Harriet Cross MP: speeches

Speeches

• 8 Dec 2025 · Unemployment Levels · Hansard source

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  As I am sure the Minister and the rest of the Front-Bench team know, we are seeing huge redundancies and mass unemployment within the oil and gas sector increasing every week. When did any of the Front-Bench DWP team last meet the oil and gas sector to discuss that?

• 8 Dec 2025 · Unemployment Levels · Hansard source

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  2. What assessment he has made of trends in the level of unemployment.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Office for Budget Responsibility Forecasts · Hansard source

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  The forecasts are meant to help the Government to decide what to do, but there was nothing in this forecast of oil and gas revenues, which explains why the energy profits levy was kept. We have seen a £6.2 billion downgrade in the expected revenue from oil and gas to the end of the Budget period—a 40% decrease in just a year from what it was bringing in—while production is down 55% and 33% for gas and oil over the period. None of that is to do with the size of the basin; it is all to do with the fiscal and regulatory regime that this Government are imposing on the North sea. It was announced today that 100 jobs are going at Harbour Energy, and there will be more to come. Every job loss from now on is on this Government, because they know exactly what the oil and gas sector has been saying to them—it has been saying exactly the same to me, too, but I have chosen to listen. Why have the Government decided on the back of the OBR forecast to keep the EPL, when they know the impact it is having on jobs, investment and production and the future of the North sea?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  We are talking about £150 off energy bills that are already £200 higher than when the right hon. Gentleman came into government, and £300 was meant to come off those bills. Will bills be higher or lower than when he came into government last year?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Will the Secretary of State give way?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  No, I do not agree, because that is factually untrue. Investment in green technologies, including carbon capture, EV charging point roll-outs, wind and solar, is being driven by our oil and gas companies. They will stop investing in green technologies and our domestic supply if we tax them into the ground, and that is exactly what the EPL is doing. The Labour Government have kept the EPL, which means that our oil and gas companies are being taxed at 78%, which is more than is faced by any other mature basin in the world. They also removed investment allowances, ensuring that our oil and gas companies are the most uncompetitive when they are trying to invest in the North sea. As a result, the companies and the skills that we need for the transition are moving abroad. Across the UK, we are losing tens of thousands of North sea jobs. That impacts every constituency. Do not think it is just north-east Scotland that is impacted; every single hon. Member in this House has oil and gas worker constituents—energy workers—who are losing their jobs today because of the Chancellor’s choice last week to keep the EPL. That impacts everybody.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way on that point?

