Covid-19: National Memorial

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 8th December 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord True (Con)]

The noble Baroness of course makes a very good point; I would always commend the planting of trees. We have received a very large number of views and suggestions from parliamentarians, as we have heard today, and the public on how this period should be remembered and commemorated, which we will pass on to the commission as it is established. I assure noble Lords that it will give full consideration to all initiatives and ideas and provide recommendations to the Prime Minister.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree that we owe it to the dead, as a memorial, to find out how this pandemic began? I declare an interest in having co-authored a book on the topic.

[Lord True (Con)]

My Lords, I do agree, although that is obviously not entirely under the control of Her Majesty’s Government. However, there are billions of people across the world who will need to be satisfied and have their minds put at rest in the way my noble friend asks.

Post-Brexit Financial Settlement

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Thursday 15th July 2021 Lords Chamber

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, we are not surprised by these figures. As I said, the details of how they are calculated are set out in the withdrawal agreement in exhaustive detail, through several dozen articles. The question to which the noble Lord alludes has been sufficiently debated. There are different views on this question but what is clear is that, before we left the EU, we were paying very substantial net sums into it.

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, RTE reports that our 2021 payment is to be €6.8 billion whereas, in the latest Budget Red Book, table C.6 on page 97 shows our 2020-21 sum as £10.4 billion—nearly twice as much. The sum for 2021-22 is £11 billion, so the discrepancy is not likely to be due to year-end differences. The difference is several billion pounds, which is a big number by any standard. As Senator Everett Dirksen said 60 years ago:

“A billion here, a billion there, and pretty soon you’re talking real money.”


Can the Minister explain the discrepancy?

[Lord Frost (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think that any of us on this side of the House feels particularly comfortable paying large sums to the European Union, but it is an agreed outcome in the withdrawal agreement and we stand by it. There are differences in the calculation methods between the EU arrangements and ours. For example, their figure does not include all the receipts we will receive in future, there are different ways of forecasting and so on. We are not surprised that there are some differences. What matters is our own calculations and that we are comfortable with the bills when they arrive, which we are.

European Union (Future Relationship) Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

3rd reading & 2nd reading & Committee negatived & 2nd reading (Hansard) & 2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & 3rd reading (Hansard) & 3rd reading (Hansard): House of Lords & Committee negatived (Hansard) & Committee negatived (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 30th December 2020 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, I hope you can hear me this time. It was my fault last time, and I apologise. I was going to say what an honour it was to follow the courageous noble Baroness, Lady Hoey. I warmly welcome the noble Lord, Lord Austin of Dudley, and congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Cavendish of Furness, on his valedictory speech. The ratio of good sense to words spoken is probably higher in him than in any other Member of the House. We will miss him very much.

The hour is late and much has been said, so I shall digress and take a long view. Whatever your views on Brexit, there is no doubting the peculiar agony of Britain's relationship with its neighbouring continent. Ever since the day, 8,100 years ago, when the sea broke through the chalky gorge between Dover and Calais, there has been a dilemma: are we separate from or close to the continent? If the Strait of Dover had been six times wider, as is the Tsushima Strait between Japan and Korea, I suspect we would never have joined the Common Market, and if there was an isthmus, I think we would never have had a referendum. Britain is close enough to the continent to be repeatedly entangled in continental political systems, but far enough away to repeatedly regret joining them.

Henry VIII’s break with Rome and the events of 410 AD were both a form of Brexit. Of the Reformation, a former Leader of this House, Lord Salisbury, said during the referendum campaign:

“Henry VIII declared independence from the Pope and the Emperor for the lowest of reasons, his lust and his wallet”,


but it

“released this country from its obscurantist shackles and made the industrial revolution and the period of British dominance possible.”

Of 410 AD, the writer and historian Paul Johnson, in his book The Offshore Islanders, written the year before Britain joined the Common Market, argued that by then the British were by then terminally fed up with the “festering incubus” of Roman colonialism. Opportunity came when a barbarian army crossed the Rhine and the Goths sacked Rome itself. At that point, something peculiar happened to Britain. It is a myth that the Romans told Britain it was on its own. Rather, a rebel force of semi-Romanised British nationalists inspired by a British-born theologian, Pelagius, with his heretical doctrine of free will, captured London and other cities, imposed peace and then wrote to the Emperor Honorius requesting legal recognition of their independence. Otherwise preoccupied, the emperor agreed. Johnson wrote this, which I think has interesting echoes:

“There was no provision in Roman law for a territory to leave the empire. But by an ingenious use of the lex Julia, the British got round the difficulty and severed their links with the continent by a process of negotiation.”


