Labour has been accused of a £1billion betrayal of Grangemouth workers after promising Jim Ratcliffe taxpayer support to redevelop Old Trafford while he closes the refinery.
Around 400 staff at the plant near Falkirk were told by PetroIneos last week they had lost their jobs despite repeated promises from government ministers of a “just transition”.
The redundancies came days after Chancellor Rachel Reeves gave her backing to Ratcliffe, who part-owns Grangemouth, for a multi-billion pound revamp of Manchester United’s stadium and surrounding area.
The project could see £1billion of public money invested in housing and transport infrastructure including the possible relocation of an entire cargo rail network, the Sunday Mail can reveal.
Meanwhile workers at Scotland’s last oil refinery face the dole queue after assurances about new jobs in the renewables sector failed to materialise and even a £20million economic aid package including for retraining has yet to be delivered.
Kenny MacAskill, former justice secretary and Alba party MP, said: “Starmer’s Labour are showing their true colours. It’s Ratcliffes Man Utd over Team Scotland. Never mind millions for Antwerp when Grangemouth is to close.
“It’s perverse that Scotland is being deindustrialised while an area around a football stadium, already owned by a billionaire, is going to be redeveloped using potentially a billions pounds of public money.
“Scotland’s oil should be refined in Scotland and Scotland’s oil riches should benefit jobs and businesses in Scotland – not fund an English fitba club owned by a billionaire.”
PetroIneos, a joint venture between Ineos and state-owned Chinese firm PetroChina, want to convert Grangemouth into an import terminal with just 65 staff expected to be retained from the 500-strong workforce. The refinery is expected to shut its doors as early as May this year.
Alongside promises to back his Old Trafford project, Ratcliffe’s firm Ineos has also been given a £600million loan guarantee by the UK Government for a factory in Belgium.
Falkirk’s Labour MP Brian Leishman said: “It’s a nonsense. Scotland at the heart of Government? I can’t even get a meeting with the Chancellor.
“This is the first test and the Government has failed miserably.”
He was promised a meeting with his ministerial colleagues about the looming crisis in December but said he is still waiting today.
He said: “I requested my meeting in December and despite repeated chasing up I am still waiting.
“This is the level of contempt they have for one of their own colleagues.”
Ratcliffe, a Brexit supporter, came out in support of Keir Starmer a month before the 2024 vote but has insisted his firm Ineos is ‘apolitical’.
Leishman added: “The UK Government announced a £100million one-off growth deal for Scotland on the back of what is happening with Grangemouth. Despite giving £600million loan guarantees to Ratcliffe for a factory in Belgium.
“What [Scottish Secretary] Ian Murray is not telling you is that £80million of that £100million was already given by the previous Tory Government.
“The Scottish Government fired in £10million and the UK Government has fired in £10million. That won’t even touch the sides for something that is worth £403.6m per year to the Scottish economy.”
He was also critical of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar, who promised in a TV debate before last year’s election that his party would “step in to save the jobs at the refinery and to invest in that transition and we would put hundreds of millions of pounds behind it to make it a reality.”
When challenged on his claims last week Sarwar said: “It is a privately owned company. I don’t own Grangemouth”.
Sarwar refused the Sunday Mail’s request for an interview for this story.
Scottish oil executive John Bell, director of Gulfsands Petroleum, started his career as an apprentice in Grangemouth in the 1980s and said he has lobbied for the UK Government to review how Grangemouth could be included in the UK’s overall energy mix but has also been ingnored.
He said: “In October I contacted my local MP regarding these concerns and urged them to consider an independent review before things got worse. To date I haven’t had a substantive response. It’s disappointing that the industry’s calls appear to be falling on deaf ears.”
Bell said he was not trying to “bash net zero” but said: “The question remains how we go about achieving it.
“Grangemouth supplies aviation fuel to major airports in Scotland and the North East of England.
“There should have been, and still should be, an independent review for this refinery and for the complex to see what role it can play in the energy transition and the journey to net zero and to ensure the right security, diversity and sustainability is there for the UK.
“It’s hard to reconcile or even comprehend why we would close down the opportunity to produce our own gas, generate our own energy or refine our own energy products and instead ship these products in from overseas.”
Robert Buirds, the former chairman of the trade union contractors group at Grangemouth between 1999 and 2009, said vital skills will now be lost in Scotland with Grangemouth’s closure.
He said: “The skills base we used to have are being depleted, particularly because the shipyards have mostly all gone.
“You’ve got John Whittaker who runs the Peel Group on the West Coast and Ratcliffe on the East coast. It’s like two billionaires playing monopoly with Scotland and nobody is doing anything about it.
“The politicians do not care. They’re all careerists with no interest in what ordinary people are going through.”
Leader of Unite the union, Sharon Graham, said: “For the government to support the redevelopment of Old Trafford at the same time as Manchester United’s joint owner billionaire Jim Ratcliffe, is ploughing ahead with Grangemouth’s closure plans, is either tin-eared or inept.”
But junior Scotland Office minister Kirsty McNeill defended her party’s dedication to Scotland and blamed both the previous Tory government and Holyrood for the Grangemouth disaster.
The Labour MP for Midlothian said: “The first and most important thing to say is a period of uncertainty and potential redundancy for workers is always unbelievably stressful.
“My heart is with those workers.
“The reality is before July there was no plan for Grangemouth. We have been in since July, and the minute we were behind our desks, we focused on a few different things.
“First of all, making sure that relationship with the Scottish Government works so that we can come up with a joint plan for that site and those workers.
“Secondly, that £100million package for the local area to make sure that the community is invested in and the workers are, to a degree, protected.
“And thirdly, Project Willow, which got £1.5 million to think about a sustainable future for the site.
“Nobody thinks that sort of effort could be done and dusted within weeks or even months. But we are absolutely committed to making sure that there are long term answers.”
When asked how these long-term plans would help workers who are being made redundant today, McNeill again referenced Project Willow – a study which is loking at a long-term future for Grangemouth site.
She said: “Really people should be asking themselves ‘where have the Tories and the Scottish Government been? Where have the Tories and SNP been for those workers?’
“Labour has had a much shorter run in to get that done but everything we could do, we have done at pace.”
McNeill was also unable to say why the UK Government had promised Ratcliffe’s Old Trafford project its backing when he was making hundreds of Scottish workers redundant at Grangemouth. She said: “I think these are separate questions, honestly.”
Ratcliffe’s Ineos were contacted for comment.
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