Ed Miliband opens the door to more drilling in North Sea despite previously branding plans 'climate vandalism'
The government has issued new guidance that will allow applications to be resubmitted for the Rosebank oil field and Jackdaw gas field.
However, environmental groups are still urging the Net Zero Secretary to reject the schemes.
The move comes after the Court of Session in Edinburgh upheld a legal challenge to the projects in January, ruling that processes had not been followed in granting consent.
The UK Government and North Sea Transition Authority (NSTA) were found to have acted unlawfully by not taking into account emissions resulting from the burning of the extracted fuels.
The Tories were in power when clearance was given for Shell's proposals to develop the Jackdaw field in 2022, and Equinor and Ithaca Energy's Rosebank plans in September 2023.
In the judgement, Lord Ericht said the consent should be 'reduced' - quashed - and reconsidered.
Mr Miliband's Department for Net Zero has now issued guidance on how the environmental impacts of oil and gas drilling should be assessed.
That is expected to see the projects revived - despite Mr Miliband pledging not to approve any new licences in the North Sea basin. He previously described the Rosebank plans as 'climate vandalism'.
Mr Miliband will assess the environmental project's environmental impact, while 'taking into account and balancing relevant factors on a case-by-case basis - such as the potential economic impact and other implications of the project'.
No decisions are expected to be made under the new guidance until Autumn at the earliest.
Energy Minister Michael Shanks said: 'This new guidance offers clarity on the way forward for the North Sea oil and gas industry, following last year's Supreme Court ruling.
'It marks a step forward in ensuring the full implications of oil and gas extraction are considered for potential projects and that we ensure a managed, prosperous, and orderly transition to the North Sea's clean energy future, in line with the science.
'We are working with industry, trade unions, local communities and environmental groups to ensure the North Sea and its workers are at the heart of Britain's clean energy future for decades to come – supporting well-paid, skilled jobs, driving growth and boosting our energy security.'
Labour's attitude has been in stark contrast to the US, where new president Donald Trump has been vowing a 'drill baby drill' policy to exploit natural resources.
Tessa Khan, executive director of Uplift, said: 'The new rules mean that oil and gas companies will finally be forced to come clean over the enormous harm they are causing to the climate.'
She argued Rosebank would not lower fuel bills or boost energy independence as most of the oil would be exported, and tax breaks would mean the public would cover most of the costs of development.
She also said the extreme weather the UK is experiencing 'must be a wake-up call for this Government to stand up to the oil and gas firms'.
Greenpeace UK head of climate Mel Evans said: 'It's only right for the Government to take into account the emissions from burning oil and gas when deciding whether to approve fossil fuel projects currently pending.
'Since Rosebank and other drilling sites will pump out a lot of carbon while providing little benefit to the economy and no help to bill payers, they should fail the criteria ministers have just set out.
She said approving the projects would be a 'political sleight of hand' that would benefit oil giants while leaving the UK hooked on fossil fuels.
'Real energy security and future-proofed jobs for energy workers can only come through homegrown, cheap renewable energy, and that's what ministers should focus on,' she urged.
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BBC News
14 minutes ago
- BBC News
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James Cook Scotland editor • @BBCJamesCook BBC Nicola Sturgeon's memoir Frankly is now on sale, slightly earlier than expected after newspaper serialisations and interviews teased some tantalising extracts. True to its title, the book has Scotland's former first minister writing candidly about the highs and lows of her time in office including challenges she says had a serious impact on her mental health. So with the full text now available, what are the key things we have learned? Transgender controversy After more than eight years in power, and eight election victories, Sturgeon saw final months in office marred by rows about trans issues. It was, she writes in her memoir, a time of "rancour and division". Sturgeon now admits to having regrets about the process of trying to legislate to make it easier to legally change gender, saying she has asked herself whether she should have "hit the pause button" to try to reach consensus. "With hindsight, I wish I had," she writes, although she continues to argue in favour of the general principle of gender self-identification. Spindrift Isla Bryson was jailed in 2023 after being convicted of rape Sturgeon also addresses the case of double rapist Adam Graham who was initially sent to a female prison after self-identifying as a woman called Isla Bryson. It was, writes Sturgeon, a development "that gave a human face to fears that until then had been abstract for most people". As first minister she sometimes struggled to articulate her position on the case and to decide which, if any, pronoun to use to describe Bryson. "When confronted with the question 'Is Isla Bryson a woman?' I was like a rabbit caught in the headlights," she writes. "Because I failed to answer 'yes', plain and simple... I seemed weak and evasive. Worst of all, I sounded like I didn't have the courage to stand behind the logical conclusion of the self-identification system we had just legislated for. "In