular industries and parts of the power system, but we should be using it much less. We need to support industries by finding new ways to decarbonise, be it with hydrogen or other fuels, but some will continue to require gas. I recognise that fact, and will continue to work with my hon.”
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“While deploying clean power will not immediately affect everyone, every wind turbine we switch on and solar panel we plug in helps reduce our dependence on gas and brings down people’s bills.”
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“My hon. Friend is right—the affordability crisis is the No. 1 thing facing all our constituents. I am not going to cut across what the Chancellor may or may not say next week in his Budget, but I hear what my hon. Friend says. We have already taken action by removing VAT from electricity bills, as well as the £150 of costs that we took off bills previously, but the first point he made is critical, because the situation in the middle east is what is driving up everyone’s bills. We can continue to take action to reduce those bills, as the previous Government did when Russia invaded Ukraine, but if we do not fix the fundamental problem, we will have to bail people out every time there is another fossil fuel price spike.”
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“We want to grow the number of jobs in clean power, but we also want them to be good, well-paid and sustainable jobs.”
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“I welcome my hon. Friend’s appreciation of the decision we have made today. The longer-term impact of climate change will be felt by his constituents as much as everyone else’s, so it is in all of our interests—as I know he appreciates—for us to take action to tackle it. While this is an important decision, the action we have taken to deploy clean power and break the link with fossil fuels is also really important. My hon. Friend is right to centre this discussion on jobs. We have worked not just to create new jobs in the clean power of the future, but to make sure those are good jobs. With offshore wind, for example, we are making sure there is fair work for offshore workers, in conjunction with trade unions and the workforce.”
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“On the wider point, consenting decisions are regulatory decisions for the Secretary of State to make, and then it is for the North Sea Transition Authority to make the final decision and issue the consent. Those decisions are not subject to debates in this House—they are quasi-judicial decisions. However, I can absolutely assure my hon. Friend that that decision, like this one, will be based on a whole range of factors, and the environmental impacts will be absolutely central.”
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“On the international point and the message this decision sends about the climate emergency, I cannot be clearer about how central tackling climate change still is to the wider agenda of our energy policy. The transition to a non-fossil-fuel economy will require oil and gas for decades to come, and this decision is about where we get that from, not about the end goal, which is to remove our exposure to fossil fuels in the long term. We continue to take action on the climate crisis in a whole range of other ways. For instance, the Secretary of State will lead our delegation to COP to make sure we continue to press for international collaboration.”
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“Despite the noise of the political debate, this Government take climate action seriously, and we are delivering good, long-term jobs in every single community for those young people in the industries of the future—jobs in clean energy that we as a country can be equally proud of. I hope the young people who attend my hon. Friend’s meeting will see some of those opportunities as a real chance, not only for a career in this country, but to help us tackle the climate emergency.”
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“I am glad that people across the country are engaging in those kinds of discussions. It is really important that people get together, discuss this issue and recognise the absolute centrality of climate change to our lives right now, as well as its future impact. I would say two things: first, this Government take the climate emergency very seriously and are taking action right now to tackle it, whether that is building the clean power that gets us off fossil fuels or improving homes so that people use less fossil fuel energy to heat them. Secondly, young people right now should believe that their Government are taking this issue seriously.”
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“As a Government, we are making it as attractive as possible to invest in clean energy sectors. That is why we have seen more than £100 billion-worth of private investment in the clean energy transition since we came into Government—£110 billion of investment in two and a half years. It is clear that people see the clean energy transition as a route for investment and helping to build our energy security. I would say to all those, pension funds or others, who do not take the economic opportunity seriously that there is a huge opportunity here to build the country we want to see and to get good economic returns as a result. We have set up things such as the National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy to help crowd in that investment.”
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“I do not agree with that, actually. I will give the same answer that I gave to the Green party. We absolutely believe in tackling the climate crisis and in building our way out of a dependence on fossil fuels, but I cannot just click my fingers and make that happen overnight. We have to build this infrastructure over time, and there is a transition period in which gas will remain the main source of energy for people heating their homes. We have to move even faster to change that by electrifying heating to bring down people’s bills and get us off fossil fuels. I am open to any ideas my hon. Friend might have on how we can go faster on that.”
