Environment Bill (Twentieth sitting)

Fleur Anderson Excerpts

Committee stage & Committee Debate: 20th sitting: House of Commons
Tuesday 24th November 2020 Public Bill Committees

My point is that, when one looks at the fine detail, not all was as it seemed. Sadly, our protections are not as strong as they were. That is the theme of most of my contributions. We will be less well protected next month than we are today. That is why the non-regression principle is so very important. I commend it to the Minister and ask her to take the advantage that we are yet again offering her and which would strengthen her Bill.

[Fleur Anderson (Putney) (Lab)]

The clock is ticking: we are only five weeks away from the end of the famous implementation period. This amendment seeks to freeze that in time and say that in five weeks’ time there will be no regression or diminution in any protection afforded by any environmental standard effective in UK domestic law. Surely that is the most important part of the Bill. At least we could say that the Environment Bill is being brought forward to replace, renew and look beyond all the environmental protections that we will not have when we are not an EU member: that we will do better than that—or at least, not regress. If the amendment is not agreed to, we are worried that we will not have that safeguard.

The Government have frequently stated their desire to improve the quality of our environment and protect our existing environmental standards. Why, then, do they stop short of enacting an unambiguous and binding requirement not to regress on existing rules, as would be enacted through the amendment? This is not about staying tied to EU rules. As the shadow Minister says, we are not re-enacting Brexit at all; rather, we are ensuring that the UK rules get better and better over time and are protected from deregulatory pressure.

Non-regression is an exciting and emerging norm of environmental law, and we need to harness its potential. That requires a positive trajectory for environmental standards, with the ultimate goal of progressively improving the health of people and the planet. There is a precedent, as was mentioned, in other international laws and instruments. Non-regression can be found explicitly in international instruments, such as the 2015 International Union for Conservation of Nature draft international covenant on environment and development, the 2017 draft global pact for the environment and the 2018 Escazú agreement, which mirrors the Aarhus convention for the Americas. It is important to mention those because there is precedent. We cannot say that such a provision is unnecessary and does not need to be done. It should be added to the Bill.

To underscore why we, as the Opposition, feel so strongly about the issue, one need only look at how much the UK’s environment has benefited from the EU framework that the Bill is replacing. In the 1970s, we pumped untreated sewage straight into the sea, but EU laws and the threat of fines, as well as good enforcement, forced us to clean up our act. Now, more than 90% of our beaches are considered clean enough to bathe off. I have yet to hear a meaningful reason why the Government would not at least commit to the new clause. To say that it is not necessary is just bluster and evades the issue, and it is just not good enough.

If we are to put our money with our mouth is, the new clause should be added to the Bill, especially because it would match our ambition as we host COP26 next year. It would be a meaningful legal commitment to non-regression, and in turn a powerful endorsement of the Government’s stated ambitions to be world leaders on environmental matters. It would create an authoritative platform from which the UK could seek to improve global green governance. There is nothing to lose by adopting the new clause and everything to gain.

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[Dr Whitehead]

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

This new clause concerns well consents for hydraulic fracking: cessation of issue and termination. Hon. Members may ask themselves, “What has fracking got to do with this Bill? Why is there a new clause about fracking when we are talking about other issues entirely?” I would contend that fracking, or potential fracking, is central to many of the issues that we have discussed. The current fracking regime and whether or not wells are being fracked cut across, potentially considerably so, the Bill’s protections and provisions relating to the natural environment, biodiversity and various other issues. There are a number of worrying issues relating to how fracking is carried out, how its consequences are dealt with, and how its by-products come about and are or are not disposed of.

I am sure that hon. Members will have access to a fair amount of information about the fracking process and that they will be aware that, as far as this country is concerned, it has not got very far. The Cuadrilla well in Preston was paused on the grounds that it caused earthquakes when the fracking process began. Although the then BEIS Secretary, the right hon. Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), used a provision to direct that that particular drilling company should not proceeded, that provision also allowed for corners to be cut on standards, so that it could get going with the fracking process. The standard relating to seismic disturbance was only a small part of the substantial environmental consequences to which the widespread introduction of fracking would give rise.