Rumour has it that the British negotiator was named Davidius Frostus.

That Brexit did not end so well, although the Dark Ages were no picnic on the continent either. This separation is as historic. It is up to us to make it work by unleashing enterprise, innovation and economic growth.

Intelligence and Security Committee: Russia Report

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 22nd July 2020 Lords Chamber

[Lord True]

My Lords, I have said before that I do not accept the noble Lord opposite’s narrative about delay. The intelligence committee has been reformed in this Parliament; it has published the report and the Government have responded to it in detail at the first possible opportunity.

[Viscount Ridley (Con) [V]]

My Lords, does my noble friend agree with Anders Fogh Rasmussen, speaking when he was Secretary-General of NATO, that

“Russia, as part of their sophisticated information and disinformation operations, engaged actively with … environmental organizations working against shale gas … to maintain European dependence on imported Russian gas”?

Will he agree to look into how much the debate on shale gas in the UK was distorted by Russian interference?

[Lord True]

My Lords, my noble friend asks a detailed question; I will undertake to respond to him on that. In general, the threats faced are various, and there is no question that the UK is not fully aware of the efforts of external actors to intervene in our country.

Vote Leave Campaign

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 28th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Young of Cookham]

The Government followed the precedent of previous national referendum campaigns in 1975 and also the campaign on Scottish independence. The Government published a leaflet in accordance with precedents setting out the Government’s view. There was nothing irregular or improper about that at all.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, given that the remain campaign spent considerably more than the leave campaign—not even counting the £9 million spent by the Government—and that the vote leave campaign has been investigated twice over these issues already by the Electoral Commission, does the Minister agree that it is important that the Electoral Commission is not put under significant political pressure on this matter?

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 30th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, this is not the Bill that enables us to leave the European Union. It is the Bill that makes sure the law works when we do. Britain voted decisively in 2016 to leave the EU. Both Houses of Parliament then voted to leave the EU. Both main parties stood in the general election on a manifesto of leaving the EU, while the Liberal Democrats and Scottish nationalists, who stood on the opposite promise, lost votes and seats.

Now, the elected House of Commons has sent us this Bill almost unamended. That does not mean we cannot scrutinise and amend it, but it does mean that trying to wreck it, under the pretence of amending it, is not acceptable. If, in this gilded, crimson echo chamber of remain, this neo-Jacobite hold-out for the euro-king across the water, we indulge in wrecking this Bill, we will not stop Brexit—but we might hurt Britain. The public reaction would rightly be severe. In the part of the world I come from, in Ashington, Blyth and Cramlington, they will say—I paraphrase—“How dare that unelected panoply of panjandrums and pampered popinjays think they know better?”.

I look around this Chamber and, among those with genuine concerns about the Bill—many of whom will have listened attentively to my noble friend the Leader and her careful concessions on the SLSC and affirmative procedure—I also see people pretending to worry about democracy while trying to undermine it and pretending to want the best for the country while talking down Britain. I see people who, unlike David Cameron, refuse to admit that,

“Brexit has turned out less badly than we first thought”.

That is a quote.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

It has not happened yet.

[Viscount Ridley]

That is what David Cameron said. Remember what the Treasury forecast said in the event of a leave vote. These were its exact words:

“A vote to leave would represent an immediate and profound shock to our economy. That shock would push our economy into a recession and lead to an increase in unemployment of around 500,000, GDP would be 3.6% smaller, average real wages would be lower, inflation higher, sterling weaker, house prices would be hit and public borrowing would rise compared with a vote to remain”.


That was not its worst-case scenario. Instead, we have falling unemployment, record employment, strong consumer confidence, robust GDP growth, higher real wages, modest inflation, stable house prices, booming inward investment, thriving tourism, a buoyant stock market and even sterling is back above $1.40—not far off its pre-referendum level, more’s the pity.

That is a clean sweep of failed predictions and the Treasury, in the leaked documents that we have seen today, has barely changed its models.

