A Scottish Labour MP has criticised his party for not doing enough to save the Grangemouth oil refinery.
Earlier this week, some workers at the site were sent redundancy letters by their employer, Petroineos. The site is Scotland’s only oil refinery, and is expected to close by the summer.
Brian Leishman, Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth, said he was angry at the UK government, as well as other parties involved.
But Labour said it had offered a £100m support package to the community.
The prime minister has previously said he took the issue of the refinery closure very seriously.
Sir Keir Starmer added: “We’ll do everything we can to make sure that viable long-term future is there for the workers, for their communities and all that rely on it.”
‘We should be doing more’
Leishman told BBC Scotland’s The Sunday Show he had anger at a multitude of actors “but primarily at my own government at the moment”.
He said the current UK government, which came into power last summer, had inherited the problem from the previous Conservative administration, who he accused of turning their back on the refinery workers.
He also criticised the inaction of the SNP government at Holyrood.
Leishman added: “There’s a lot of people who have got to carry the can for this but we really, in government now, should be doing an awful lot more.”
He said he had taken the issue to the top of the UK government and the answers he had received back had been “incredibly underwhelming and not good enough”.
Leishman added: “This is the biggest industrial issue to hit Scotland in 40 years – more must be done.”
He added: “The workers want to go on the proper transition towards greener, cleaner energy industries.
“The Grangemouth refinery is the perfect site for that.”
Getty ImagesHe said the Scottish Labour leader, Anas Sarwar, had been “very quiet on the issue”.
Leishman continued: “The wider Scottish Labour party needs to do an awful lot more as well and that goes right up to the prime minister down in Downing Street as well, he’s got to do an awful lot more.”
He said he had not seen any plans for the refinery from the Labour party, despite the claims made during the election campaign that if they won the election they would intervene.
Leishman added: “It’s one thing being in opposition and making promises. Now we’re actually in government, we should follow through and make good on them.”
During last summer’s general election campaign, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar promised that if his party won the UK election it would invest in Grangemouth.
He said: “We would step in to save the jobs at the refinery and to invest in that transition by making an energy transition hub at Grangemouth and we would put hundreds of millions of pounds behind it to make it a reality.”
Scottish Labour said the UK Labour government had put together a £100m package to support the community and invest in the workforce, including investment in skills, local energy projects, and wider growth initiatives.
They added: “As well as continuing work on industrial futures for the site, the government is also providing tailored support to ensure workers can secure good, alternative jobs.”
Petroineos has said the closure was going ahead because the site was unable to compete with those in Asia, Africa and the Middle East.
The company said the decision would “safeguard fuel supply for Scotland” by converting the site into a terminal able to import petrol, diesel, aviation fuel and kerosene into Scotland.
The shift is expected to keep around 65 of the roughly 500 jobs on the site.
The majority of the workers at the plant are understood to have agreed voluntary redundancy deals, with the job losses spread out over the next 18 months.
A spokesperson for the UK government’s Department for Energy Security and Net Zero said: “We took immediate action following Petroineos’s confirmation on the closure of Grangemouth.
“Before July, there was no overall plan for the future of the Grangemouth refinery.
“Within weeks, we worked with the Scottish government to put together an unprecedented £100m package to support the community and invest in the local workforce, along with tailored support to help those affected find good, alternative jobs.”
Getty ImagesThe SNP MSP Michelle Thomson – who represents Falkirk East – said both governments needed to do “a whole lot more” to support oil and gas workers.
She told The Sunday Show: “I absolutely accord a huge amount of blame for this to the UK government. They have done absolutely nothing. They are asleep at the wheel.”
Thomson called on the SNP Scottish government to use their convening powers to arrange an immediate meeting on the future of Grangemouth with Prime Minister Keir Starmer and Ineos chairman Sir Jim Ratcliffe.
The Scottish government’s Energy Secretary Gillian Martin said she wanted to secure a long-term future for “the wider Grangemouth industrial cluster”.
She added: “Refining at Grangemouth should continue, and a premature closure of the refinery is fundamentally short-sighted and detrimental to the transition to net zero.”
She urged the UK government to “bring forward real investment to save Grangemouth”.
Scottish Conservative MSP for Central Scotland Stephen Kerr said: “Brian Leishman was rightly critical of his own government.
“Most of the funding for the growth deal that would have helped saved this lifeline refinery was provided by the last Conservative government.
“Michelle Thomson today refused to acknowledge the SNP had failed to deliver a just transition for our oil and gas industry, but it has never been clearer that the SNP and Labour governments have both turned their backs on this vital sector.”
Getty ImagesDerek Thomson, Scottish secretary for Unite the Union, represents employees at Grangemouth.
He told BBC Radio Scotland that there were no jobs for the Grangemouth staff to move on to that had the same skills or salary base.
Mr Thomson added: “The UK government has to take the fair share of shouldering the responsibility in all of this with the pre-election and post-election promises from Keir Starmer and Anas Sarwar just not coming to fruition.”
He added that the Scottish government could have done more, and should have pushed the UK government more.
The union representative added he believed the workers’ jobs could still be saved.
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