Mercifully, fracking is not used substantially in this country, but it is in other countries. When I visited Texas some time ago, I went to Austin, which is right in the middle of the fracking industry, in the large, relatively easy-to-access basin that covers a lot of Texas and in which a lot of fracking wells have been drilled. As we came into the airport, we could see ahead of us what looked like a moonscape. There was a large number of circular pads with extraction equipment covering the landscape as far as the eye could see. It also glinted in the sun, inasmuch as attached to those fracking pads were a number of what looked like ponds or small lakes. It looked like a landscape of lakes, but it was not. It was a landscape of tailing ponds associated with the fracking pads, and in which were placed the results of the fracking process—the fracking fluid that had been used to blast the rocks apart, which contained substantial chemicals to assist in that process. If they were to be produced in this country in the quantities suggested—at least 10,000 or so cubic metres of fluid per fracking pad—they would be classed as hazardous waste and would need to be disposed of very carefully. There are actually very few hazardous waste sites in this country that can take that kind of waste. The solution in the United States was that, on some occasions, they injected the waste back down into deep basins, which is not ideal. Alternatively, they just kept it on the surface in tailing ponds on the landscape. That could be the future for us, if we were to develop fracking to any great extent.

As I say, we have had only two goes at fracking in this country so far. They happened to be in two areas of the UK that contain the seams from which gas can be extracted through the fracking process. One is the Bowland shale in the north-west of the country, which happens to encompass the Lake District national park. The other is across the Weald and into South Downs national park, an area of outstanding natural beauty that goes across Sussex and into Hampshire. If we had a substantial fracking industry in the UK, wells would be drilled in those two concentrated areas. There would be a concentration of wells in that precious landscape, possibly like the concentration that I saw in Austin, Texas.

The Infrastructure Act 2015 placed restrictions on where fracking can take place, but it did not have a great deal of traction in this country. Modern fracking can proceed by diagonal drilling; it does not have to involve drilling down. An interesting discussion emerged about the extent to which parts of the country could be declared to be surfaces on which fracking should not take place. The Government of the day identified some areas of outstanding beauty and national parks as areas where fracking should not take place, but all people need to do is set up a fracking plant right on the boundaries of a national park and drill diagonally.

[Fleur Anderson]

Does my hon. Friend agree that if the new clause is not agreed to and fracking is not stopped, that will undermine a lot of the biodiversity and ecosystem protection elsewhere in the Bill? It is bad for the climate, the environment and pollution, and local people do not want it either.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thoroughly agree with my hon. Friend about a regime of substantial fracking. All that has happened at the moment is that fracking has been paused. All the infrastructure requirements and legislation allowing fracking on a reasonably unrestrained basis are still in place, so it is more than possible that a future Government, or indeed this Government, might decide that they no longer wish to pause fracking. Everything is ready to go. As she said, this raises the question not only of what happens to the fracking fluid but of the escape of fugitive emissions between the well being produced and the gas being conveyed. Indeed, it is the practice, when fracking has been completed, to have a so-called flare-off to clean the well’s tubes, as it were. Enormous amounts of gas mixed with elements of the fracking fluid are released into the atmosphere and simply flared.

We understand that fracking sites will have multiple wells drilled with a very large amount of transport involved, with traffic coming to remote countryside areas, the levelling of an area several football pitches wide to make the pad, and a host of other things that result in environmental despoliation in pursuit of fracking. There are also the long-term consequences when the well is depleted: will it be re-fracked? If it is depleted, will it be properly capped off? One of the problems in Texas now is that the fracking wells have not proved to be as bountiful as had been thought––what a surprise––and several have simply been abandoned with little done to cap them off. There can be a regime for doing that properly, but in the countryside where the fracking has taken place, there is continuing danger and concern in respect of surface water and water in seams underground.