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Well, in that case, the Minister will have heard exactly the things that I hear from it, so why has he not acted on them? I asked the company I met on Friday what it thought about the North sea future plan paper. Its words to me were: “We didn’t need 170 pages, we just needed a fair fiscal regime.” That is all it wants. It wants the EPL to be taken away, and it needs the fiscal regime to make sense. The EPL windfall tax was brought in when there were record prices. Last week, the Government defined “windfall” as $90 a barrel and 90p a therm, yet we have to wait until 2030 to get that. We therefore now have a windfall tax on $68-a-barrel oil and about 80p-a-therm gas. Why do we need to wait until 2030? Why are we doing that to our oil and gas sector? Why are we making sure that they are completely taxed into the ground? Why are we making investment unviable, ensuring companies move abroad and undermining our industry? We have defined what a windfall is, but we will still tax companies on windfall profits now. That does not make sense. There is no windfall. We are now taxing the oil and gas sector so much that the tax revenues are falling. The decrease in revenue from the oil and gas sector last year was 40%. Why was that? It is because investment is going abroad and production is falling. It is because it is not viable to invest in the UK any more. A company I met last week said that it is more stable to invest in west Africa than the North sea. That is the situation that is being created by this Government. That is the issue that we see in north-east Scotland, and it is my constituents and the constituents of neighbouring MPs who are feeling the brunt. My constituents do not talk about career progression, but about career survival: “How much longer will my job last? How many more redundancy rounds will I survive?” Those are the conversations we have in north-east Scotland. That is the reality of the oil and gas sector in north-east Scotland, and that is the absolute madness of the policies that this Government are following. Will the Government, please, for the future security of our energy, for £50 billion of investment that could come into our energy systems, and for the survival of tens of thousands of jobs, scrap the EPL? It must be scrapped. In no other sector in any other part of the country would this Government allow that many jobs to be lost, yet they are willing to do that to the energy sector in north-east Scotland, and to our oil and gas workers, and that is completely irresponsible.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  Yes, absolutely. Many flights that take off from Aberdeen are full of workers who are leaving north-east Scotland for Norway, taking their skills and taxable income with them. Norway welcomes the opportunity for investment in its energy sources. Norway drilled more than 30 new exploration wells in its North sea this year. We drilled zero. That is not because the North sea is different on either side of the boundary line, but because of the United Kingdom’s fiscal and regulatory regime. We are banning ourselves from our own resources. We are making it so financially unviable to get at our own resources that we are becoming more and more reliant on other countries for our energy security. That does not make sense. Even if we come at the issue from a green angle and pretend that we are helping the climate, imports are more carbon intensive. We are bringing more carbon-intensive energy, which we need, into the UK. The Government love telling us that we will need oil and gas for years to come. We will, but we will not be using UK oil and gas for years to come. We will be using oil and gas from Norway, Qatar, Mexico or America, and we will import it at a huge carbon cost, and at a huge cost to the Treasury through loss of tax, other revenue and investment. Offshore Energies UK states that £50 billion of investment will be lost because of the EPL being kept in place. That £50 billion could go to a huge number of schools, roads or NHS projects, or it could fill any deficit that we have, but no, it is being left, because the ideology of this Government is to run down our domestic oil and gas sector. When I am out having constituency meetings in north-east Scotland, I spend most of my time listening to people who are worried about their jobs. They are worried about when—not if—their job will be lost, and where they will get another one. There are no new jobs in the oil and gas sector. They are not being created. When a job is lost in north-east Scotland, or in any other constituency with oil and gas jobs, there are no replacement jobs. Our skilled workers are moving abroad. That expertise and those skills—the ones that will drive the transition and keep our communities together—are moving away. One of the most cynical things that the Government did on Wednesday last week, when they chose to keep the EPL, was to release their consultation results for the future of the North sea. They thought that the people of north-east Scotland were so dim, so stupid, that they would not realise that keeping the EPL in place was going to have a destructive impact. They thought that they could wave a little flag with “North sea future plan consultation” written on it, and it would distract us, but guess what? We are not distracted. We know that it does not matter how many tie-backs are allowed, or whether we rename a licence as a certificate; that will not make any difference when it comes to how long the North sea lasts, because we do not have the fiscal regime to make it viable. I met representatives of a large oil and gas producer on Friday—I am sure that no Government Members did, because they do not actually engage with the sector or listen to it.

• 1 Dec 2025 · Budget Resolutions · Hansard source

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  One of the most incoherent, damaging and destructive decisions that the Government took last week was not to scrap the energy profits levy. The levy will destroy our oil and gas sector, as the Government have been told by so many sources, including the industry itself, the renewables industry, the unions and Offshore Energies UK. The Government know exactly the impact that keeping the EPL will have on jobs, investment, our supply chain and our transition to cleaner renewable energies.

• 25 Nov 2025 · Draft Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024 (Consequential Amendments) Order 2025 · Hansard source

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  As we have heard from the Secretary of State, the draft order will seemingly simplify the infrastructure consent processes in Wales for infrastructure projects, including those related to energy, electricity, transport, waste and water, by moving from the current multinational-level agencies process to an approvals process monitored and applied by the Welsh Government. The explanatory notes to the Infrastructure (Wales) Bill published by the Welsh Government in June 2023 stated that it would ensure “timely and effective delivery of major infrastructure and low carbon development in the right locations”. Of course that is welcome, but it cannot and should not be at the expense of local and community voices and input. Any centralisation of planning processes and decisions must remain sympathetic to the needs and concerns of communities who will be most impacted by the new infrastructure, especially that of the scale and nature covered by the draft order. Any changes that are made —even those as relatively limited as those we are considering—must be to the benefit of the people, businesses and communities of Wales, and should not add a route to silence legitimate concerns. Of course we want a simplified approach to infrastructure and planning that is business, community and, importantly, growth friendly and will help Wales catch up with the rest of the UK. However, given the scale of what needs to be achieved in Wales to make real, tangible change, we on the Opposition Benches are not convinced that these measures represent the change necessary to stimulate and truly accelerate Wales’s economy. We will not oppose the draft order, but I would be grateful if the Secretary of State could address the following questions. Is there any scope for the Senedd or a future Welsh Government to propose changes to regulations that would make Wales unaligned with the rest of the UK, causing complications? Are the Government confident that the relevant agencies in Wales have the capacity to deal with applications under these licences? What projects does the Secretary of State feel will be most impacted, or benefit most, from these changes in the next five years? Does she see the draft order as a gateway for further devolution? Has she assessed whether the legislation might make consent easier to obtain in Wales than in other devolved nations, and the knock-on effect that could have on projects in other parts of the United Kingdom? What cross-Government work is being done on that?

