Rishi Sunak says approving new licences for oil and gas drilling ‘entirely consistent’ with net zero plan
Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to Aberdeenshire, the prime minister said approving new licences for drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is “entirely consistent with our plan to get to net zero”.
Rishi Sunak said domestic oil and gas saves “two, three, four times the amount of carbon emissions” than “shipping it from halfway around the world”.
Questioned on whether the Rosebank oil and gas field in the North Sea would be approved, he said:
Licensing decisions are obviously made the normal way but what I’d say is that – entirely consistent with transitioning to net zero – that we use the energy that we’ve got here at home because we’re going to need it for decades.
Key events
Final preparations are taking place to house migrants on the Bibby Stockholm barge, Downing Street has said, amid reports the floating accommodation block has not received approval from local fire services.
The prime minister’s press secretary told reporters:
The Bibby Stockholm is currently undergoing final preparations including fire safety checks. That’s happening this week to ensure that it complies with all the appropriate regulations. There’s been refurbishment that’s been ongoing to ensure it complies with the marine industry safety regulations.
As you’d expect, we continue to work extremely closely with the local council… to ensure the right preparations are in place before anyone boards.
Asked about reports that plans to move migrants into RAF Scampton in Lincolnshire have been delayed, she said:
Work is ongoing to open to site at Scampton and we want that work to be done as soon as possible.
I can’t get into running commentary on expected timelines but eventually the site will accommodate almost 2,000 people.
Members of the National Education Union, the UK’s largest teaching union, have accepted a 6.5% pay rise for teachers in England and voted to end strike action.
Responding to a vote by the NEU to end strike action, the education secretary, Gillian Keegan, wrote on Twitter:
This is good news for teachers, good news for parents and most of all, good news for students.
Downing Street did not give a timeframe for the Department for Transport’s review of low-traffic neighbourhoods (LTNs).
The prime minister’s press secretary told reporters:
I don’t have any kind of details of timeline as of yet.
Obviously, with any review like this, we would want to conclude it as swiftly as possible, but I can’t pre-empt the kind of scope of the review at this point.
She said that once the “fact-finding mission” had concluded, ministers would decide what “evidence-based action” to take.
Asked whether the government could overrule councils on LTNs, she declined to get into “hypotheticals”.
Downing Street has denied that Rishi Sunak’s language on protecting motorists has changed in the wake of the Uxbridge and Ruislip by-election.
Asked whether the Tories’ narrow victory, which came amid local concerns about the expansion of London’s ultra-low emission zone, had affected the prime minister’s thinking, his press secretary told reporters: “No, not at all.”
On his move to review low-traffic neighbourhoods, she said:
The prime minister has always been of the view that local consent is important.
And it’s worth mentioning that a lot of these low-traffic neighbourhoods were introduced during Covid, often without votes or local feedback to them.
They’ve got to work for residents, businesses and emergency services. We want to be giving people the choice on how they travel, not just restricting or making their life difficult for those who rely on cars. And that’s why we’re reviewing the impact of low-traffic neighbourhoods.
I think it’s a perfectly consistent position that the prime minister has always been of the view that, as I said on our energy policy, everything we have to do has to be proportionate and pragmatic.
Downing Street said more than 100 new oil and gas licences would be awarded in the autumn.
Rishi Sunak’s press secretary said that future rounds were then “normally announced around a year after”.
She said they could not “pre-empt the process” of the next round as it depends on how bidding unfolds but added:
We certainly are very confident that over 100 at least will be issued.
Asked whether there would be hundreds before the next general election, the press secretary said:
The usual way this follows is that once a funding round is launched the licences are issued normally within a year of that time period but I wouldn’t comment on general election timing.
The UK government’s decision to support 100 new fossil fuel exploration licences shows a total disregard for our environment and for future generations, say the Scottish Greens.
The Scottish Greens climate and energy spokesperson, Mark Ruskell MSP, said:
This is an utterly reckless decision that will leave a long and destructive legacy. It is probably the single most consequential decision Rishi Sunak will make as prime minister and he has chosen the worst possible option.
