Disclosures recently made by the Department for Transport confirms that a Labour MP was told, and acknowledged that no funding would be made available for an Ipswich northern bypass scheme, should one be developed.

In correspondence between civil servants from the DfT in February, questions from the Member of Parliament for Ipswich, Jack Abbott, admit that there are “no funding pots right now.”

This website published a story in February detailing how information disclosed by the Department stated that Mr Abbott would be told that there was no funding available after his ministerial surgery meeting with Simon Lightwood MP, a DfT junior minister.

Abbott, who serves in the government as the Culture Secretary Lisa Nandy’s Parliamentary Private Secretary, went on to ask civil servants, “what would be the process for the council if they did want to bid for funding? What would they need to provide?“

Civil servants have also cast doubt on the need for a bypass, due to the recent joint replacement works on the Orwell Bridge, stating that they will increase the reliability of the structure, and so “the case for a major intervention like a £500m bypass is likely to be weaker still once those works are complete.“

All of this comes just weeks after Suffolk County Council voted to explore all possible options around solving the issues that the Ipswich area, and its surrounding transport connections face when going into the future, with a report set to be delivered to Cabinet by the end of September 2026.

“The idea of blaming our housing crisis on immigration is wild to me actually, Robert.” Wild indeed, when the laws of supply and demand are so difficult to comprehend. “Do you think that if we lock down our borders, that we are going to solve the housing crisis”, she probed further.

“The thing is, the more people you have in a country, the more houses you’re going to need”, responded Kenyon, in a line returned with either a great deal of condescension in mind, or just a sheer lack of intelligence. I am minded to back the idea of the latter being true.

“You using immigration on the issue of housing, I think is absolutely unjust” surmised Wakefield, before attempting to conclude the conversation with Kenyon. Unfortunately for the Green candidate, Fiona Bruce then allowed Kenyon to put his question forward again, “Does immigration have an affect on housing?”

At this point, evidently frustrated, Wakefield returned her serve with the same level of condescension delivered to her by Kenyon earlier. “Whoever lives in this country, has an impact on housing, of course. The numbers of people in a country, thats not necessarily to do with immigration.”

As of now, I am still unsure as to whether the Green candidate has been explained the system by which immigration and emigration functions, as the number of people living in any country at any one time is entirely to do with it, but if this mind numbing exchange demonstrates anything close to the best of what Britain’s two insurgent political parties have to offer, then we are well and truly done for.

I was however desperately intrigued by the data behind this, and the fundamental caveat here is that I am only looking at the total number of homes completed in each year and the theoretical demand created by net migration. There is evidently not a surplus of housing stock in the UK, but when context is a applied through the net housing needs of migration, it should help to guide us on the impact of immigration.

According to the Office for National Statistics, the average size of a UK household is currently 2.35 people. An entirely unhelpful figure in most regards, but for this it is actually rather useful. By applying it to the net migration figures, we are able to discern the net housing needs on a year by year basis over a much longer period of time.

From 2012 until the now infamous Boriswave of 2021-2023, the net housing needs as a result of migration sat comfortably below the number of houses completed every year. This is the most clear reminder that migration is not the sole driver of the need for greater housing supply.

For years, the level of migration in the UK had a notional, but not overwhelmingly significant impact on the level of available housing supply, but it would be wrong to suggest that in recent years, in large part due to the substantial amount of net migration.

Net migration now appears to be on a downward trend, which over a longer period of time may begin to resolve some of the pressures placed on the system by the Boriswave.

But with the government already struggling to fulfil their aims to construct 1.5 million homes by the end of their first term, with the least amount of homes built last year since 2020, it will likely be a long road to alleviating Britains housing crisis.

Alan Milburn’s interview this weekend with Laura Kuenssberg confirmed what many have long suggested: the welfare state is actively enabling a generation of young people to opt out of contributing anything at all to society.

The latest NEET figures themselves are damning, and the absence of any serious scrutiny over where public money is flowing has allowed the problem to fester. Nothing on the horizon suggests it is about to improve.