In August 2016, the Bank of England forecast that exports in 2017 would be down by 0.5%, despite the devaluation of sterling. In fact, they were up 8.3% year on year. Here are a few headlines from just this month alone:

“Exports put UK factories on their best run for 20 years”;


“Freight volumes through the Port of Dover have reached record levels for the fifth consecutive year”;


“UK tech sector enjoys record investment in 2017 despite Brexit”;


“UK services grow faster than forecast despite growing Brexit concern”;


“British universities boast record number of international student admissions”;


and, for the first time ever, the UK has topped the Forbes annual survey of the best countries for business.

To those who say things could have been even better, I reply that I am amazed we have not slowed more. Despite a dire dirge of doom from the diehards that people should put their heads between their legs and kiss their fundaments goodbye, British consumers and producers just keep rolling along. Good for them. The noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, made the sensible point that Brexit is probably not the most important thing happening. “If that’s the worst that Brexit will deliver”, he said, “I wouldn’t worry about it”.

Talk to businessmen and they are more concerned about the fourth industrial revolution, and the opportunities and threats that it brings—artificial intelligence, data processing and gene editing. I have just come from the inaugural meeting of the APPG on Blockchain. We face a thrilling century in a vibrant world. We can face it from behind the protectionist tariff walls and harmonised regulatory veils of the EU—where sluggish legislation is shaped by £1.5 billion of crony capitalist lobbying a year—or we can face it openly, adopting global standards and taking decisions that favour innovation rather than retard it. That does not mean deregulation; it means better regulation. To get there, we need as a simple exercise of democratic action, to pass this Bill, which neither gold-plates nor waters down anything.

To those noble Lords who say that the Government will get too much executive power here or there in the undergrowth of the Bill: I will listen to their arguments. I have some sympathy with them, though I wonder why they often expressed so little concern at the way EU laws were imposed on us in the biggest Henry VIII power grab of all. However, I urge them to listen to what the Government are saying in concession to these points. Some of the accusations of incoherence from this side of the House do, I admit, have force. But it is a bit rich to be lectured on incoherence by the Labour Party.

Parliament and Central Government: Relocation

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 29th November 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

That is exactly why the Government are concentrating at the moment on the devolution which is happening, bottom-upwards.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, does my noble friend the Minister agree that one of the side benefits of the proposal of the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, might be that there were a lot of early retirements from the senior ranks of the Civil Service, enabling us to inject fresh northern blood into it? There might even be some early retirements from this House.

[Baroness Chisholm of Owlpen]

I thank my noble friend for that very interesting point. We are encouraging people to join the Civil Service and looking for highly intelligent, motivated people. As I said earlier, a lot of those people will be working in the north; they will also be working in the east, the west and the south. That is why we are encouraging departments to have hubs outside the centre.

Deregulation Bill

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Tuesday 21st October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Curry of Kirkharle]

My Lords, I have some sympathy with the comments just made by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, but let us be clear: these are deregulatory measures. The annual licence fee for a taxi is a cost on business, and extending the period would be deregulatory and welcomed by taxi firms.

I challenge the assertion that under Clause 12 individuals will be placed at greater risk. Of course, those of us who use taxis prefer to use our regular firms. As someone who has a very keen family interest in disability, the last thing I would wish would be for any individual to be put at greater risk. However, we are not suggesting in Clause 12 that unlicensed taxis be used. These are taxi firms that have been licensed by a neighbouring authority, so they have been subject to the same licensing process as the firms to which the request for a cab has been made. In my own case, like other noble Lords I use taxis from time to time. If my preferred taxi firm is unable to transport me to the station or the airport, I have to go further afield and find another firm. That taxi firm then loses that business and maybe will lose my future business because I have transferred my allegiance to another firm.

This is an opportunity to free up the market for taxi firms and to allow them to operate outside their immediate geographic area. It is something that we should support.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I apologise to the Committee for not being present at Second Reading, but perhaps I may be allowed to comment on Clause 12, which I believe is a fair and reasonable measure that will bring improvements for customers.

At the moment it is only outside London that a private hire operator cannot subcontract a booking in a different district. Is there something peculiarly wicked about provincial private hire firms that does not apply in London? A London-based private hire firm can subcontract, as can a foreign unlicensed company, and this gives it a huge advantage. It puts private hire firms outside London at an iniquitous disadvantage, but it also leads to perverse, inconvenient and even unsafe consequences for customers. I shall give your Lordships a real example.

