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Hello, I'm Sean Curran and this is yesterday in Parliament from BBC Radio 4.

An energy minister has defended plans to end new oil and gas licences in the North Sea.

On Thursday the 6th of March, Sarah Jones told the Commons, giving the go-ahead for new licences,

wouldn't take a penny off bills. But the Conservatives accused the government of betraying workers

in the industry. Politicians like three-word slogans. Tony Blair had education, education,

Boris Johnson gave us build back better.

And then, of course, there was Rishi Sunak's Stop the Boats.

This week, in his first interview since leaving Downing Street,

the Conservative former Prime Minister told Nick Robinson

he regretted using the phrase.

But slogans are still popular.

And yesterday, the Conservative Shadow Energy Minister, Andrew Bowie,

found three little words to attack Labour's plans for the North Sea and oil and gas workers.

It might be drill, baby drill in the USA.

It's Dole Baby Dole under Labour in the UK.

This week, the government launched a consultation on its manifesto promise to ban

new licences for oil and gas exploration and confirmed that the windfall tax on the profits of

energy companies would end in 2030. The industry minister Sarah Jones told MPs the government

wanted to seize the opportunities of what she called the clean energy transition in the North Sea.

While we have always been clear that oil and gas will continue to play an important role for decades to come,

the reality is that new licenses for oil and gas awarded in the last decade have only made a marginal difference to overall

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