Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of applying the climate compatibility checkpoint design to the development of existing licenses for domestic gas exploration and extraction.

Development under existing licences is already subject to rigorous examination by our expert regulators. This includes an environmental impact assessment by the Offshore Petroleum Regulator for Environment and Decommissioning (OPRED), net zero related assessments by the North Sea Transition Authority which assesses the full societal cost of greenhouse gas emissions of proposed projects and has a clear emissions reduction focus in its stewardship activities.