There is a private hire firm in Birmingham that has a contract to transport any staff with minor injuries from Jaguar Land Rover’s plants to hospital. As the firm cannot subcontract a booking to an operator in another district, if the injury occurs in the Wolverhampton plant, the car does a 55-mile return journey to take the person to a hospital 2.6 miles from the plant. For most of that round trip the car is empty. Jaguar Land Rover wants to deal with a single operator, but this is the result.

Another real example is of a private hire operator in Derby asked by a customer to collect an important client in another district. It must refuse the job, and refuse to arrange it with another firm in that district. The firm appears unhelpful to its customer. I have a third real example. A private hire firm in north Tyneside has a member of staff with a terminal illness. He would like to continue working, but from home. Since he lives just outside the north Tyneside border, that is illegal. I have another example. People often hire private minibuses to do long journeys for groups of up to six or eight people—to an airport, for example. That vehicle must return empty. If it breaks down en route, the operator is breaking the law if he asks another firm in the district where the breakdown happens to take the customer on. This measure would reduce congestion, pollution and noise a little, too.

Please note that the beneficiaries of this change in the law would include people with disabilities. That is because a wheelchair-enabled vehicle that has taken a customer from his home in district A to a hospital in district B would now be able to collect a different customer at the hospital and take him back to district A. As far as I can tell from Hansard, when exactly these measures were discussed and passed in this House in 1998 for London, one organisation that was widely praised in the debate for its support of the measures was the Suzy Lamplugh Trust. It therefore surprised me to hear today that it is against this measure. If this rule is good for London, it is surely good enough for the rest of the country. Can it be that London-based private hire firms are worried about competition from firms based outside London? This is an excellent and sensible measure that has benefits for customers.

[Baroness Kramer]

My Lords, Clauses 11 and 12 cover separate, different but sensible measures. Obviously, a thought for safety penetrates all of our thinking as we address this range of issues.

To pick up on the issue raised by my noble friend Lord Bradshaw and explained by others, particularly my noble friend Lord Greaves, the amendments do not in any way change the rules on vehicle licences. Those are tough and carried out by local authorities and there is absolutely no change. If my noble friend Lord Bradshaw knows a firm that thinks it can run a £200 car for successful private hire and meet the standards, I suggest that he call the local authority. It would be extremely difficult for a car that has that kind of market value to achieve the standards that are rightly required by local authorities in licensing those vehicles.

Clause 11 aims to reduce the administrative and financial burdens on some taxi and private hire drivers. The measures we have included in the Bill, which I will address in relation to Clause 12, will also help to improve the experience of booking taxis and private hire vehicles. I join with others in saying that in making his case my noble friend Lord Greaves prayed in aid London. Both the measures in Clause 11 and Clause 12 are already the status in London. Indeed, when we turn to London as the example that we are trying to copy, that is exactly what Clauses 11 and 12 do. It means that we have a good history of the way in which Clauses 11 and 12 function.

Clause 11 will standardise at three years the duration of both taxi and private hire vehicle driver licences; and at five years the licence for a private hire vehicle operator. Shorter periods would be permitted only where there are specific circumstances around a particular application. For example, a local authority might decide that a probationary period was necessary. Typically the duration would be three years for the vehicle driver licence and five years for the operator licence. Frankly, it means that those people will not have to renew their licences as frequently as they do in some areas.

The Department for Transport carries out a biennial survey of licensing authorities. Our 2013 survey showed that nearly half of licensing authorities grant taxi and private hire driver licences for three years, so this is not a sudden revolution. A number of local authorities use a shorter term but we can see by comparing safety records that there is nothing to suggest that those local authorities that grant their licences at three years have an inferior record. That is important to note. When it comes to the operator licences, a number of licensing authorities routinely grant private hire operator licences for five years although the substantial majority do less than five years. Again, there is nothing to suggest that there is a difference in safety between one authority and another on the basis of those differences in licensing terms.

The Government therefore consider that this is an area of taxi regulation that would benefit from deregulation. By setting a standard duration of three years for taxi and private hire vehicle driver licences and five years for private hire vehicle operator licences life will be made a lot simpler and substantially cheaper for licence holders. We estimate that the measure will save drivers around £8 million per year and operators around £1 million per year. People who are in this trade are not wealthy people. They find it tough to make a living and any little help we can offer is valid when it is not putting safety at risk.