football parlance, I lost the dressing room." Speaking to ITV News on Monday Sturgeon said she now believed a rapist "probably forfeits the right" to identify as a woman. JK Rowling JK Rowling posted a selfie of herself wearing a T-shirt describing Sturgeon as a "destroyer of women's rights" The former first minister also criticises her highest profile opponent on the gender issue, Harry Potter author JK Rowling, for posting a selfie in a T-shirt bearing the slogan "Nicola Sturgeon, destroyer of women's rights". "It resulted in more abuse, of a much more vile nature, than I had ever encountered before. It made me feel less safe and more at risk of possible physical harm," she writes. Sturgeon adds that "it was deeply ironic that those who subjected me to this level of hatred and misogynistic abuse often claimed to be doing so in the interests of women's safety". Rowling has been approached for comment. Her relationship with Alex Salmond Sturgeon's mentor and predecessor as first minster, Alex Salmond, is mentioned dozens of times in the book, often in unflattering terms which reflect their estrangement after he was accused of sexual offences. Salmond won a judicial review of the Scottish government's handling of complaints against him and in 2020 was cleared of all 13 charges but his reputation was sullied by revelations in court about inappropriate behaviour with female staff. Sturgeon lambasts Salmond's claim that he was the victim of a conspiracy, saying there was no obvious motive for women to have concocted false allegations which would then have required "criminal collusion" with politicians, civil servants, police and prosecutors. "He impugned the integrity of the institutions at the heart of Scottish democracy," she writes, adding: "He was prepared to traumatise, time and again, the women at the centre of it all". The claims have been angrily rejected by Salmond's allies. The former SNP leader died of a heart attack in North Macedonia last year, aged 69. The independence referendum Nicola Sturgeon recalls a "totally uncharacteristic sense of optimism" as Scotland prepared to vote on whether to become an independent nation on 18 September 2014. It was arguably the defining event of her professional life and, in her view, a chance to "create a brighter future for generations to come". The campaign was tough, she says, partly because of what she calls unbalanced coverage by the British media including the BBC and partly because Salmond left her to do much of the heavy lifting. "It felt like we were trying to push a boulder up hill," she writes. PA Media Sturgeon claims Alex Salmond showed little interest in the "detail" of the independence white paper A key period in the lead-up to the poll was her preparation, as deputy first minister, of a white paper setting out the case for independence. At one point, she says, the magnitude of the task left her in "utter despair" and "overcome by a feeling of sheer impossibility". "I ended up on the floor of my home office, crying and struggling to breathe. It was definitely some kind of panic attack," she writes. Sturgeon says Salmond "showed little interest in the detail" of the document and she was "incandescent" when he flew to China shortly before publication without having read it. "He promised he would read it on the plane. I knew his good intention would not survive contact with the first glass of in-flight champagne," she writes. Operation Branchform Sturgeon describes her "utter disbelief" and despair when police raided her home in Glasgow and arrested her husband, Peter Murrell, on 5 April 2023. "With police tents all around it, it looked more like a murder scene than the place of safety it had always been for me. I was devastated, mortified, confused and terrified." In the weeks that followed she says she felt like she "had fallen into the plot of a dystopian novel". Sturgeon calls her own arrest two months later as part of the inquiry into SNP finances known as Operation Branchform "the worst day" of her life. She was exonerated. Murrell, the former SNP chief executive, has been charged with embezzlement. The couple announced they were separating earlier this year. Getty Images Sturgeon described her house as looking like a murder scene Leading Scotland during the pandemic ForSturgeon, the coronavirus pandemic which struck the world five years ago still provokes "a torrent of emotion". Leading Scotland through Covid was "almost indescribably" hard and "took a heavy toll, physically and mentally", writes the former first minister. She says she will be haunted forever by the thought that going into lockdown earlier could have saved more lives and, in January 2024, after she wept while giving evidence to the UK Covid inquiry, she "came perilously close to a breakdown". "For the first time in my life, I sought professional help. It took several counselling sessions before I was able to pull myself back from the brink," she writes. PA Media Nicola Sturgeon appeared visibly upset when giving evidence to the Covid Inquiry Misogyny and sexism Scathing comments about the inappropriate behaviour of men are scattered throughout the book. "Like all women, since the dawn of time, I have faced misogyny and sexism so endemic that I didn't always recognize it as such," Sturgeon writes on the very first page. One grim story, from the first term of the Scottish Parliament which ran from 1999 to 2003, stands out. Sturgeon says a male MSP from a rival party taunted her with the nickname "gnasher" as he spread a false rumour that she had injured a boyfriend during oral sex. "On the day I found out about the story, I cried in one of the toilets in the Parliament office complex," she writes. She said it was only years later, after #MeToo, that she realised this had been "bullying of an overtly sexual nature, designed