For months, I have been rabbeting on about the necessity to introduce some form of national service. It seems like a straightforward political win for any party that dares to look outside of their own castle.

But now, I am more convinced than ever that it represents the only serious intervention capable of rescuing Britain’s youth from a state-subsidised drift into irrelevance.

The Conservatives tried this in their 2024 election manifesto. It bombed with the public, was communicated badly by Downing Street, and was simultaneously picked apart by their own Defence Minister. The policy was not fundamentally wrong, but the execution was a disaster.

Denmark shows how it can be done properly, extending conscription to include women for the first time last year, with service lasting between three and twelve months. On their Day of Defence, every Danish citizen over 18 is required to attend seminars introducing them to the military and undergo a medical assessment to determine their suitability for service.

If you will pardon the pun, it is a NEET solution on two fronts: every 18-year-old gets a medical check-up, and the country begins to build something resembling cultural cohesion. And goodness knows we need that too.

The model also works because it is honest about what it is. It does not dress compulsion up as opportunity. It tells young people that ownership of a country is not inherited passively, but earned. Young Danes are not asked whether they feel like contributing. They are expected to.

Norway goes further. Its model rotates conscripts through military, civil defence, and public service roles depending on aptitude and national need. A young person with no aptitude for or interest in the armed forces can spend their service supporting emergency services, environmental monitoring, or social care. The country gets what it needs. The individual gets skills, structure, and the not-insignificant experience of being useful.

We could adopt exactly this: a compulsory Day of Assessment at 18 for every young person, modelled on the Danish template, combining medical screening, a skills audit, and an honest conversation about where each individual could contribute most. That would be followed by a minimum period of structured service, military or civilian, with financial or legal penalties for refusal, such as in Sweden or Finland.

The Office for Budget Responsibility has repeatedly flagged long-term inactivity as a structural fiscal risk. Complaints about the cost of a national service programme are inevitable, but they ignore the other side of the ledger. We are already paying, heavily, for a generation that contributes less and less. The question is not whether we can afford to act, but whether we can afford not to.

The politics, if handled properly, are more straightforward than they appear. It is not a question of left or right. In Scandinavia, both conservative and social democratic governments have broadened the scope of national service.

Britain today is broken for so many people, especially the young. As a society, we lack demonstrable skills, self-discipline, and a sense of collective purpose. It is time we put that right.

By Harry Brennan, Henry Lloyd, Abigail Mableson and Lara Kipper

Hundreds of millions of pounds in benefits have been given to dead people in a blunder uncovered by The Telegraph.

In a costly overpayment failure, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) paid out £850m in benefits to claimants after they had died.

It is not known which benefits were overpaid, but it is thought the 2.6 million errors since 2021 could be related to a mix of mental health and out-of-work benefits, state pension payments and others.

Pat McFadden, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has an obligation to protect public money and recover overpayments wherever possible.

Yet less than half the £850m has been recovered – adding millions to Britain’s spiralling benefits bill, which costs taxpayers about £300bn each year.

Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, has faced repeated accusations of being soft on benefits following pressure from backbench MPs.

Last year, he made an about-turn on plans to tighten eligibility for personal independence payments (PIPs) despite concerns over a surge in claims linked to anxiety and ADHD.

He also backed down on plans to restrict winter fuel payments, in a move that added £1.25bn to the benefits bill, and gave in to pressure to lift the two-child benefit cap – adding £3bn a year.

On Saturday, The Telegraph revealed Government plans for an online self-service benefits system for PIPs, with an official trial of the system concluding the plans will result in a surge in claims.

The latest revelations on overpayments are likely to be embarrassing for Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, who sacked the boss of National Savings and Investments (NS&I) because of a separate “missing millions” scandal.

The Telegraph revealed how NS&I failed to pay £476m owed to bereaved families of up to 37,500 dead savers because of systems issues since 2008. Dax Harkins, the bank’s chief executive, was forced out over the fiasco.

