SNP backs climate-assessed North Sea production over imports as Aberdeen conference rejects union call for higher windfall tax

The SNP's annual conference in Aberdeen on Friday passed a resolution stating that domestic oil and gas production, "reviewed by climate compatibility assessments, is clearly preferable to importation, where international imports have a bigger carbon footprint". An amendment from the party's own Trade Union Group, asking the UK Government to increase profit levies on fossil fuel extractors, fell. The Stratawire reported from the conference floor.

Resolution 17, "It's Scotland's Energy", was moved by Stephen Gethins MSP, the Scottish Government's Energy Minister, with Jack Middleton MSP and Lara Bird MP. Its first paragraph calls the Energy Profits Levy one of the "reckless political decisions taken at Westminster" that "have cost thousands of Scottish jobs in the energy industry". It demands that "all further income from oil and gas resources taken by the UK Treasury is placed in a Future Generations Fund", and closes by calling "for Scotland's energy to be in Scotland's hands, not controlled by Westminster".

Gethins: no futures fund, and no to the amendment

Opening the debate, Gethins said: "the UK is one of the only countries to have discovered extensive oil and gas and never put a futures fund in place. Never." He told delegates that the Energy Profits Levy had "raised in just the past four years £12 billion for the Treasury", and said of the amendment: "I read the trade union amendment and I'm afraid I will vote against it because it calls upon the UK government in terms of that and I've seen the damage that that has done."

"In capitals across Europe, they worry about energy security," Gethins said. "And my message is, not that Scotland is part of the problem, but on that, Scotland is part of the solution."

Seconding, Middleton, the MSP for Aberdeen Central, described "Westminster's energy profits levy that costs 1,000 jobs every single month" and said the amendment sought "not to remove the energy profits levy, a cruel Tory policy, but to increase it". In July, Middleton broke with the Scottish Government to call for the UK Government to approve the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil fields, PA reported at the time.

The union case: make polluters pay

The SNP Trade Union Group's amendment would have asked the Scottish Government "to call upon the UK Government to increase profit levies on fossil fuel extractors and on polluting industries to match the social cost of the pollution caused by these activities". If Westminster refused, it asked the Scottish Government to "explore any and all devolved powers (such as land taxes, a Land and Buildings Transaction Tax (LBTT), new environmental levies, or individual wealth taxes)" and to invest the revenue in "accelerating Just Transition (especially in the north east) and zero-carbon housing retrofits".

Moving it, Simon Barrow of the Trade Union Group said: "Rather than shying away from all windfall profit levies because the UK is failing, we should be leading the debate on how these revenues can actively benefit Scotland." He told the hall that "Unite, RMT, the Scottish Trade Union Congress are fully behind the idea of using profit levies in that way".

The seconder, the convener of the SNP Climate and Environment Group, said: "The levy takes money from a polluting industry, which we all agree morally is the right thing to do, that polluters should pay. But it's done nothing to replace those jobs." He added: "We seem to have stalled out and the just transition seems to be dead in the water."

Aberdeen speakers: import or produce

Graham Leadbitter, the party's Westminster energy spokesperson, warned against a forced decline: "we'll be treating those communities like Thatcher treated the coal mining communities, like Thatcher treated Ravenscraig. My father worked on Ravenscraig."

Lara Bird, the MP elected in the Arbroath and Broughty Ferry by-election in June, put the choice as: "Do we import oil and gas to meet that demand with a higher carbon impact that that brings? Or do we need it domestically, supporting the jobs here on our doorstep?" She said the amendment "removes the line which demands for energy policy to be in Scotland's hands". Barrow disputed that in his reply, saying "All it does is insert this between 8 and what is now 9".

Aberdeen's SNP MP Kirsty Blackman told the hall: "the reality is 27% of our electricity comes from gas" and "We cannot support the decimation of my city of Aberdeen."

Burying 'presumption against'

Richard Thomson, the former Gordon MP who was the SNP's candidate in June's Aberdeen South by-election, which the party lost, linked the defeat to the words "presumption against" in a draft energy strategy. He said those words "first appeared in a draft energy strategy produced in different times for the Scottish Government over three and a half years ago" and that "we need to pass a motion which puts to bed any suggestion that this party or our party in government supports a presumption against".

"The best time conference to have signalled that intention in an energy strategy would have been three and a half years ago," Thomson said. "The next best time to do it is right here, right now, by passing the motion that's before us and doing so unamended."

Summing up, Gethins said: "Remember Labour came into power saying they'd go down by £300. They have gone up." Delegates then voted by card. The amendment fell and the resolution passed.

What it means

Our reading: paragraph 8 puts the party conference behind the test the Scottish Government already applies, under which new oil and gas developments that pass "climate compatibility tests" can go ahead, and frames it as a preference for domestic production over imports. Power over oil and gas licensing remains with the UK Government. The vote also signals opposition to the Energy Profits Levy rather than support for raising profit levies, the change the party's own Trade Union Group sought and failed to win.