Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Brougham and Vaux and Lord Turnbull

Monday 9th February 2015 Lords Chamber

[The Deputy Speaker (Lord Brougham and Vaux) (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that if Amendment 21E is agreed to, I cannot call Amendment 21G by reason of pre-emption.

[Lord Turnbull]

My Lords, I confess that I am somewhat mystified why we are discussing a fracking moratorium. It was not in the Bill as it left the Lords and the Commons declined to insert an amendment. What is there left for the Lords to consider?

There are two approaches for analysing this issue. The first we might call the appeal to reason. That was the title of the book by the noble Lord, Lord Lawson. What is the logic of the moratorium? It seems to me to be completely incoherent. It is argued, first, that we do not know enough to permit this technique to be deployed in the UK, but the moratorium would prevent drilling under careful restraints of the kind that the Minister has pointed out and it would prevent us advancing our knowledge. In my view, it is the logic of the GM-crop tramplers.

The next argument is that we cannot allow our shale reserves to be exploited as this would be inconsistent with the decarbonisation targets of the Climate Change Act. Setting aside the fact that our exploitation of shale is pretty immaterial in a world where China has said that its CO₂ emissions will continue to rise until 2030 and India refuses to set any such objective, this proposal ignores the fact that the largest part of gas usage is for heat in our homes and the feedstock for chemicals. That is not going to change for a long time given the slow turnover in our housing stock for several decades.

This morning, I looked at where the various sources of energy came from. At 11 am on a very cold and still day, we were using 46 gigawatts of energy. Of that, 6% came from wind and 43% from gas. This proposal ignores the fact that we need access to gas to provide the back-up when the wind does not blow in precisely these climatic conditions, which are repeated quite often each winter.