Mr Bell and Mr McFadden are now facing questions about their own failings, with critics saying the benefits department has “lost its grip on basic administration” and asking why they are not doing more to claw back erroneous payments.

Hundreds of millions of pounds in benefits have been given to dead people in a blunder uncovered by The Telegraph.

In a costly overpayment failure, the Department for Work and Pensions (DWP) paid out £850m in benefits to claimants after they had died.

It is not known which benefits were overpaid, but it is thought the 2.6 million errors since 2021 could be related to a mix of mental health and out-of-work benefits, state pension payments and others.

Pat McFadden, the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, has an obligation to protect public money and recover overpayments wherever possible.

Yet less than half the £850m has been recovered – adding millions to Britain’s spiralling benefits bill, which costs taxpayers about £300bn each year.

Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, has faced repeated accusations of being soft on benefits following pressure from backbench MPs.

Last year, he made an about-turn on plans to tighten eligibility for personal independence payments (PIPs) despite concerns over a surge in claims linked to anxiety and ADHD.

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He also backed down on plans to restrict winter fuel payments, in a move that added £1.25bn to the benefits bill, and gave in to pressure to lift the two-child benefit cap – adding £3bn a year.

On Saturday, The Telegraph revealed Government plans for an online self-service benefits system for PIPs, with an official trial of the system concluding the plans will result in a surge in claims.

The latest revelations on overpayments are likely to be embarrassing for Torsten Bell, the pensions minister, who sacked the boss of National Savings and Investments (NS&I) because of a separate “missing millions” scandal.

The Telegraph revealed how NS&I failed to pay £476m owed to bereaved families of up to 37,500 dead savers because of systems issues since 2008. Dax Harkins, the bank’s chief executive, was forced out over the fiasco.

Mr Bell and Mr McFadden are now facing questions about their own failings, with critics saying the benefits department has “lost its grip on basic administration” and asking why they are not doing more to claw back erroneous payments.

A total of £9.5bn in benefits were overpaid in 2025, official figures show, but more than two-thirds of this was because of fraud, while 20 per cent was because of claimant error. The figures obtained by The Telegraph show the scale of official error relating to deceased benefit claimants for the first time.

Lee Anderson, Reform UK’s spokesman for work and pensions, said: “This is an absolutely appalling scandal that exposes just how badly broken the system has become.

“Nearly a billion pounds of taxpayers’ money has been paid out to people who are no longer alive, and ministers have known about the problem for years yet failed to fix it. Both Labour and the Conservatives have shown time and again that they cannot be trusted with the public’s money.”

Shimeon Lee, of the TaxPayers’ Alliance campaign group, said: “These figures show a department that has lost its grip on basic administration.

“Funnelling nearly a billion pounds to deceased claimants is a staggering waste of taxpayers’ money. The Government must simplify the welfare state and standardise eligibility so there is a streamlined system that prioritises accuracy.”

The benefits overpayments are understood to have been made by DWP staff after a notification of death of a claimant was received too late to halt payouts, or arrived at the point of payment.

Overpayments also occur when benefit claimants spend time in hospital or go into care. These include PIP – the mental health benefit – and the disability living allowance, among others.

These usually stop or are suspended after a claimant has been in hospital for 28 days. While state pensions continue, means-tested benefits such as pension credit or jobseeker’s allowance may be reduced. Benefits generally resume if someone is discharged from hospital.

The overpayment figures exclude winter fuel payments, but The Telegraph has discovered that winter fuel payments have also been sent to the accounts of dead claimants. Some £27m in winter fuel payments have been sent to close to 83,000 dead people since April 2023.

Winter fuel payments are paid out after claimants are accepted for the handouts in September, meaning by the time they are paid at the start of winter some claimants have already died.

It is thought in some cases the cost of recovery could end up being higher to the taxpayer than the cost of the overpayments themselves, which typically run into the hundreds of pounds.

