UK Shale Gas
Debate between Tessa Munt and Michael Fallon(11 years, 5 months ago)
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Michael Fallon
It is certainly the responsibility of the operator to disclose that; but obviously, it is for the Environment Agency or SEPA to ensure that what is disclosed is accurate. If the hon. Gentleman will allow me to write to him on that point to ensure that there is a procedure whereby that information is verified, I would be happy to do so.
Tessa Munt
I hope that the Minister will forgive me a brief intervention. In my experience, the Environment Agency always gives at least a week’s notice, sometimes more, of a visit to inspect when it is looking at procedures. I wonder whether the Minister, while he is writing about the subject, might consider ensuring that spot checks and investigations take place without a period of notice given to the body that is doing the drilling.
Michael Fallon
I will certainly consider that suggestion, and if I may, I will write to my hon. Friend about it.
The hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion also asked me about the differences in well designs between operations here and in the United States and about the possibility that we might have methane leaks on the scale that we have seen in Pennsylvania. I visited the United States to talk to experts, and I am aware that the standard of environmental regulation has varied widely across the different states of America. They do not have the overall, national regulatory system that we have. Practices appear to have been tolerated in some states that would not be acceptable in others.
I understand that the repertoire of well design technology is essentially the same as in the United States, but the regulatory framework in the United Kingdom is quite different. Here, we have a national regulator—the Health and Safety Executive—which will require a full review of well design and construction by an independent competent person. I should point out to the hon. Lady that the Royal Academy of Engineering commented that that was a highly valuable feature of the United Kingdom’s system. We can certainly learn from the experience in the United States, but I want to emphasise to her that we start from a position of having what the United States did not have—a system of national regulation.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Tessa Munt and Michael Fallon
Michael Fallon
The position is that insurance payments are now coming through to the company, so the financial situation is not quite as the hon. Gentleman describes it. I want to assure him that the Government are doing everything they possibly can to safeguard the financial future of the two collieries, and to assist the company in necessary restructuring following the disastrous fire at Daw Mill earlier this year.
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Many village halls, such as the one in East Brent in my patch, have applied for Big Lottery awards for all funding to install PV solar panels and use feed-in tariffs as an invaluable source of income to make repayments on loans to complete their projects. It is a feature of the lottery that it is funded not by Government but by individuals, and that that grant funding is made completely independent of government, as is stated on its website and in its literature. Ofgem seems to have decided in February 2013 that lottery funding is—