Claire Coutinho is the MP for East Surrey and Shadow Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
On Tuesday, Labour MPs were whipped to vote against our amendment to the King’s Speech to back more drilling for oil and gas in the North Sea, and to save our remaining refineries from Labour’s soaring Carbon Tax.
While they were voting to ban new British oil, behind the scenes, the Government quietly announced that it was easing sanctions on Russian oil.
Why? Because by shutting down British production, Miliband and Starmer are making us more reliant on foreign imports. As Kemi Badenoch rightly said at Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour think oil from Russia is acceptable, but oil from Aberdeen is not.
We are in the extraordinary position of Ukraine’s sanctions chief criticising our country, whilst UK officials brief out that the fault lies with Starmer and Miliband for being asleep at the wheel as UK energy supplies have been put increasingly under strain.
Here’s the problem. Production is not the same as consumption. If you shut down our means of making fuel, it doesn’t mean we need any less. All it does is make us more reliant on foreign regimes for that very same fuel. What’s worse is that this will almost certainly have lower environmental standards and produce more emissions as it is shipped across the world to get here.
Labour are learning the wrong lessons from the Iran War. In the long run up into the consequent global jet fuel shortages, they have done nothing to prepare. We wrote to Ed Miliband a month ago to ask him to publish the National Emergency Plan for Fuel so that we could make sure British supplies were protected. He and other Ministers dismissed our questions, telling the British public that everything was tickety-boo.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We lost a third of our oil refineries last year. We have just four left. But by the end of the Parliament we could have zero as they are being forced out of existence thanks to an onerous Carbon Tax and high energy costs. Some of our refineries are spending more on the Government’s Carbon Tax – which doubled last year under Ed Miliband – than on their entire wage bill. That is simply not sustainable.
Guess who doesn’t face this crushing tax? The Indian refineries which are at the centre of the current storm. That’s what lifting the sanctions is allowing in: jet fuel and diesel from these refineries which, unlike our own, use Putin’s oil and have twice the emissions because, unlike our own, they are powered by coal. What kind of climate leadership is this? Where is it leading to? Bankruptcy?
This cannot go on. We have to face up to reality. The world is getting more dangerous and other countries like the US, the Middle East and Asia have not put punishing carbon taxes on their own industry. They are not shutting down their oil and gas industries – in fact, they are doing everything they can to maximise their own energy supplies.
We have the only Government in the world doing the opposite. Under Ed Miliband we will be more reliant on Putin for oil, on Modi for jet fuel, on Xi Jinping for solar panels and on Marine le Pen for electricity imports when our wind farms stop spinning.
However, this is the logical conclusion of Ed Miliband’s plans. If you place higher burdens on our industry than other countries, then British production will decline. That does not mean we will need any less oil, gas, jet fuel, chemicals or plastics, we will just become more reliant on foreign regimes over whom we have no control.
There is one very simple explanation for this act of national self-harm. The Climate Change Act, and the legal obligation it places on Ministers to reduce emissions, only counts domestic emissions. So shutting down British industry in favour of dirtier imports from abroad is, perversely, measured as a win for our climate targets.
If Ed Miliband sets himself up for his future career jetting around the globe selling the same model to other countries, he needs to shut down as much UK industry as possible, as quickly as possible. That is exactly what he has spent the last two years doing, regardless of the consequences.
There is an alternative. But it requires a government prepared to abandon Ed Miliband’s zealotry and back our own domestic production instead. We need to axe the Carbon Tax, Get Britain Drilling, double down on nuclear and make electricity cheap. That’s the plan that the Conservatives put forward and the one that Labour MPs rejected.
It’s almost beyond belief, but yes, Labour’s policy is to shut down our own domestic oil and gas industry whilst directly funding Putin’s war machine instead.
While they were voting to ban new British oil, behind the scenes, the Government quietly announced that it was easing sanctions on Russian oil.
Why? Because by shutting down British production, Miliband and Starmer are making us more reliant on foreign imports. As Kemi Badenoch rightly said at Prime Minister’s Questions, Labour think oil from Russia is acceptable, but oil from Aberdeen is not.
We are in the extraordinary position of Ukraine’s sanctions chief criticising our country, whilst UK officials brief out that the fault lies with Starmer and Miliband for being asleep at the wheel as UK energy supplies have been put increasingly under strain.
Here’s the problem. Production is not the same as consumption. If you shut down our means of making fuel, it doesn’t mean we need any less. All it does is make us more reliant on foreign regimes for that very same fuel. What’s worse is that this will almost certainly have lower environmental standards and produce more emissions as it is shipped across the world to get here.
Labour are learning the wrong lessons from the Iran War. In the long run up into the consequent global jet fuel shortages, they have done nothing to prepare. We wrote to Ed Miliband a month ago to ask him to publish the National Emergency Plan for Fuel so that we could make sure British supplies were protected. He and other Ministers dismissed our questions, telling the British public that everything was tickety-boo.
Nothing could be further from the truth. We lost a third of our oil refineries last year. We have just four left. But by the end of the Parliament we could have zero as they are being forced out of existence thanks to an onerous Carbon Tax and high energy costs. Some of our refineries are spending more on the Government’s Carbon Tax – which doubled last year under Ed Miliband – than on their entire wage bill. That is simply not sustainable.
Guess who doesn’t face this crushing tax? The Indian refineries which are at the centre of the current storm. That’s what lifting the sanctions is allowing in: jet fuel and diesel from these refineries which, unlike our own, use Putin’s oil and have twice the emissions because, unlike our own, they are powered by coal. What kind of climate leadership is this? Where is it leading to? Bankruptcy?
This cannot go on. We have to face up to reality. The world is getting more dangerous and other countries like the US, the Middle East and Asia have not put punishing carbon taxes on their own industry. They are not shutting down their oil and gas industries – in fact, they are doing everything they can to maximise their own energy supplies.
We have the only Government in the world doing the opposite. Under Ed Miliband we will be more reliant on Putin for oil, on Modi for jet fuel, on Xi Jinping for solar panels and on Marine le Pen for electricity imports when our wind farms stop spinning.
However, this is the logical conclusion of Ed Miliband’s plans. If you place higher burdens on our industry than other countries, then British production will decline. That does not mean we will need any less oil, gas, jet fuel, chemicals or plastics, we will just become more reliant on foreign regimes over whom we have no control.
There is one very simple explanation for this act of national self-harm. The Climate Change Act, and the legal obligation it places on Ministers to reduce emissions, only counts domestic emissions. So shutting down British industry in favour of dirtier imports from abroad is, perversely, measured as a win for our climate targets.
If Ed Miliband sets himself up for his future career jetting around the globe selling the same model to other countries, he needs to shut down as much UK industry as possible, as quickly as possible. That is exactly what he has spent the last two years doing, regardless of the consequences.
There is an alternative. But it requires a government prepared to abandon Ed Miliband’s zealotry and back our own domestic production instead. We need to axe the Carbon Tax, Get Britain Drilling, double down on nuclear and make electricity cheap. That’s the plan that the Conservatives put forward and the one that Labour MPs rejected.
It’s almost beyond belief, but yes, Labour’s policy is to shut down our own domestic oil and gas industry whilst directly funding Putin’s war machine instead.