I don’t trust Swinney to control Scotland’s energy, says Badenoch

Kemi Badenoch has said she would not trust the First Minister with Scotland’s energy policy after he said his party would call for more powers if it won May’s election.

John Swinney revealed on Monday he would draft a Section 30 order to acquire the responsibilities over energy on the first day after he was re-elected as First Minister.

The order would then have to be accepted and actioned by the UK Government – something they would be very unlikely to do.

Speaking to the Press Association in Aberdeen during a visit to an oil rig, the UK Tory leader said: “I do not trust John Swinney with Scotland’s energy.”

She added: “The SNP’s policy is pretty non-committal, so if he took control of those powers, we will still not be drilling.

“What we need to do right now is allow new licences, make sure that we can drill our own oil and gas and use those revenues to help the people of Scotland.”

During her visit to the north east of Scotland, the Tory leader touted her party’s new campaign to “get Britain drilling”, in the hopes of increasing energy security.

Speaking to STV News during a visit to Stornoway on Monday, Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar said the calls were the First Minister talking “about what he can’t do, rather than confront what he can do”.

“This is the same old John Swinney doing the same old tactics,” he said.

“The problem we have here is John Swinney has no energy and that’s why we need a new government and we need a new first minister so we can have new ideas, new energy and new leadership to fix the mess the SNP have made over the last 20 years, to get the basics right in our country and to build a better future for Scotland.”

Speaking to the Press Association during a visit to the St Fergus Gas Terminal in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire, the First Minister said: “Scotland generates a huge amount of energy, far in excess of the energy requirements,

“But our people are not getting the benefit of that and I want to make sure that Scotland’s future is in Scotland’s hands and our energy is in Scotland’s hands, where we have control over energy resources from the early days of the next SNP government, so that we can take decisions to make sure that Scotland’s energy wealth works for the benefit of the people of Scotland through lower bills, by using our energy wealth for the benefit of the people of our country.”

SNP candidate for Aberdeen Central, Jack Middleton, said Mrs Badenoch had “some nerve” to visit Aberdeen and “lecture” about energy policy, claiming successive UK governments have “raked in more than £350 billion from our offshore industry and gave us nothing back in return”.

If the SNP was to make the request for new powers on the first day of the new parliamentary term, it would do so without a finalised energy strategy being produced by the Government.

The document was published in draft form under Nicola Sturgeon – including a presumption against new oil and gas – but never finalised, with a spokesman for the First Minister last week blaming the volatility in the global sector and the party’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn saying confusion caused by the UK Government made it difficult to produce a plan.