I appreciate that some stakeholders have expressed concern about safety implications. There may be a slight misconception. It is now the case that many licensing authorities that grant annual licences actually carry out criminal record checks only every three years. Although the licence is annual, the criminal records checks—the issue that has noble Lords exercised—are typically a three-year process. Of course, we are now saying that the standard for criminal records checks will be three years. That would be a relatively small change for most authorities. They will continue to do those formal checks. As I said, we have examples in London and in the many local authorities that already use that three-year cycle that it is not associated with additional risk.

Clause 12 will allow private hire vehicle operators to subcontract bookings across licensing boundaries. Again, this is a capacity that has been available continuously for London. The noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, made the case extremely well and illustrated the many situations in which this is an extremely important measure and the extent to which car hire companies outside London are put at a disadvantage compared with London operators. One of the main motivators behind this measure is that it is so difficult when people call a taxi firm that cannot provide a taxi and are then turned away. I have a relevant personal experience, which could have turned out to be extremely difficult. I was in Gloucestershire and going to visit an elderly friend in a nursing home. I got to the station and there was no one around. I looked at the board and started calling taxi firms and car hire firms and not one could supply a car. They explained to me that they could not call someone else because they would have to call out of the area and they could not do that. In such cases one would hope to have a mobile phone that is smart-enabled to get on to the web to try to find other firms in the area to call. I was glad that I was not a mother with three children, that it was not getting dark and that it was not raining. It seems unreasonable not to allow the taxi firm to subcontract in order to be able to meet the booking.

We are often concerned about young people out late at night who try to find a taxi to take them home safely. In that situation, we do not want them having to track down one company after another. They should be able to call an operator who they have confidence in who can find them a taxi, even if it is subcontracted from out of area. You can already subcontract in area, and I should make that clear to those people who may have used subcontracted taxis or private hire vehicles and were not aware of it.

The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said that he was concerned about disabled people. Surely that is the group which has the most to benefit from this change. Most car hire companies have a limited number of wheelchair-accessible vehicles and there may be circumstances where a disabled person needs to travel in a particular kind of vehicle. It is all very well to say that disabled people need to make advance bookings, but I want people with disabilities to be able to live their lives as freely as the rest of us can and not always have to think about things in advance—or, frankly, have to do without. We have a mechanism here which gives an operator the scope to reach out of area and subcontract to someone else who has a wheelchair-accessible vehicle to meet a need. That is exceedingly beneficial.

I want to make it clear that the initial operator who takes a call and makes a booking remains liable to the passenger who made the booking. He is the person with whom the contract has been established. If someone chooses to call a particular operator, that operator retains the liability for the subcontractor, so the terms and conditions, the recording of the booking and the fare, if it has been agreed, all remain with the operator who the customer has contacted.

South Sudan

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Monday 28th July 2014 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

It is also important to ensure that we have Ethiopia and—as far as there is a Government in Somalia—Somalia on board. There are problems with allegations that Ugandan troops are too close to the side of President Kiir and biased against Mr Machar, so there are a number of delicacies that would raise questions about a Commonwealth role.

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, will the Minister confirm that efforts to eradicate the guinea worm continue in this region? It is a terrible parasite that is on its last legs. Through the excellent work of this Government supporting the Carter Center, it is down to its last handful of cases in South Sudan. It would be a terrible pity if the parasite were to escape again.

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire]

My Lords, in conditions where it is extremely dangerous for aid workers to be outside towns and where there are now severe problems in making sure that polio vaccination continues, I doubt that we have the capacity at present to ensure that the guinea worm eradication programme continues, but I will write to the noble Viscount.

Energy: Fracking

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Monday 17th March 2014 Grand Committee

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I declare my interests in various forms of energy as detailed in the register, especially in coal. I congratulate my noble friend Lord Borwick on this extremely timely debate. As he probably knew, today is the 65th birthday of fracking. Through the wonders of Twitter, I found out this afternoon that it was on 17 March 1949 in Archer County, Texas, and Stephens County, Oklahoma, that the first commercial hydraulic fracturing operation happened. During those 65 years, there have been extraordinarily few environmental problems. Ken Salazar, who was Secretary of the Interior in the first Obama term, recently said that,

“there’s not a single case where hydraulic fracking has created an environmental problem for anyone”.

