The SNP has been accused of spreading ‘misinformation’ over its key election claim that Labour’s plans for the North Sea oil industry could cost 100,000 Scottish jobs. Leading SNP politicians have repeatedly used the claim to attack Keir Starmer’s policy of increasing levies on, and abolishing tax incentives for, energy companies operating in the North Sea. Earlier this week, John Swinney compared the potential impact of Labour’s pledges to deindustrialisation under Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s and claimed they could create an “industrial wasteland” in the north east of Scotland .
The 100,000 figure is based on estimates by the investment bank, Stifel. But Stifel’s analysis – set out in two reports seen by The Ferret, one written in June 2023 and the other in May of this year – actually says that job losses could take place across the “UK North Sea” sector and not just in Scotland. Stifel confirmed to The Ferret that its research did not say where job losses could fall.
Read more: Douglas Ross, the moral vacuum, fashions his own ruin with sickbed sacking Does an SQA by any other name work the same? 'Labour and Tory political game-playing on immigration is failing Scotland' According to Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), the trade body for the North Sea industry, just under half –- around 90,000–- of the nearly 220,000 jobs supported by the UK oil and gas sector are in Scotland. Campaigners and experts have accused politicians in Scotland of “bowing t.