Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Andrew Miller Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Amber Rudd]

The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. It is essential that the Environment Agency and Health and Safety Executive have sufficient staff. They have not raised that with me and have accepted the fact that they will have the responsibility, but we will keep conversations with them open to ensure they can do their job correctly.

[Andrew Miller (Ellesmere Port and Neston) (Lab)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Amber Rudd]

I am going to make progress.

On fugitive emissions, I have spoken about the report produced by Professor David MacKay and Dr Timothy Stone. Their report determined that, with the right safeguards in place, the net effect on greenhouse gas emissions from shale gas production will be relatively small. We report fugitive emissions from onshore energy extraction annually as part of our international reporting obligations on the UK’s greenhouse gas emissions. That is done in accordance with guidelines produced by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and is audited annually by a group of international experts.

[Andrew Miller]

On a point of order, Mr Speaker.

[Mr Speaker]

I may be wrong, but I just have a slight sense that this might be a point not of order but of frustration. We will discover.

[Andrew Miller]

There is a lot of frustration in the debate, Mr Speaker. In Committee, the Government made an extraordinary statement that there were some issues around baseline monitoring that the Minister regards as commercial-in-confidence. That is why I have tabled the amendment. Would it not be helpful if the Minister answered that point now, while she is dealing with that measure, rather than simply moving on?

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

That is not a point of order.

[Andrew Miller]

No, but it is on the record.

[Mr Speaker]

All sorts of things are helpful and all sorts of things are unhelpful, but they usually have one thing in common: that none of them is a point of order.

[Amber Rudd]

Thank you, Mr Speaker. The hon. Gentleman is right and asks an interesting question. I reassure him that I have written to him and other members of the Committee about that point.

[Andrew Miller]

Where is the letter?

[Amber Rudd]

It was sent to every member of the Committee.

With regard to industry reporting commitments, fugitive emissions levels will be constantly monitored at all stages of development. The data will be made available in line with best practice and regulatory reporting requirements. However, to provide additional reassurance, I am pleased to announce that the Government will direct the Environment Agency to require operators to monitor and report fugitive methane emissions. In addition, the industry has confirmed its commitment to site-by-site reporting of fugitive emissions.

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[Amber Rudd]

My hon. Friend has raised that issue before and I hope that we will hear from him later. As he will be aware, we believe that that question is best decided later, when we have a charter in place that will address the issue.

[Andrew Miller]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. Earlier in the Minister’s speech, she referred to a letter that she claims to have sent to the members of the Committee. I have checked my file—everything was sent electronically—and no such letter arrived in my office. I would be grateful if a copy of the letter could be made available to Members now.

[Mr Deputy Speaker (Mr Lindsay Hoyle)]

That is not a point of order for the Chair, but the hon. Gentleman has clarified what he believes to be the position. The Minister may or may not wish to comment.

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[Mr Yeo]

I do not entirely agree. The fall in gas consumption in the UK will not take it below the level at which we require imports. Even if gas consumption goes down, as the hon. Gentleman suggests, we will probably still import gas. For the reason I have just mentioned, if that gas is LNG, using our domestic supplies of shale gas would be beneficial in terms of greenhouse gas emissions.

I note that the environment, health and safety concerns highlighted by the Environmental Audit Committee are not shared by the Environment Agency. I also note that Lancashire county council’s objections relate not to such concerns, but to noise and traffic movements. Those understandable issues arise in all sorts of planning applications, many of which have nothing to do with the energy industry.

[Andrew Miller]

It is worth pointing out that the hon. Gentleman’s arguments about safety are supported by the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society, the Geological Society and the British Geological Society.

[Mr Yeo]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that extremely pertinent point.

We have probably all received a great many e-mails on the trespass issue. It is worth pointing out that the coal industry has enjoyed such a right for generations, and there seems to be no reason why it should not be extended to the gas industry.

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[Dr Huppert]

I thank the Minister for that welcome news. I was going to talk about water usage, but I will turn to that matter instead. The Minister’s words effectively bring us closer to proposed new clause 4 and amendment 44, which were tabled by me and a number of my Liberal Democrat colleagues. They propose that we should not allow fracking if it leads to an increase in carbon emissions.

I thank the Government for new clause 15, which takes us halfway there, and this other amendment, which takes us even further. We will know, as a result of this change, whether there are higher carbon emissions. The change does not go quite as far as banning fracking, but it is, none the less, a welcome step. I will not now be pressing new clause 4 and amendment 44 to a Division.

