Cutting support for the oil and gas industry too soon risks “plunging people into poverty”, Scotland’s former finance secretary, Kate Forbes, has said.
She said groups such as Just Stop Oil were “wrecking people’s lives” with their protests.
Ms Forbes, who narrowly missed out on becoming SNP leader and Scottish first minister after Nicola Sturgeon stepped down, spoke about the importance of making a “just transition” away from fossil fuels like oil and gas.
Environmental campaigners say new developments in the North Sea, such as the Rosebank oil field west of Shetland, should be halted because of the impact they could have on climate change.
But Ms Forbes, now a backbench MSP after turning down a job in First Minister Humza Yousaf’s cabinet, said: “I think that a just transition needs to have justice at its heart, and that means you can’t cut off oil tomorrow.
“That means that you’ve got to continue to support oil and gas to an extent, in order to allow the supply chains to build up for alternatives.
“If you cut it off tomorrow, or even if you cut it off next year, or maybe even in five years time, you won’t have built up the supply chain that can cater for all of these new jobs that are going to be created.
“All you do is plunge the country into poverty, and that does not serve our people.”
She added that the powersharing deal between the SNP and Scottish Greens at Holyrood meant some people living in rural Scotland believe that “urban-centric environmentalists can have more say about the rural economy than the actual people working in there”.
Appearing at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe with comedian Matt Forde, Ms Forbes was asked if the SNP’s brand was “being compromised by Patrick Harvie and Lorna Slater” – the Scottish Greens’ co-leaders who are ministers in the Scottish Government.
Ms Forbes, the MSP for Skye, Lochaber and Badenoch, said she had dealt with both Mr Harvie and Ms Slater, as she stressed the importance of gaining public support.
However policies such as highly protected marine areas, and the deposit return scheme for drinks cans and bottles, have both had to be shelved after being criticised.
Ms Forbes stressed: “There is no reaching net zero for example, unless you take the public with you on some of the more difficult issues. If you can’t take them with you, we ain’t going to get there.
“So that requires again a respect, and not necessarily a sense of being preached at.”
Meanwhile she claimed environmental group Just Stop Oil were “alienating the very public whose behaviour we need to see change”.
She said: “I think protest is fundamentally important, but protests that continue to hit workers, those that are struggling to get about their daily life – the cleaner who can’t get to work and yet needs to feed her kids – when you start wrecking people’s lives in that way, you’ve lost them as an audience.”
She continued: “Behaviour never changed as a result of being preached at. I think most people want to do the right thing, but they don’t want to see their lives wrecked in the process.”
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