Thank you for contacting me about the Rosebank oil field and new North Sea oil and gas developments. In my view there is no response to the climate crisis that does not confront the problem of fossil fuel supply head on.

I appreciate your concerns on this issue. I believe the Government’s plan to double down on fossil fuels with new exploration in the North Sea is the wrong answer to the fossil fuel crisis we face.

Drilling for more oil and gas in the North Sea sends the message that the UK does not take the climate crisis seriously enough, and is not showing the leadership that is needed in this climate emergency.

I recognise that we need to continue to use the North Sea, including production from existing fields. However, new exploration there will have no effect on energy bills and would take a long time to come on stream – with an average of 28 years from exploration to production. Furthermore, it would divert investment from renewables and, as you know, drastically undermine our efforts to fight the climate crisis.

The UN warned last October that countries were on course to produce more than double the amount of fossil fuels by 2030 than would be consistent with limiting average global temperature increases to 1.5°C. The International Energy Agency, meanwhile, has made clear that the pathway the world needs to take to get to a net zero energy system by 2050 involves no new oil and gas fields being approved for development beyond projects already committed to as of last year. So, while we need a phased and just transition that ensures we protect the interests of oil and gas workers in the North Sea, that does not mean carrying on with a business-as-usual approach or pretending that the climate emergency does not exist.

More than a decade of under-investment and blocking of renewables, a failure to reduce our reliance on foreign oil and gas and the closure of natural gas storage in England have left this country extremely vulnerable to shocks on the international market, which is what we experienced after Covid and Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

It was only last month that our now former Tory Prime Minister would have allowed new fracking licenses across England. Yet fracking is part of the wider issue at the heart of this Tory Government who time and again have failed to appreciate the scale of the global warming crisis. For too long climate change has been viewed as tomorrow’s problem – an issue that will affect future generations.

Britain urgently needs to tackle the causes of climate change and invest in real renewable solutions to our energy supply, rather than simply finding more ways to extract dwindling supplies of fossil fuels.

The quickest, cheapest and best answer for our national energy security is a green energy sprint. New renewables are nine times cheaper than gas. They would not only help fight the climate crisis, but also increase our energy security and sovereignty, bring down bills and create jobs. It is for this reason I support calls to make our electricity system fossil fuel free by 2030, including by quadrupling offshore wind, doubling onshore wind and more than tripling solar, and with a new publicly-owned clean generation company – Great British Energy – helping to harness the power of Britain’s sun, wind and waves. We should also make energy efficiency a national mission, insulating 19 million homes across the UK.