LIVERPOOL – The CEO of Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, told a Labour Conference event today that responsibility for energy and climate policy should be stripped from politicians.

Speaking on a panel with Labour’s Energy and Net Zero Minister Michael Shanks, Centrica boss Chris O’Shea said that politicians were only concerned with short-term election cycles, rather than long-term planning. He said that the UK should look to the Bank of England as an example, which makes independent decisions on the country’s monetary policy.

”I don’t know why we don’t outsource things like energy policy, things like defence policy, and things like health policy to professionals rather than politicians,” O’Shea said. The event was hosted by Arden Strategies, a lobbying firm with close connections to the energy industry and the Labour Party, and was entitled: “Mission just transition: Leaving nobody behind on the journey to net zero”.

O’Shea, who was paid £8.2 million in 2023, carried on to say: “If you can establish bodies that were independent of Cabinet ministers, then you would, by definition, have a long-term view. It was one of the best things Gordon Brown did to give independence to the Bank of England. Why not try it for other industries?”

Labour was elected to office on 4 July with a landslide 174-seat majority.

“It is concerning that the boss of a major energy company seems to be lobbying for less democratic accountability and oversight,” said Peter Geoghegan, editor of Democracy for Sale. “Especially as these comments are being made at a Labour conference where a fifth of all climate events are sponsored by oil and gas-linked companies, often, as in this case, working with lobbyists with long ties to the Labour Party.”

Tom Brake, a former Liberal Democrat MP and the director of campaign group Unlock Democracy, said: “There is a case to be made that politicians focus on the short term. But there is an even stronger case to be made that for some businesses, their focus is on nothing but their immediate bottom line. That is particularly true for the fossil fuel producers that have known for decades the damage their products are causing but have carried on extracting regardless.”

The event was also attended by Gary Smith, the general secretary of the trade union GMB. Smith told the audience that he was worried about high taxes being imposed by the government on oil and gas companies.

“As a trade unionist, you want to be dealing with businesses that are making money, because our job is to go in there and squeeze as much of that profit out for our members,” he said, when questioned about how GMB plans to advocate for workers in the oil and gas sector.

“The hardest businesses to deal with are the ones that are losing money. That’s why I worry that taxation on oil and gas is going to strangle off oil and gas earlier, suffocate oil and gas, and stop the opportunities for the future.”

Smith claimed earlier during the event that Labour wanted to impose a “Venezuelan tax regime” on the UK’s fossil fuel sector.

Labour’s policy is to increase the windfall tax on the profits of energy companies from 75 percent to 78 percent until 2030.

It was reported in February 2024 that the world’s largest oil companies have made $281 billion in profit since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, which sent fossil fuel prices soaring across the world. O’Shea predicted that energy bills “will not be coming down in the next 10 years”.

Centrica recently reported earnings of £1.1 billion for the first half of the year, compared with a record £2.3 billion in the first half of last year, and O’Shea was more positive about Labour’s windfall tax hike than union boss Smith.

O’Shea called the tax a “pain in the arse” and said he would rather see it dropped to 25 percent, but emphasised that the most important thing was that “it doesn’t keep changing”. He also pointed out that a high tax rate encourages companies to invest, since they would rather spend their capital than see it taxed by the government.

GMB boss Smith also vocally criticised Labour for seeking to ban new North Sea oil and gas licences. Speaking in front of Labour minister Shanks, he signalled that GMB’s support for Labour may wane if there are job losses due to its oil and gas policies.

“When our members are getting laid off because of Labour policy, that will be a moment,” he said. GMB donated more than £250,000 to Labour MPs in the 12 months prior to the general election, and has given more than £5 million to the Labour Party since Keir Starmer became its leader.

The North Sea is an ageing basin with declining fossil fuel reserves, which has led to falling numbers of jobs. Over the past decade, the number of jobs supported by the North Sea oil and gas industry has halved.

Shanks responded by saying: “We need to do a lot more about giving people a genuine stake in the energy projects that are built in their own back garden, so that they really benefit, involving things like jobs, skills, and money off bills potentially. All these options are on the table because if we don’t bring the public with us on this, we’re never going to achieve what we need to achieve and we don’t have time to hang about.”

The world’s foremost climate science body, the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), has warned that “keeping warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels requires deep, rapid and sustained greenhouse gas emissions reductions across all sectors”, led by the energy industry.

Centrica boss O’Shea also took the opportunity to urge Labour not to renationalise Thames Water, claiming that it would scare off international investors. Thames Water has issued billions of pounds of dividends to its shareholders all while being hit with hefty fines for pollution and leaks. Its parent company, Kemble, recently defaulted on its debt, and Thames Water has said it has enough money in its operating company to last just 15 months.

“The answer is not to put a company into public ownership. That will simply scare away investment,” O’Shea said. Shanks did not respond.