I still feel strongly about new clause 6, but we are waiting to get clarity from the Department about exactly which areas are excluded. I hope that we will get that clarity later. New clause 9, on a moratorium on onshore unconventional petroleum, was tabled by the hon. Member for Bolton South East (Yasmin Qureshi), who asked me to speak in support of it as she is unable to be here today. I believe that we should have that moratorium, and so am happy to support that new clause. I would love to hear what the position of the official Opposition is on it as they were not prepared to say. On amendments 50 and 51, which I also feel strongly about, the Opposition made it clear that they do not support them. We will see what happens if we have the opportunity to test the will of the House on those as well.

[Andrew Miller]

I rise to speak in support of amendment 117, which is in my name. In Committee, I brought to Members’ attention the Government’s own science and innovation strategy, which talks very clearly about openness. It says:

“Technology allows openness and public scrutiny of research that was not possible until now –going far beyond the ability to share a published paper through open access; the data and the information behind the paper can be made available to all.”

That substantive document, which was produced by the Treasury and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, sets out the case for openness. There are two areas of this debate where openness has not occurred. The first relates to the redacted documents from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which is hardly consistent with the Government’s stated position. The second relates to the point made in amendment 117, which is that baseline monitoring data should be published

“in a form that enables it to be subject to scientific peer review.”

It can be done.

The Minister of State, Department for Transport, the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes) referred to a letter—I thank him for giving me a copy of it because I had not seen it—but it does not address the substantive point of the amendment, which is that data should be published in a form that enables them to be available for scientific peer review. I am not talking about any old published charts and data. The data should be published in a way that the scientific community can use. There are established standards that are well understood by the Departments of the Minister and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd). I also ask the Minister to consider that matter with some care as the Bill progresses through the Lords.

[Mr Hayes]

Let me give the hon. Gentleman that assurance. If the letter was not clear that is my fault, not his. I am absolutely clear that the information must be made available in an appropriate and proper form and in the way that he describes.

[Andrew Miller]

I am extremely grateful to the Minister, and ask him to clarify that matter in the Bill.

[Miss McIntosh]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak to the amendments standing in my name, which were tabled in a personal capacity as the constituency MP for Kirby Misperton, where Third Energy proposes to apply for a licence in six weeks. At a public meeting attended by residents of the three villages affected, Third Energy admitted that there is a minuscule risk of contamination of groundwater. I therefore urge my right hon. and hon. Friends to look extremely carefully at the contents of amendment 59.

My hon. Friend the Minister talked about the amount of monitoring that would be done three months before a licence application for drilling can be started. Is she aware of the worrying fact that at least one insurance company has stated in writing that it will not insure for public liability any landowner who allows the oil and gas industry or fracking companies on to their land? That raises the question whether during the monitoring stage and, in the long term, during the fracking stage, home owners will be able to obtain insurance.

Another point raised is about emissions after the fracking operation has finished. Third Energy seems to think that the land will revert to the landowner at completion of the fracking operations, but I believe that that is a misunderstanding. I shall be grateful if the Minister clarifies that matter.

I am delighted that my hon. Friend says that compensation for blight may indeed be possible, as proposed in my amendment 61.

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We recognise that infrastructure development does not happen fast enough in this country, but, since 2010, we have started to turn this around and address the regulatory barriers that have held back delivery of our infrastructure networks. We have introduced the national infrastructure plan for transport, energy, flood defences, communications, water and waste networks, and we have agreed long-term funding settlements for public infrastructure investment. This has generated a new momentum in infrastructure delivery, and, as a result, more than 2,500 projects have been delivered during this Parliament. However, we are not complacent, and we understand that there is still much to do to reverse the long-running issue of under-investment.

[Andrew Miller]

In Committee, I brought hon. Members’ attention to the fact that, while we were debating the Bill, the Institute for Government published a document entitled “The Political Economy of Infrastructure in the UK”, which drew conclusions similar to those in the Opposition’s new clause. Has the Minister had a chance to read the document, and will he be replying to the Institute for Government?

[Stephen Williams]

In recent weeks and months, the question of whether to set up a separate body has been much debated in both Houses, and many people outside Parliament, including the Armitt commission set up by the Opposition, have contributed thoughtfully to that debate. All of that has informed our discussions, but the Government take the view that it is up to Ministers, accountable to Parliament, to set out the infrastructure vision for the development of our country. It is not something we should subcontract to another body; it should be up to us. Our constituents should make representations to hon. Members to inform our deliberations, rather than feeling they have to go to a non-elected body to make those important recommendations.

