Fossil Fuel Advertising and Sponsorship

Carla Denyer Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[Carla Denyer (Bristol Central) (Green)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Twigg, I think for the first time.

The petition’s demands are simple, clear and extremely compelling. In the UK, we forbid tobacco advertising because tobacco kills us, and that ban has worked to reduce the number of people dying from it. The air pollution caused directly by fossil fuels and the extreme weather caused by climate change are already killing at least as many people as smoking was before the ad ban, and they are likely to kill many more, so why the hell are we allowing fossil fuel companies to take up space in public places and on our screens to sell us products that kill us? I find that argument so compelling that I have dedicated a significant amount of my life in the past few years to trying to make a ban happen. I thank Chris Packham for initiating the petition and doing so much work to get more than 110,000 signatories, and I thank everyone who signed it.

This campaign has been running for many years, and I want to highlight the groundwork done on it by grassroots organising group Adblock Bristol, of which I am a member. Adblock Bristol exists because its members think a lot of things are fundamentally wrong with advertising. Advertising often works by telling us that we are not good enough without a product or by engendering a positive emotion about a product or service that we did not previously have. It often worsens inequality. The billboards are not in the posh parts of town, and they overwhelmingly advertise products that are bad for our health, the environment or society. That is not to mention the direct environmental, social and road safety impacts of the adverts themselves.

After a few years of successfully opposing applications for individual billboards in our community, Adblock Bristol set up a national organisation called Adfree Cities, where I worked for a little bit. It campaigns nationally alongside Platform, Badvertising and others to support people in their local communities all over the country to oppose the pernicious impact of advertising. In fact, the hon. Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) listed some of the communities that I supported in doing that.

Many local councils have already adopted policies of not hosting adverts for high-carbon products and services, or other harmful products such as junk food, payday loans, alcohol and gambling, on billboards on council-owned land and bus stops. That is a start, but most billboards are privately owned and councils have no jurisdiction over them and no ability to control the myriad other ways that advertising intervenes, often subconsciously, in our lives. Regulation of advertising in this country is, in general, extremely light touch and, frankly, outgunned by the capacity of the companies that pay for the advertising. That is where the petition comes in. It is time for the national Government to step up where local councils do not have the power to do so.

This kind of social and regulatory change often creates uproar when it is first proposed, only for it to be accepted as extremely obvious, and for the previous status quo to seem appalling, not long afterwards. We have only to look at compulsory seatbelts in cars, the indoor smoking ban and tobacco advertising. “Freedom of speech, freedom of the market, freedom of choice,” they say, yet we pretty much all agree now that advertising products that cause us serious harm should not be allowed.

Let us remember that we are not talking about banning the product; we are just saying that communications that are specifically designed to increase the use of fossil fuels, through misleading claims and by crafting social norms and a social licence for their use and expansion, directly undermining the Government’s evidence-based policy, which is essential to keep us safe from the climate crisis, should not be allowed. That should be a no brainer.

Does the Minister want the history books, and perhaps his children, to look back in 10 years and see that he played the modern-day version of the role of those who opposed seatbelts in cars or the smoking ban? I guess not, in which case now is the time to be brave. He will be glad he did it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrew Bowie]

I absolutely will. In fact, Mr Twigg, you have pre-empted exactly where I was going in my speech.

Such investments are not token gestures—[Interruption.] Exactly. They are strategic investments that will shape the future of energy. Domestic supply chains, from engineering specialists to subsea infrastructure manufacturers, and from power cable component suppliers to logistics and offshore support companies, will support the transition. Again, we should allow them to tell people in this country about their work.

[Carla Denyer]

The hon. Gentleman will have heard earlier in the debate from the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) that some oil and gas companies advertise their work on decarbonising despite it making up only 0.3% of their business. On that basis, I could arguably edit my Wikipedia page to say that I am a professional swimmer or pub quizzer, but I do not think that would be a fair representation of what I spend most of my time doing, although it probably adds up to 0.3% of my time in some months. On that basis, would the hon. Gentleman reconsider whether he really thinks it is fair to allow oil and gas companies to advertise work that accounts for less than 0.5% of their business and use that to greenwash their image?

[Andrew Bowie]

No, obviously that would not be fair, but as has already been pointed out, the Advertising Standards Authority has demonstrated that it possesses both the mandate and the mechanisms to hold companies to account for misleading environmental claims, and as yet it has found none to be in breach.

