Ban on Fracking for Shale Gas Bill

Simon Hoare Excerpts

Wednesday 19th October 2022 Commons Chamber

[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

The right hon. Gentleman is making a compelling case against fracking with which I fully agree. Does he agree with me that, for all the potential downsides he has referenced, there is absolutely no guarantee that any shale gas extracted would be sold in the national domestic market? It would go to the highest bidder. There could be real downsides for our communities with no obvious uplift in supply.

[Edward Miliband]

The hon. Gentleman puts it incredibly well. That is why what the Government are coming up with is such a nonsense idea.

The Government are breaking not just a manifesto promise—no doubt they will say that the manifesto was drawn up before the Russian invasion of Ukraine—but a promise made by Ministers in April this year. The Business Secretary’s response is not to abide by the promise but to try to shift the goalposts. In his immortal words, which I hope MPs will take back to their constituents,

“tolerating a higher degree of risk and disturbance appears to us to be in the national interest”—[Official Report, 22 September 2022; Vol. 719, c. 40WS.]

I think that could be a description of the Government. This is a matter of trust. How can communities across this country trust a Government who say one thing categorically in their manifesto, repeat it in April, and then go back on their word with no mandate from the British people?

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Not at the moment.

We want to ensure that the consultation considers the views of regional Mayors and local authorities, as well as the immediate concerns of those most directly affected. I also want it to consider the views of MPs, as well as the use of local referendums, as I said to my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton (Nick Gibb). We will consult on the mechanism, but I can assure the House that any process of evidencing local support must be independent rather than directly by the companies themselves, and if evidence of appropriate local support for any development is insufficient, that development should not proceed. Local communities will have a veto, so I can assure my hon. Friend the Member for Rother Valley (Alexander Stafford) that if the people in his constituency do not want fracking, they will not have it.

[Simon Hoare]

Could my right hon. Friend confirm, for clarity’s sake, that the moratorium will remain in place while the process of consultation is agreed and that it will remain in place until it is approved by a positive vote in this place following a debate on the Floor of the House? Can he also confirm that the Government will indeed press their amendment today to a Division, if time allows and such circumstances are created?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend, and I would like to make it absolutely clear that we need local consent before anything happens.

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[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Let me be absolutely clear: local communities will have a veto. If fracking does not get local consent—what form that local consent must take will be consulted on, and it could be, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Bognor Regis and Littlehampton asked, by local referendum. That is what the consultation will be about. If local consent is withheld, that is a veto and it will not be overruled by national Government.

[Simon Hoare]

In fairness, the Secretary of State is trying to address the serious concern that he knows exists on these Benches, and many of us are grateful to him for that. I think he said this in response to my earlier intervention, but I would like him to clarify this point. When he brings back the local consent process, the tick-box programme, if the House votes against it, the moratorium on fracking by its very definition will remain in place. Will he confirm that point for absolute clarity, and say that today is not the end of the matter?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

My hon. Friend is right to say that today is not the end of the matter. If the House were not to accept the local consent mechanism, there would be no ability for local communities to give consent, and that would mean a veto were in place.

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[Richard Graham]

My right hon. Friend is absolutely right—Yorkshiremen so often are, as the Minister knows. Local planning approval should absolutely be at the heart of the definition of local consent.

[Simon Hoare]

The Secretary of State used the word “veto”, not objection, so there is no business of appeals or anything else. If the local community vetoes it, it is dead—strangled, kaput.

[Richard Graham]

I think we are all broadly in agreement on that; I hope that the Minister is in listening mode.

The perfect solution would have been to get back to the 2019 manifesto, as the Prime Minister has urged us to do in many instances. That would have taken us back to the moratorium, which was a settled position that the whole country accepted. None the less, I recognise that some hon. Members think there may be virtue in fracking. As the Secretary of State likes to say—his nine-word mantra—everything has changed because of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. That is true, and there may be worse to come—who knows what nuclear weapons might be deployed and what impact that might have on energy and all the rest of it.

We should accept, as should the Labour party, that there may be a role for shale gas should the scientific evidence support it and should local consent indicate that communities support it. It is fair enough for the Secretary of State to say that we should look at it, but I urge him to have a free vote on the definition when it comes back to the House.

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[Simon Hoare (North Dorset) (Con)]

First of all, may I thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, a long-standing friend, for how he has approached today’s debate? The assurances he has given to the House should be taken seriously and with the sincerity with which he made them. They have been enormously helpful.

My opposition to fracking is well known. I would say to anybody who is uncertain about the merits of new exploration and exploitation of fossil fuels that they should watch—on playback if they did not see it on Sunday —the concluding episode of “Frozen Planet II”. Only an idiot would think that our planet could sustain new forms and new exploitations of fossil fuels into our environment. I am not entirely sure why this has been made a matter of confidence, and I am still less certain why His Majesty’s Government have decided to resurrect an issue that I thought had been interred, quite properly, some little while ago. However, I am absolutely convinced that fracking is not going to happen. These are bald men fighting over a comb. It is not going to occur. No local community is going to grant consent. I would love to vote against fracking tonight, but like my hon. Friend the Member for Hazel Grove (Mr Wragg) I want to keep my voice and my vote to help shape the future of the party I have been a member of since 1985, and I am not prepared to throw that away on something which, as I say, is not going to happen.

I agree with those who have called for a free vote. There should be a free vote once my right hon. Friend has undertaken the consultation and the matrix of that consultation has been sorted out. It is not, however, an esoteric point to say, as a point of principle, that His Majesty’s Opposition should take control of the Order Paper. We have, dare I say it, quite enough chaos at the moment without adding to it. It is a strange day when the Labour party is trying hold us to a manifesto commitment I was proud to stand on in 2019 to maintain a moratorium. The key thing is that the moratorium remains in place unless or until a new regulatory system is introduced. From listening to the debate today and having been privy to conversations with many colleagues on the Conservative Benches over the past few days, it is my very firm belief that that day will never dawn.