Sarah Jones MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 13 Mar 2025 · Manufacturing: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  It was a good night for Villa fans last night, so I congratulate anyone in the west midlands who supports the club, as my husband does. The west midlands, in many ways, leads the country on manufacturing, and it has one of the UK’s largest specialist workforces. Whether in automotive, aerospace or the rail supply chain, it is an incredibly important area. We have invested in the west midlands investment zone—Made Smarter, the High Value Manufacturing Catapult; it is all there—but we want to keep breaking down barriers to growth in the area, which is why advanced manufacturing is such a key part of the industrial strategy that we will announce soon.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Manufacturing: West Midlands · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right; we do not want a race to the bottom. Advanced manufacturing jobs in the west midlands are well paid for a reason: there is a very highly skilled workforce and we want to protect and grow that. He is right that there is more that we can do. Some £2 billion was set aside in the Budget for the automative sector and just shy of £1 billion for aerospace. That will help; however, we can further reduce the barriers, whether around regulation, planning or trading and export, and we are working as fast as we can to do just that.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend asks a very good question. I am very pleased that the Department for Transport today launched the new UK bus manufacturing expert panel. We need to support our bus manufacturing, both for the transition to net zero and for building our businesses in the UK. I am very happy to work with him on that.

• 13 Mar 2025 · Topical Questions · Hansard source

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  I saw many incredible businesses when I went to the Exeter business park last year. When I was in Saudi Arabia in January, I was with a range of businesses that were promoting investment, including many from the south-west. There is more that we can do, but there are some brilliant people there who are doing brilliant things. I think we can go further, and I am certainly very happy to work with my hon. Friend on that.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I met BP yesterday to talk about that. If we look at somewhere like the US, there are massive supplies of oil and gas. BP has made its decision. We are working with it very closely on carbon capture and hydrogen in particular. If we drilled as much as we possibly could in the North sea, we would only find less than 1% of the global market. This is a declining basin —that is a fact. It has declined significantly over the past decade and it will continue to do so. We need to manage that process and support people. BP is working very closely with the Government on our renewables agenda, and on carbon capture and hydrogen.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I thank my hon. Friend for his work on the Select Committee, which is very important. As he knows, for a long time we have been a bit stuck in trying to set up a passport system because of the slightly different skills and qualifications in each industry and the need to bring them together. The Government became involved to try to ensure that we could bridge that gap and enable people to make the transition. Oil and gas workers are highly skilled and greatly in demand, and, as my hon. Friend says, they are paid a good wage. We need to work with the new offshore wind companies; we like to see union recognition, and we like to see good salaries for people doing those jobs as well. There will be other jobs that people can go into. The plan is to help people make the transition rather than leaving them adrift as the last Government did.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is absolutely right. She was of course referring to the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who said yesterday that “one of the things our party did not get right in government was setting ambitious goals on…energy policy without having a clear…plan to deliver them.” —[ Official Report, 5 March 2025; Vol. 763, c. 171WH.] I entirely agree with him.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is right to point to the golden triangle of energy security, jobs and climate, and how we can bring them together. I am working hard—not as hard as him; he is working incredibly hard—on bringing as many jobs as possible to his constituency. I look forward to continuing to do that.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend raises a number of thorny issues relating to ETS, for which I am responsible in the Department. We have been having lots of conversations about how we progress, what the EU does, what we do and what we need to do moving forward. These things are enormously complicated, because pulling a lever here will have an unintended consequence over there, so we are treading carefully, as she would expect. On the EU partnerships and the new relationships that we have with our partners, they are incredibly important. Today the Prime Minister is with the Taoiseach in Ireland, and we are agreeing an energy partnership. We will be working together in the Celtic sea and the Irish sea to speed up progress on wind turbines by using data and our resources to look at our marine landscape and get to a point where private investors can invest quicker. These things are worth doing, and we will certainly carry on doing them.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Gentleman for his question, and indeed for the good relationship we have built up from his speaking on behalf of his constituents in relation to steel and other sectors that we have talked about. Of course, energy-intensive industries talk to us about energy prices, and we are looking to see what we can do. I held a roundtable last week with the energy-intensive industries—steel, chemicals, ceramics of course, and others—and we are looking at what we can do to make sure they can be profitable and grow.