Select committee: Scottish Affairs Committee
Recommendation 12
4th Report - The future of Scotland’s oil and gas industry
Published 24 Oct 2025
Addressed to Scotland Office
Scottish Affairs Committee GB Energy and the net zero transition All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
The Government should recognise the urgency of the need for a coherent plan for the North Sea by committing to dates for the publication of its consultation response and consequent transition plan. The transition plan should be long-term in scope, provide certainty to the sector, and speak directly to the challenges faced by the communities in the northeast of Scotland, who are disproportionately affected by the UK’s transition away from oil and gas. We recommend that the Government’s transition plan contains specific and measurable outcomes on increasing the transfer of skills from the oil and gas industry to new sectors, with clear commitments from both governments and industry on how to achieve them. This could include target figures for oil and gas workers transitioning into specific industries, for clean energy job creation, and data on the UK supply chain content in both oil and gas and renewable energy activity. (Recommendation, Paragraph 90)
From: Scottish Affairs Committee, 4th Report - The future of Scotland’s oil and gas industry (HC 459), 24 October 2025
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 16 January 2026 (deadline 24 December 2025).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government welcomes the report and says it "partially agrees" with several recommendations, pointing to its North Sea Future Plan and 2025 Budget as setting out many of the issues the Committee raised.
- On licensing, it states that issuing new exploration and production licences "would not help our energy security", and instead introduces Transitional Energy Certificates for some production adjacent to already licensed fields, with no exploration permitted.
- On tax, it "partially agrees" with the call to bring the successor regime in sooner: the Energy Profits Levy is to end by March 2030 at the latest, or earlier if the price floor is triggered, and a new Oil and Gas Price Mechanism will replace it.
- It "agrees" with the recommendation on a communications campaign, saying an industry-led campaign on clean energy job opportunities is "launching next year".
- On the Oil and Gas Transition Training Fund, it says it will extend the fund from 2026-7 to 2028-9 with up to £18 million jointly funded with the Scottish Government, but has "considerable fiscal sustainability concerns" about a hypothecated fund from oil and gas tax revenues.