The former energy minister, Chris Skidmore, has resigned over new legislation to offer more offshore oil and gas licences, prompting another by-election.
In a statement released tonight on X, formerly Twitter, Mr Skidmore said:
“I cannot vote for a bill that clearly promotes the production of new oil and gas.”
The Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill will be debated in the House of Commons on Monday (8 January 2024). It requires the industry regulator to invite oil and gas companies to apply for oil and gas licences every year.
In an attack on UK fossil fuel policy, Mr Skidmore said:
“This bill would in effect allow more frequent new oil and gas licences and the increased production of new fossil fuels in the North Sea.”
“I cannot vote for the bill next week. The future will judge harshly those that do.”
He said he was resigning the party whip and would be “standing down from parliament as soon as possible”.
Mr Skidmore, who signed into law the UK’s commitment to reach net zero carbon emissions by 2050, said:
“I can also no longer condone nor continue to support a government that is committed to a course of action that I know is wrong and will cause future harm. To fail to act, rather than merely speak out, is to tolerate the status quo that cannot be sustained.”
He said it was a “tragedy” that the “UK has been allowed to lose its climate leadership”:
“The bill that will be debated next week achieves nothing apart from to send a global signal that the UK is rowing ever further back from its climate commitments.
“We cannot expect other countries to phase out their fossil fuels when at the same time we continue to issue new licences or to open new oil fields.”
The government announced plans for annual licensing offers in November 2023 and legislation was included in the King’s Speech two days later.
Mr Skidmore, who carried out a review of the UK government’s net zero policy, said:
“At a time when we should be committing to more climate action, we simply do not have any more time to waste promoting the future production of fossil fuels that is the ultimate cause of the environmental crisis that we are facing.”
There was no case, he said, for increasing fossil fuel production “at a time when investment should be made elsewhere, in the industries and businesses of the future, and not of the past.”
He said the International Energy Agency, the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change and the UK’s Climate Change Committee had all said there must be no new additional oil and gas production beyond current commitments if we are to reach net zero by 2050 and limit temperature rise to 1.5C.
He added:
“As fossil fuels become more obsolete, expanding new oil and gas licences or opening new oil fields will only create stranded assets of the future, harming local and regional communities that should instead by supported to transition their skills and expertise to renewable and clean energy.”
Mr Skidmore’s resignation means Rishi Sunak faces another by-election. It will be at least the eighth in 12 months.
Of the by-elections held so far, the Conservatives retained one seat, Labour gained four and the Lib Dems gained one.
Mr Skidmore has held the constituency of Kingswood, in south Gloucestershire, since 2010, taking the seat from Labour. He had a majority of more than 11,000 at the 2019 general election.
Kingswood will disappear in upcoming boundary changes and Mr Skidmore had already said he did not plan to stand at the general election.
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DRILL OR DROP? 
He may be quitting on principal. However, he may just realise he will not get re-elected in the next General Election? I don’t know. Horses for courses – I suspect the latter- like a rodent leaving a sinking ship?
[AI typo corrected at poster’s request]
I think he realises perfectly that he will not get elected in the next General Election, as his seat is disappearing due to boundary changes.
He probably thought it good to boost his profile before there’s a myriad of MPs looking for employment within the next 12 months.
More Skidmark than Skidmore
Grateful that he has the guts & conscience to resign over the government’s abdication of responsibility & volte face on oil & gas licences. Hope that others follow suit.
Ahh, the “hope”! Except the reality is Norway has instructed their drillers to drill under every stone they can find, and USA is on track to be exceeding all records.
I fully anticipate there will be MANY politicians who resign over getting energy policy wrong, although there have been plenty who got it wrong and haven’t. Perhaps it would be easier not to concentrate on those that resign or don’t but simply on those who got it wrong? As UK has been relying upon UK oil and gas producers to enable discounted oil and gas energy supplies to UK consumers whilst that “cheap” unreliable energy hasn’t, I suppose resigning is better than the ancient Japanese “alternative”.
I missed the bit when he signed into Law that he detailed what it would cost UK households. Goodness, it must be a pretty free ride if you can sign into Law £trillions of pounds of costs without telling that to the people who will fund it.
He could always stand as a Green and see if he was successful-at keeping his deposit.
I suspect when it got to the stage of having to explain on the doorstep how he could afford to do without the energy support payments he received from taxation upon UK oil and gas production to his constituents who were not so fortunate, he might have found the response somewhat uniform, and concise. He might have found a few businesses that were only being kept in UK as they were in receipt of taxpayer funding to do so to stop them going to where their energy costs were lower. I suspect though he would find many more that were going out of business due to high energy costs.
It just surprises me that the TV advert slots are so full of the ones requesting charitable donations. All these Stop Oil lot must have donated all those hundreds of pounds each surely????????
Perhaps he had just noted the Uxbridge result and become aware that voters may be silent until they see the cost to them and then react accordingly, and suspected explaining they were going to face the rest of the £6k/household per year for Net Zero up to 2050, was beyond his ability? It would have certainly destroyed any offer of a reduction in Inheritance Tax!
