GB ENERGY is a “sham” and Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer is “taking my constituents for fools,” a Tory MSP has said amid heated exchanges at Holyrood.

Conservative energy spokesman Douglas Lumsden made the remarks on Thursday evening as the Scottish Parliament debated legislative consent to its UK counterpart’s Great British Energy Bill.

The consent, allowing Westminster legislation to operate in areas that are normally devolved, passed by 88 votes to 28, but not before fierce exchanges on the British government’s plans for a green energy investment company to be headquartered in Aberdeen.

Labour insists the new firm will create 1,000 jobs and bring down energy bills, but GB Energy boss Juergen Maier has conceded that the jobs could be 20 years away and was unable to predict when bills might begin to fall.

Mr Lumsden warned MSPs of “20 years of pain and decline for the north-east of Scotland, tens of thousands of jobs lost as Labour shuts down the oil and gas sector,” adding: “GB Energy is a sham.

“The Prime Minister is taking my constituents for fools.”

He accused Labour and the SNP of “carpet-bombing” Scotland with electricity pylons for wind power and called for more oil and gas to be extracted from the North Sea, dismissing opponents of fossil fuels as “economically illiterate socialists” and “extremist, unhinged Greens.”

His language prompted a rebuke from Presiding Officer Alison Johnstone and a withering response from Scottish Labour energy spokeswoman Sarah Boyak.

Praising the co-operation between Scottish and British governments on the project, Ms Boyak said they had made “important progress” on renewables.

She told MSPs: “I have to say Douglas Lumsden’s utterly negative and inaccurate speech has not helped the work that we need to do in political parties across this chamber.”