A DWP spokesman said: “It is DWP policy to recover all debt where it is reasonable and cost effective to do so. We encourage anyone who has recently lost a loved one to use our Tell us Once service, which makes it easy to notify us and other government services of a death in one simple step.

“Once we’ve been notified, we act quickly to update our records and make sure benefits only go to those who are entitled to them.”

A Suffolk MP has been told there is no funding available to support the development of any Ipswich Northern bypass proposal, should one be put forward, before 2031.

New documents released by the Department for Transport (DfT) relating to the issue of a proposed Northern bypass include a ministerial briefing for an MP surgery with Jack Abbott MP.

Abbott met with Simon Lightwood MP, Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State (Minister for Roads and Buses), on Wednesday 14th January 2026.

A ministerial briefing created by the DfT included a set of top lines for the minister to be aware of before the meeting, the first of which made very clear that no funding would be made available for any such proposals or projects before 2031.

As further emails disclosed confirm, there are presently no current or future plans in the pipeline that could be considered for candidacy as a new Major Roads Network (MRN) scheme.

Abbott has been campaigning publicly for a Northern Bypass of the town since his election in July 2024, having asked the Prime Minister directly about the issue in parliament last year during PMQs.

In an email dated 22nd January 2026, a readout from the meeting held between Abbott and Lightwood, included conversation on Orwell Bridge repairs, the Northern Bypass, and the Copdock Junction.

The email went on to say that, following the meeting, SL [Simon Lightwood MP] has requested that we provide the following:

1. A short note on NH’s [National Highways] assessment of the integrity of Orwell Bridge, given the extensive closures.

2. A briefing note on Copdock Junction.

The minister did not request a briefing note on any matters relating to a proposed Northern bypass of Ipswich.

In the same set of emails, DfT civil servants also acknowledge the political complexity of the situation, in relation to impending devolution and the establishment of a Mayoral Authority that will take control of strategic highways.

In December 2025, the government announced plans to delay elections to the four new Mayoral authorities, Greater Essex, Sussex and Brighton, Hampshire and the Solent, and Norfolk and Suffolk, until 2028, having previously been planned for this coming May.

The decision, which industry experts have said ‘reflects poorly on the government', will likely hamper further efforts by those campaigning to deliver a process or formal planning for a bypass.

Jack Abbott MP has not commented publicly or online about his campaign to build a Northern bypass of Ipswich since meeting the Minister on the 14th of January.

Speculation has been rampant in Westminster over recent weeks that the Labour government are planning on postponing a number of local elections that are due to be held in May of this year.

In November of last year, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government gave reassurances to it’s respective Commons Select Committee that all elections in May 2026 would go ahead. The Chairman of the Committee, Florence Eshalomi, stating yet she was concerned that ‘we are seeing a postponement yet again’ despite the Secretary of State ‘repeatedly’ telling the committee that they would be going ahead just before Christmas.

Data collected and published by the Office for National Statistics has tracked the concerns of voters through a series of surveys in the two most recent electoral periods; the 2024 General Election, and the 2025 Local Elections.

The response from voters is a stark one tracking a significant rise in concerns held, in all surveys, except the one held immediately after the 2024 General Election.

According to the ONS data, voters broadly consider the safety of candidates and voter identification requirements to be a constant issue, unaffected by other changes, but of low priority compared to concerns about bias in the media or the spread of misinformation and fake news.

Most notably, the number of voters who said they had no concerns about the future of elections in the UK jumped from 15 percent before the general election, to 31 percent the following month, before crashing down to 11 percent in the seven months to March 2025.

On this question, there is a significant split between the position of voters 30+ and the 16 to 29 age group, the latter of which are shown to be the least apathetic during the period directly before the general election. In the July 2024 survey following polling day, and the change of government from the Conservatives to Labour, they were also the most hesitant age group to state that they had no concerns about the future of elections as well, with just 22 percent stating they had no concerns, compare to 35 percent in the 50 to 69 age group. By March 2025 however, the number of voters surveyed who no concerns about future elections had fallen drastically, by up to 23 points, with all age groups hitting a record low.

