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.
Here’s a roundup of the key developments from the day:
The prime minister said new oil and gas drilling licences for the North Sea would help the UK achieve net zero carbon emissions – and that the plan would strengthen the UK’s energy independence and reduce reliance on hostile states, such as Russia. Sunak, who is visiting Aberdeenshire today, said using domestic oil and gas would be better for the environment than importing it.
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 that the government was on the wrong side of history.
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.” Experts also pointed out that his plans will not, as he claims, bring down bills.
Ed Milibandhas called the government’s plans for North Sea oil and gas “weak and confused policy”. The shadow climate and net zero secretary said the plan “will do nothing for our energy security and drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments, while continuing to leave us at the mercy of fossil fuel dictators like Putin”.
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” that greenwashes oilfields and allows for more oil and gas extraction than can be stored.
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.
Downing Street has denied that Rishi Sunak’s language on protecting motorists has changed in the wake of the Uxbridge and Ruislip byelection. 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.”
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. The joint NEU general secretary Kevin Courtney has said the government “could and should” have gone further after the teaching union accepted its 6.5% pay offer.
The Labour MP Jess Phillips has said the criminal justice system has suffered from “total collapse and calamity”, with her party claiming that more than 90% of crimes go unsolved. The MP for Birmingham Yardley and shadow minister for domestic violence and safeguarding told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday that criminals had “never had it so good”.
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, 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.
People who have been wrongly convicted should not have to pay “living expenses” for the time they spent in prison, No 10 has said after a man spent 17 years inside for a rape he did not commit.Rishi Sunak thought the practice was unfair and had launched discussions with Home Office officials to “establish the facts”, prompted by the case of Andrew Malkinson, who was freed last week.
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NASUWT members have accepted a 6.5% pay rise for teachers and school leaders in England, the union has said.
A total of 77.6% of the union’s members had indicated they were willing to accept the pay offer as part of a consultative survey, PA News reports.
However, just 18.4% of the 18,000 respondents said the measures announced by the government to tackle excessive workload were sufficient.
Dr Patrick Roach, NASUWT general secretary, said:
Teachers and headteachers should benefit from more money in their pockets at a time when they are struggling with rising interest rates, rocketing rents and mortgages and persistent high inflation.
Whilst NASUWT members are willing to accept the STRB pay award recommendation, they do not believe that it is sufficient redress for the impact of more than a decade of real-terms pay cuts, where the value of teachers’ pay has declined by 25%. Furthermore, our members do not agree that sufficient action is yet being taken to address their concerns over excessive workload and long working hours.
We have today written to the education secretary calling on the government to do more to address our members’ demands for pay restoration and immediate action to tackle excessive workload and long working hours.
The House of Lords conduct watchdog has been asked to reopen an investigation into whether the Conservative peer Lord Chadlington may have breached lobbying rules when he introduced a company that was awarded PPE contracts worth £50m.
The agency gained its first Covid contract days after it was put into the high-priority “VIP lane” for companies with political connections. Chadlington was a shareholder and paid director of the agency’s parent company, Sumner Group Holdings (SGH).
The Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) stated in November 2021 that Chadlington was the “source of referral” of SG Recruitment, meaning he had identified the company to the government.
Last year, the Lords commissioner for standards cleared Chadlington of breaching the rules against peers lobbying the government to benefit companies in which they have a financial interest. The commissioner concluded that Chadlington’s “only involvement” had been to provide SG Recruitment’s chief executive, David Sumner, with the email address of another Tory peer, Andrew Feldman, who was advising the DHSC on PPE procurement.
The commissioner said:
The evidence shows that Lord Chadlington’s only involvement in this matter was to provide Mr Sumner with Lord Feldman of Elstree’s departmental email address, which would doubtless have been obtainable from other sources. He does not appear to have ‘referred’ SGH [sic] to the department, nor did he facilitate introductions or seek to leverage his influence as a member of the House of Lords.
Lawyers representing Chadlington have now told the Guardian that he had a conversation with Feldman first, that he suggested SG Recruitment as “a potential candidate” for PPE contracts, and that Feldman gave him his email address to pass on to Sumner.
Chadlington’slawyers said:
Upon the secretary of state for health’s national call for help at the outset of the pandemic, our client spoke to Lord Feldman, who was assisting the government’s efforts to secure PPE from industry sectors. Our client explained that SG Recruitment Limited (SGR), which he had been informed by Mr Sumner had contractual relationships with the NHS, may be a potential candidate. Lord Feldman suggested that Mr Sumner email him at his DHSC email address, which Lord Feldman provided to our client for that purpose.
Read more from my colleagues David Conn and Rob Evans here:
People who have been wrongly convicted should not have to pay “living expenses” for the time they spent in prison, No 10 has said after a man spent 17 years inside for a rape he did not commit.
Rishi Sunak thought the practice was unfair and had launched discussions with Home Office officials to “establish the facts”, prompted by the case of Andrew Malkinson, who was freed last week.
There was never any DNA linking Malkinson, now 57, to the crime and he always insisted he was innocent, which doubled the amount of time he spent behind bars.
The prime minister’s press secretary said:
In principle, for someone who has been wrongfully convicted, it doesn’t seem fair that they would have to repay or reimburse costs.
