LABOUR leader Sir Keir Starmer has performed a U-turn on state-owned power generation, the Scottish Greens said today.
Flying into Scotland by private jet today, Sir Keir toured the west of the country to promote his party’s plans for a just transition, including the creation of a Scottish headquartered and publicly owned “GB Energy” company.
His Scottish Labour counterparts had boasted this week that the plans could generate as many as 63,000 jobs, enabling many of the estimate 100,000 people whose jobs rely on North Sea oil and gas to transfer their skills towards producing clean energy — and make Scotland a “clean energy superpower.”
Speaking in Greenock, Sir Keir said: “Oil and gas will be part of the mix for many years.
“We’re not revoking any licences, but a transition is coming.
“The worst thing we could do now is do what Rishi Sunak is doing and put our head in the sand and pretend it’s not happening.
“And I’ll tell you for why, that’s what happened when coal was coming to an end and we are still paying the price in communities across the whole of Scotland and across the whole of the United Kingdom.
“I’m not prepared to let that ever happen under a future Labour government.”
Scottish Greens co-leader Lorna Slater however challenged the plans after Sir Keir revealed to BBC Radio Scotland that GB Energy would in fact “be an investment vehicle, not an energy company.”
Accusing him of a U-turn, Ms Slater stated: “Earlier this week Anas Sarwar was promising us that GB Energy would be a publicly owned company that would generate and sell renewable energy.
“After today’s U-turn from Keir Starmer it’s hard to tell who has more disregard for — the people of Scotland or his colleagues in Scottish Labour.”
Unite general secretary Sharon Graham called for Labour to produce “a concrete plan and serious investment” to save jobs and skills in the transition away from oil and gas.
She said: “Unite has a plan to create 35,000 commensurate new energy transition jobs in Scotland by 2030.
“This will require investment of £6.6 billion over the next six years.
“That is the commitment we need to see if oil and gas workers are not going to be the coal miners of our generation.
“Until these new green, well-paid, skilled jobs are in place there must be no ban on oil and gas licences.”