Voters also continue to have significant concerns about foreign interference in elections. The recent conviction of Reform UK’s former leader in Wales, Nathan Gill, for taking pro-Russian bribes from Oleg Voloshyn, who was working on the behalf of a “close friend” of Vladimir Putin, according to the BBC.

Those with the greatest concerns are those in the over 70s age group, who are mirroring their concerns today, to those they held during the cold war. In contrast, the 16 to 29 were far less concerned about foreign interference before the 2024 general election, but have become increasingly worried since the general election.

All groups have displayed substantial concerns about the spread of misinformation, with those concerns trending upwards in the approach to the 2024 general election.

The post election survey recorded a decline of around 20 percent. However, the 16 to 29 age group saw the smallest decrease, with around 50 percent still concerned, compared with 42 percent among those aged 50 to 69.

By March 2025, concern had risen again across all groups, reaching a new peak of over 75 percent.

Voters also expressed significant concern about media bias. The 16 to 29 age group stood out, with concern rising in the period immediately before the general election, in contrast to a largely stable pattern among other age groups.

Although this concern fell slightly after polling day, it remained above 50 percent. By comparison, concern among those aged 50 to 69 fell sharply over the same period, dropping by more than 20 points, before all groups saw a significant rise again by March 2025, illustrating further dissatisfaction.

Understanding the concerns of the electorate should be at the forefront of ensuring that views about democracy are addressed correctly by government and local authorities. With trends painting the starkest picture about electoral disillusionment ahead of this year’s local elections, the consequences that could emerge from their cancellation, even if partial, will only serve to heighten existing concerns about the democratic system.

The response from voters is a stark one tracking a significant rise in concerns held, in all surveys, except the one held immediately after the 2024 General Election.

According to the ONS data, voters broadly consider the safety of candidates and voter identification requirements to be a constant issue, unaffected by other changes, but of low priority compared to concerns about bias in the media or the spread of misinformation and fake news.

New data shared by a government department, has revealed a dramatic fall in commercial animal imports into the UK over the last five years.

Data published by the Animal and Plant Health Agency (APHA), has shown that the number of dogs being brought into the UK has decreased by over 65% since 2020, hitting its peak in 2021 during the height of the pandemic, before rapidly reducing the following year.

According to the APHA, 78,299 dogs were commercially imported to Britain in 2021, which was an increase of 11,000 over the previous year’s total. However in 2022 the number fell drastically down to 44,151, and has since decreased further down to 22,145 as of September 2025.

The Department for Environment, Food, and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) defines the commercial importation of animals as:

• The movement of groups of more than 5 cats, dogs or ferrets

• The movement of cats, dogs and ferrets involving a change of ownership and/or for rehoming, including rescue animals

• Pet animals that are unable to fulfil the requirement of the pet travel regulation for travelling within 5 days of their owner or owner’s representative

The significant reduction in the number of dogs coming to Britain has been attributed to a number of measures put in place in 2022, when the government temporarily suspended all commercial dog imports of dogs, cats, and ferrets from Belarus, Poland, Romania, and Ukraine from April until October of the same year.

The restrictions were put in place on advice from DEFRA’s Animal Disease Policy Group (ADPG), who raised concerns over the zoonotic disease, Brucella canis, which is a bacterial infection that can cause infertility in dogs, but can also be spread to humans.

In October 2022, the government lifted the ban, but introduced new rules for the commercial importing of dogs, which has placed heavier restrictions on the type of dog that can be imported, and the tests that it must undergo before coming to Britain.

APHA data from the last three years shows that after imports resumed, Romania has become the single largest commercial importer of dogs to the UK, totalling over 32,000 canines over that period, despite the additional tests and approved importer status rules that were enforced from October 2022.

A spokesperson for the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs said:

A leading rural charity has criticised the government this week for not announcing further subsidies for residential and commercial solar in the budget.

The Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE), the countryside charity, told The Economist that they would have liked to have seen “a lot more” from the government in commitments to support homeowners and businesses who want to install solar panels on their properties.

The official Budget, as published by the government, contained the word “solar” once.

Lola Karpf, a spokesperson for the charity, went on to say that that they “didn’t see as much as they wanted to see” within the Budget, in relation to their ongoing campaign for greater rooftop solar deployment across the country.

The CPRE stated that while the government aims for 65 percent of solar capacity on the ground and 35 percent on rooftops, it believes this ratio should be reversed.

They said that “we have conducted research in the past that shows that we can put 60% of solar on rooftops and that would meet government targets with 40% on the ground.”

The charity had already claimed a victory earlier this year, when the government announced that it was planning for solar panels to be fitted to most new-build homes in England by 2027, and the CPRE have now said that they want to see “every suitable, new and existing home with rooftop solar” in the coming decade.

According the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, over 1.5 million homes in the UK have some form of solar installation as of October 2025, representing 4% of all households, and an increase of over 600,000 in five years.

Ground mounted solar schemes have also grown rapidly in the past five years, with the number of sites of 25 megawatts or more almost doubling since 2020.

This surge has led politicians from government and opposition parties to oppose large developments in their own constituencies.

Earlier this year, Sarah Champion, the Labour MP for Rotherham, voiced her opposition to a local 3,500 acre scheme.

She told the BBC in October that the proposed site was taking up “productive agricultural land, which is at a premium in Rotherham, and the loss of such valuable green space will have a serious adverse effect on my constituents.”

The countryside charity did have some praise for the government on their budget announcements, going on to say that their decision to inject “£1.5 billion into a warm homes plan” was really encouraging as it “towards supporting lower income households, social rent homes” and they were keen for more rooftop solar that connects to heat pumps and electric vehicle charging.

Donald Trump’s online tirade against UK taxation on North Sea oil was, predictably, loud and unsubtle, but not without merit. “A TREASURE CHEST for the United Kingdom,” he called it, lamenting punitive taxation that deters investment. Though his delivery was typical of his style, the underlying point should make British policymakers pause. For decades, the UK has sat atop immense hydrocarbon wealth yet treated it more as a political inconvenience than a strategic asset.

Successive governments, left and right, have struggled to square the realities of energy economics with the public rhetoric of climate leadership. But with North Sea production declining, energy bills stubbornly high, and geopolitical instability driving home the perils of import dependence, the time for a reassessment is now overdue.

It is important to start with the facts. The UK still has an estimated 10 to 15 billion barrels of recoverable oil and gas beneath its continental shelf according to the North Sea Transition Authority. Production has fallen by 60 percent since 2000, but it remains a crucial part of Britain’s energy mix, contributing 38 percent of domestic gas and 75 percent of oil in 2023.

Yet investment in exploration and production has withered. The reason? Policy volatility, particularly since the introduction of the Energy Profits Levy in 2022. While intended to claw back windfall profits, the combined marginal tax rate on North Sea operators now sits at 75 percent, among the highest in the world. Even after recent tinkering, including the “price floor” mechanism introduced in 2023, the damage to investor confidence has been considerable. Shell and Harbour Energy have both scaled back UK projects.

In light of these persistent policy failures and the retreat of private operators, a compelling argument emerges for establishing a state-run oil company. This would not be unprecedented. Norway’s oil success was built on Statoil (now Equinor), a state-owned entity that allowed the country to maintain sovereign control over production, pricing, and environmental standards. Equinor remains majority state-owned and directly serves national policy aims, from renewable investment to energy security.

A British equivalent, perhaps modelled as the Great North Sea Energy Corporation, could fulfil a similar function. It would remove the dependency on the private sector’s confidence in government tax policy, enabling stable, long-term investment in strategic fields. Profits could be directly channelled into a sovereign wealth fund, insulating the Treasury from price volatility and ensuring the proceeds of extraction are retained for the public good.

