To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the report by Platform, Friends of the Earth Scotland and Greenpeace UK Training & Tickets: the hidden costs for offshore oil & gas workers, published on 22 June, what steps they are taking to create a training passport scheme to allow offshore workers to transfer their experience between sectors.
Answered on
6 July 2021
The North Sea Transition Deal includes a commitment from industry to create an integrated people and skills plan, with measurable objectives, to support its transition and diversification. This will assess the industry’s future skills, training and standards requirements, and how industry will support and enable the transition of the workforce.
Furthermore, the sector has committed to work to ensure that the workforce’s skills and competencies are mutually recognised across energy sectors enabling easier job transferability. This includes promoting the uptake of relevant existing initiatives, such as the Engineering Construction Industry Training Board Connected Competence scheme and expand these as appropriate.
In order to ensure we have the skilled workforce to deliver net zero, we have launched the Green Jobs Taskforce, working in partnership with business, skills providers, and trade unions, to help us develop plans for new long-term, good quality, green jobs by 2030 and advise on what support is needed for people in transitioning industries.
In addition, the offshore wind sector set out a commitment, in the Offshore Wind Sector Deal, to develop an offshore energy passport (recognised outside the UK) to facilitate job mobility between different sectors. Discussions with training providers is ongoing.
We are powering forward with my Rt. Hon. Friend the Prime Minister’s Ten Point Plan, which will mobilise £12 billion of government investment to support up to 250,000 highly-skilled green jobs in the UK.