Permitted Development and Shale Gas Exploration

Rosie Cooper Excerpts
Thursday 28th March 2019

(5 years ago)

Commons Chamber
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Wera Hobhouse Portrait Wera Hobhouse
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I certainly agree that we do not really have comparative data. Fracking is hailed as this new thing that would reduce global warming, but it absolutely does not.

Giving permitted development rights to shale gas exploration would mean local communities being removed from the decision-making process. That is one of my biggest concerns. This issue was picked up by the report of the Housing, Communities and Local Government Committee, which concludes:

“Shale gas development of any type should not be classed as a permitted development. Given the contentious nature of fracking, local communities should be able to have a say in whether this type of development takes place, particularly as concerns about the construction, locations and cumulative impact of drill pads are yet to be assuaged by the Government”.

Rosie Cooper Portrait Rosie Cooper (West Lancashire) (Lab)
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Will the hon. Lady give way?

Wera Hobhouse Portrait Wera Hobhouse
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I really have to get on now.

Since the Government proposals were announced, 300,000 people have signed petitions against them and 40 councils have passed motions to reject them. With such widespread opposition, giving fracking companies access to permitted development rights would not simply speed up the process; it would serve to muzzle opposition, effectively silencing local communities. This is outrageous and I hope that colleagues across the House will join me in voicing their strongest opposition.

The consultation that looked at making larger fracking sites part of the nationally significant infrastructure regime is entirely incoherent and, frankly, dangerous. According to the Select Committee report, there is no precedent for this classification. Shale gas extraction sites fail to meet the criteria that normally determine nationally significant infrastructure. The report suggests that this issue would undermine the ideals on which nationally significant infrastructure was founded, and would damage the relationship between fracking companies and the communities they are placed within. Combined with permitted development rights, this adds to the Government’s callous attempt to take the decision-making process away from local communities. Shale gas exploration and extraction would be a decision for private companies and the Government, bypassing those who are most affected by it.

Let me turn to the climate crisis. The big problem that we face is the Government’s energy strategy and our continued reliance on fossil fuels. Fracking is not sustainable, and even classifying it as a transitional fossil fuel does not stand up to the science. It recently emerged that investing in fracking would produce as many carbon emissions as 300 million new cars. It is blatantly obvious that the Tory Government favour fracking over renewable energy. The Environmental Audit Committee found that investment in renewable energy had fallen by 56% in 2017, which was the greatest decline of any country that year. In May 2018, investment in renewables was at its lowest in 10 years, despite the claims by the Government that renewable energy is booming. That must be wrong if we must now urgently turn our attention to becoming carbon zero before 2050.

The recently released IPCC report states that globally we must become carbon zero by 2050, if we are to limit a global temperature rise to 1.5 °C. Scientists have concluded that a temperature rise that is higher than that will bring irreversible damage. The IPCC report gives us 12 years to completely transition away from fossil fuels in order to prevent this from happening— 12 years. With the proximity of that deadline, how can this Government argue that now is the time to be rushing into a massive national project of shale gas production? My view, which I hope will be shared by others in this House, is that they absolutely should not. We must reinvest in renewable energy. This Government have removed subsidies for onshore wind and have spearheaded a 65% cut in subsidies for household solar panels. The 2017 Budget ruled out additional investment in renewables before 2025. Yet communities up and down the country are asking for more investment in renewables. Only a few weeks ago, our streets were filled with schoolchildren who were making their voices heard and saying that the climate crisis is the biggest issue for them.

We urgently need a culture change. All Government Departments should have sustainability and a zero-carbon target at their core. As a developed country, we should lead the fight against climate chaos, but this Government have gone in completely the opposite direction. Policies such as those proposed by the Government stand in the way of progress. This Government cannot keep prioritising big oil over the urgent need to combat climate chaos. They have to drop these proposals. As a country, we must legislate in a way that restricts fossil fuel industries and instead invests heavily in renewable energy. There is no time to lose. We owe it to ourselves and future generations.

--- Later in debate ---
Louise Haigh Portrait Louise Haigh (Sheffield, Heeley) (Lab)
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It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Wells (James Heappey). The Government are considering bypassing local authorities entirely and removing the need for planning permission for fracking, because fracking has little or no support in our communities. Ministers have been hypnotised by the success story in the United States, without considering the critical difference between the US and the UK, which is that the US has vast tracts of low-density land that it can exploit. For fracking to be a viable part of our energy mix in the UK, two things are necessary—tracts of land with low population, and broad-based community support—but we have neither.

The Bowland shale gasfield, which is by far the most sizeable in the UK, is where the viability of fracking will live or die. It covers land from Lancaster in the north to Sheffield in the south and Whitby in the north-east. One well—just one—has been introduced to that basin, in the teeth of opposition, and even that has lain dormant for many months due to tremors. The gasfield covers almost all the major metropolitan centres of the north of England: Liverpool, Manchester, Preston and, on the right side of the Pennines, Derby, Sheffield, York and north Leeds. It is an absurdity that the Government think that a fracking basin that covers a population that runs into many millions is viable.

Rather than recognise those inherent flaws, which are caused by trying to impose an industry with a dubious environmental record on a highly populated sweep of land, the Government are instead trying to override the local population entirely. If communities cannot exercise their democratic right to oppose fracking through the planning system, how can the Government maintain the presence of localism? There is no broad consent for fracking in the way that there often is for other uses of the national infrastructure projects regime.

Rosie Cooper Portrait Rosie Cooper
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Will my hon. Friend acknowledge that it was the elected members on Lancashire County Council who voted not to have fracking at Preston New Road, and that it is the Government who turned their back on those people—my constituents? Despite all their nods to localism, what the Government are saying is that localism and local opinion is well and truly buried.

Louise Haigh Portrait Louise Haigh
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My hon. Friend is absolutely right. There can be no pretence to localism when the Government are riding roughshod over the voices and rights of local authorities and local people, not least because of the documented seismicity risks. Since October last year the Preston New Road operation has triggered three red level tremors and 57 earthquakes, not to mention the risk to aquifers. Denying the local community a meaningful say is utterly anti-democratic and perverse.

It is not too late for the Government to rethink their approach and recognise that the obstacles they find in their way should not just be bulldozed through inappropriate legislation. At a fundamental level, the prospects for an advanced shale gas industry in the UK are completely and utterly flawed.