It shows a total disregard for our environment and for future generations. If these licences go ahead it will be a big leap towards climate chaos.
Climate breakdown is the greatest environmental threat that we will ever face. Our world is on fire. We are already way past the point when we should have been transitioning away from fossil fuels, yet Downing Street is choosing to double down on them.
He added that green energy is the safest, cheapest and cleanest energy available:
We have a huge renewable potential and an abundance of natural resources that any country would envy. Those are the industries we should be supporting.
Downing Street has insisted the granting of about 100 new oil and gas licences in the UK will be “perfectly compatible” with net zero targets.
A No 10 spokesperson denied that progress on green energy commitments could be undermined by the prime minister’s support for drilling in the North Sea.
Asked whether the UK’s efforts to protect the environment could be “undone” by the current approach, the official said:
I don’t accept that at all.
I think both heading towards our net zero target and achieving it is perfectly compatible with using the resources that we have here at home.
Importing oil and gas, which we are currently doing, from other countries potentially actually releases higher carbon emissions and is more expensive for consumers so it doesn’t make sense.
Downing Street was asked about a tweet by the Conservative party chair, Greg Hands, last year which suggested extracting more North Sea gas would not lower global prices.
Asked about Hands’s claim in February 2022 that more UK production would not reduce the price of gas, a No 10 spokesperson said:
I’m not sure of that particular tweet but I think what has been clear and has been made clear by the independent North Sea Transition Authority is that the two policy positions are totally compatible.
They admit themselves that beyond hitting net zero, oil and gas will remain a part of the mix of energy that provides for the UK.
Pressed on whether that meant prices would fall, the official said:
Importing oil and gas from other countries, not only would that, necessarily, because you are reducing domestic supply, you are also increasing costs by importing and potentially also increasing carbon emissions because of the importation of the oil and gas.
I don’t see why and the prime minister doesn’t believe that if we have the resources here at home we shouldn’t use them.
Helena Horton
Scientists have tentatively welcomed Sunak’s decision to fund more carbon capture and storage (CCS), but said it could be a “deal with the devil” which greenwashes oilfields and allows for more oil and gas extraction than can be stored.
Myles Allen FRS, a professor of geosystem sciences at the University of Oxford, said:
Great to see much-needed investment in carbon capture, but why does the taxpayer need to foot the bill when the main beneficiaries are precisely those companies looking for new oil and gas licences?
The solution is increasingly obvious: make new extraction conditional on responsible CO2 disposal. At current prices, extractors can certainly afford it.
Scientists have also said the CCS funding should not be connected to new oil and gas licences. Paul Fennell, a professor of clean energy at Imperial College London, said:
I welcome the announcement on carbon capture, which is important for the future and allows some sectors, such as steel and cement, which produce important things which are not easily substitutable by other materials, and which intrinsically produce CO2, to continue. We need every arrow in the armory. I abhor the implicit connection with new oil and gas licences.
Stuart Haszeldine, a professor of carbon capture and storage at the University of Edinburgh, said:
Storage of 2m or 5m tonnes CO2 per year should not become a policy excuse to release additional 10’s or 100’s million tonnes CO2 from development of new oil and gas extraction through many tens of new licences. If Rosebank field (Equinor) goes ahead, that is 200m tonnes of extra CO2, if Jackdaw field (Shell) is developed that is 70m tonnes extra CO2.
Rishi Sunak says ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars remains government policy
The ban on the sale of new petrol and diesel cars from 2030 remains government policy, the prime minister has said.
Rishi Sunak has been under mounting pressure after more than 40 Conservative MPs and peers wrote to him calling for the deadline to be pushed back, PA Media reports.
However, the prime minister said it remained part of his agenda and reiterated his commitment to transition to net zero in a “proportionate and pragmatic way”.
Echoing Sunak, the energy minister Andrew Bowie told Sky News: “We remain committed to ensuring that more people get access to, are able to buy, are able to drive electric and hybrid cars.”
Their comments came as Sunak announced at least 100 new oil and sea gas licences alongside a new carbon capture scheme in north-east Scotland.