Moreover, a publicly owned operator could prioritise carbon mitigation, pioneering best-in-class extraction practices, investing in offshore electrification and CCS, and ensuring rigorous environmental oversight. Crucially, the UK would no longer be held hostage to private firms mothballing fields or pulling capital in response to marginal tax changes.

In economic terms, the state would benefit from both upstream profits and downstream fiscal revenues, allowing a much higher return per barrel. According to analysis from the UK Infrastructure Bank, every £1 billion invested in upstream oil and gas delivers up to £2.8 billion in gross value added when operations and supply chain effects are considered. A publicly owned operator could retain a greater portion of that value within the UK economy.

The contrast with Norway could not be starker. Oslo, sitting atop comparable reserves, has turned its oil wealth into long-term national prosperity. Through the Government Pension Fund Global, Norway has built a sovereign wealth fund now worth over £1.4 trillion, or over £250,000 per citizen. It invests globally, acts counter-cyclically, and insulates the domestic economy from oil shocks.

More critically, Norway has managed this while remaining a climate leader. It generates 98 percent of its electricity from hydropower, subsidises EVs, and has a roadmap to decarbonise heavy industry with CCS and hydrogen. Crucially, it doesn’t treat its fossil fuels as a moral failing, but as a transitional asset. The revenues are used to fund the future, not to apologise for the past.

The UK, by contrast, has spent North Sea revenues on general expenditure, papering over deficits rather than investing in long-term energy resilience. In 1980, oil revenues made up 8 percent of total government receipts. Today, despite elevated prices, they are a political sideshow.

It's not just the North Sea. The Falklands Basin, according to some geophysical surveys, holds up to 1.3 billion barrels of recoverable oil. Even more speculative is the British Antarctic Territory, where some estimates suggest as much as 500 billion barrels, although any exploration is bound by the Antarctic Treaty, which prohibits commercial exploitation for now.

Still, these are clues to a larger truth: Britain has energy options, but it has consistently chosen not to use them. A kind of national allergy to hydrocarbons has taken root, fuelled by legitimate climate concerns but untethered from economic realism.

Yes, Britain has a net zero target by 2050. Yes, we need to decarbonise electricity, heat, transport. But the idea that new domestic oil and gas projects undermine these goals is disingenuous. As the Climate Change Committee (CCC) itself notes, domestic production is less carbon-intensive than imports. North Sea oil emits about half the CO₂ per barrel compared to LNG imports from Qatar or the US.

Moreover, the idea that global oil demand will vanish overnight is fantasy. The International Energy Agency predicts that even under its most ambitious scenario, oil will still make up 25 percent of global energy consumption by 2040. If the world is still buying oil, why shouldn’t Britain sell it?

What matters is what we do with the revenues. Rather than letting it seep into general budgets, the UK could adopt a Norwegian-style green sovereign wealth fund, capitalised by oil profits but directed at energy transition: hydrogen, CCS, grid infrastructure, and nuclear baseload. That would be genuine climate leadership, funded not by taxation or debt, but by our own natural endowment.

Then there are the jobs. The UK oil and gas sector directly supports 120,000 jobs, with a further 100,000 indirectly across the supply chain according to the OECD. These are not disposable roles, they are precisely the kind of engineering and technical skills needed for offshore wind, hydrogen and carbon storage. Preserving this workforce through a managed energy transition should be a national priority, not a fringe concern.

The North Sea Transition Deal, signed in 2021, aims to do exactly this, requiring industry to cut emissions by 50 percent by 2030 and committing £16 billion of investment in low carbon energy. But these ambitions need financing, and oil revenues offer a bridge.

The UK does not face a binary choice between oil and climate. What it faces is a choice between responsible self-reliance and the illusion of moral purity through offshored emissions and imported energy.

A publicly owned national oil company would give Britain long-term strategic control over a sector too important to be left to the mercy of market sentiment and quarterly earnings. It would secure investment, stabilise output, and allow the public to directly share in the benefits of national resources. It is time to end the ambiguity and establish a model that works for Britain.