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  The National Wealth Fund and Great British Energy will be incredibly important in this space. Most countries have a sovereign wealth fund like the National Wealth Fund. We have set that up. Most countries have their state energy companies. We have loads of state energy companies—just other countries’. It is absolutely right that we set up our own. We also have the clean energy bonus, which will mean that we are encouraging supply chains and jobs here in the UK, so we can move away from reliance on other countries.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I am not sure how many times I will have to go through this, but we are not cutting energy jobs. The North sea is declining because there is less and less oil and gas there. The work the previous Government did on renewable energies secured no supply chains for this country, so we were reliant on other countries, as the hon. Member points out. We are putting in place incentives for supply chains to be in this country, so that we make more. I am delivering a steel strategy to make sure that we use steel from this country for our clean energy future. These are the policies we are putting in place to make sure we have a managed transition, clean energy, lower bills and energy security.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that I am on planet Earth and that we are well aware of what we are doing. We look at the world around us and see the enormous hike in energy prices, which is linked to our being attached to the global market for oil and gas. The previous Government spent tens of billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money in order to protect people against the price hike, and we cannot allow that to happen again. It is absolutely right that we push for cheaper renewable energy, and I remind the hon. Gentleman that I sit in two Departments: the Business Secretary is my boss, and the Energy Secretary is my boss. They both agree with this policy, as does the Chancellor, because it is the right thing to do.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  Our manifesto was clear that we would not issue new licences, we would not revoke existing licences, we would manage existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan, and we would ban fracking. The consultation is about the detail behind that. There are some complicated issues that we need to unpick, which is why we are having the consultation, why we welcome everybody’s views, and why I hope the hon. Lady will add her voice to it.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  The hon. Gentleman raises a really important point. We know that energy bills have been rising because of the oil and gas we rely on and the impact of the war in Ukraine. We have massively increased the warm home discount so that 6 million households will get £150 to help towards their energy bills, but he is right to champion people who are going through a cost of living crisis. We will do what we can to support them.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  The previous Government oversaw a loss of 70,000 jobs that they cared not one jot about. They had no plan of support and no transition plan, and they allowed that managed decline without any commitment. This Government are doing exactly the opposite. We are supporting that transition, we are supporting those workers and we are making sure we can transition people, grow the economy and deliver energy security at the same time.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  As I hope I made clear, we are not revoking existing licences and we will manage the existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan. As I also made clear, this is a declining basin and we need to manage the transition. The hon. Lady is absolutely right to point to the challenges, and I have great respect for her family history and for all those who work in oil and gas. She is right that we will need oil and gas for decades to come. We are trying to have a sensible plan to manage that process and I hope she will take part in the consultation, too.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I meet industry representatives all the time, and their response to Kim McGuiness is great. She is such a force of enthusiasm, knowledge and power for her communities, and people engage with her. They like what she says about investing in the north-east, and they are responding to her. She is making a real difference in her community. We are doing all we can, through all kinds of levers that the Government can use, to make sure that the investment in clean energy supports all our communities. My hon. Friend is right to highlight the fact that we need to take advantage of the particular skills of people in the north-east.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is completely right to expose Reform’s arguments for the nonsense they are. The CBI brought out a report a week or so ago showing that the net zero economy grew by 10%, which is much faster than the wider economy. This is delivering jobs already, as well as investment from around the world, in part because we are the second most attractive country in the world in which to invest, as PwC has told us. The reality is that we can bring down bills, secure good jobs and make ourselves more energy secure, and Reform is living in the past.