Energy Bill [Lords]

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Callum McCaig

Monday 18th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Callum McCaig]

I agree very much with the hon. Gentleman. It strikes me that there are certain parallels with the coal conversation moments ago. That situation could come to pass if we do not support the North sea. We need to transition away from oil and gas, but that will take some time given the economics at play. If we are using oil and gas—we will be doing so for the foreseeable future—it might as well be ours. We might as well get the economic benefit of it, and we should certainly use that economic benefit to try to diversify and invest in other areas. The hon. Gentleman made the point on subsidies. The oil and gas sector is taxed very highly, and more highly than any other sector of which I am aware. It is taxed less than it was, but we probably require it to be taxed less if we are to see the benefit of the industry in future.

The OGA is vital to that future and it is hugely important that it is put on a firm footing. It must be given the regulatory powers it requires and the ability to engage fully with industry on access to infrastructure, plans for investment and so on. I very much support the Government in ensuring that the OGA continues to have a laser-like focus on maximising economic recovery, which is fundamental to that purpose. Over the years, there have been umpteen changes to oil and gas. It is in the nature of the industry, with its huge capacity to generate income, that the goalposts have changed substantially during that time, but I plead with all hon. Members not to change the goalposts again. The industry has been working for two years towards proposals on maximising economic recovery, which have universal buy-in and require that the OGA’s focus is not complicated.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman accept that the focus must be on economic regeneration, rather than further regulation? The industry, especially at this time, cannot afford more costly regulation.

[Callum McCaig]

I disagree. The absence of a strong regulator is where there have been significant problems in the oil and gas industry, in particular with access to infrastructure. The inability to get two parties with competing commercial interests to agree a deal on access to oil and gas infrastructure—a pipeline, for example—has meant that investment decisions have not been implemented. The industry needs a regulator that is hard-touch where required. I very much hope that the threat of sanctions from the OGA will in itself be enough, and that they will not be required. The OGA probably recognises that itself. Issuing sanctions left, right and centre would suggest that its soft skills, its influence and the buy-in the Wood review has brought forward, are not working effectively enough. Where there is no compliance or buy-in to the idea of maximising economic recovery, and where disagreements about access to infrastructure are inhibiting investment, the regulator should go in—and go in hard—to ensure that what everyone is supposed to be working towards is delivered.

--- Later in debate ---

[Callum McCaig]

I am sorry to disappoint the right hon. Gentleman. I will be brief, to a degree. I do not need to rehash the arguments about the closure of the renewables obligation, which is disproportionately affecting Scotland, because 70% of the wind farms that are in the pipeline would be there. I know that the Government have said that they want to try to reintroduce the closure in order to meet a manifesto commitment, but I urge them not to do so. If they do, we shall oppose the move.

[Sammy Wilson]

Given that fuel poverty in Scotland has increased by two and a half times since 2002—from 13% of the population to 34%—how can the hon. Gentleman justify further subsidies for wind turbines, which are paid by consumers and most of the proceeds of which go to well-heeled large landowners?

[Callum McCaig]

I do not think that that is the solution to fuel poverty. I think that the solution to fuel poverty is to insulate homes, in which there is huge and disproportionate investment in Scotland, and to end poverty. We have made various suggestions about how to do that, but the fact is that fuel poverty does not exist in a vacuum; it exists in the environment of actual poverty.

Onshore wind is a cheap renewable, and the closure of the renewables obligation is set to save bill payers the princely sum of 30p. Moreover, it will produce up to 63 million tonnes more carbon dioxide.

Trade, Exports, Innovation and Productivity

Debate between Sammy Wilson and Callum McCaig

Wednesday 13th January 2016 Commons Chamber

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

It is a pleasure to take part in the debate, and to follow the hon. Member for The Cotswolds (Geoffrey Clifton-Brown), who has made some sensible suggestions. His proposal for buddying businesses is one that all the agencies involved should take on board. I was not expecting to speak quite so early in the debate. This topic is clearly of interest to some Members, but the memo about it does not seem to have been passed to the official Opposition. Some Labour Members are here, providing an honourable exception, but it is surprising to see so few here, given the importance of these fundamental tenets of the economy not only to the economy itself but to the services that they provide the money to pay for. If we do not get the economy right, we do not have the services.