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[Stephen Williams]

Although a newspaper is an important community asset in the widest sense, it is literally here today and gone tomorrow. It is not a permanent, fixed, tangible asset in the community, so the Bill, as currently drafted, could not apply to it. However, the Welsh Government have yet to adopt all the provisions of the Localism Act 2011, although its provisions were available to them at the time. I therefore encourage the hon. Gentleman to put pressure on the Administration in Cardiff to adopt the provisions and protections that already exist in that Act.

[Andrew Miller]

The Minister said that he would introduce secondary legislation during the current Parliament. Given that there are only 32 or 33 sitting days left before Dissolution, does he intend to introduce secondary legislation that will become law during this Parliament?

[Stephen Williams]

That is certainly the intention, but I do not want to be drawn into matters of parliamentary procedure. This is a very straightforward change, which builds on provisions that already exist in the Localism Act. It does not require complicated legislation; indeed, it does not require primary legislation. As the hon. Gentleman and others will know, today’s written ministerial statement will carry some weight in the planning system, and a statutory instrument will follow shortly to give full weight to it.

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[Andrew Miller]

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield (Richard Burden) for his kind remarks. Unless I commit a sin that means the Whips require me to do something else in the next few weeks, this will be the last Bill I serve on in Committee. I did so voluntarily, because I take a great interest in a number of its clauses, not least the one referred to by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster (Mark Field). I followed his remarks carefully and agreed with virtually every word he uttered. I am sure he would agree that the draft presented to the Committee last week was grossly inadequate for its purpose. He described the issues in thriving urban areas that need to move quickly to accommodate the needs of developers and the economy, as well as the changing technologies in the telecoms space. Different issues arise when it comes to rural access. Access arrangements have been far from satisfactory, but the clause—drafted in haste—has resulted in this step backwards. That is regrettable because—as was said in Committee—this is long overdue.

I will get the Minister into trouble with the Whips if I go on too much, but he is a man of such integrity that in the last general election he even invited his Labour opposite number, who was at one time my agent, to go for a coffee to discuss how their business should be conducted. That is an example of how collegiate he is. I thought that he would get into trouble with the Whips again when he praised the Secretary of State. I thought that the Minister was going to say that the Secretary of State was adding his weight to the matter, but as I am of similar girth I can get away with that remark.

The Bill has some extraordinarily important aspects. As my hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Northfield said, it covers an enormous area. The House will have to come back to the telecoms code and in the interests of all parties—including those mentioned by the hon. Member for Cities of London and Westminster—that will need to be done sooner rather than later, but with careful engagement with all the players.

I was especially interested in the clauses relating to hydraulic fracturing. In the dim and distant past when I worked in geology, I taught students how drilling technology works. I made the point in Committee that had we been using the technology today that we were using 40 years ago I would be against hydraulic fracking, but the technologies have developed to an extraordinary degree. We do not know enough about the UK’s general environment subsurface, so a huge amount of work is needed. In Committee and in the other place, amendments were tabled on baseline monitoring, and I am pleased that the Government have started to move in the right direction. It is possible to come up with a regulatory structure that works for the communities we seek to represent and in terms of the economics of the industry. To achieve that goal, the Government will need to think carefully about some of the issues and the underlying science.

The amendment that I tabled in Committee, about peer reviewing baseline monitoring data, is acceptable to the industry. It is in the interests of the Government and the country to reach cross-party agreement so that the data that go into the public domain are fully understood and we can argue from an evidence base, which we cannot do at present. When the first pilot well was drilled in my constituency, I got only five letters about it: three were technical questions and two were letters of objection. The second one, which was handled differently by the developer, resulted in a massive number of objections and a protest camp that is very firmly in place.

It is important that this House, the industry and the regulators engage with the public, so that there is a better scientific understanding of what can be achieved with the regulatory machinery we put in place. I have no doubt that that is an achievable goal. I hope those on the Government Front Bench recognise that when they seek to develop the Bill further in the other place.

Serving on the Bill with my hon. Friends on the Labour Front Bench and the rest of the Labour team has been a pleasure, as has been working on this topic with the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings and the Under-Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Hastings and Rye (Amber Rudd). These are hugely important issues and Parliament must get them right.

Finally, there is a message to consider. Reflecting on the way the Bill has been conducted, it is important that the next Parliament looks carefully at the process we have gone through. There are better ways to legislate and perhaps the next Parliament can learn from that. I wish the Bill well in the Lords. I want to see the robust amendments retained so that the regulatory issues raised by those on the Opposition Front Bench can be protected and enshrined in the Bill. That will enable this important industry to develop in this country with the support of the public we seek to represent.

[Mr Hayes]

rose—