The former Business Secretary has said the government’s decision to ban new North Sea drilling for oil and gas will ‘line the pockets of overseas dictators’.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said the government had ‘not learned the lessons of Russia's invasion of Ukraine’ and the UK economy would be negatively affected by the decision.
Speaking to GB News, Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg said: “We now look forward to lining the pockets of overseas dictators. Tens of thousands of British jobs disintegrating and increasing energy bills for the British people.
“Former Labour leader Ed Miliband, now Energy Secretary, ordering an immediate ban on new North Sea drilling for oil and gas, is a decision at the heart of the net zero fallacy in the UK.
“In the UK we love to boast about the fact that we have cut carbon emissions by more than half since 1990. The Tories have been nearly as culpable in this foolishness as the Labour Party and green lobby more broadly,
“And while we have cut emissions significantly, we have primarily done so by passing our emissions to foreign countries at the expense of our industry and energy security.
“This has hit the economy, economic growth and jobs. A quick search on the national grid dashboard shows over a third of our energy is imported, the majority of which comes from fossil fuels.
“In other words, we have given the appearance of cutting missions so we can give ourselves a pat on the back, while global emissions are hardly affected.
“It's difficult to believe that as recently as the 1990s the UK was a net exporter of energy. We were energy independent, but now we are net importers.
“And this will only get worse under Labour and its fanatical plans to ban drilling.
“The decision represents a boost to overseas dictators who will take full advantage of our reliance on their oil and gas reserves.
“Have we not learned the lessons of Russia's invasion of Ukraine? The UK, along with Denmark and Germany, has the most expensive electricity bills in the world. What we all have in common is a strong reliance on unreliable green energy.
“As a result, we have sluggish growth. Meanwhile, the US, China and India, which are all growing much faster, have cheap energy, and all of these economies are willing to use fossil fuels.
“One of the great failures of successive Conservative governments was not to roll back the green agenda. As a result, we have paved the way for Labour to set in stone a destiny of high energy energy bills, deindustrialisation, the loss of jobs and energy insecurity.
“We should not be banning drilling in the North Sea. Rather, we should start fracking onshore to improve the wealth of the nation.”
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