Fossil Fuel Advertising and Sponsorship

Michael Shanks Excerpts

Monday 7th July 2025 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Siân Berry]

Before the Minister winds up, I want to ensure that he tackles the question of sponsorship, which is a key part of the petition. I think that focusing only on advertising ignores the lack of choice that people have if their much-loved sports team, the gallery they want to visit or the theatre company that they support is sponsored by a fossil fuel company. The Minister needs to reflect on why so many people signed the petition, having been put in an invidious position by these sponsorship deals.

[Michael Shanks]

It goes back to what I said earlier. I take the hon. Lady’s point, and I take seriously the number of people who engaged with the petition. I also reflect on the number of organisations and activities across the country that rely on sponsorship. I do not think that we should discount that so easily, because we have incredibly important organisations that may well collapse without some of that sponsorship.

There is a balance to be struck here. It is incumbent on Government to set the tone for what we expect in climate action. It is right and proper to hold private companies accountable where they share misleading information, but where they are supporting organisations that rely on their funding, I am afraid I struggle to say that we should simply withdraw that funding and, with it, the organisations that rely on it. As someone who has run a charitable organisation in the past, I can tell the hon. Lady that there is not an abundance of cash out there in alternatives.

This is about a balance, but I take the hon. Lady’s point on board, and we keep these things under review, as do other Departments that have a closer relationship with the Advertising Standards Authority and deal with questions on such matters. As I say, this is about us treading a little lighter on people’s lives and making the case for taking collective action on the climate crisis, but not being in the business of banning things.

I want to touch briefly on a point that the shadow Minister made, which is not often raised in these debates, about the just transition for the oil and gas industry. It is important to recognise that the industry has long been in transition, but there are many thousands of workers who rely on it for their livelihood and there are whole communities that depend on it for employment and investment. Although it is right that we are looking to the future of the North sea—a future that will include oil and gas for many decades to come, but will inevitably move towards other technologies, including carbon capture, hydrogen and offshore wind—we need to ensure that we are delivering the transition on the principle of fairness. Fairness for households means protecting bill payers from the volatility of fossil fuels, but in the North sea, fairness also means ensuring that workers and communities have a long-term, prosperous plan for their future.

The North sea will play a critical role in Britain’s energy future. For nearly 60 years, people have worked in incredibly difficult circumstances in the North sea, with workers, businesses and communities helping to power our country with oil and gas, and they will do so for decades to come. Although oil and gas production from our own shores will play an important role, as we drive towards clean energy, the North sea gives us an opportunity to show new leadership. That is why in our consultation earlier this year we outlined the role that we want to see the North sea playing long into the future.

I reiterate a point that I made at the beginning: this is an incredibly important subject and an important moment for us to say that the action needed on climate change is not just a question of banning advertising; it is about serious investment in how we push towards our clean energy transition. The Government are playing an active role in driving that forward, reducing emissions right across the country, creating good economic opportunities as part of that, demonstrating global leadership on climate action and delivering opportunities to every part of the country.

We are bringing people with us on this journey, so that when those who stand up and say that the climate crisis is not a priority for us, or that we should not be moving to net zero because it might be too difficult, we can say that we are delivering the economic and industrial opportunities of the 21st century. That is how we bring people with us and deliver on our transition for everybody. It is also how we deliver the action needed to tackle the climate crisis. That is why, although this petition is an important conversation, we think there are already measures in place to tackle many of these issues. They may well need to go further, and that is for the bodies responsible to do themselves. We think that the action needed from Government is to drive forward this transition and to deliver jobs, energy security and climate leadership, and that is what we will continue to do.