It is important that those companies, which require the underlying profit from their traditional exploration and drilling work to support their investment in the clean technologies of the future, are allowed to tell the country and the world about that. We should be immensely proud that we have not only a world-leading oil and gas sector—the cleanest basin from which to extract oil and gas in the world right now—but one that spends billions on developing the clean technologies of the future and attracts international companies to the United Kingdom to do the same.

If the issue is the accuracy of advertising, we should have confidence in the existing regulatory framework, which has proven capable of intervening where necessary. A blanket ban is neither proportionate nor necessary when robust oversight is already in place. I am afraid that the ban advocated by the petition may be purely ideological. It would damage investor confidence and be counterproductive in reducing carbon emissions.

I am proud that BP, Shell, Total, Equinor and the rest invest in music, art, culture, education and sport across the UK—and let us look at what happens when they do not. Baillie Gifford, a global investment management firm that invests in some of Scotland and the UK’s biggest companies, which just happen to be oil and gas companies, was sadly forced, under pressure from environmental activists, to withdraw support for the Edinburgh international book festival. Who has had to step up at the last minute to plug the gap? It is the Scottish Government—the taxpayer—to the tune of £300,000 this year alone, at a time of tightening budgets, fiscal constraints and a difficult financial outlook for the country. When there was money already available, that is utter madness.

The oil and gas industry, which is based in and around Aberdeen but has a presence across our entire island nation, is a national asset. We should be championing it and the people who work in it, not demonising them. We should be proud when we see the names of successful British companies supporting British artists, musicians and sportspeople, and when we see them investing in communities, schools and our country. We should absolutely allow them to tell the world of the globally significant investment that they are making in the clean technologies of the future, and we should not have any truck with this petition.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero (Michael Shanks)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Twigg, for my first petitions debate, which are a great innovation in parliamentary procedure. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier), I thank everyone who signed the petition. I do not think that I have been in a Westminster Hall debate with so many people in the Public Gallery. That is fantastic to see, and I thank them for being here.

I join the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie), in his comments about the Piper Alpha disaster, the 37th anniversary of which was yesterday. It was the worst oil disaster in history, in terms of human lives lost, and it reminds us just how dangerous some of the work in the North sea is. It also reminds us of the importance of the culture of safety, which has changed beyond recognition since that disaster. This is a useful moment to pause and reflect on the lives that were lost.

This is an important debate, and I praise my hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter for his excellent introductory speech. As a Member of Parliament, it is not always easy to give a balanced speech, but he attempted to put forward both sides of the argument very strongly, and I give credit to him for doing so.

I also thank other hon. Members who have contributed to the debate and raised a number of points. My hon. Friend the Member for Stroud (Dr Opher) brought his extensive medical experience to the debate. He rightly spoke about the significant impact that emissions have on people’s health, and about why climate change is a public health crisis as much as an environmental one. I also thank the hon. Member for Bristol Central (Carla Denyer) for her commitment to this issue. What she does in her spare time will now be in Hansard, so I think Wikipedia will be updated—there is no way out of that; it is on the record.

I recognise the strength of feeling on this incredibly important issue; the 100,000-odd signatures on the petition that triggered the debate underline that point. Before I address the specific points in the petition, however, I want to be absolutely clear that the Government are committed to tackling climate change. In fact, the Prime Minister said recently that that is “in the DNA” of the Government. We know it is an urgent threat to life—an existential crisis for our planet—and as I have said on numerous occasions, it is no longer a theoretical future threat, but a very present reality. We do not have to look far around the world to see examples of that.

Even if we did not accept all that as a huge reason to take action, we should recognise that the huge opportunity that swapping fossil fuels for clean, home-grown energy provides is much greater than just tackling the climate crisis: it can deliver our energy security in an uncertain time for our world and create tens of thousands of new jobs. It is also the industrial opportunity of the century. That is why one of the Prime Minister’s five key defining missions in government is to make this country a clean energy superpower with clean power by 2030, accelerating towards net zero. It is also why the Prime Minister has set one of the most ambitious nationally determined contribution targets in the world—to reduce all greenhouse gas emissions by at least 81% by 2035—and a few weeks ago my right hon. Friend the Chancellor set out the most significant investment in home-grown clean energy in British history.

Let me be clear. The Government are committed to this transition because it is the right thing to do for our energy security and to tackle the climate, but we will succeed in this mission only if we bring people with us. The moment that people start to feel that this is something being done to them, not with them, is the moment when we lose the battle. The shadow Minister rightly pointed out that we have been on this transition for a long time now. We have halved emissions since 1990 because of the consensus between Governments of different persuasions. That consensus, as many people will not have failed to notice, has now fractured, which is a great shame.

