Jackdaw Gasfield

Toby Perkins Excerpts

Wednesday 21st October 2026 Commons Chamber

[Michael Shanks]

I am genuinely confused about the Lib Dems’ position, because my understanding was that they were now in favour of the Jackdaw field. Maybe that will change again by the end of the day. I hear the point that she makes. We are not waiting for a tipping point. We have been getting on with electrification and building the clean power mission for the past two and a half years.

I would gently say to the Lib Dems that there were 10 sites for new nuclear projects in 2009. After Labour left office in 2010, the leader of the Liberal Democrats was Energy Minister for a period in which no new nuclear, which would have helped us, was built.

I agree with the hon. Lady’s point about climate. In making the decision, all those factors had to be weighed up. The full decision notice is available, and it goes into this in great detail, but the Secretary of State was very clear that her assessment is that the decision does not prevent the UK from meeting legally binding limits on carbon emissions, or from achieving our net zero target. A managed transition recognises that moving to a low-carbon economy will involve balancing climate objectives, the deployment of clean power and the electrification of heat and industry with ensuring energy security in the short term, in which we will be required to use oil and gas across our economy. This is about doing both, and getting us to the end point as quickly as possible.

[Mr Toby Perkins (Chesterfield) (Lab)]

Today’s decision is probably not a surprise to most people. It will make a relatively limited difference to energy security, and probably very little difference to pricing, but I very much welcome what the Minister said about it being part of a transition, and about us not ripping up the policy commitment to no wider exploration. I agree with him that this decision is consistent with our manifesto pledge.

We need to move to heat pumps and electric vehicles, and to make other changes for industry, but does the Minister agree that the absolute priority is bringing down electricity prices and getting us off the fossil fuel rollercoaster? What else will he do, in this Budget and Budgets to come, to make sure that we achieve that?

[Michael Shanks]

I agree with my hon. Friend about the absolute priority. He is absolutely right to say that this decision will not take a penny off bills. We have been consistent on that throughout. We are a price taker as a country, and no number of consenting decisions will change the fact that gas is traded on the international market and the decision is of marginal impact on the overall price; it does not have an impact on that. Nevertheless, the gas resulting from this decision will account for around 5% of domestic gas production, so the decision is important from a security point of view.

My hon. Friend’s wider point is about how we move many more people over to electricity and then bring down the cost of electricity. We are doing all we can to break the link with gas; that is absolutely critical. Electricity bills have gone up in the last two price caps because of our exposure to fossil fuels. That is affected by a war thousands of miles away that we had no part in.

We are already making progress. A few years ago, 90% of the electricity price was set by gas. The figure is now 60%, and is going down all the time, but we have much more to do on that. Evidence from the past few months has shown that the people who are being supported to take up heat pumps or solar panels are off-grid households, which face the impact of heating oil prices. They have taken up those opportunities. The public are behind us on this; we just need to make it as straightforward as possible. That is what the warm homes plan will deliver.