Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Mark Menzies Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)]

As always, it is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Alan Brown). Anyone listening to us can tell that we clearly come from the same part of the world.

The matter before us today is of great importance to my Fylde constituency. I begin by saying to those on the Treasury Bench that my vote today is very much conditional on what the Secretary of State has already said and on what the Prime Minister said to me at Prime Minister’s questions. The moratorium was a manifesto commitment that each and every Conservative Member stood on, campaigned on and was elected on, and it is no secret that I would much rather the moratorium remained in place.

The manifesto commitment said:

“We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.”

We in Fylde will not forget that fracking in our communities has twice led to national moratoriums. For people in Fylde, this is not a debate of what might happen; it is about not repeating events that have happened. Those events impacted on our countryside, our people, our homes and our communities.

I continue, as I always have, to take an evidence-based approach, but the geology has not changed; neither has the science. The industry has had more than a decade to show that fracking can be carried out safely in Fylde. Every time it has tried, the same thing has happened. We cannot keep doing the same thing, hoping for a different outcome. The 2019 seismic event proves that. The only conclusion I can reach from the evidence is that Fylde and its geology remain wholly unsuitable for fracking.

If this motion remains unamended, I simply cannot support it today. As someone with genuine concerns, I thank the Labour party for giving the House the opportunity to debate this critical issue, but I am afraid that the motion goes too far. Simply taking control of the Order Paper is not something I can support. Just as I opposed it during the Brexit votes, I am unwilling to reopen that Pandora’s box. Once we do that, where on earth does it end?

My only objective is to get the right outcome for the people of Fylde. I gently remind the Labour party that it was the last Labour Government who issued the fracking licences in Fylde. They issued those licences without the gold standard of regulation for which I fought for many years and secured. That includes the traffic light system and the seismic limit of 0.5, and the fracking industry signed up to both.

The 2.9 event in Preston New Road in August 2019 was 251 times more powerful than the industry’s own safety limit. In reply to me this afternoon, the Prime Minister mentioned that she will look at the regulations. Well, I urge her and the Government to ensure that any look at regulations has, at its heart, the desire to maintain a safe approach to seismic limits.

If the industry were to have its way and the limit were raised to 3.5—bearing in mind that Preston New Road was 2.9—the limit would be 1,000 times more powerful than the previous limit of 0.5 and four times more powerful than the August 2019 event that led to the second national moratorium.

My vote is based on the good faith that the Prime Minister has shown me and my constituents over recent weeks, and the promises that she made earlier in this House. The Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy is very excited by the prospect of local compensation and incentives to local communities, but he should not confuse that with the thought that communities can be bought. The people of Fylde are not for sale and their principles are not up for auction. They will look at this on the facts and the safety merits first and foremost.

[Yasmin Qureshi]

The hon. Gentleman may not be aware but, when fracking was happening in Fylde, I went out there to protest against it. He talks about carrying the people, but Bolton South East and the whole north-west have been against fracking. The Secretary of State is listening, and I tell him that we in the north-west do not want fracking.

[Mark Menzies]

I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention, and the point she makes is a powerful one that stands on its own.

In his letter, the Secretary of State has confirmed that the Government will launch a consultation next month to assess how local consent is to be gauged and has committed to put this vote to the House—I welcome that. I also welcome the fact that he has agreed today to ensure that there is, in effect, a local veto—or whatever words people wish to use for it—and that the voices of the people in Fylde will be listened to in a fair, transparent and independent way. I thank him for listening to them. It is not up to the fracking companies to determine whether local consent exists; an independent, transparent alternative to that must be found, and I thank those on the Treasury Bench for agreeing to it. May I also make it clear that it is important that the local planning process must remain in place and that we rule out any nationally significant infrastructure projects referral? If we are committed to localism, I can think of no more important issue than the one before the House today.

Ultimately, I am able to vote for the amendment because I believe that the people of Fylde share my conviction that the answer from our communities is no to fracking, and when they say no to fracking, I expect the Government to deliver and to hear that no does mean no.

[Wera Hobhouse (Bath) (LD)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree that this is about not only seismic activity and local consent, but climate change, and that the Government should listen to the Climate Change Committee and produce a report about the climate impact of fracking?

[Mark Menzies]

The hon. Lady makes an important point.

On energy security, let me say that there is nobody more committed to it than myself; we manufacture all the nuclear fuel for the UK in my constituency, at Westinghouse. But in order to make up the shortfall of the amount of gas we import, we will be looking at drilling somewhere in the region of 6,000 to 10,000 wells. The quantities we are talking about are astronomical and the timescales involved mean we are not going to get gas into the network any time in the next two years. There is no infrastructure to get the gas from these wells into the grid. The alternative is building gas-fired power stations to turn this into electricity and feed it in through wires, but again the timescales involved simply do not exist. So the energy security argument, important though it is, does not even stack up in the timescales the Government are talking about.

In conclusion, I welcome the fair, transparent and meaningful consultation that both the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State have committed to today. That gives the people of Fylde the opportunity to reject fracking and, more importantly, to have their voice heard.

[Yvette Cooper (Normanton, Pontefract and Castleford) (Lab)]

On a point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker. The Home Secretary has been sacked or has resigned this afternoon—this is utter chaos. The Prime Minister appears to have appointed and sacked both a Chancellor and a Home Secretary, two of the great offices of state, in the space of six weeks. This is no way to run a Government. Have you had any indication from the Prime Minister that she will come to this House to answer questions arising from this?

The former Home Secretary, the right hon. and learned Member for Fareham (Suella Braverman), says in her resignation letter that she sent

“an official document…a draft Written Ministerial Statement about migration, due for publication”

from her personal email, and that this was against the rules. This raises huge questions about why a Home Secretary who was responsible for security was breaching basic rules. There are also rumours that in fact this statement on migration had not been agreed across the Government, there were major disagreements and that it had been blocked by the Chancellor. She also says in her letter that she has

“concerns about the direction of this government”

and the breaking of “key pledges”. She says very pointedly that they have made mistakes and that

“hoping things will magically come right is not serious politics.”

There is clearly huge chaos at the heart of the Government. Home affairs is far too important for this kind of chaos. This is about security, public safety and the issues covered by the great offices of state. Given that the Government seem to be imploding, we clearly need not simply a change of Home Secretary, but a change of Government. Can we get a new statement to this House?