For us to win the political argument, we have to bring people with us. Instead of banning and blocking, our emphasis needs to be much more on empowering people to make informed choices. As the Prime Minister said before the election, after a period in which Government seemed to tread quite heavily on all our lives, part of this Government’s mission is to deliver for the people of this country, but to tread a little lighter on people’s lives. In this space, that means ensuring that everyone has access to accurate and trustworthy information about the climate crisis and the energy they use and the options available to them to be part of the transition.

In that context, I turn specifically to the petition. The UK has a robust regime in place to regulate the content and targeting of advertising through the Committee of Advertising Practice, which sets the codes that are upheld, and through the Advertising Standards Authority, which enforces the codes. The Government are not involved in the codes or in any of the investigations or enforcement delivered by the Advertising Standards Authority. In 2021, those bodies launched a climate change and environment project to respond to the ongoing climate crisis and ensure that environmental claims made in advertising are not misleading or irresponsible. Those findings have informed their updated guidance on advertising.

As the Government’s response to the petition sets out, we do not currently have plans to go any further on the guidance and ban or restrict fossil fuel advertising. However, that is not to say that we do not recognise that the climate crisis, as I have already outlined, is the greatest long-term global challenge we face. To address that, we need a legal framework in place to help us reduce our emissions, which will contribute to reducing our reliance on fossil fuels.

[Carla Denyer]

I thank the Minister for his patience while I checked a fact. A minute or so ago, he used the phrase “informed choice” to defend why he is not planning to ban advertising for fossil fuels. Is he aware that that exact phrase, “informed choice”, was used by the tobacco companies to campaign against the ban on tobacco advertising? I am reading from a memorandum by British American Tobacco that was submitted to Parliament in 2000.

[Michael Shanks]

I suspect that if we go through all the words that have ever been spoken inside and outside this place, we might find two words that go side by side quite often. In answer to the hon. Lady, no, I do not think that that is the case at all. She makes a persuasive argument, but in my view it is not the argument that applies in this particular case, which I will outline if I can make just a little more progress.

To come to the broader point, it is important that people have the knowledge and information before them to make informed choices on personal decisions, particularly on installing things in their own home. However, as a Government, we have a responsibility to share factual information about the state of the climate. That is why this Government frequently talk about the importance of the climate crisis; I think I have done so three times already in this speech. I am not seeking to pretend that there is not a climate crisis, and I do not think we have hidden from that fact at all.

I also want to talk about the path that the UK is currently on. We need to make a broader argument to the public that goes beyond banning advertising by certain companies. Collectively, we have a responsibility to show the opportunities presented by this transition, counter to much of the misinformation and disinformation that is being put about, including by Members of this House.

The latest report by the Confederation of British Industry shows that the net zero economy is growing three times faster than the wider economy, so there is an economic argument that we have to make. Since we came into government last July, more than £40 billion of private investment has come into the clean energy industries. We believe that the best way to build on that success, bring the public with us and create a convincing argument that this is the right route is by focusing on the economic and social benefits of net zero.

We have therefore been working with industry to explore how we can reduce emissions from high-carbon products, including voluntary eco-labels that help consumers to make different purchasing decisions. We are continually listening to the private sector, local government, trade unions and civil society. That is why we relaunched the Net Zero Council, and we will also publish our upcoming public participation strategy. At the same time, we are doing everything we can to slash emissions while building a more secure and stable future for our country.

The shadow Minister, in customary fashion, reeled off a set of political lines about why this is the wrong choice for us as a country, despite the fact that he believed in it last year when he was delivering speeches from the Government Benches. The truth is that actions speak louder than words, which is why in the past year we have not just said that we are committed to the clean energy mission and to delivering action on climate change; we have delivered.

We ended the onshore wind ban within 72 hours. We set up Great British Energy, the first publicly owned energy company in 70 years. We consented enough clean power for 2 million homes by approving applications that had languished on Ministers’ desks. We kickstarted the carbon capture industry. In the past few weeks, the Chancellor has also announced a significant investment of more than £60 billion in home-grown clean energy, including new regional hydrogen networks for transport, storage, industry and power. We also published our industrial strategy, which places clean energy right at the heart of industrial renewal over the next 10 years.

The wider context of climate action is important, and we want the UK to be a world leader in this space. That is why in 2008, when my right hon. Friend the Energy Secretary held the same role, we backed the Climate Change Act 2008, making the UK the first country to introduce legally binding net zero emissions targets. Since then, we have overachieved against the first, second and third carbon budgets, and we will be setting carbon budget 7 by June 2026, in line with our statutory duties.