Fracking: Local Consent Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateHelen Morgan
Main Page: Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat - North Shropshire)Department Debates - View all Helen Morgan's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(1 year, 9 months ago)
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I beg to move,
That this House has considered local consent for fracking.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I thank colleagues who have sponsored the debate, particularly my hon. Friend the Member for Bath (Wera Hobhouse), who joins me here. I was grateful to receive cross-party support for my application from colleagues from six different parties, on both sides of the House, but it is a little disappointing that nobody from the Government Benches has joined us today.
I made the application for the debate to the Backbench Business Committee some six weeks—and one Prime Minister—ago, at a time when the Government had lifted the moratorium on fracking, claiming that it was necessary to increase our domestic fossil fuel output to cut costs and increase energy security.
I very much welcome the debate and congratulate the hon. Lady on securing it. I just want to make it clear that there is somebody from the Government Front Bench here: I am sitting here and listening carefully to everything she says.
I thank the Minister for that intervention, but I was referring to Back Benchers in my previous comment.
The former Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset (Mr Rees-Mogg), argued that fracking would only happen with local consent, but repeatedly declined to outline the detail on how consent might be obtained and whether it was synonymous with compensation. As I have said before, compensation is not consent, and I firmly believe that affected communities would oppose fracking in their area.
Since then, the current Prime Minister has U-turned on that U-turn. That is welcome, but with much of the Government’s 2019 manifesto abandoned, the Prime Minister pledging his own support for fracking over the summer and the Conservatives having voted to allow fracking just one month ago, I believe it is worthwhile obtaining some clarification from the Minister on the matter. I ask him to guarantee that fracking without consent is never forced on our communities, either in my constituency or anywhere else in Britain. We must prevent the Government from making yet another U-turn.
There is no mandate for fracking. It was outlawed in the manifesto of every major party in 2019 and only a tiny minority appear to believe that there is a benefit. The Liberal Democrat manifesto mentions “banning fracking for good.” “Permanently ban fracking”—the Labour party manifesto. The Conservative manifesto states,
“We will not support fracking”,
and the Green party manifesto reads
“Ban fracking, and other unconventional forms of fossil fuel extraction”.
Some 90% of the electorate voted for one of those parties. It is clear that people do not want fracking, and there are very good reasons why.
Britain cannot produce enough gas from fracking to reduce the global gas price, so it will not reduce our energy bills, especially when electricity from renewable sources is the cheapest form of energy we can produce. Investing in renewables—not only the cheapest, but the cleanest form of energy—is the best way to bring down our bills and our carbon emissions. As COP27 meets in Sharm El Sheikh and the lack of progress on the climate emergency is brought to international attention, it would be disastrous for the UK to start novel types of fossil fuel extraction. We need to find ways to keep fossil fuels in the ground, not waste effort looking for ever more inventive ways of extracting them.
The fundamental scientific evidence surrounding fracking and its safety has not changed either. Fracking is still unsafe and unproven. Last month the British Geological Survey refused to endorse fracking as a safe practice in its report for the Government. The House of Commons Environmental Audit Committee has previously warned that fracking poses a “risk to groundwater” and a
“risk of polluting surface water”,
and that the need for considerable quantities of water for fracking
“could pose localised risks to water supplies”.
This follows one of the driest summers ever; we cannot afford to take the risk.
Research commissioned by the Liberal Democrats has revealed that fracking caused 192 earthquakes in 182 days at one active site in the UK. That is more than one a day. A 2.9 magnitude earthquake was recorded near Cuadrilla’s site near Blackpool in 2019. Residents reported their shock at houses being shaken for two to three seconds. A report by the Oil and Gas Authority said it was not possible to predict the probability or size of tremors caused by the practice, so people do not want fracking for good reason. When they have had the opportunity to express their opposition, they have done so in numbers.
When fracking was last proposed at Dudleston Heath— a small village near Ellesmere in my constituency—a huge number of residents rapidly organised opposition to the proposed site. One constituent who led the protest said that they
“crammed about 300 people into the village hall”
in a public meeting about fracking. At the end of the meeting, a show of hands was requested, and he reported that
“everyone bar one person was against”
fracking.
Lovely as they are, I doubt whether the views of people in Dudleston Heath and Criftins are unique, and every MP in a potentially impacted area has had countless emails from constituents opposing the plans. Furthermore, the huge number of well-organised grassroots community groups that have cropped up across the country is evidence of a groundswell of opposition to the fracking plans.
