After nearly a year in office, the government has yet to deliver on its election promise to save the Grangemouth refinery, says Brian Leishman MP.

As I write, the first tranche of redundancies at the Grangemouth refinery are due to go ahead within a week, with the new industries of the future still over the horizon and out of sight.

It’s the very definition of an unjust transition.

The Labour Government was right to step in to save Scunthorpe Steel and the pace at which ministers and Parliament acted shows that when there is political will, there is a way.

As Unite the Union have said, there are striking similarities between the steel plant and the refinery in my constituency.

Hundreds of direct and thousands of indirect jobs at risk. Private capital and a foreign government are in charge of infrastructure of strategic importance to our nation. We are seeing needless acts of industrial vandalism which will be damaging to communities far and wide.

During the General Election campaign, I believed my Party leaders when they said that they would step in and save the refinery. Yet, after ten months in power, there have still not been any meaningful commitments to deliver on that promise.

The £100 million Falkirk and Grangemouth Growth Deal is simply not the answer – not when the refinery is worth north of £400 million to the Scottish economy every year.

Nor is the £200 million from the National Wealth Fund, as welcome as the announcement was, because the money is conditional on private investment coming in, with no planned government ownership.

It will mean that workers, communities and Scotland will once again be at the mercy of private capital and possibly foreign ownership.

Industries coming in down the line are simply not good enough when jobs – and Scotland’s fuel, and therefore national security – are in the firing line today.

Many communities in my constituency are still reeling from the closure of the pits, mills and breweries four decades on. The effect of deindustrialisation, loss of employment and opportunity are plain to see for all.

However, it feels like ministers have not learnt any lessons from the mistakes of governments of the past.

The influence of Scotland’s only oil refinery goes well beyond Grangemouth or even the borders of my constituency. The fuel produced at the refinery keeps Scotland’s 5.5 million people moving. It supports aviation activity every day at Scotland’s two major airports.

To be blunt, neither Holyrood nor Westminster have done nearly enough on the issue. The SNP have known about the closure for years and so have the Conservatives, yet they have done nothing to secure the future of refining capacity in Scotland.

The Labour Government indeed inherited the problem with little time to fix it. However, it is our problem to sort now and I have been consistent in calling on ministers and Keir Starmer to step in and for the government to at least take a transitional stake in the refinery’s future.

Intervening and treating Grangemouth in the same way as Scunthorpe is the right thing to do – for workers, their communities and all of Scotland.

Nationalisation should not be seen as radical politics – it is the common sense thing to do because in today’s volatile geopolitical context, we cannot afford to rely on others and import fuel as Petroineos plan to do.

It is not too late for Scottish Labour MPs and MSPs to do exactly what the Prime Minister said after winning the election and that is to stand up for Scotland on this issue and put ‘country before party’. 

Brian Leishman is Labour MP for Alloa and Grangemouth.

Image: Brian Leishman at the refinery, c/o Office of Brian Leishman MP.