I am really pleased to take part in this debate, and I am going to focus on one area where the UK, and in particular Scotland, has strong natural and competitive advantages: energy. I thank the Minister for a positive response to my question about oil and gas. It would be more helpful if we focused on what could be done to help the situation, rather than getting into some of the politics around it. I accept fully that we are in a political environment here, but we need to reflect on what message this place is sending to the folk in Aberdeen who are being laid off when we are having knockabout about the oil price—it is not helpful. Having said that, I respect, accept and am thankful for the positive comments made.

It would seem that the Government have turned over a new leaf in 2016 in their approach to oil and gas. Today, I have had positive conversations with the Energy Minister, who also gave a positive response to the questions from my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston (Hannah Bardell) about incentives for oil and gas at Energy and Climate Change questions last week. We are in an incredibly difficult position with the oil price, and jobs are being lost, but there is still a bright future. The industry is doing what it can to reduce costs—unfortunately, in many cases that will require job losses—but it is also innovating, and I will come on to discuss that. Help from the Government is, however, required in order to bridge over what we hope will be a temporary downturn. Most people expect the oil price to rise at some stage, but it is not clear when or by how much.

Aberdeen is a city of innovators—there is no doubt about that. Some of my SNP colleagues may be surprised to learn that the city in Scotland that filed most patents in 2014 was Aberdeen. It filed more than Edinburgh, whose population is twice the size of Aberdeen’s, and more than Glasgow, whose population is almost three times as large. These patents were primarily in oil and gas, but they were also in life sciences, biosciences and food and drink, and so the city is thriving. It is, however, unquestionably an oil and gas and energy hub, and the job losses announced by BP yesterday, coming on the back of 150 announced by Petrofac the day before, are genuinely heartbreaking for those involved. As I have said, the industry is taking the steps it can to innovate. Innovation is one of the hallmarks of the oil and gas industry, and it was heartening to see the level of innovation and of renewed collaboration that is taking place in the industry, as it works to deal with the lower oil price.

Some of the issues the oil and gas industry faces pre-existed the oil price fall but they have been exacerbated by it. There are three sides to the coin in terms of the costs and changes in income that oil and gas companies face. The first is the oil price, and none of us can do anything about that. The second is the costs that the industry is exposed to, and it is doing what it can there. The third is taxation, and I am pleased that it would seem Ministers have an open mind on that. I plead with them to look at oil and gas taxation in the round to see what can be done to help.

The important issue of the apprenticeship levy has been raised. We wholeheartedly support the levy, provided it has the investment coming to Scotland. There have been questions asked, again by my hon. Friend the Member for Livingston, about the potential double imposition of an apprenticeship levy-type scheme on oil and gas companies, which already pay significantly into training schemes through a number of industry levies.

As part of maintaining and progressing Aberdeen’s position as an innovative hub, our local authorities—Aberdeen City Council and the Aberdeenshire councils—are exploring a city deal. They are looking at significant investment in infrastructure, which is obviously an important part of this debate and a key way of securing economic growth, and very much at how they can continue to make the best of the expertise in innovation that the city of Aberdeen is proud to host. There are proposals within the city deal to create an innovation hub around the two universities, bringing together industry and universities in a way that has already been discussed today. Measures are required to protect the north-east of Scotland and provide the bridging for the oil industry that I mentioned, and the Aberdeen city region deal is a very important part of that toolkit. I commend it again to the Government, hoping that they will look upon it favourably and act quickly.

Even in these times of difficulty, there are many ways in which innovation in the oil industry can provide a massive support to the UK economy. Enhanced oil recovery is one such way, as is looking at being one of the first movers on decommissioning. We would not want to see that happening prematurely, but if it is inevitably going to happen, we have the ability, as we have one of the more mature oil and gas basins in the world, to take our expertise and export it globally. We cannot afford to miss that opportunity.

