Prime Minister corrects parliamentary record after Full Fact intervention

19 December 2023

Full Fact is pleased to have secured our first correction from Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. 

At Prime Minister’s Questions last month, Mr Sunak said there are “200,000 people employed in Scotland’s North Sea oil and gas industry”. 

However, as we pointed out at the time, this figure refers to the number of people employed in the sector across the entirety of the UK. In Scotland, around 96,000 jobs are supported by oil and gas. 

After this exchange we wrote to Mr Sunak to ask him to correct the record.

Mr Sunak has since acknowledged his error and submitted a letter of correction to Hansard. 

He said: “An error has been identified in my answer to the hon. Member for North Ayrshire and Arran (Patricia Gibson) in Prime Minister’s Questions”, and provided an updated and corrected answer, in which he states there are “200,000 people employed in the UK’s North sea oil and gas industry”. 

We’d like to thank Mr Sunak for his correction.

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