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  The shadow Minister quoted trade union representatives, having not met them or supported them in government. That is always rich. [Interruption.] He says that he did; I stand corrected, although I suspect that he did not do it often. He quoted the general secretary of the GMB, so let me quote him back. The general secretary said: “Tory ideology has left the UK vulnerable and exposed. Our Government stood by and exported the bulk of the jobs, closed gas storage and failed to invest in new nuclear and skills.” I thank the shadow Minister for his questions, and I will come to them shortly, but I have to say that this is a fairly familiar story from the Conservative party: no acknowledgment of their failed record on the North sea, no acknowledgment of their having presided over the worst cost of living crisis in a generation, and no answers to the future challenges that our country faces. I remind the hon. Gentleman that it was his party that lost 70,000 North sea jobs in less than a decade. His Government were content for those workers to have to go around the world to find jobs, but this Government want to keep those talents here in the UK, which is why, unlike the last Government, we have a plan. In my statement, I said that everyone accepts that the North sea is a declining basin. I do not know whether the shadow Minister understands the basic geology, but this is a super-mature basin, and the harder it becomes to drill for oil and gas, the less likely it is that people will be successful. Only one in 10 of the licences that have been offered and granted in recent years have ultimately led to any work. The hon. Gentleman needs to establish what his party’s view of this agenda is. The hon. Member for West Suffolk (Nick Timothy), who is sitting next to him, had some very peculiar things to say in Westminster Hall yesterday, and it is unclear exactly what their position is. The hon. Member for West Aberdeenshire and Kincardine (Andrew Bowie) was a Minister for the grid who opposed grid infrastructure, he was a Minister for solar who opposed solar power, and here he is now, the Minister for Aberdeen, campaigning against jobs and investment in his own community. We are getting on with a plan for the future. First, we will invest in clean power. It is ludicrous that at this time when our bills depend on what Putin chooses to do and we have to respond, the shadow Minister is suggesting that we should do more of that. Even if there were no climate change, even if there were no push to clean power, if we drilled as much oil and gas from the North sea as we possibly could, it would amount to less than 1% of the global market and would have no impact on bills whatsoever. We will give immediate support to workers—we have explained how we will do that—and we will support Scotland more widely. We will support Great British Energy in Aberdeen. We will support Grangemouth with £200 million from the national wealth fund. Harland and Wolff in Arnish and Methil has been saved from closure. Yesterday, the Port of Cromarty Firth received £55 million through the floating offshore wind manufacturing investment scheme. Twenty per cent. of the contracts in allocation round 6 of the contracts for difference auction are going to Scotland. We have hydrogen investment in Cromarty and Ayrshire. We have the biggest budget for the Scottish Government that we have seen. This is a party that is committed to supporting the people of Scotland, not overseeing managed decline.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I do not agree with that framing whatsoever. We have Putin who invaded Ukraine, leading to the massive global shock for energy prices, and we have a Secretary of State who is very pragmatically taking forward plans to, as the triangle tells us, protect and grow jobs, and give us energy security. I think most people in the country understand that. They get that we need energy security and to tackle the climate at the same time.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  My hon. Friend is standing up for the jobs and the young people in her community, and it is a shame that the national Conservative party Opposition do not seem clear on what their policy is. Where people can see the jobs and the benefits, councils such as her Conservative-led council support renewables, but for some reason Conservative Front Benchers do not. I do not understand that, but we will keep backing this agenda because we know it will deliver jobs.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  The right hon. Gentleman paints a lovely picture of walking up the hill in his constituency— I am sure we would all enjoy doing that. He makes an important point about solar. We need to make sure that we are taking people with us and doing the right things, which is what we are trying to do. We know that even if we pushed as far as we could on solar, it would still account for less than 1% of the overall land and the same proportion of our agricultural land—it is a small amount. He is right to want to make sure that his constituents have an environment that they like and enjoy. It is equally right to say that we will need infrastructure in our communities, and that people should see a benefit where we ask them to have infrastructure. There is the solar taskforce, which is looking at all these issues.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  I thank the hon. Lady for her remarks. On upskilling and redeploying workers, as I said previously, we are introducing the passporting scheme and making sure that we can break down the barriers that exist in different industries, because the skills and talents of people working in oil and gas can be transferred to renewable energy. We want to make sure that we do that. The hon. Lady talks about vulnerable residents and the cost of heating, and she is absolutely right to do so. We have all suffered from the huge cost of living crisis caused by Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. We are doing what we can, and 6 million people will now get the £150 warm homes discount this winter, which will help with their energy bills. The hon. Lady asks about the windfall tax. The clue is in the name: it is a tax on windfall profits. While the oil and gas industry is making windfall profits, there will be a windfall tax; when it is not, there will not be. That is the way the scheme works, but her points on the need to insulate homes—we are working at pace on that—and to support vulnerable people are absolutely right. The basic principle is that we have an energy bill rise driven by fossil fuels, so we must move to home-grown power for our energy security and for long-term bill reductions.