Speaking to BBC Radio Scotland’s Good Morning Scotland programme about the 2030 ban, Sunak said:
That’s about new cars, not all existing cars. So it’s the sale of new cars. That’s been the government’s policy for a long time. It remains the government’s policy.
But what I have said more generally on my approach, is that we will transition to net zero, I’m committed to it, but we will do it in a proportionate and pragmatic way that doesn’t necessarily add burden or cost to families’ bills, particularly at a time when inflation is higher than any of us would have liked.
And more generally, on motorists, I think actually, this was down recently to the Ulez expansion that your listeners may or may not be familiar about, which I don’t think is the right thing.
I think at a time when, as I said, families are looking at bills and worried about inflation, adding £12.50 on to their life every time they visit the supermarket or a GP or drop their kids off at football practice does not seem to me to be the right thing to do.
Bowie told ITV’s Good Morning Britain:
The prime minister has been quite clear we are committed to the 2030 target for the phasing out of new petrol or diesel cars, the sale of that.
That doesn’t mean that you won’t be able to drive a petrol [or] diesel car post-2030 but the sale of petrol [and] diesel cars, we are hoping that our aim is that we will see [it] start from 2030.
We remain committed to that target. We remain committed to ensuring that more people get access to, are able to buy, are able to drive electric and hybrid cars.
Rishi Sunak says approving new licences for oil and gas drilling ‘entirely consistent’ with net zero plan
Speaking to broadcasters on a visit to Aberdeenshire, the prime minister said approving new licences for drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea is “entirely consistent with our plan to get to net zero”.
Rishi Sunak said domestic oil and gas saves “two, three, four times the amount of carbon emissions” than “shipping it from halfway around the world”.
Questioned on whether the Rosebank oil and gas field in the North Sea would be approved, he said:
Licensing decisions are obviously made the normal way but what I’d say is that – entirely consistent with transitioning to net zero – that we use the energy that we’ve got here at home because we’re going to need it for decades.
Donna Ferguson
A man seen as one of the key architects of Theresa May’s disastrous 2017 election campaign has been selected by the Conservative party to fight Matt Hancock’s seat at the next general election.
Nick Timothy abruptly resigned from his post as May’s chief of staff when MPs put pressure on her to get rid of him, shortly after the party lost its majority in the 2017 vote and had to turn to the Democratic Unionist party to form a government.
Timothy, 43, who supported Brexit, was a special adviser to May in the Home Office during the era of the hostile environment policy that led to the Windrush scandal. He was confirmed as West Suffolk’s Tory parliamentary candidate on Sunday night.
As co-author of May’s election manifesto and its “dementia tax” policy – which put no cap on social care costs but allowed people to keep £100,000 of assets – he was widely blamed by the Tories for the election results.
One Tory MP told the Guardian Timothy had been “instrumental in delivering the worst Conservative election campaign in living memory”.
He went on to write a book, Remaking One Nation: the Future of Conservatism, in 2020, in which he described May’s reaction to the 2017 election results.
“My phone rang. It was Theresa … I could hear the disappointment and hurt and anger in her voice,” he wrote.
“There was terror, too. I had seen or heard her cry before, but this was different. She was sobbing. I remember thinking she sounded like a child who wanted to be told everything was just fine.”
Hancock, the former health secretary, currently represents the constituency as an independent and has said he will stand down at the next general election. He had the Tory whip removed in November when he agreed to appear on the ITV reality programme, I’m a Celebrity … Get Me Out of Here!
Timothy is understood to have strong family ties to the constituency, which was won by the Tories in 2019 with a majority of 23,000 votes.
A local Conservative councillor, Lance Stanbury, welcomed the selection of Timothy, who had previously tried and failed to be selected for the Meriden constituency in the West Midlands in 2019.
“Delighted, absolutely delighted that Nick has been selected to fight for West Suffolk,” Stanbury told the PA Media news agency.
Read the full story here:
Sir David King, a former government chief scientific adviser and founder and chair of the climate crisis advisory group, has responded to the government’s announcement:
Rishi Sunak is now breaking openly with the all-party agreement dating back to 2008, which led to the set up of the world’s first climate change committee of parliament.
