Jackdaw Gasfield

Seamus Logan Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

It is good to hear from the MP for my old home—he is my mother’s MP and a great champion for Ayrshire. Ayrshire has a critical role, and it could have an even more important role if we were to build new nuclear at Hunterston, which, if it were not for the objections of the SNP, we could be looking at much more seriously. He is right to point to the fact that there are huge opportunities around supply chain jobs. We have had a meeting at a port in his constituency to talk about the opportunities there. The real drive behind this is the clean energy transition for our energy security, but reindustrialisation off the back of that will create good jobs in every single part of the country. We need to dispel the idea that we cannot manufacture things in Britain and actually get back to building things in every single part of the country.

[Seamus Logan (Aberdeenshire North and Moray East) (SNP)]

I want to be kind to the Minister, because I am sure he is still smarting from the verbal caning that he received from Mr Speaker earlier. I want to clarify that I welcome this decision, my constituents welcome this decision and the Scottish Government’s statement welcomes this decision. We also welcome the creation of the energy wealth fund—albeit 50 years too late, as my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen North (Kirsty Blackman) said earlier—but he will be aware that electricity bills are going to go up twice later this year. Can he give me a reassurance from the Dispatch Box today that he will accelerate the Government’s commitment to the Acorn project at St Fergus? Will he give me a commitment that he will accelerate the approvals for ScotWind projects, which are beside my constituency? Finally, will he give me a better answer than the one he gave my colleagues earlier: how much of this £2 billion will be spent for the benefit of the people of Scotland?

[Michael Shanks]

The hon. Gentleman talks about needing to have set up wealth funds a long time ago. I probably would not disagree with him on much of that, but I would just point out that the Scottish Government have the ScotWind fund, which they are currently drawing down to meet the deficit in their own spending. That is not building a legacy for the future; it is using it to paper over the cracks in the fiscal competence of the SNP Government. The hon. Gentleman might welcome this decision, but I am genuinely still not sure what the SNP’s position is more generally. Nevertheless, I welcome his support for it.

The hon. Gentleman is right to mention the Acorn project. He and I have had useful conversations about it, and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Inverclyde and Renfrewshire West (Martin McCluskey), who is next to me on the Front Bench, is the Minister responsible for carbon capture, usage and storage now. As the hon. Gentleman is aware, a sales process is now going through, and we continue to be very supportive of that process. We have set aside funding to support the project.

The hon. Gentleman is also right to flag the question of approvals for projects. Some of that sits with us, but most of it at the moment is involved in a bottleneck on consenting decisions, which are the responsibility of the Scottish Government. I know I have done a bit of point scoring here, but in line with the problem solving driver for this Government, I would just say that I have a really good relationship with Stephen Gethins, the Scottish Government Energy Minister. We are working together on a lot of these things, but we need to get the consenting decisions made much more quickly so that projects can get out and get built.