KEIR Starmer has addressed the closure of the ExxonMobil site in Fife which threatens more than 400 jobs.
Speaking at Prime Minister’s Questions on Wednesday, Tory leader Kemi Badenoch quoted the American oil giant, which said that the Government “needs to understand that the whole industrial base of the UK is at risk unless they wake up and realise the damage their economic policies are doing”.
Around 400 jobs are at risk at ExxonMobil’s Fife Ethylene Plant at Mossmorran, which makes the base material for plastics and the UK Government has previously confirmed it will not intervene in the planned closure.
She asked: “Is the loss of UK industry the price to pay for having a clueless Chancellor?”
Starmer replied: “Let me just say about ExxonMobil, it is a difficult time for the workforce there and we must focus on supporting them.
“We’ve been meeting the company for over six months and explored every possible reasonable avenue. They have been facing losses for the last five years.”
To heckles from the Tory benches, the PM said: “It’s best to do the detail before you chunter.”
He went on: “They’re currently losing £1 million a week.”
Turning on Badenoch, Starmer added: “She talks about policy and approach. On energy policy, she follows Reform.
“On the European Convention [of Human Rights], she follows the man who wants her job.
“And when her shadow minister said we should deport people lawfully here to achieve ‘cultural coherence’, she pretended it that it didn’t happen.”
Starmer continued his attack, branding her the “trade secretary that didn’t sign any trade deals” and highlighting her support for the disastrous Liz Truss mini-Budget and “open borders”.
He added: “She hasn’t got an ounce of credibility.”
Paul Greenwood, the UK chair of ExxonMobil, on Wednesday morning launched a blistering attack on the UK Government’s policies that he said had “deliberately” contributed to the closure of the Fife site.
He told the BBC’s Today programme that there are “four keys to success” in the ethylene business: cheap and abundant ethane, low-cost operations, a market that pays good prices for ethylene, and a highly skilled and dedicated workforce.
He said: “I will be blunt, I have one of those keys to success in place, and that is a brilliant workforce; two of those keys I deliberately do not have because of Government policy.
“Take the ethane supply, you know what’s happening in the North Sea: we’ve had windfall taxes, we’ve had a ban on production licences – I need cheap sources of abundant ethane and I do not have them, because the North Sea – because of Government policy – is declining rapidly and that ethane is increasingly high price.
“If I come to the second part, which is I need to operate at low cost, I have to have a burden put upon me of CO2 taxes – we paid £20 million last year in CO2 taxes, that will double in the next four or five years, my international competitors do not have those costs, I also have to deal with high energy costs and those kind of things – so these are deliberate Government policies that are undermining us.”
Labour have previously taken major steps to support industry in England, including nationalising the British Steel works in Scunthorpe and backing a £1.5 billion loan for Jaguar Land Rover, which has its main factories in the West Midlands and Merseyside.
However it has failed to act on the closure of the Grangemouth oil refinery and the Port Talbot steel works in south Wales.
