Infrastructure Bill [Lords]

Mark Lazarowicz Excerpts

Monday 26th January 2015 Commons Chamber

[Joan Walley]

That is exactly the point—no one knows who has overall responsibility. The Environment Agency appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee to give evidence, but it was unable to take overall responsibility. Somebody has to, otherwise we will be dealing with liabilities long into the future.

I know that our time is brief, but I wish to raise the issue of whether there could be a moratorium. People out in the country see that we currently have exploration for shale gas going on, but not full-scale industrialised extraction. When that is in place, 10 or 15 years down the line, the issues will not have been properly thought through. Why do we not sort all of that out now? Why do we not have a regulatory regime that is fit for purpose both for exploration and for the larger-scale extraction that will happen later?

[Mark Lazarowicz (Edinburgh North and Leith) (Lab/Co-op)]

My hon. Friend is right that we should be discussing that—actually, now is not when we should be discussing it, because it is an outrage that we have 20 minutes or so left for speeches on a matter that could have been discussed at much greater length before. We all know that half the time in Parliament we are not debating Bills and there are no votes, so more time could have been made available to discuss fracking at a much earlier stage, and the Government could and should have made more time available now.

[Joan Walley]

I agree with my hon. Friend about having more time. People in this country will not forgive us for not having the time necessary to scrutinise this Bill in detail. We could well end up with a fossil fuel industry in 15 years’ time, precisely when we should be phasing out fossil fuels. That is what we have signed up to in international agreements, but we could well end up with an industry that has not been properly regulated because of these failures on overall strategic assessments.