Shale Gas Production

Sammy Wilson Excerpts

Tuesday 15th March 2022 Commons Chamber

[Greg Hands]

I strongly commend my hon. Friend for his support for Government policy on energy, and particularly nuclear. He mentioned seismic limits; I was not the Energy Minister at the time, but I believe that tens of thousands of complaints came in to the Geological Society at the time of the drilling. That showed the magnitude of the public impact of some of the drilling at the time.

On my hon. Friend’s point on local consent, I refer him to what I said earlier about the importance of the need to bring local communities on board in respect of any of these projects. With pretty much every type of energy production, we need to bring the local community on board, and that is the case for fracking as well.

[Sammy Wilson (East Antrim) (DUP)]

There has been much hand-wringing in the House about the cost of energy, energy security and our reliance on outside sources, yet within our own country we have sufficient gas to do us for 50 years. Does the Minister think it is sensible to turn our back on the jobs and taxes and to spend money to buy gas overseas when we have an indigenous source, a pipeline across the United Kingdom and one of the richest and deepest shale gas seams in the world?

[Greg Hands]

We are not turning our back on anybody. We have been absolutely clear that it is vital for us to keep our energy diversity and our energy security. We are not turning our back on anybody or anything, but Government policy on this issue is unchanged: we need to see both the scientific evidence and the local community support before we can proceed, as we set out in our 2019 manifesto.