My right honourable friend tweeted himself at Cop28 that there must be an unabated phaseout of fossil fuels to meet our climate goals. But today we have a bill before this house, the sole purpose of which is to double down on granting more oil and gas production licences. I do not believe, and it pains me to say this, that this bill will advance that commitment to transition away from fossil fuels.
This bill is about improving domestic energy security. But I think we all understand that the oil and gas extracted from the North Sea is owned by private enterprises and the government does not control who it is sold to. We all understand that this does not necessarily lower bills. We have to acknowledge that 200,000 jobs supported by the oil and gas industry have been lost over the last decade, and that is despite hundreds of new drilling licences being issued.
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