Call me old fashioned, but I prefer a politician to have POLICIES that add up. Other people’s principals are a luxury I can not afford. (My own, I will fund, others, nope.) Mind you, there is one lot of them telling me vote for them if I want HOPE! OMG, I thought that was the National Lottery, the Church, or Lefty Lawyers-all that required considerable “donations”.
Life can be so confusing.
[Edited by moderator] good riddance
Wish I had a song written about me
It’s interesting that whenever a politician of stature, principle – please, not ‘principal’ – and integrity emerges, there are those who will retaliate with accusations of self-serving. Integrity for them is an impossible concomitant of a political career. What a sad take on domestic politics where earlier good and honest intentions, no doubt supported by principles, are deemed doomed to founder at contact with a spurious reality, itself of necessity corrupt!
Whilst it is true that politicians of obvious integrity, perhaps more easily recognisable by us old-fashioned citizens, seem rare birds today, they do still exist and it seems churlish immediately to accuse of mendacity one with a record of opposition to a government policy so obviously out of kilter with scientific fact and common sense, so obviously mendacious and self-interested.
Only yesterday The Guardian reminded us that Sunak’s September justification for its domestic FF extraction policies was to aid the young to grow up not “dependent on foreign dictators” for energy security. This of course is the time- honoured dog-whistle justification for domestic fracking advanced by the anti- anthropogenic global heating lobby.
In the same article it was pointed out that the government has now admitted that oil from the controversial Rosebank field is to be sold on the international market rather than reserved for domestic consumers. So much for the use of homegrown British resources “to manage the decline in domestic oil and gas production in a way that reduces our vulnerability to hostile states.” (Dept. for Energy Security and Net Zero – quoted in The Guardian)
Just occasionally “other people’s principals” (sic) are based upon an ethical system which is worth supporting rather than those vague and of course unspecified principles peculiar to each of us. Perhaps Mr.Skidmore’s stance has such a foundation.
Yes it’s entirely possible that he’s a man of integrity standing up for his principles.
On the other hand he’s been advocating policies which lead to de-industrialisation or worse, economic suicide, by ensuring that the UK energy price is higher than most others which makes us uncompetitive. It’s interesting that those, such as he, talk about the great opportunities to lead the green revolution while the Chinese have cheaper electricity than us due to their coal-fired power stations and are easily able to outcompete us. He and his like aim to ensure we cannot compete on a level playing field. It’s also interesting to note that he’s one of a large cabal of Conservative MPs receiving funding by a group of billionaires. https://www.cen.uk.com/our-caucus
https://dailysceptic.org/2024/01/03/green-billionaires-fund-large-backbench-tory-net-zero-parliamentary-caucus/
On balance of probability, I’m inclined towards rat and sinking ship. I hope I’m not doing him a disservice, maybe he just doesn’t grasp the consequences of his policies. Maybe he thinks China will change it’s policies out of sympathy once they see the UK economy devastated and its people impoverished ?
Perhaps it does, perhaps it doesn’t but I note within all that twaddle to conflate the “international market” as somehow separate to taxation being gathered at source of production, UK-and then available to be directed to reduce high energy costs in UK not much principle at all. It is what the Guardian do, but not many read the Guardian, and hopefully even less have issues identifying facts.
Of course, real principle would be to refuse to accept such assistance. Good for you 1720 but I suspect there will be few who did the same and few who do not want the same assistance when the hostile states either cut off supplies or have them cut off through sanctions to attempt to try and restrict their ability to fund wars. My principles include allowing that, and knowing there are implications of that being done and a FACT that the wind doesn’t always blow and the sun doesn’t always shine and that nuclear power stations take around 30 years to come from thought to generation. Not sure either that there was much principle conflating energy supply security with mythical weapons of mass destruction which resulted in many thousands dead.
Mr. Skidmore has his own principles which are indeed peculiar to each of us. There is no Group Think requirement to accept the principles of others. There are plenty in history who have claimed principles that many would think pretty unprincipled at the time, or subsequently. I would have thought Uxbridge would have suggested many do not want to support other people’s principles by paying more for the “joy” of doing so. Some can HOPE they will do so, but maybe they should at least show what the costs will be rather than claim they will be less-and then not deliver. Policies are things that should be delivered, principles are things claimed and often no delivery emerges.
I even had one of those green energy suppliers (lol) wanting me to pay more into my energy account yesterday even though I was in credit and had been for many months. Suppose it was one of their principles that I should but as they pay no interest on my credit but my bank does I think I will stick to my policy of paying for it when I use it. Either my policy or their principle is a lot less of an issue if there are those nice UK producers contributing taxation that then reduces the burden to me. After all, those alternatives have proven to be pretty unreliable in doing that job and those that have been claiming they would must be a pretty UNPRINCIPLED lot, or mistaken. Seem to remember Mr. Skidmore being one within that Group-so, see previous paragraph. Plus, once the mistake has been demonstrated at high cost to many, how principled is it to suggest the mistake has not happened?
Reminds me of that South Sea Bubble, 1720-which happened when?????
Good Bye!, you deluded woke individual!