Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what assessment she has made of the potential effect of redundancies proposed by the PBS consortium on the contract with TotalEnergies on offshore safety standards in the North Sea.

The UK Continental Shelf (UKSC) safety case regime requires Total to demonstrate to the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that it can comply with the offshore legislation. Total has accepted safety cases for all its offshore installations and HSE has a targeted intervention plan which involves the testing of assertions made in safety cases. Total must continue to demonstrate that it is operating in compliance with the accepted safety case in the event of changing its contractors or when contractors themselves make changes, such as decreasing staff numbers etc.