The proposal to issue at least 100 new oil and gas licences is another drain on our failing economy. The crises covering the [northern hemisphere] now – following four successive summers – means oil, gas [and] coal must be phased out quickly.
And that means this will be another stranded asset. The public will surely see this as a desperate act of electioneering, putting our future at severe risk. Britain can no longer claim to be leading on the climate crisis and that is shameful.
Green groups say Rishi Sunak’s ‘international credibility is on the line’
Helena Horton
Green groups have criticised Sunak’s plans to issue more oil and gas licences as “dangerously incoherent” as the planet boils.
Philip Evans, from the Greenpeace UK climate team, said:
This new announcement is nothing but a cynical political ploy to sow division, and the climate is collateral damage. Just as wildfires and floods wreck homes and lives around the world, Rishi Sunak’s government has decided to row back on key climate policies, attempted to toxify net zero, and recycled old myths about North Sea drilling.
If Sunak were serious about boosting our energy security while keeping energy bills down, he’d remove the absurd barriers holding back cheap, homegrown renewables and launch a nationwide insulation programme to tackle energy waste in our homes.
Experts also pointed out that his plans will not, as he claims, bring down bills. Jess Ralston, the head of energy at the Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit (ECIU), said:
Government is currently subsidising oil and gas companies to drill more in the North Sea. This will not bring down bills as there isn’t enough gas to move the dial on international market prices and the oil and gas industry’s own estimates show the North Sea will continue to decline no matter what the government policy is.
Prioritising oil and gas over cheaper renewables and pushing back regulations on insulation in rental homes, both of which would bring down bills, is against advice from the International Energy Agency, United Nations and Climate Change Committee. And while carbon capture will be an important technology for some industries, like manufacturing, it’s yet to be seen how much it will cost or where it will be most useful.
Friends of the Earth’s head of policy, Mike Childs, added:
Climate change is already battering the planet with unprecedented wildfires and heatwaves across the globe. Granting hundreds of new oil and gas licences will simply pour more fuel on the flames, while doing nothing for energy security as these fossil fuels will be sold on international markets and not reserved for UK use.
Rishi Sunak’s international credibility is on the line. He promised other world leaders the UK would cut carbon by more than two thirds by 2030. His recent announcements on energy and transport look as though he is reneging on the UK’s commitments. The prime minister should stop playing politics with young people’s futures and build the safe, clean economy we urgently need.
Others have said leaders of low-income countries, which have been urged by the UK government and other rich western countries to decarbonise, will be watching this announcement with some surprise.
Oxfam’s climate change policy adviser, Lyndsay Walsh, explained:
Today’s wrongheaded decision is yet another example of the government’s hypocritical and dangerously inconsistent climate policy.
Extracting more fossil fuels from the North Sea will send a wrecking ball through the UK’s climate commitments at a time when we should be investing in a just transition to a low-carbon economy and our own abundant renewables.
As millions of people in low-income countries are pushed deeper into hunger and poverty by a climate crisis they haven’t caused, high-emitting and wealthy countries like the UK can no longer just talk the talk – they must walk the walk.
Former net zero tsar criticises expansion of oil and gas drilling
The government’s former “net zero tsar” has called for an emergency debate into Rishi Sunak’s decision to grant 100 new licences for oil and gas production in the North Sea.
Chris Skidmore, the influential Conservative MP who led the review of the UK’s climate goals, tweeted a statement in response to the government’s announcement.
He said:
This is the wrong decision at precisely the wrong time when the rest of the world is experiencing record heat waves. It is on the wrong side of the future economy that will be founded on renewable and clean industries and not fossil fuels.
It is on the wrong side of modern voters who will vote with their feet at the next general election for parties that protect, and not threaten, our environment. And it is on the wrong side of history that will not look favourably on the decision taken today.
Worryingly, this decision has also been announced when MPs are on recess, unable to hold the government to account.
I will be writing to the speaker to call for an emergency debate as soon as we return.
Skidmore, a former science minister and advocate of green policies within the Tory party, previously urged ministers to halt the development of the Rosebank oilfield in the North Sea, or risk destroying the UK’s credibility on the climate crisis.
