Jackdaw Gasfield

Nadia Whittome Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

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. 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.

[Nadia Whittome (Nottingham East) (Lab)]

The Government claim that approving Jackdaw will help fund clean energy—making them, if you like, both the arsonist and the firefighter. The North sea is a declining basin, though, meaning that it is a rapidly shrinking tax base. The Office for Budget Responsibility expects the North sea to provide just £100 million in tax per year by 2030. At that rate, the oil and gas sector would take 20 years to match the Government’s injection into the energy wealth fund today, so does the Minister see that approving Jackdaw is a false economy?

[Michael Shanks]

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.