The Energy Secretary sold the Jackdaw decision on a morning media round from Scotland and sent a junior minister to face MPs in her place — and the Speaker made him sit there and take a dressing-down that was meant for her.
UK Commons Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle erupted in fury in the House of Commons in London today over the British government's handling of the Jackdaw gas field decision. In a sustained attack on ministers from the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, he accused the government of treating Parliament as an afterthought — putting the media first, and doing it again after being warned before.
The decision allowing production at the Jackdaw field in the UK North Sea had already been trailed in the press overnight and was announced on Wednesday morning across the media — including by Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh herself on Sky News — rather than being made first to Parliament, where the Ministerial Code says the most important announcements of government policy belong.
Fahnbulleh did not come to the Commons to make the statement. She was in Aberdeen, Scotland, on a full morning broadcast round — Sky News, BBC Breakfast, Good Morning Britain, LBC, the Today programme and BBC Radio Scotland, as GB News catalogued — and visiting Shell's St Fergus gas terminal. Junior minister Michael Shanks was sent to deliver the statement instead, and before he could begin, Hoyle addressed him directly and let rip, making clear the discourtesy applied to MPs on all sides of the House.
"It is shameful that this announcement was not made to the House first, and it is an immense discourtesy to the House that the Secretary of State did not come here to make the statement."
Hoyle said Shanks was having to take the flak for a Secretary of State who "can't be bothered to come" — one who, he said, does not care about members on this side or that side of the House. "I am sorry that Sky News is more important than the members on both sides. It is appalling treatment," he said. "I'm sorry that Aberdeen is more important than the MPs they've elected." He even demanded to know whether there would be a leak inquiry — "or is it that this department is deliberately briefing out to the media?"
The Speaker stressed that MPs are elected to hear important announcements in the chamber, not via the media. "In the end, we are elected by our voters to hear statements here, not through the media," he said. "Am I getting the message through, Minister? Because we've had this conversation once before. I'm sorry you've been made the patsy who has to take this ridiculous situation. I want us to learn. I was hoping we'd change what happened before."
Shanks stopped short of an apology. "I entirely respect your comments," the Rutherglen MP replied. "Your points have been noted, and I will absolutely take them back to the Department." Hoyle shot back that he had been promised the points were noted before — "I'm sorry that you're having to be put up when the Secretary of State can't be bothered to come" — and only then did the minister begin the statement, which supplemented a written ministerial statement made that morning.
The decision itself is a major one for Britain's energy supply. The North Sea Transition Authority has given approval to produce gas from Jackdaw, Shell's field some 150 miles east of Aberdeen, now operated by Adura, the Shell–Equinor venture — gas that is expected to start flowing within weeks, in time for winter, and to lift domestic production by around six per cent at its peak. The field was first approved under the Conservatives in 2022, but its consent was overturned in the courts three years later, and a fresh environmental assessment has now cleared the way. Fahnbulleh defended the decision as "compatible with our legally binding climate commitments," while Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch attacked Labour at Prime Minister's Questions for dithering for two and a half years and demanded an end to the ban on new oil and gas licences. Greenpeace UK's Ami McCarthy condemned the approval, saying it showed "the toxic grip fossil fuel lobbyists still hold over our energy policy," and pressure is now building on ministers over the separate Rosebank field.
The episode was widely reported the same day by UK outlets including Politics.co.uk, The National and the Standard, and the Guido Fawkes video of Hoyle speaking angrily in the Commons matches the contemporary accounts. It continues the Speaker's long-running campaign against successive UK governments briefing policy decisions to the press before Parliament — he reprimanded this government in June 2025 for publishing the strategic defence review before MPs had seen it, and he has hauled minister after minister back to the chamber over the same offence. On Wednesday, his frustration with the absent Secretary of State boiled down to one line: "I thought this was a new beginning."