Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Rebecca Long Bailey Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Rebecca Long Bailey (Salford and Eccles) (Lab)]

Fracking will not solve the energy crisis. Indeed, the shale gas extracted by fracking would make no difference to gas prices and is a more expensive alternative to renewables. Further, fracking would demonstrably increase the risk of local earth tremors, as recently confirmed by the British Geological Survey.

On the wider environmental impact, Greenpeace says:

“Not only is fracking bad for our climate, it risks causing air, water and noise pollution. It uses toxic chemicals that may not be regulated well enough. An accident could mean that these chemicals leak into water supplies or cause pollution above ground. In fact, this has happened many times in the US.”

With all this in mind, why on earth would the Government pursue a strategy that poses such risks and flies in the face of efforts to tackle climate change? Well, the author and climate commentator Naomi Klein calls it

“the Shock Doctrine: the exploitation of wrenching crises to smuggle through policies that devour the public sphere and further enrich a small elite.”

This bandit capitalism extends beyond just fracking into the way the Government approach our whole energy system. The pursuit of markets at all costs, with little state intervention, keeps leading to the same problems: complex, poorly designed mechanisms, open to gaming and profiteering, that deliver poor value for money and poor environmental outcomes, if they deliver at all. When that system fails, as it is failing now, well, it is everybody else’s problem.

A new generation is now calling for change, a green new deal and a green jobs revolution that distributes costs and rewards progressively, deepens economic democracy and kick-starts an industrial strategy to rebuild and light up Britain. We get it on this side of the House, but I am worried that we will miss this chance. Worse, I am frightened that, although numerous Conservative Members may speak out against fracking, the fact remains that they are still in a Government led by an environmental and economic vandal.

The clock may well be ticking on the Prime Minister’s days in office but, as Naomi Klein sadly states,

“When powerful ideologies are challenged by hard evidence from the real world, they rarely die off completely…A few true believers always remain to tell one another that the problem wasn’t with the ideology; it was the weakness of leaders who did not apply the rules with sufficient rigor.”

That is why today is so important. That is why across this House we have a moral duty to vote in favour of this motion, to introduce a Bill to ban hydraulic fracking for shale gas once and for all.