Let me move on to exports, the north-east of Scotland and the oil and gas supply chain, which is about much more than Aberdeen, as it goes the length and breadth of the UK. That situation is good and it is getting better; Aberdeen relies much less on the North sea, in terms of supply companies based there, for its income. I wish, however, to draw the House’s attention to something announced at the tail-end of last year. In principle, I support this, and I am not criticising it, but it needs to be taken in the round, with a more supportive approach being taken to oil and gas. I refer to the announcement that there would be an export credit agreement of $500 million for a couple of UK-based companies for exports to Petrobras, the Brazilian state-owned oil major. That is good in and of itself. It helps support exports from the UK—from Aberdeen—but when we are looking at these things, we need to be careful. If we are providing exports to something like the oil and gas industry elsewhere without providing the same at home, we may inadvertently end up requiring greater imports of oil and gas in the future. We do need to get the incentives for exploration right. Again, I do not mean to criticise, but we have to have both sides there; we have to have support not only for exports, but for the domestic industry.

Aberdeen, and Scotland more widely, have huge natural advantages on green energy, and the Paris deal cements the opportunity we have in that regard. There is a sad irony here, in that the deal comes at the same time as the UK Government have taken the hatchet to a number of green energy policies, undermining the opportunity to truly embrace what will be one of the biggest global growing markets of this century. In her much-heralded “reset” speech, the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change said:

“At the same time, we are building new interconnectors to make it easier to import cheaper electricity from Europe.”

I support the building of interconnectors, as does my party, because an integrated European market for electricity will be a good thing, but the ambition shown there and the logic for making this move is the wrong way round. We should not be doing this to import electricity; we should be doing it to export the green electricity that can be produced from the wind and the waves—the sea and the tides—in Scotland. That is what we should be doing. That is the opportunity interconnectors provide; the opportunity is not about importing cheap electricity, but about building an industry that we can be proud of, in order to develop the skills that we need.

The renewables sector is an important part of rebalancing the economy, in geographical terms as much as anything else. The criticism often made of renewables, particularly of onshore wind, is that they do not provide that many jobs. The reality is that onshore wind does provide a lot of jobs, doing so in places where without the wind industry it is likely that there would be no jobs at all. We cannot overstate the importance of a small number of highly paid jobs in an area where they did not exist.

[Sammy Wilson]

Does the hon. Gentleman also accept that many of the studies in Scotland have shown that the onshore wind industry and the way that it despoils the landscape have taken away many tourist jobs?

[Callum McCaig]

I have heard that asserted year in, year out, but, as far as I understand it, the tourist sector in Scotland is doing very well. It continues to do well and it is a major sector of growth in the Scottish economy, so I do not quite understand those assertions. I have read that there is anecdotal evidence—it is no more than that—of somebody saying, “I came to Scotland. I drove up the A9 and didn’t like the wind turbines, so I am never coming back.” Well, somebody else is there to take their place, and there always will be, as Scotland offers world-class tourism that is not in any way “despoiled”—in the words of the hon. Gentleman—by wind turbines.

It is not overly negative to say that genuine critiques can be made. On green energy policy, for example, various things have been done, but the most damaging to the United Kingdom’s reputation and to the financial and investor confidence that is required to secure investment in the UK was the decision at the 11th hour—actually it was even later than that—to pull the plug on carbon capture and storage. Two projects—Peterhead and White Rose in Yorkshire—took part in a CCS competition. Big companies invested significant time and resources on the basis of the supposed good word of the United Kingdom Government. Before they had even had the opportunity to submit their bids, the plug was pulled and the damage was done. We cannot underestimate the impact that that and all the other incremental attacks on green energy policy have had. We are missing a major trick here. As I have said, this is a huge opportunity to grow our economy and our skill base and to do it in differing parts of the United Kingdom. To send out such damaging messages really brings into question the commitment of the UK Government not just to green energy, all the talk at Paris and the global climate change deal, but to the economy and investment more widely.

Finally, let me touch on the Green Investment Bank, which was mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Dundee East (Stewart Hosie). It was supported by this party and also by the entire Chamber when it was debated—clearly, that was before I was elected to this place. The bank is a shining example of how we should address market failure. It is how we can ensure that investment is directed to the right areas, and that support is given to nascent industries to help them get off the ground. We have repeatedly criticised what is proposed. Again I say that we will oppose the privatisation of the Green Investment Bank if we do not get cast-iron assurances that its green remit will be protected.

After Paris, the rules of the game have changed, and the UK and Scotland have a chance to seize the benefits. Scotland is ready, but I fear that, as part of Tory Britain, we are being left behind.