Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Debate between Simon Hoare and Richard Graham

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Richard Graham]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right—Yorkshiremen so often are, as the Minister knows. Local planning approval should absolutely be at the heart of the definition of local consent.

[Simon Hoare]

The Secretary of State used the word “veto”, not objection, so there is no business of appeals or anything else. If the local community vetoes it, it is dead—strangled, kaput.

[Richard Graham]

I think we are all broadly in agreement on that; I hope that the Minister is in listening mode.

The perfect solution would have been to get back to the 2019 manifesto, as the Prime Minister has urged us to do in many instances. That would have taken us back to the moratorium, which was a settled position that the whole country accepted. None the less, I recognise that some hon. Members think there may be virtue in fracking. As the Secretary of State likes to say—his nine-word mantra—everything has changed because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That is true, and there may be worse to come—who knows what nuclear weapons might be deployed and what impact that might have on energy and all the rest of it.

We should accept, as should the Labour party, that there may be a role for shale gas should the scientific evidence support it and should local consent indicate that communities support it. It is fair enough for the Secretary of State to say that we should look at it, but I urge him to have a free vote on the definition when it comes back to the House.