• 6 Mar 2025 · North Sea Energy · Hansard source

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  With permission, I would like to make a statement about this Government’s plans to unleash the North sea’s clean energy future. For almost half a century, the workers, businesses and communities of the North sea have powered our country and the world. We believe that they can and will continue to do so for the next half a century and beyond, which is why yesterday, we launched a consultation on the steps we are taking to seize the opportunities of the clean energy transition in the North sea. This is about working with businesses, workers and communities to strengthen north-east Scotland’s status as the energy capital of the UK, and it is about showing global leadership as we deliver a well-managed, orderly and prosperous transition. We know that the North sea is a maturing basin. Oil and gas production has seen a natural decline of 72% between 1999 and 2023, and as a result, the industry has lost around a third of its direct workforce over the past decade. The truth is that sprinting to clean energy is the only way to deliver energy security and good, long-term jobs for the workforce and for communities. At the same time, we know that we need to listen to the science on what is required to keep global warming to 1.5°C. A science-aligned approach to future oil and gas production is the only way to deliver climate security for future generations, so we owe it to the North sea’s workers and communities—who have done so much for our country—to come up with a proper plan for the future. That is what this Government are doing. First, we are consulting on our manifesto commitment not to issue new licences to explore new fields. While we have always been clear that oil and gas will continue to play an important role for decades to come, the reality is that new licences for oil and gas awarded in the past decade have made only a marginal difference to overall production. To continue granting them would not help our energy security, would not be compatible with our climate commitments, and would not take one penny off bills. As such, we will not award new licences, but we will continue working with the sector to manage existing fields for the entirety of their lifespan. We will also provide the long-term certainty on its fiscal landscape that the sector needs. Yesterday, the Treasury set out plans for a new regime to respond to future spikes in oil and gas prices once the energy profits levy ends in 2030. The second part of the consultation is about harnessing the North sea’s unique strengths, including its offshore infrastructure, highly skilled engineers and deep supply chains, to make it a global clean energy powerhouse. In just eight months, we have already made significant progress. We have established Great British Energy in Aberdeen, so that it is in the perfect position to drive the roll-out of clean energy projects. We have improved the offshore wind auction, so that later this year there will for the first time be a new clean industry bonus to reward investment in good manufacturing jobs and clean supply chains. We have overseen a record-breaking renewables auction. We have kick-started the UK’s carbon capture and hydrogen industries—the energy sectors of the future—with strong, early investments. Just yesterday, we awarded more than £55 million to the port of Cromarty Firth for upgrades that will support the development of floating offshore wind, creating hundreds of jobs as we ensure Scotland and the UK remain world leaders in this next-generation technology. But that is just the start. Our clean power action plan will drive £40 billion a year of investment to meet our goal of clean power by 2030. Research shows that jobs in offshore renewable sectors could increase by tens of thousands in that time. We will also make sure workers have the tools they need to take up these new opportunities. Already, we have worked with the Scottish Government and trade bodies to launch a skills passport, making it easier and quicker for oil and gas workers to bring their skills and experience into clean energy jobs. That idea has been stuck in the mud for years. Thankfully, we have made more progress in the past eight months than was made in the previous 14 years combined. At the same time, we are putting clean energy at the heart of our upcoming modern industrial strategy. We are incredibly fortunate to have the North sea on our doorstep. For decades, the oil and gas buried there have fuelled development and charged our economy, but the North sea’s long-term future lies in its incredible clean energy potential. We know that its stable winds and shallow shelves make it one of the best locations in the world for offshore wind farms. We know that the UK continental shelf alone has enough capacity to store up to 78 billion tonnes of carbon, which is roughly the amount this country has produced since the industrial revolution. With our skilled offshore industry and workforce, we are perfectly placed to seize this natural advantage and get ahead in the global race for new jobs in new industries. Instead of sticking our head in the sand and avoiding the big decisions, we have set out a plan to deliver the future that the North sea’s workers and communities deserve. It is a plan to co-ordinate the scale-up of clean energy industries, from offshore wind and hydrogen to carbon capture and storage; a plan to give the oil and gas sector the support and clarity it needs to continue operating for decades to come; a plan for energy security and sustainable economic growth; and a plan to keep working with the people who matter most—the North sea’s businesses, workers, communities and trade unions— to take advantage of the tremendous opportunities of the years ahead together. I commend this statement to the House.