Leaders in Aberdeen have called on Keir Starmer to visit the region after plans to cut 250 jobs at Harbour Energy were confirmed.
At an emergency meeting on Friday, regional leaders issued a stark warning that the Granite City will see an increase in child poverty and alcohol and drug problems if jobs continue to be lost in the North Sea.
“The UK Government promised that its approach to North Sea energy sector would not cost jobs,” Russell Borthwick, the chief executive of the Aberdeen and Grampian Chamber of Commerce, who called the emergency meeting, said.
“We brought you together today because it’s our view that this promise has now been broken. In the past fortnight alone, nearly 600 energy jobs have been put at risk in this region.”
The meeting comes just days after Harbour Energy, the largest independent oil and gas firm in the North Sea, announced that it plans to cut 250 jobs by the end of the year due to the UK Government’s Energy Profits Levy (known as the windfall tax) on North Sea operators.
It also follows the several hundred jobs lost at subsea engineering supply chain firms across the North-east in the last ten days.
Mr Borthwick called these losses a “flashing red warning light” for UK energy security. By calling the meeting, he wished to send a “clear message” to the UK Government that “enough is enough”.
STV NewsSpeaking to STV News after the meeting, Mr Borthwick urged the UK Labour Government to “take cognisance” of the impact the windfall tax is having on the lives and livelihoods of people in the North East of Scotland, “because of current policies being pursued in the direction of net-zero”.
“It’s not just 250 jobs at Harbour Energy – it’s 250 on top of the 350 lost in the last couple of weeks from supply chain companies, which are failing because there’s no work in the North Sea,” he said.
“The Climate Change Committee told us in a report in February that a third of all oil and gas employment has been lost in Aberdeen since 2015. It’s a crisis, but no one is talking about it.”
Mr Borthwick added: “Thousands of people have already lost their jobs and it’s just the tip of the iceberg.”
Kerry Smyth, a Harbour Energy employee in Aberdeen, is one of many people who could be impacted by the job cuts.
STV NewsShe, along with her colleagues, was called to a meeting on Wednesday and told of the job cuts.
“We’ve already experienced a significant number of job losses in the last couple of years, so to hear another 25% of our workforce – 250 jobs – will be going before the end of this year was hard to take, but not unexpected,” Smyth told STV News.
She described feeling “uncertain, worried, concerned, sad, and frustrated” by the announcement on Wednesday, and she laid the blame at the UK Government’s door.
Ms Smyth said people are concerned about their lives, livelihoods, mortgages, families, and children in the wake of the announcement.
“It’s real, and the government needs to take accountability for this because it is directly as a result of policy,” she said.
“I was really disappointed with the Prime Minister’s response to this at PMQs on Wednesday and the lack of care for the people of Aberdeen. They need to act now to save the industry and help us support the energy transition with the right skill set.”
Ms Smyth added that the Green energy sector hasn’t ramped up to the extent it can provide jobs to people who are being laid off from the oil and gas industry.
“There’s a chasm where we don’t have enough oil and gas to make up the energy mix, so we’re going to have to be importing from other countries,” Ms Smyth said.
“It’s really frustrating that we’re losing jobs only to import at higher cost and at higher emissions impact.”
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