Dennis Robertson this week told the Scottish Parliament that there was no crisis in the oil and gas industry.
Business was booming. More oil had come out of the North Sea last year “than ever before.”
He apologised the following day, having heard from his constituents and realised the offence he had caused. But the question is, why did an Aberdeenshire MSP get it so wrong in the first place?
Oil and Gas UK chief executive industry leader Deirdre Michie also spoke about the bigger picture this week. “Times are really tough for this industry and for the people working in it,” she said. “We will continue to see job losses as we move into 2016.”
The industry body estimated that 65,000 jobs were lost last year as a result of the oil jobs crisis across the UK. Now they have confirmed the bitter truth that more jobs are set to go.
Deirdre Michie also called for people to be “thoughtful and supportive of our colleagues and their families who are being made redundant or who are at risk of being made redundant.”
Dennis Robertson failed to do that, which is why he had to say sorry. I am glad that he did. Yet he still cannot bring himself to admit that the oil and gas industry is in the midst of a jobs crisis, and he is not alone.
SNP Energy Minister Fergus Ewing was asked about his colleague’s views, and he found it just as hard to admit the obvious truth. The word “crisis” was one he could not bring himself to say.
That is deeply disappointing, in the face of so many jobs lost and such bleak prospects in the months ahead. Saying sorry is not enough, if you and your party remain in denial about the crisis we face.
The SNP spent years claiming that oil revenues would pay for Scotland’s public services if we broke away from the rest of Britain.
Now they seem unable to accept that North Sea oil barely makes enough profit to pay any tax at all.
That is a pity, because even without oil revenues the North Sea still matters a great deal, because of the jobs it supports, the business it generates and the value it adds to the wider economy.
The Scottish Government has a duty to assess the impact of the oil jobs crisis on the Scottish economy, whether on companies in the supply chain, on rural communities supported by wages from offshore or on the whole range of service industries in and around Aberdeen.
If SNP Ministers don’t recognise there’s a crisis in the first place, they won’t come up with any of the solutions Scotland so urgently needs. Until they do, the Scottish Government will be letting Scotland down.
Lewis Macdonald is a Labour MSP for North East Scotland
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