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“It is in our self-interest to centre this transition on the workers who currently power the country through oil and gas and who will take us through into the future. He is right to call out those politicians who talk about pragmatism, but who want it all to be one way. Pragmatism means being clear that oil and gas will be important for decades to come and that we have to invest now in the jobs of the future, in his constituency and across the country.”
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“I could not agree more with my hon. Friend. I am grateful for his putting on record the fact that there are jobs in oil and gas in Hartlepool and in towns like it across the UK. Although there is a concentration of jobs in the north-east of Scotland, it would be wrong to say that this is a problem for the north-east of Scotland to solve. There are such jobs all across the country. We must get this transition right. As for the oil and gas workers, the new nuclear that we want to see in his constituency, and renewables, I make the point that the workforce is the same, and we are going to support them to retrain and bring their immense experience into what we have to build in the future.”
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“I have been very clear with all developers that expect to receive public money that they should look at every single part of their procurement to ensure, even down to the smallest contracts, that they procure locally as much as possible. I recognise that that is a shift from where we have been for a long time as a country, but it is critical because that is where we get supply chain jobs right across the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.”
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“It is estimated that another project, Loch Kemp, will create 370 jobs in the highlands at peak construction. It has committed £7.5 million to a community fund, and to investing in projects such as the Caledonian canal and local roads. The hon. Gentleman also rightly made the point about local supply chains and making sure we are delivering as much of the economic benefit of those projects in local communities. The single most important thing my Department has been driving in two and a half years in relation to the construction of these projects is no longer to be agnostic about where we build things as a country, because we actually care about industrial strategy.”
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“The cost does not come from turning off wind; it comes from turning up gas somewhere else in the country. If we deploy LDES in the way we intend to, we will be able to reduce that dependency on costly gas generation. I understand that the hon. Member for Inverness, Skye and West Ross-shire agrees with me on the need for long duration energy storage—we have had this conversation many times—but he also rightly wants to make sure that his community benefits from these projects. Their construction in itself creates a significant number of jobs over several years. That is expected to begin by next year and continue into the early 2030s. One project that he mentioned, Loch Earba, will create approximately 600 jobs over its five-year construction period, including at least 30 new apprenticeships.”
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“We remain really ambitious. He is right to say that future scenarios require even more long duration energy storage, but this is a remarkable turnaround from a 40-year gap in building any of these projects anywhere in the country. Ofgem has provisionally selected 16 projects. It has made minded-to decisions, but a consultation process is running. Three projects are pumped storage hydropower in Scotland, representing over half the LDES capacity. Ofgem will announce its final decision on those projects by the end of the year. When they are delivered, they will reduce costs for consumers by maximising our renewable energy generation to make it available when we need it at peak times and reducing our reliance on natural gas, which is the part of the constraints that is often misunderstood in the press.”
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“I recently visited the pumped hydro project in Cruachan, which follows a well-trodden path of technology that we have deployed for a very long time. Pumped hydro lasts for a long time, is an important part of how we deliver long duration energy storage and will play a critical role in balancing supply and demand. In June, Ofgem published its minded-to list for window 1 of the cap and floor scheme. That was a significant milestone for the sector. I agree with the hon. Member for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey (Graham Leadbitter)—there is a double act of Members with long constituency names——about the ambition on long duration energy storage, but I would also say that this is the first long duration energy storage we have built in Britain in 40 years, and it is a significant amount: 7.5 gigawatts of capacity is not nothing.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗
“Over decades we have built a significant amount of renewable energy generation across the UK, both offshore and onshore, but we have not kept pace with being able to store that electricity for when we need it most, which has meant that our electricity system cannot get the full benefit of the clean, cheap, secure power that is being generated every single day. In fact, as the hon. Gentleman said, we have to spend considerable amounts of money on constraining that renewable capacity, because we did not build the grid. We have not built the necessary storage, so our transition to being able to deploy clean power when we need it requires much more flexibility, which comes from long duration energy storage.”
House of Commons20 October 2026Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0Source ↗