We also saw well-organised opposition on a national level in the well-publicised campaigns by organisations such as the Campaign to Protect Rural England and Friends of the Earth, signalling the depth of support among many who do not live anywhere near one of the proposed sites.
In North Shropshire, a licence exists covering a small area of land by the Cheshire border, but whose impact zone extends to the market towns of Whitchurch and Market Drayton. There was huge concern in October when the then Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, the right hon. Member for North East Somerset, said in response to an urgent question that
“the moratorium on the extraction of shale gas is being lifted”.
He also said, in response to a question from me:
“Compensation and consent become two sides of the same coin. People will be able to negotiate the level of compensation and it will be a matter for the companies to try and ensure widespread consent by offering a compensation package that is attractive.”—[Official Report, 22 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 790-95.]
I find the suggestion that anyone will agree to something if they are paid enough slightly odd, although perhaps I am being a little idealistic, but I also believe that if the Conservatives refuse to impose an outright ban on fracking, a valid consent process must be put in place now to protect local communities in the event that the moratorium is lifted in future.
I propose a local referendum process—not just for those in the area covered by the fracking licence, but for the people living in the surrounding impact zone. When a council was approached for planning permission, it would have to gain the express consent of those in the affected areas before granting such permission. That should follow a period in which the full facts of the impact on the area were not only publicly available, but actively communicated to those affected. The planning inspector should not be able to overrule the decision reached in the local referendum and the subsequent council planning committee decision.
Local councils have been impacted by the cost of living crisis and are struggling to balance their budgets as it is, with many reporting financial distress, so the cost of administering those public information campaigns and subsequent referendums should not fall on the local council, or indeed the local taxpayer, but should be met by the company making the planning application. An application to exploit the resources of the British countryside should in no way be foisted on the taxpayer, but should be met by the companies that are making huge profits as a result of the global gas price. Will the Minister comment specifically on those suggestions for safeguarding communities that could be impacted by fracking in the event of a further Government U-turn?
Local communities affected by fracking have already expressed their opposition to the lifting of the moratorium; so, too, have the vast majority of the British people, who in 2019 voted for parties that opposed fracking in some form or another. Fracking simply will not bring down our energy bills, and if we are to address the energy problems the country faces, we must rapidly invest in renewable energy sources. The science has not changed either, and fracking is just as unsafe and unreliable as it was three years ago. I would welcome the Government’s confirmation of that point.
Given that the Conservative moratorium has been demonstrated to be fragile and temporary in nature, and that the Prime Minister pledged to overturn it in the summer leadership campaign, and given that Conservative MPs voted in favour of lifting the moratorium only a month ago, it is essential that a watertight process of local consent be put in place. If Conservative MPs will not pledge to honour their manifesto commitment and keep the ban on fracking, we must safeguard our communities from this unnecessary, disruptive and dangerous practice.
The hon. Member has made an important point. I will not attempt to answer it because I am not the Minister for Climate, but I will flag it with him and ask that the hon. Member gets a proper answer.
As well as our groundbreaking leadership in the transition of our existing energy system to net zero supply, we are investing heavily in the technologies of tomorrow to ensure that we can be a global player in the great challenges we face. Agriculture and transport are the two biggest industries after energy that generate and use the most carbon and greenhouse gases, and we are hugely advanced in research and development in those sectors. I say that as a former Minister for future transport and for agritech. This country has a huge opportunity as part of the science superpower mission to generate solutions that we can export around the world, and I am proud of what we are doing.
Given the crisis in Ukraine and the extraordinary pressures on everybody this year when it comes to paying their energy bills, the Government made a huge commitment to cap those energy bills and provide support, but it is right that our customers—the constituents we serve, taxpayers, households and businesses—would expect any responsible Government to look at whether there are easily and quickly accessible supplies of clean gas in the UK that could be extracted in a sensible and environmentally satisfactory way. People would think it was daft and weird if we were not prepared even to look at doing so in such a context. But let me be clear: that cannot in any situation go against our own environmental commitments, the environmental advice we have received or, crucially, local consent. As others have said, the British Geological Survey has made it crystal clear that there is no evidence to suggest that fracking can be pursued in any way that would pass that test. Again, I am delighted to repeat how pleased I personally am that we—the Prime Minister, the Cabinet and the Government —have made it clear that we are back to our 2019 effective moratorium.
Given that the Government are happy to express their commitment to stopping fracking, would they be willing to put that into legislation so that we do not always have a shadow of doubt hanging over us that the issue might raise its ugly head again?