• 18 Nov 2025 · Clean Power: Energy Sovereignty · Hansard source

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  Energy sovereignty and energy security are vital, and gas will play an important role in that for years to come, but our domestic production is falling because of this Government’s policies. Imports of liquefied natural gas are up by 40% this year, and domestic production is meant to get to 25% by 2030. We must support domestic production, and to do that the Government must scrap its policy of an increased energy profits levy and open up new licensing. When will the Government do that, and when will they support jobs, investment and domestic production from the North sea?

• 18 Nov 2025 · ExxonMobil: Mossmorran · Hansard source

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  Exxon has said that the plant’s closure “reflects the challenges of operating in a policy environment that is accelerating the exit of vital industries, domestic manufacturing, and the high-value jobs they provide.” When are the Government going to take responsibility for the decisions that they are making? We see no prospect of energy prices reducing, while the ethane supply from the North sea is reducing at a huge rate. That is leading to these job losses and it will continue to lead to more and more job losses across Scotland, as the Minister knows, until policy decisions are changed and until the North sea is supported.

• 17 Nov 2025 · Budget: Press Briefings · Hansard source

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  The Government have clearly lost control of this Budget process. While they have been flying kites, businesses across the UK have been sending up distress flares. The £40 billion of tax from them in the last Budget saw hiring down, confidence down and investments down, and we are now seeing the same again. If any business in this country went to find backing and made as many U-turns as this Government are producing, it would not have a chance of finding an investor, so how can any business across the country have confidence in this Government?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  I was just wondering whether the Minister remembers what else happened in 2022, around February time, that might have impacted gas prices.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Projections show that if we fully utilised the oil and gas in the North sea we could cover half our energy needs up to 2050, so there is a lot more in there than five years-worth, but even if it were true that there was only five years-worth, why would we be increasing our imports to cover it? Why would we not be using what we have, given that we will be a net importer for years to come in any event? Why are we closing down the North sea if, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, it will all be gone in any case? It makes no sense.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  The Minister just referred to the oil and gas sector as “the status quo” or something that we should be moving away from. Does he also mean the 100,000 jobs supported by that sector, the millions in investment and the billions that we get in revenue from that sector? Which part of that does he not support and which part of that does he not want to protect while we transition to new energies? It sounds to me like he wants to shut it down tomorrow. Those are my constituents, the local economy in my area and energy security for the country. He seems to be very willing to get rid of them.

• 12 Nov 2025 · Energy · Hansard source

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  Will the Minister give way on that point?

• 4 Nov 2025 · Supporting High Streets · Hansard source

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  Family businesses are crucial to our high streets, including mine in Inverurie, Ellon, Turriff and Huntly. Indeed, they are the backbone of our high streets, yet this Government’s national insurance contributions changes and Employment Rights Bill, and their slashing of business property relief, will have a huge impact on them and employment in them. What does the shadow Minister think of that, and what can we do to help our high streets and, in particular, family businesses in them?

• 27 Oct 2025 · North Sea Oil and Gas Industry · Hansard source

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  We urgently need to restore confidence and stability in our oil and gas sector, or we will be here again and again as more and more businesses suffer and more and more jobs are lost, whether in my constituency, across north-east Scotland, in Scotland as a whole or in the UK as a whole—there are oil and gas and energy jobs everywhere in the UK. The future of Petrofac’s 2,000 skilled and expert staff, as well as the indirect jobs that rely on them, are now at risk and reliant on Petrofac being able to find a buyer for its North sea assets. Does the Minister think that the job of finding a buyer has been made more or less likely, given that the Government have created, in the industry’s words, “the most unstable fiscal” environment “in the world”?

• 23 Oct 2025 · Fishing and Coastal Growth Fund · Hansard source

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  This fund was set up to act as a sweetener to our fishing communities after they were completely sold out in the Government’s EU-Brexit reset. In that negotiation, 12 years of access to our seas were given away. Scotland lands three-quarters of the tonnage of fish in the UK and 60% of the value of UK fishing comes into Scotland. However, of this £360 million fund, Scottish fishermen will get only £28 million—7.7% of the fund. Does it really make sense to the Minister that Scotland gets 8% of the fund, when Scottish fishermen bring in so much of the value of fishing? If it does not make sense, what is she going to do about it?

• 23 Oct 2025 · Alleged Spying Case: Role of Attorney General’s Office · Hansard source

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  When was the Attorney General informed that the case was going to collapse?

