Rishi Sunak is facing a backlash in parliament this week over plans to allow more oil and gas exploration in the North Sea, as Tory troubles pile up on multiple fronts in the run-up to a general election expected this year. MPs return to Westminster on Monday after the Christmas break with all parties gearing up for what will inevitably be a bitter election battle that could end the Conservatives’ 13 and a half years in power. Sunak’s hopes of a trouble-free start to 2024 were dashed on Friday when Chris Skidmore, a former Conservative energy minister, resigned as an MP in protest at the Offshore Petroleum Licensing Bill, which will be debated in the Commons on Monday. The bill will establish a new system under which licences for oil and gas projects in the North Sea will be awarded annually – a plan that has enraged green MPs of all parties and caused consternation across the world.
Skidmore, who said he could not vote for legislation that “clearly promotes the production of new oil and gas” and would show that the UK is “rowing ever further back from its climate commitments” is expected to make his last speech in the Commons during the debate and will refuse to vote for the bill. Other Tories, including Alok Sharma, a former cabinet minister and chair of the Cop26 international climate summit, are expected to speak against the bill as a green backlash to the government’s stance on climate policy grows. Theresa May, a former prime minister, has also previously raised objections to the licensing plan. Amid signs of increasing coordination on green policy issues among MPs of different political persuasions, Skidmore and another former Tory minister Lord Goldsmith have signed an all-party letter to Claire Coutinho, the energy secretary, calling for the bill to be dropped. The letter from the all-party parliamentary group for climate change says: “Just last month, as the UK’s second warmest year on record concluded, the UK joined other countries in signing the UAE consensus at Cop28 and thus pledged to transition way from fossil fuels. But this bill, and the government’s commitment to ‘max out’ the North Sea’s declining oil and gas reserves, is diametrically opposed to that agreement. “Instead of honouring the promises we’ve made to our allies and partners at Cop28 this bill further weakens any claim the UK makes to be a world leader in tackling climate change.” The latest report from the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) makes it clear that no new fossil fuel projects should be licensed, as doing so goes against the recommendations of the world’s leading climate scientists.
Skidmore’s decision to quit parliament leaves the prime minister facing the possibility of three difficult byelections early this year. Skidmore retained his Kingswood seat, near Bristol, at the 2019 general election with an 11,220 majority over second-placed Labour. His seat now looks a likely gain for Labour. Defeat risks arresting any political momentum that is vital for Sunak if he is to make his party competitive again before the general election, now widely expected to be held in the autumn. He also risks the loss of Blackpool South, where a byelection is likely with the sitting MP Scott Benton facing a Commons suspension for a “very serious breach” of standards rules. Labour will easily reclaim a seat that has a majority of less than 4,000 votes. A third byelection also hands Keir Starmer another chance to win a seat that would have been beyond his party’s reach until recently. Should Labour win Wellingborough, where Peter Bone had a majority of 18,540 majority at the last election, it will boost Starmer’s argument that he is now cutting deep into Tory territory. Bone was the subject of a recall petition when he was suspended from parliament after he was found to have bullied and harassed a member of staff and exposed his genitals. Yet even before those byelections are held, Sunak will be plunged back into a row over immigration. Talks between ministers and rival groups of Tory MPs over Sunak’s controversial Rwanda bill, designed to ensure he can deport asylum-seekers to the east African country, will take place this week. Votes and amendments will take place later this month. Liberal Tories within the “one nation” wing of the party are already warning that attempting to appease the right by making the bill any more severe could trigger government resignations, given the number of moderate MPs on the frontbench. “If you are worried about the state of the party, you can’t afford to lose more ministers,” said one Tory MP. “The government is packed full of sensible one nation centrists.”
The legislation attempts to limit legal challenges to sending asylum-seekers in Britain to Rwanda. Not a single Tory MP voted against it during the first vote on the measures. However, the right are angry that it still allows individual appeals and does not explicitly override the European Convention on Human Rights. Some on the right are now pessimistic that they have enough support to defeat the government and strengthen the bill, but they are also prepared to fight back against any changes made in the Lords, where the bill is expected to be weakened. It signals weeks of battling over a topic that has already dogged Sunak’s premiership for months. While there is no prospect of the government losing Monday’s vote on oil and gas licensing, ministers believe it will run into more problems at later parliamentary stages as MPs highlight inconsistencies in the government’s approach. Ministers, who maintained that more licences would enhance the UK’s energy security, have admitted that most of the oil from the new Rosebank field in the North Sea will be sold on the international market, rather than to UK consumers. There are powerful internal opponents. May has said: “Obviously, energy security for us is important but … new oil and gas licences only provide for energy security if all that energy is sold into the UK and, actually, it will be sold on the world market, so I think there are some questions around that.”
Senior Tories also expect trouble in the House of Lords. Labour has tabled an amendment saying it “is entirely incompatible with the UK’s international climate change commitments and is a totally unnecessary piece of legislation which will do nothing to serve the UK’s national interest”. Jeremy Hunt, the chancellor, has hit back at Skidmore over his decision. While praising his work for the government as climate change adviser, Hunt said: “I do profoundly disagree with the reasons that he gave for resigning. “The independent panel for climate change [the Climate Change Committee] that we have in this country are very clear that even when we reach net zero in 2050, we will still get a significant proportion of our energy from fossil fuels … and domestic oil and gas is four times cleaner than imported oil and gas.”