The government will make it illegal to grant new oil and gas licences in the North Sea, putting the Uk North Sea Oil Ban at the centre of a new Energy Independence Bill announced in the King’s Speech.
The move turns a key Labour manifesto pledge into legislation after the party made a ban on all new exploration and drilling licences in the North Sea a central promise in 2024. Labour said it wanted to “take control of our energy security” and build a “clean energy superpower” by 2030.
The announcement came at the state opening of Parliament, where the government set out a programme that places the North Sea ban in statute rather than leaving it as a political promise. That matters because the issue has become one of the sharpest dividing lines in the new Parliament, with two of Labour’s main opponents, Reform UK and the Conservatives, both vowing to overturn the policy if they can.
The argument is not only political. Oil and gas still account for three-quarters of the UK’s energy mix, even as the majority of the country’s fossil fuels are now shipped in from abroad. Supporters of the ban say the answer is to speed up the shift away from fossil fuels; critics say shutting the door on new licences risks weakening the public finances and the oil and gas sector in Scotland.
The debate has also spilled beyond Westminster. The US ambassador to the UK has urged Britain to make more of its reserves, adding pressure on ministers who are trying to present the policy as a step toward energy security rather than a retreat from domestic production.
Claire Coutinho, a Conservative frontbencher, attacked the plan in forceful terms, accusing Ed Miliband of being “utterly deluded” for seeking to put the ban into the statute book. She said: “He is not making us more independent. He is making us more reliant on foreign imports.”
That criticism lands in a year of higher global oil prices and ongoing supply concerns, which give the policy added urgency and make its consequences harder to dismiss as abstract. The government is betting that locking in the ban now will help Britain move faster toward cleaner power; its opponents are betting that it will leave the country more exposed before that transition is complete.
What happens next is clear enough: ministers will try to turn the pledge into law through the Energy Independence Bill, and the fight over whether Britain should keep any path open for new North Sea drilling will now move from party platforms to Parliament.
