INEOS Chemicals: Grangemouth

Andrew Bowie Excerpts

Wednesday 17th December 2025 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bowie (West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for the advance copy of his statement. The steps announced today by the Government to secure the ethylene plant at Grangemouth are welcome news, especially for the workers at the site who can now look forward to the new year, assured that their jobs will remain at the strategically vital site—and Grangemouth is vital, as the UK’s last plant producing ethylene, a key ingredient in plastics used in advanced manufacturing and the automotive and aerospace sectors. To have lost domestic production capacity for such a core product would have been unconscionable.

However, this move, welcome as it is, demonstrates just how exposed sites such as Grangemouth have become under this Government. This Government’s policies are leading to the deindustrialisation of this country, with unemployment rates soaring and the economy shrinking as a result. From potteries in Stoke to the Prax Lindsey oil refinery in Lincolnshire and, most obviously and glaringly, our oil and gas industry in the North sea, this Government are not just overseeing but engineering the decline of energy-intensive industries in this country.

Of course, I am genuinely glad that 500 jobs at Grangemouth will be protected, but that will be cold comfort for the thousands of workers in and around the wider oil and gas industry who have already lost their jobs, or those who will spend Christmas next week not knowing whether they will have a job next year because of Labour party policy. Last week it was Harbour Energy, and before that it was the Port of Aberdeen, Apache and Petrofac. TotalEnergies has had to merge with NEO NEXT Energy to operate, while Shell has merged with Equinor.

Those businesses all say the same thing: the exorbitant taxation regime, increased and extended until 2030, is driving away investment. Couple that with the utterly astronomical cost of energy here in the UK, pushed ever higher by unnecessary green levies and carbon taxes, and it is no surprise that, in his response to today’s announcement, Sir Jim Ratcliffe said that

“high energy costs and punitive carbon”

taxes were

“driving industry out of the UK at an alarming rate. If politicians want jobs, investment and energy security, then they must create a competitive environment.”

Week after week, more jobs in the sector are lost and critical national assets shut up shop as a direct consequence of policy decisions made by this Government. Since Labour stepped into office, more than 15,000 manufacturing and industry jobs have been lost—that is the scale of the crisis we are dealing with.

Great Britain has a proud manufacturing legacy, but current Government policy towards energy is squandering that legacy, damaging Scottish jobs, and damaging an important national asset.

“There are 200,000 jobs in the UK associated with oil and gas, and they are all at risk unless the government changes course.”

Those are not my words, Madam Deputy Speaker, but those of the chairman of Ineos at Grangemouth.

Today’s announcement is timely, however, as tomorrow I will be visiting Mossmorran to meet the team following the news that the polyethylene plant there will be closing. ExxonMobil’s chairman there has explained that he does not have two of the keys needed for success because of Government policy. He said:

“We’ve had windfall taxes, we’ve had a ban on production licences—I need cheap sources of abundant ethane, and I do not have them, because the North Sea—because of Government policy—is declining rapidly…we paid £20 million last year in CO2 taxes, that will double in the next four or five years.”

What is shocking, though, is that for some inexplicable reason the Secretary of State for Scotland chose today to attack ExxonMobil when explaining why it was not receiving the same support as Grangemouth, saying that the management

“weren’t able to give us a pathway to profitability.”

Of course they cannot do that—at every turn this Government are putting up hurdles, shutting down the North sea and taxing these businesses until they burst. Honestly, this Government just do not get it. They are not listening.

Today’s announcement does not even scratch the surface when it comes to rectifying the damage and pain that this Government have inflicted on industry in this country. Given that this is the second time this Government have launched an unprovoked attack on a leading investor in the United Kingdom, does the Minister want me to pass on an apology from the Government when I visit Mossmorran tomorrow?

Today’s announcement is welcome, but this Government could do so much more. We should scrap the energy profits levy and remove the punitive carbon taxes—we are not getting an exemption to the EU emissions trading scheme anyway, according to the EU Commission. We should incentivise, not punish. A Conservative Government will do all this and more when we return to office in three years’ time—unfortunately, those are three years I do not think British industry has.

[Chris McDonald]

I start by thanking the hon. Gentleman sincerely for welcoming the support for Grangemouth—it really must be the season of good will. On this occasion, I can assure him that he is correct: this is the last ethylene plant, so we can agree on that this time.

The hon. Gentleman talked about the business environment for the chemicals industry. I thought I had set that out reasonably well in my statement, but perhaps not. I shall just say a bit more. On energy costs, we already have the energy-intensive industries scheme and, as I mentioned, we have increased the level of the supercharger. The British industrial competitiveness scheme will come in in 2027 with an additional 25% reduction. He may be interested to know that our electricity costs are already more competitive than many countries in Europe, but not France and Germany, which are the benchmark for me. That is why we are introducing the British industrial competitiveness scheme. On gas, after policy costs we are already competitive. These businesses trade internationally, and our success in striking international trade deals with the EU, the US and India, and with Korea just this week, means that there are more market opportunities all the time.

The shadow Secretary of State made the contrast with ExxonMobil. I reiterate the point that this Government —the Government would always do this, as I am sure he would expect—are investing in a business with a viable and sustainable future where there is a viable business plan, primarily because the owner of the business has invested in the business over time. As I said a few weeks ago in my statement on Mossmorran, ExxonMobil had failed to invest in that plant, and that is why it said that there was a £1 billion investment gap.

On jobs, in the clean energy sector we are creating 40,000 new jobs in Scotland alone and 800,000 jobs across the whole of the country. This is a transition that the Government are actively engaging in and managing. The shadow Secretary of State says that a Conservative Government would do something different from what they did last time, but they did not do anything last time. When Ineos announced in November 2023 that it was going to close its refinery, the Conservative Prime Minister at the time said, “That’s a commercial decision.” They did nothing about it—nothing at all.

Investment in this area is very important, so I refer the shadow Secretary of State to an article that was published this morning by my noble Friend Lord Stockwood, the Minister for Investment. He talked very carefully about the international investment environment and the performance of the UK economy and lamented the fact that so many people in this country—so many Cassandras, such as the shadow Secretary of State—are constantly talking the economy down and frightening investors away. I think it is about time he recognised the success of our clean energy industries and the success of this Government’s industrial strategy and stopped talking Britain down.