One new name in the UK Cabinet is Miatta Fahnbulleh who replaces Ed Miliband as Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero.
Ms Fahnbulleh, who was only elected in the 2024 landslide, has been working on policy ideas for a potential Burnham government since resigning as a junior communities minister in the aftermath of Labour’s disastrous local election results in May.
She previously served as Parliamentary under-secretary of state at the Ministry of Housing and has worked at the Energy Department where she focused on consumer issues and electricity prices.
As Energy secretary, she will be expected to maintain momentum in the nation’s offshore wind sector, and previously called for the net zero target to be brought forward. After her appointment she said she will take a “pragmatic” approach to exploration of oil & gas.
However, she has reiterated Labour’s commitment to honour existing licences while issuing no new ones, suggesting the industry lobby groups will continue to face resistance to continued drilling.
Mr Miliband, who, as architect of the Starmer government’s energy policy, secured more than 13GW of offshore wind capacity across two procurement rounds and launched a £1bn ($1.34bn) supply-chain initiative and was hostile to more oil & gas activity.
Born in Liberia, Ms Fahnbulleh arrived in the UK as a five-year-old after her parents fled the country’s civil war in 1986. The family was subsequently granted asylum.
Ms Fahnbulleh is a trained economist and a former civil servant who is said to sit on the Labour party’s “soft left” wing. She also ran the New Economics Foundation think tank when it produced a report calling for a total end to new drilling in the North Sea basin.
Offshore Energies UK (OEUK), a lobby group representing North Sea oil and gas companies, urged Fahnbulleh to meet company representatives to clarify that the new government “backs homegrown energy production” over imported oil and gas.
It said the industry urgently needs the government to approve the multibillion-pound Jackdaw and Rosebank projects off the coast of Scotland, alongside a pipeline of other domestic oil and gas developments, and a continuing government commitment to the development of renewables.
Failure to exploit the UK’soil and gas “does not alter UK oil and gas consumption. It just means we depend increasingly on imports”, it said.
It has called for the Treasury’s proposed Oil and Gas Revenue Levy to be introduced immediately to unlock £50bn of investment.
“The damaging ban on exploration leaves the UK trailing behind Norway instead of partnering with it to underpin European energy security. This ban must be reversed,” said OEUK.