I hear the hon. Member; she has made her point and put it on the record. I am slightly adverse to the idea that we put into legislation every single thing that we are not going to do. We would be here an awfully long time to reassure everyone. I am not sure that that is a sustainable way for Parliament to proceed. The Prime Minister made it clear through the written ministerial statement to the House, and the sector and community generally have understood that the idea mooted in September is now dead and buried, and we will not go back there.
I turn to the important point regarding local consent, which a number of colleagues have made. There is little I can say about pockets of local consent in particular areas. With regard to the situation in North Shropshire, in response to which the hon. Member for North Shropshire partly brought forward this debate, the licence for fracking that would potentially impact the Market Drayton and Whitchurch area is an indicative licence. No work has been done and no application for work has been received. In the light of the announcement of the return to the 2019 position, it is difficult to envisage any situation in which that licence could be of any use. I reassure her that we are not expecting any activity in that area.
We all—and the Government certainly—recognise that community support is important. We generally want planning to be something that is done through and with local communities, not to them. Some sort of balance is always required. Obviously, there is a huge difference between a loft extension and the siting of a huge piece of critical national infrastructure. However, a good developer will and should always engage with the local community and listen to real concerns.
I have seen consultations in my area where concerns have been expressed but have not been listened to or reflected in the proposals, and no change has been made to anything that was promoted. That often drives the view of sham consultations, in which people are not being heard. We need to be wary of assuming a one-size-fits-all approach would work for local support. Difficult though it is to see how this would take off, we have left open the possibility that if an area—north, south, south-west, Scotland or Northern Ireland—found itself sitting on an easy and geologically stable opportunity to exploit shale gas and came to the Government with strong local consent, strong environmental data and a strong business and environmental case, the Government would consider it. That is very different from us setting an ambition and encouraging this industry around the country.
My constituency is home to the first two major substations, connecting the first two offshore wind farms in the southern North sea. As the local constituency MP, I watched as the scheme promoter came forward with a proposal for a substation, which I naively thought 10 years ago was a thing the size of a shipping container that hums behind a yew bush, but this thing is the size of Wembley stadium and its proposed location was on top of a hill, so the whole of Norfolk could see this huge piece of industrial development. I was not against hosting the substation in Mid Norfolk, but through decent consultation with the company, we ended up siting it in low-lying ground, out of sight, with minimal light and visual impact.
For our thanks, we have had another one; we now have two next to each other in Mid Norfolk. It is critical infrastructure, although if we were better connecting all the offshore wind farms, we could reduce the need for individual substations and cabling all across the Norfolk and Suffolk coast. The Minister for Climate is looking into that, because it would support the infrastructure for trading out of the southern North sea. I have seen at first hand that communities are often not properly consulted. As other hon. Members have said, without in any way opening up the risk of community benefit creating an opportunity for some sort of inappropriate payments to buy consent, I believe it is important that when a village is hosting two vast pieces of national infrastructure, it might get a park bench or some swings or something from the developer, which is making a huge amount of money.
There is a difficult balance to strike, but we all know good consent and good consultation when we see it. We know when a company is listening and when a community has been properly heard. I do not think that has been the case often enough and I am delighted to have the chance to put that on record.
I thank you, Mr Paisley, for your chairmanship, and the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate. I also thank the Minister and the Opposition spokesperson, the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), for attending the debate. To clear up any confusion, at the start I was expressing my disappointment that there were not more Back Benchers here to put on the record their concern about their communities being able to consent to a very controversial process.
I am also grateful to the Minister for clarifying the Government’s position; I think that we all agree that that U-turn is welcome. However, while there is still this shadow of doubt, it would be nice if the Government committed to putting some formal consent process in place to safeguard communities in the event of a future change of heart.
I thank the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) for his kind words, for giving us the Northern Ireland perspective, and for clarifying that the issue is controversial across the whole United Kingdom, not just in rural England.
I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bath for her kind comments. She is a formidable environment campaigner, who we are proud to have in our party, and she made an excellent speech, expressing that local empowerment is at the heart of what Liberal Democrats stand for and believe. I am grateful for her contribution.
I cannot remember the last time that anyone described me as exciting, so I thank the Minister for that kind comment; I hope that it was well intended!
I am grateful for the comments made today. Everybody has made valuable points. We strongly feel that the local consent mechanism should be put in place to safeguard our communities.
I congratulate the hon. Lady on leading her first Westminster Hall debate.
Question put and agreed to.
Resolved,
That this House has considered local consent for fracking.