to humiliate and intimidate, to cut a young woman down to size and put her in her place". Her personal life PA Media Parts of the memoir are deeply personal. Nicola Sturgeon says she may have appeared to be a confident and combative leader but underneath she is a "painfully shy" introvert who has "always struggled to believe in herself." She writes in detail about the "excruciating pain" and heartbreak of suffering a miscarriage after becoming pregnant at the age of 40. "Later, what I would feel most guilty about were the days I had wished I wasn't pregnant," she says. Sturgeon touches on the end of her marriage, saying "I love him" but the strain of the past couple of years" was "impossible to bear." She also writes about her experience of the menopause, explaining that "one of my deepest anxieties was that I would suddenly forget my words midway through an answer" at First Minister's Question Time. "My heart would race whenever I was on my feet in the Chamber which was debilitating and stressful," she says. And she addresses "wild stories" about her having a torrid lesbian affair with a French diplomat by saying the rumours were rooted in homophobia. "The nature of the insult was water off a duck's back," she writes. "Long-term relationships with men have accounted for more than thirty years of my life, but I have never considered sexuality, my own included, to be binary. Moreover, sexual relationships should be private matters." What the future holds PA Media Sturgeon loves books and has often appeared at literary events such as Aye Write in Glasgow Nicola Sturgeon has a few regrets. These include pushing hard for a second independence referendum immediately after the UK voted — against Scotland's wishes — to leave the EUn, and branding the 2024 general election as a "de facto referendum" on independence. But now, she says, she is "excited about the next phase" of her life which she jokingly refers to as her "delayed adolescence". "I might live outside of Scotland for a period," Sturgeon writes. "Suffocating is maybe putting it too strongly, but I feel sometimes I can't breathe freely in Scotland," she tells the BBC's Newscast podcast. "This may shock many people to hear," she continues, "but I love London." She is also considering writing a novel. Nicola Sturgeon concludes her memoir by saying she believes Scotland will be independent within 20 years, insisting she will never stop fighting for that outcome and adding: "That, after all, is what my life has been about."
The Guardian
23 minutes ago
- The Guardian
Anger, fear and a total rejection of politics: the Palestine Action protest was a snapshot of Britain today
In the third month of this tense, parched summer, the British state is under severe strain. Stripped of resources by 14 years of reckless rightwing government, contorting itself to maintain relations with ever more extreme regimes abroad, expanding its security powers at home through ever more tortured logic, regarded by ever more voters with contempt, a once broadly respected institution is increasingly struggling to maintain its authority. You could see the strain on the faces of some of the police officers, reddening with exertion in the sun, as they arrested 521 people in Parliament Square on Saturday for displaying pieces of paper or cardboard with a seven-word message supporting the proscribed group Palestine Action. It was one of the biggest mass arrests in London's history. The many protesters who refused to be led away had to be lifted off the ground, one by one, without the exercise looking too coercive in front of the cameras. Then their floppy, uncooperative forms had to be carried by clusters of officers through the hostile crowd – to chants of 'genocide police!', 'shame on you!' and 'fascist scum!' – to a ring of police vans at the square's perimeter, which were then sometimes obstructed by further protesters, before they eventually drove away. So many officers were needed that some had come from Wales. When Tony Blair's Labour government introduced Welsh devolution 26 years ago, in times of more harmony and less scarcity, cooperation between the nations was probably not envisaged in this form. On Saturday, so that the capital's police custody system was not overwhelmed, those arrested were taken to 'makeshift outdoor processing centres', the Observer reported – as if during a general breakdown of law and order. Some of those released on bail then reportedly went back to the protest. 'Given the numbers of people arrested,' said the Metropolitan police, 'it would have been entirely unrealistic for officers to recognise individuals who returned to [the square].' 'Entirely unrealistic' is not a reassuring phrase for those who believe that the government's approach to Palestine Action is practical and based on sound law. If charged, those arrested will enter the overburdened criminal justice system and then, if found guilty, Britain's bursting jails. It's likely that further supporters of Palestine Action will follow. The organiser of Saturday's protest, Defend Our Juries, has promised a sustained campaign of 'mass, public defiance', to make the proscription of Palestine Action 'unworkable'. This amendment to the 2000 Terrorism Act – a less benign legacy of Blair than devolution – states that anyone who 'wears, carries or displays an article' publicly, 'in such a way… as to arouse reasonable suspicion that he is a member or supporter of' Palestine Action could be jailed for up to six months; and anyone who 'invites support for' the organisation could be jailed for up to 14 years. Authoritarianism and austerity have risen together in Britain, as the relatively generous public spending of the Blair years has receded and new waves of radical activism have formed over the climate crisis and the destruction of Palestine. Yet the