Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Christopher Pincher Excerpts

Wednesday 11th February 2015 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Percy]

I will not, because other Members are still to speak.

There is clearly the potential for fracking. I do not pretend to be a scientist—I stopped studying science when I finished my double-award GCSE at the age of 16—so I will not get into the arguments, but clearly there is the potential for an industry that a large number of my constituents would support, subject to those safeguards. That is why I voted the way I did in previous stages of the Bill’s consideration. I do not think that the way the Lords amendment has been drafted, or indeed this evening’s debate, has done a great deal to increase the confidence of residents. I make a plea to the Government that we have to take people along with us on a journey, particularly when there is a new technology that is very controversial—[Interruption.] Hon. Members say that it is not a new technology, but it is new to this country, as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Miss McIntosh), so people’s concerns about it should be heard, just as concerns about wind farms should rightly be heard.

I urge the Government to think very carefully about this. I reiterate my view that the residents of Brigg and Goole and of the Isle of Asholme are not closed-minded about this technology; they simply want to know that the evidence is there to support it and that their homes, communities and local environment will be sufficiently well protected. That is what I thought we had agreed to with the amendment a couple of weeks ago.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

I am reassured by the words of my hon. Friend the Minister, particularly with regard to groundwater protection. I think that she and the ministerial team have gone out of their way to be as consensual as possibly in order to bring the Opposition with them in support of hydraulic fracturing. Having heard the shadow Minister, who is a decent and knowledgeable man, say that he believes in a bipartisan approach, I think it is a great pity that he has chosen not to adopt such an approach tonight. He and I served on the Energy and Climate Change Committee, and it is worthy of note that the Committee has produced in this Parliament not one but two reports on fracking and shale gas.

It is also worthy of note that except for the hon. Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery), not one Opposition member of the Select Committee is here tonight. That seems to suggest that the others are not particularly concerned about the proposals put forward by the Government. Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat members of the Committee all supported the importance, with safeguards, of fracturing for shale gas.

My right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr Lilley), a fellow member of the Committee, made an eloquent speech demolishing many of the myths that surround shale gas extraction. I will not attempt to reheat and rehearse most of what he said. He made a point about aquifers relative to shale layers underground. The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) has worries, as have others, about the potential pollution of the water table. I think that that is almost impossible as a result of shale gas fracturing. Fracking, in and of itself, cannot cause pollution of the water table, because the shale layer is hundreds, sometimes thousands, of feet below the earth’s surface, whereas the aquifers are just a few feet below the earth’s surface. In between the aquifers and the shale layer are hundreds, sometimes thousands, of feet of solid rock. Firing sand grains into fractures a hair’s breadth wide is not going to cause pollution of the aquifers. That will happen only if the wells themselves are compromised, and given that we have some of the best environmental protection in the world, that is very unlikely. If one drills down thousands of feet—

[Gregory Barker]

My hon. Friend draws attention to the fact that here in the UK we have the best environmentally regulated regime for oil and gas extraction in the world. That is a very important point. We have a terrific record, particularly for onshore drilling. It would be wrong to cast out—