Labour’s shadow work and pension secretary has confirmed the party’s plans to block all new domestic oil and gas developments if it wins power, instead proposing to invest heavily in renewable sources such as wind, and also in nuclear power.
Jonathan Ashworth said details would be announced soon when asked about a report in the Sunday Times, in which unnamed Labour sources outlined the proposal for Keir Starmer to make a bar on new North Sea projects one of his “national missions”.
“What we’ll be doing in our coming weeks is outlining how we want to invest in the green jobs of the future, to bring bills down, to create a more sustainable energy supply,” he told Sky’s Sophy Ridge on Sunday show.
“We’ll be outlining that in a significant mission in the coming weeks, and we’ll be announcing more details then.
“We know we’ve got to move to more renewable sources of energy. It’s important for our climate change commitments, but it’s also the way in which we can bring energy bills down for consumers. This isn’t about shutting down what’s going on now. We will manage those sustainably.”
The proposals, expected to be set out formally by Starmer on a visit to Scotland next month, will involve not just a ban on new North Sea oil and gas licences, but a pledge that any borrowing for investment should be limited to green schemes.
Asked if this would leave the nation over-reliant on wind power, Ashworth said: “It’s a mischaracterisation to say our policies all depend on wind. Yes, we need to invest in wind. We need to invest in tidal [power], we need to invest in nuclear.
“We need more sustainable sources of energy supply in order to bring the bills down for consumers and actually create jobs in this green transition.”
The aim, he said, should be for the UK to become a world leader in the green energy transition, and would create hundreds of thousands of jobs.
A Labour source told the Sunday Times that new North Sea drilling would not bring down energy bills and would scupper climate targets. Existing projects would be managed “sustainably”.
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The proposal is the latest in a series of Labour pledges over a move towards a greener economy, much of it pushed by Ed Miliband, the shadow climate change secretary.
In 2021, the shadow chancellor, Rachel Reeves, announced that the party would invest £28bn a year in climate crisis-related measures, covering not just green energy but also areas such as home insulation, active travel and flood defences.
At last year’s Labour conference, Keir Starmer said Labour would set up a publicly owned energy company run on clean UK power, to be known as Great British Energy.
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