He continued:

“We need to make sure that story is told”.

Obviously, the oil industry and the gas industry cause problems but hydraulic fracturing itself has not produced a single environmental problem.

This is a very good topic for a debate. Professor Muller’s report goes straight to the heart of an issue that is central to the environmental debate and it needs more attention. The issue is harm reduction and choosing the lesser of two evils rather than being frightened by a small risk, thereby allowing a larger risk to happen, or allowing the best to be the enemy of the good, as Voltaire put it. For example, the environmental opponents of genetic modification have, in effect, left us using more pesticides than other countries. That has been the effect of that campaign. The environmental opponents of nuclear power have left us using more coal than other countries, as well as particularly in Germany, Japan and other places.

The question is: what would happen if we do not develop shale gas? What would be the environmental impact of not developing shale gas? I ask the Minister to press her officials to take this approach to some of the questions; namely, to weigh up not just the risks of fracking but the risks of not fracking. In this case, as Professor Muller makes clear in the paper for the Centre for Policy Studies, it would mean both more air pollution, with damaging effects on people’s health, and more carbon dioxide emissions. There is no question about that. We have several years of experience and it is clear that the environmental benefits of shale gas development that were thought about a few years ago have been drastically underestimated, whereas the environmental risks have been greatly exaggerated.

As I have mentioned, the benefits include carbon dioxide reduction. As a result of the shale gas revolution, America’s energy-related carbon dioxide emissions are now back to 1994 levels and, in per capita terms, are back to 1964 levels. That is an extraordinary change, which is much faster than in any other country on the planet. We have mentioned urban air pollution. There is also an enormous opportunity now for natural gas vehicles, which are much cheaper to run, in the United States. Many commercial fleets are turning to natural gas vehicles, which can reduce urban air pollution. Not just the displacement of coal but the displacement of diesel is a great opportunity as well.

However, there is an enormous other potential benefit from shale gas: land-sparing; that is, using less land to produce energy. As we know, renewables, as a way of trying to do without carbon dioxide emissions, need an awful lot of land. To put this in perspective, if we were to use wind power alone to try to not just reduce but prevent an increase in global carbon dioxide emissions, we would have to build a wind farm the size of the British Isles every year. That is an extraordinary number.

It is not just land but the wildlife that goes with that land. There is a recent estimate that 82,000 birds of prey are killed every year by wind turbines in the United States. If you scale that back to the size of the UK wind industry, that means 16,000 birds of prey in this country. I suspect that the number is lower than that because we do not have migration corridors of the kind they have in the USA. There are also 150,000 bats. These are some of the creatures that could survive if we decided to stop building wind turbines and started working on shale gas instead. I mentioned in another debate this afternoon the possibility that we would not have to cut down forests, and all the pollution that goes with that.

As for the environmental risks and problems of fracking, I have found over the past few years that it is like chopping the heads off a hydra: every time you meet one objection, people come up with another. We have heard things like radioactivity might be coming out of fracked wells; that has now been buried. Most people now accept that the earthquakes are extremely small; much smaller, incidentally, than the earthquakes you get from hydropower, for example. As for water contamination, the myth has been well buried now that there has been serious aquifer contamination as a result of hydraulic fracturing, and if you have seen “GasLand”, you should also make a big effort to watch “FrackNation”, the film that answers it and puts it in perspective. The methane leakage question is very interesting. A recent study from the University of Texas puts the number at about 0.4%, which is extremely low. We should remember that coal mines leak more methane than that, so using and transporting coal actually generates a lot more methane and anyway methane levels in the atmosphere are not actually rising very fast; they are rising slower than predicted by the IPCC over the past two decades.

As for the issue of using chemicals in hydraulic fracturing, we put 99.5% water and sand down the hole, with a few kitchen sink chemicals, extremely diluted. This is put into rocks that are absolutely riddled with organic toxic chemicals. That is why we are going there: to get those toxic chemicals out. So it is a bit ridiculous to worry about that aspect of things.

Above all, it is worth bearing in mind that affordable energy is itself good for the environment. As McKinsey pointed out, America has had probably $250 billion of benefit from the shale gas revolution in the past three years. Think what you can spend $250 billion on—think how much environmental benefit you can buy with that.