Lord Greaves
Main Page: Lord Greaves (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Greaves's debates with the Leader of the House
(9 years, 8 months ago)
Lords Chamber
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether they intend to carry out a full assessment of, and public consultation on, the environmental, landscape and community impacts of any schemes that take place for exploratory fracking before granting any consent for commercial shale gas extraction.
My Lords, the environmental, landscape and community impacts of any exploratory hydraulic fracturing for shale gas are already taken into account through the UK’s regulatory and planning regimes. These regimes also provide opportunities for the public to be consulted.
My Lords, there are two very broad arguments against fracking. The first is that the carbon should be left in the ground, because to remove it will contribute to climate change. The second concerns the whole range of environmental, social, cultural and landscape issues around fracking. We simply do not know what the effect of fracking will be, in all circumstances, on this densely populated country with our regulatory regime. Surely it is sensible to have two or three pilot schemes and to evaluate those properly and officially before going ahead with any more.
My Lords, the economic impact of shale, both locally and nationally, will of course depend on production. However, there will clearly be opportunities for the UK to benefit, particularly through being much more self-sufficient in energy production. On the wider issues that the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, mentioned, we need to make sure that, during the process, communities—the public—have opportunities to partake in the consultation at many junctures.