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  Devolution sounds like, and should be, a fantastic opportunity. It should bring decisions closer to home with policies that fit the uniqueness of local areas and communities such as mine, where accountability and impact are more closely linked. That is the theory but in practice, certainly in Scotland’s case, the reality is very different. Devolution has become a fight for power—for the power, but not for the responsibility—and it has become about pushing party and personal ideology rather than what is actually best for the public and the businesses which we are meant to serve. Since 1999, we have seen so much power, indeed more power than any other devolved nation in the world, devolved to Scotland, or more specifically, as others have mentioned, to Holyrood, because that is where in Scotland devolution ends. What we see in Scotland is a level of bureaucracy, red tape and top-down decision making that stifles any opportunity for devolution to properly trickle down to benefit all regions and communities across Scotland. We can look at the evidence. In Scotland, 53% of planning decisions appealed to the Scottish Government are overturned by Ministers; in England, by contrast, local decisions are upheld 70% of the time. On policing, the SNP merged eight regional police forces into one nationalised central body. In doing so, it scrapped local police boards run by local councils and replaced them with a single national authority appointed by, and accountable to, Scottish Ministers. The result is that since its creation over 140 stations have closed, creating what the Scottish Police Federation has itself called policing deserts and an “almost invisible policing presence” across great parts of the country. There are also of course endless examples of devolution putting our businesses at a disadvantage compared with others across the UK, including on business rates. Business rates are devolved and when the last Conservative Government introduced 75% rate relief for hospitality south of the border, that was not replicated in Scotland. Businesses in Scotland had to wait years for a similar relief, which, when it was finally introduced, was less generous than elsewhere. In education we have seen years of decline in Scottish standards. In 2006, Scotland proudly had students who were the best in the UK at maths. But now, after years of the SNP curriculum for apparent excellence, our PISA score has plummeted by 35 points and we are trailing well behind England. That is a generation of young Scots being failed by the SNP. Why in Scotland, after almost 20 years in office, has the SNP seemingly been so content to let education standards slip and slip while over the past decade, when Conservatives were in government at Westminster, we saw standards and international rankings rise south of the border? Why, other than for the need to just do things differently, would we not look at the rising standards elsewhere in the UK and think for just one minute that maybe for the sake of the next generation of Scots we could learn from what is happening elsewhere in the UK? There is also a huge amount of incoherence between different policies in devolved areas. Pensioners in Scotland with an income of £35,000 are considered to have a low enough income to be eligible for the winter fuel payment, which of course is welcome after Labour decided to balance their books on the back of our poorest pensioners, but how does this square with the SNP Government considering workers on a salary as modest as £30,000 to be wealthy enough to be taxed more than those in the rest of the UK? Was devolution really set up as a vehicle to see teachers and doctors and police officers based and working in Scotland taxed more and taking home less pay than those doing the same job in the rest of the UK? For devolution to be considered a success, we should be able to see it and feel it, but even objectively these benefits are very hard to find. I know there have always been those saying and pointing out that we get things for free, like free prescriptions or certain bus travel or university education, but these are not free; they are taxpayer-funded—funded at the expense of something else and funded at the cost of higher taxes for people and businesses across Scotland. The Scottish Government are receiving from the UK Government over £2,500 more per person to spend than is the case in England. Why then are our outcomes not streaks ahead of those south of the border? Why is our education system failing children? Why are universities almost at the point of collapse? Why is life expectancy lower in Scotland and our drug deaths the highest in Europe? Why are NHS capital projects being paused, including the Ellon health centre in my constituency? There is chronic underfunding and under-investment in our roads, including the A96 and the A90 in Gordon and Buchan. Scotland’s employment rates are lower than those in the rest of the UK. Why are local authorities on their knees due to a lack of funding? If devolution had been made to work for Scotland, it would surely be at least equal to the rest of the UK in all those regards. If successive Scottish Governments had focused on their job and on actual devolved competences, maybe—just maybe—Scotland would have outperformed the rest of the UK, but it has not. Why? Because since devolution, successive Scottish Governments have not wanted to take the responsibility as well as the power. They have preferred to point fingers to cover their own incompetence, rather than hold themselves accountable. If what I describe had happened, or even begun to happen, over the last 25 years, maybe devolution could be seen as a success for Scotland. Until that does happen, I struggle to accept that it has been.

• 22 Oct 2025 · Devolution in Scotland · Hansard source

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  I want to pick up on the point about working with other parties to get a majority. The first thing that comes to mind is the SNP’s venture with the Scottish Greens after the last election in Scotland. Would the hon. Member reflect on how damaging that was, particularly for north-east Scotland, whether we are talking about upgrades to our roads, or the impact on our oil and gas sector?