Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, if he will make an estimate of the average backlog of safety-critical maintenance work on oil and gas installations in the North Sea; and if he will compare that backlog with the figures released in the Health and Safety Report 2022 published by Offshore Energies UK.

The Health and Safety Executive (HSE) focuses on how effectively duty holders are managing the potential safety risks of their safety-critical maintenance backlogs. HSE does not estimate backlog figures in the way Offshore Energies UK (OEUK) does, it focuses on the risk profile of assets and uses this in targeting duty holders who present the greatest risk.