Hydraulic Fracturing: North East Derbyshire
Debate between Rachael Maskell and Lee Rowley(7 years ago)
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Lee Rowley
The hon. Lady brings up an important point—one that I will come to later in my speech, because it is vital to understand that specific point before we conclude.
Some will argue from an environmental perspective, some from a perspective on the sheer imposition of activity, and others will be concerned about the uncertainty that fracking brings, for a multitude of reasons, which I cannot hope to go into in this short debate. Others would simply point to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy opinion tracker on fracking, which shows that only 16% of people were in favour of fracking in the latest survey in August this year.
I acknowledge that the Government take a different view from me and many of my residents. I accept the place the Government start from—I have no criticism of that—which is that we need to improve our energy security, diversify our energy mix and ensure we can bridge to the future when renewables can take on a greater share of the energy generation that we need in this country, but I do not agree with the Government’s conclusion on this particular issue.
I accept that energy production has fallen by over a half since 2000, that we are back to pre-North sea oil levels of imports and that we are obtaining an increasing volume of gas from Qatar to heat our homes. I accept that renewable energy remains at a smaller level of energy generation than we would all hope, although it has grown massively from negligible levels just a few decades ago. Even as a fracking sceptic, I accept that there is a debate to be had on how we continue to keep our homes warm, our cars moving and our factories working.
Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)
City of York Council policy is to not have fracking, yet INEOS Upstream is at its heels. In Kirby Misperton, 99.2% of the community in a survey said they did not want fracking, but fracking is now going ahead. Is it not vital that we listen to the community and also the environmental protectors, who are there night after night and day after day protecting that site at Kirby Misperton, wanting to ensure that those environmental standards are upheld?