LABOUR’S clean energy plans have been slammed as “anti-Scottish” as Keir Starmer’s “credibility" is called into question by pro-indy parties.
It comes as the Labour leader used a speech in Edinburgh to outline his party’s plans to meet net zero.
Starmer argued for continued use of fossil fuels while banning new North Sea oil and gas exploration and said the headquarters of a new public energy company would be in Scotland.
Scotland’s pro-independence parties all widely condemned Starmer’s plans.
Alba party leader Alex Salmond called them “anti-Scottish”, adding that Labour’s plans to halt North Sea oil and gas investment was “a great British sell out of Scotland”.
First Minister Humza Yousaf – speaking at the announcement of a new independence white paper on Monday – called into question whether anyone would trust Labour on the green economy after backtracking on its £28 billion green prosperity plan.
The Scottish Greens also attacked Starmer’s “credibility”, saying that the party doesn’t understand the climate crisis.
Former first minister Salmond said: “Labour’s plans are nonsensical, anti-green energy and anti-Scottish.
“No hydrocarbon province can operate on zero exploration and development. For a start, that’s where the jobs are concentrated. They would cost tens of thousands of skilled jobs in Scotland and provoke a collapse in high tech supply industries - the very companies needed by the growing offshore renewables sector.
"Instead of wrecking Scotland’s energy expertise, all parties should commit now to enforcing a carbon capture network across all the North Sea installations, by making it a condition of all new licences."
Salmond went on to dismiss Labour’s promise to locate “Great British Energy” in Scotland.
He said: “This is a replay of 50 years ago when Labour pledged that the British National Oil Corporation (BNOC) would be located in Scotland. But BNOC quickly became privatised Britoil and then disappeared into the maw of BP.
"What Scotland needs is its own public energy company - a Scottish National Renewables Corporation - to secure the public benefit from our people’s offshore renewable resource.”
The First Minister said that Labour governments had “squandered not tens but hundreds of billions (of pounds) of oil and gas revenue” and only invested a fraction of this in Scotland.
But he said Keir Starmer’s party is now asking Scots to “somehow be thankful that they are going to set up a part of a government department if they win a General Election”.
Yousaf went on to insist that the Scottish Government “don’t just talk the talk – we walk the walk” on green energy, pointing to the £500 million just transition fund pledged to help areas such as the north-east of Scotland transition from an economy based on fossil fuels to one focused on renewables.
Meanwhile, the Scottish Greens attacked Starmer’s “shocking admission” that Labour will wave through any Tory decision to grant a licence for the Rosebank oil and gas field near Shetland to go ahead.
Scottish Greens MSP Mark Ruskell, the party’s climate spokesperson, said: “The problem with Labour is you simply cannot trust them. Time and time again they have promised to do one thing, such as the green prosperity fund, only to U-turn.
“This Labour Party has sided with the Tories on Brexit, over refugees and now oil and gas. Now it hopes to plunder Scotland’s natural resources for Westminster again.”