possibility that austerity will make authoritarianism unaffordable, with too much of the government's funds swallowed up by the security state, does not seem prominent in Labour's thinking. The fact that Keir Starmer is a former director of public prosecutions and that the home secretary, Yvette Cooper, has for many years been one of parliament's leading authorities on national security, has given them a lot of faith in law-and-order solutions to political problems. The Parliament Square protesters took a different view. They had been advised by Defend Our Juries not to give quotes to journalists, to avoid distracting from the protest's focus on the Palestine Action proscription and the genocide in Gaza. Yet the dozen protesters I spoke to informally all talked about Britain's police and politicians without the slightest deference, as part of a system that was failing, practically and ethically, to address our era's escalating crises. As the arrests went on and on, through the hot afternoon and into the evening, many of the protesters barely moved, but kept facing the same way, sitting on the ground with their placards carefully displayed and their backs to the Houses of Parliament. Partly, this was to provide a globally resonant image, but it was also to dramatise their rejection of the will of the Commons, where only 26 MPs voted against Palestine Action's proscription last month. Parliament likes to see itself as a historic defender of freedom and liberty, yet when panics about subversive groups are under way, its liberalism often evaporates. While the Commons narrows its views in times of crisis, the electorate sometimes does the opposite. Half of those arrested in the square were aged 60 or older – usually the most politically conservative demographic. Many had had middle-class careers in public service. Chatting among themselves on the grass in the quieter moments between police surges, they could almost have been taking a break between events at a book festival. One woman sat on a camping stool, wearing a panama hat. When I introduced myself, she said: 'I don't like the Guardian, I read the Telegraph.' The last time Labour was in office, opposition to its more draconian and militaristic policies also emerged across the political spectrum. The more rightwing members of this opposition can be questioned: are they as outraged when Tory governments support wars or suspend civil liberties? My sense is not. But either way, broad opposition erodes a government's legitimacy. At the 2005 election, after the Terrorism Act and the Iraq war, Blair still won, yet with almost a third fewer votes than when he came to power. With Labour more unpopular now, Starmer can less afford to alienate anti-war voters – much as his most illiberal subordinates might want to. Yet any electoral consequences from the scenes in Parliament Square, and from likely sequels, are hardly the only things at stake in the Palestine Action controversy. At mid-afternoon on Saturday, with the police cordon tightening around us, I got talking to two elderly protesters who had watched people being arrested beside them. 'I'm in two minds about carrying on with this,' one of them said, opening and closing her piece of cardboard with its illegal message. Defiant earlier, she now seemed frightened. The legally safe space for protest in Britain is shrinking again. Meanwhile in Gaza, there's no safe space for anything at all. Andy Beckett is a Guardian columnist Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Sky News
44 minutes ago
- Sky News
PM on brink of unwanted small boats milestone - and far faster than his Tory predecessors
The number of people who have illegally crossed the Channel on small boats under the Labour government is on the brink of passing 50,000. Home Office figures show that up to and including Sunday, a total of 49,797 people had arrived since 5 July 2024. Sky News witnessed more migrants being brought ashore at Dover on Monday on a day of exceptional weather, and the Conservatives claim the 50,000 threshold has been hit. Official statistics could confirm the milestone later today. It would mean Sir Keir Starmer - who won power promising to "smash the gangs" behind the crossings - has seen 50,000 crossings on his watch in 401 days. Sky News chief political correspondent Jon Craig said that's "much faster" than under Rishi Sunak, who was in office for 603 days when he hit the unwanted tally. It took some 1,066 days under Boris Johnson, though it's worth remembering his tenure covered the pandemic. Nearly 20,000 migrants crossed the Channel to the UK in the first six months of this year, a rise of almost 50% on the number crossing in 2024 and a new record for the first half of a year. The government is hoping a new "one in one out deal" with France that came into force last week will deter crossings, with some migrants now facing the prospect of being detained and returned. 1:08 Badenoch: People don't feel safe The numbers have further fuelled public anger over the use of hotels to house asylum seekers, with protests taking place across the country this summer. Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has suggested "camps" be set up instead, saying women and children in her Essex constituency and elsewhere "don't feel safe". Her party are also proposing automatic deportation for any illegal migrants, and have regularly criticised the government for scrapping the Rwanda scheme. Shadow home secretary Chris Philp said "Labour tore up our deterrents before they were even in place". 2:41 A Number 10 spokesperson said crossings "reached all-time highs" under the previous Tory government. "The gangs had six years to set routes," they added, and Labour are determined to tackle the crisis by "hunting down gangs" and "fixing the foundations of a broken asylum system".