Asked why the prime minister had not considered changing the rules, which can be traced back to a 2007 ruling by the House of Lords, they added:
It’s not something that he has necessarily come across … part of a brief that he has never been leading on. But he has been speaking with the Home Office and others in government to establish the facts and to make sure the approach is right and fair.
At the time, judges in the House of Lords decided by a four-to-one majority that those wrongfully jailed must pay back 25% of their compensation.
Disagreeing with the measures, Lord Rodger told the house that it was not hard to see why people would feel they were, in effect, paying for their keep during the long years when they were wrongly deprived of their liberty.
The senior Conservative MP Sir Bob Neill, who is chair of the Commons justice committee, voiced his concern that Malkinson could lose part of his compensation to pay for prison costs.
I think any fair-minded person thinks this is just wrong. It goes back to a tightening of the rules of criminal compensation, or compensation for miscarriages of justice in this case, by the Labour government in 2006.
And the argument that was made was that the public might be potentially offended for forking out money towards people who are cleared on technicalities.
It’s clearly not right that somebody who was deprived of their liberty, because of the failures of the state and its institutions for a number of years, then should pay the state or be obliged to give some money back to the state, for the privilege of having been wrongly incarcerated. That surely offends any kind of sense of justice.
Scientists have criticised the government for using the announcement that it plans to fund more carbon capture and storage (CCS) to distract from the announcement that hundreds of new oil and gas licences will be granted in the UK.
Dr Stuart Gilfillan, a reader in geochemistry at the University of Edinburgh, said:
Whilst it is fantastic to see this much-needed investment in carbon capture and storage, it is extremely disappointing to have it used as a headline grabbing smokescreen to distract from a further oil and gas licensing round.
If Rishi Sunak and his government were truly serious about meeting net zero, then he would mandate the capture and storage of all of the CO2 emissions that will result from these new licences as a condition of them being awarded.
This is the only climate-compatible way for the UK to continue to extract fossil fuels, whilst developing the UK carbon capture and storage expertise urgently needed for a net zero future.
Dr Steve Smith, of the Smith school of enterprise and the environment at the University of Oxford, said it was “unfortunate” and “risky” to choose to make the two announcements together.
He said:
When it comes to public acceptance of carbon capture and storage (CCS), studies show that first impressions are important. If people hear of it first as a delaying tactic, that may stick, even in the face of further information. So it was unfortunate and risky for the PM to announce two new CCS facilities alongside 100 new oil and gas licences, while making some overtly pro-flight and pro-car statements.
Prof Cameron Hepburn, the director of the Smith school of enterprise and the environment, said:
If the government wants to prioritise the environment, energy security and jobs then it should double down on renewables. Solar and wind are already the cheapest forms of electricity in the UK and the faster we transition, the more money we will save.
The evidence so far also suggests that green jobs are likely to benefit from higher wages with less susceptibility to automation. By tying ourselves to fossil fuels for the longer term, we risk being left behind as the world races to a clean-energy future.
Ed Miliband has called the government’s plans for North Sea oil and gas “weak and confused policy”.
The shadow climate and net zero secretary said:
Every family and business in Britain has paid the price of the Conservatives’ failed energy policy which has left Britain as the worst hit country in Western Europe during the energy crisis – and Rishi Sunak is making the same mistake all over again.
Rishi Sunak’s weak and confused policy will not take a penny off bills – as his own party chair has admitted – will do nothing for our energy security and drive a coach and horses through our climate commitments, while continuing to leave us at the mercy of fossil fuel dictators like Putin.
That is why senior business leaders and Conservative politicians are lining up to point out that Rishi Sunak’s failed energy policy is economic illiteracy.
Only Labour has a plan for energy security, lower bills, and good jobs by making Britain a clean energy superpower and delivering a phased and responsible transition in the North Sea.
This is the guy who has led the UK to being the worst hit of any country in Western Europe by the energy crisis.
13 years of Conservative failure left this country exposed. Rather than learn his lesson, @RishiSunak is making the same mistake. Here’s why:https://t.co/4JntMzTUSU
In a video update on Twitter, the joint NEU general secretary Kevin Courtney has said the government “could and should” have gone further after the teaching union accepted its 6.5% pay offer.
He said:
Our emotion is not at all one of gratitude towards the government.
They could and should have settled this matter earlier – they could and should have offered more.
Instead, our emotion is pride in you – pride in the stand you took in voting for industrial action, in taking that action, in joining picket lines and taking part in our demonstrations.
Next year’s pay round is a whole other argument.
Fellow general secretary Dr Mary Bousted added:
Remember it [the government] should go further on a correction on teacher’s pay in next year’s pay round and it should increase school funding again.
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 had 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.
Plans to house thousands of migrants in new and cheaper accommodation could face fresh setbacks, after reports that the Bibby Stockholm barge has not received approval from local fire services. Photograph: Ben Birchall/PA
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.
Rishi Sunak tours the Shell St Fergus Gas Plant in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire with Simon Roddy, Shell senior vice president, Alister Jack, secretary of state for Scotland and the plant’s manager Kerry O'Neill. Photograph: Euan Duff/PA
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.
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