Infrastructure Bill [HL]

Debate between Lord Lipsey and Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb

Monday 10th November 2014 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

I support Labour’s amendments. They attempt to improve the regulatory framework but they do not go far enough. I hope that other amendments will be pushed through. We need a complete rejection of fracking. The things that have been said so far are not borne out by the facts and it would be very interesting to see future examples of just where fracking has gone very badly wrong.

We need to see a reprioritisation of renewables and energy efficiency. That would reduce our overall energy demand and make us much more able to fulfil our agreement under the Climate Change Act. Energy efficiency and renewables are already delivering jobs. They are very good at supplying employment and will do much more for energy security, lower bills and reduced emissions than an unacceptably risky shale gas industry can ever do.

The Bill contains some very worrying new measures that will, if given the green light by Parliament, threaten the UK’s wildlife. No one seems to take that into account. It will also promote the unfettered extraction of unconventional fossil fuels, which will undermine the Climate Change Act and our ability to avoid, as one nation among many nations, dangerous climate change.

The coalition talks endlessly about its supposed concern for future generations when it comes to reducing the budget but the same level of commitment is, surprisingly, absent when it comes to the environment and handing on a planet fit to live on. The next generation will be given a very degraded natural world if we do not understand the sort of damage that fracking can do.

If we want any more evidence that this is not the “greenest Government ever”, we need look no further than Clauses 32 to 37 and the deeply worrying and hugely unpopular new provisions to give companies the freedom to frack under our homes without letting us know. The Government have pushed ahead with this change despite recent polling showing that 75% of people are against it and the fact that 99% of respondents to the consultation rejected the proposals. I remind noble Lords that those people are voters.

If we look at just how much we have to do if we are not to allow the world to heat by more than 2 degrees—although it is probably already too late to avoid that—it is clear that fracking cannot be part of it. It is not even as though shale gas will bridge the gap that we keep hearing about between now and a future based on renewables. Shale gas will not be online until about 2020, or even well into the 2020s, so if the Government stick to our commitments under the Climate Change Act and coal is offline by the early 2020s, shale gas will not be replacing coal. We will see exactly what we have seen happening in the United States, which is that it is simply able to export more coal when shale gas fills its own energy needs. Shale gas merely displaces fossil fuels; it does not replace them. Professor Dieter Helm of Oxford University has told us that there is enough gas and coal to fry the planet several times. But of course we cannot use it. It must stay locked up. That is the most efficient form of carbon capture: leave it as coal.

These clauses will also allow fracking companies to undertake activities that have not yet been assessed for their environmental safety, including the keeping of substances within infrastructure on the land with no limits on what can be kept or for how long. Injection wells could be extremely damaging. They have caused problems in the United States, particularly in Ohio, where there have been earthquakes.

We know that the existing regulatory framework is full of gaps. Rather than continue the obsession with deregulating fracking and allowing the industry—an industry that the Chancellor proudly stated has the most generous tax regime in the world—to regulate itself, the Government should see this as an opportunity to introduce regulation that is fit for purpose in order to safeguard the climate. Balcombe, which has been the scene of a lot of interest in the context of fracking, has now decided to go carbon-neutral. If Balcombe can do it, the rest of us can do it.

Lord Lipsey (Lab): My Lords, I was a member of the Economic Affairs Committee, whose report, I am pleased to say, has received considerable praise today. When we started on our inquiry, I did not know what fracking was. I would have been hard pressed to distinguish it from another word beginning with “f” and ending with “ing”. However, in the months over which we heard evidence on the subject from every expert from every quarter, we had a clear impression of where the facts lay. The facts are reflected in a carefully balanced report, which says, quite clearly, that fracking must be allowed to go ahead for its enormous economic and social benefits but that we must have the right regulatory system in place. The report defines in some detail what that regulatory system should be.

That brings me to these innocent-looking amendments. If it is the mover’s intention merely to probe the Government’s intention, then I would go further and say that they are welcome amendments. In particular, the new clause proposed by Amendment 113G insists that the integrity of wells used should be independently assessed rather than it being possible for firms to use their own preferred consultants. I hope that the Minister heard the consensus around this House that that was a sensible recommendation and the disappointment that the Government have rejected it.

We need to set our arguments in a broader context. In the committee, we heard from the leading environmental groups, and I am afraid that the speech just given by the noble Baroness, Lady Jones, confirms that they were not really interested in whether the wells were integral, how much methane should lapse out or whether there were any risks of earthquakes. Instead, they sought to raise every empty canard about fracking and treat it as if it were a genuine concern. Their aim was transparent—to surround fracking with regulations and planning constraints to ensure that in practice it never happened without having, in theory, to oppose it. For example, I asked a question of Mr Molho, the spokesman for the environmentalists. I said that,

“if there was no threat of global warming in this gas, would you still be against it, or would you say … that if the regulatory framework is right, it could be a goer?”.

He said:

“We would revise the position accordingly, yes”.

In other words, what the environmentalists want is to stop fracking, and the Trojan horse they use to hide their armies is more and more regulation, which is in danger of killing the whole thing.

That was the environmentalists and, unfortunately, they are not heavily represented in this House, so it is always a delight to hear from the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. Unfortunately, their philosophy has popped up within these amendments. Amendment 113G specifies a 12-month period for groundwater baseline monitoring. It pops up in Amendment 115A, which demands a monitoring programme, including on fugitive methane, to report within six months of the passing of the Act—not, as the committee did, a report only when extraction begins. The amendment sets up a whole new system designed to ensure that fracking is compatible with climate change aims.

Those features make me worry about the position of our Front Bench. It says that it is not opposed to fracking. Indeed, I hope that the noble Baroness will say when she responds to this debate that she is in favour of fracking with the right regulation. However, in practice, it wants to make it more difficult than even your Lordships’ Economic Affairs Committee wanted. We are somehow left trying to ride two horses at once—no doubt, cheers from some environmentalists, although, in my experience, they are never satisfied by whatever concessions you make to them; not the extreme environmentalists. We are saying that we are in favour of fracking in principle but want to make it harder in practice. The noble Lord, Lord Maxton, is not in the Chamber but his predecessor, Jimmy Maxton, said that if you could not ride two horses at once you should not be in the circus. In this particular case, the trick becomes a little demanding when the horses are galloping in opposite directions. Are we for fracking or against it, subject to the right regulation? At the end of reading these amendments, I was in great doubt.