09:30 Helen Morgan (Liberal Democrat)

Britain cannot produce enough gas from fracking to reduce the global gas price, so it will not reduce our energy bills, especially when electricity from renewable sources is the cheapest form of energy we can produce. Investing in renewables—not only the cheapest, but the cleanest form of energy—is the best way to bring down our bills and our carbon emissions. As COP27 meets in Sharm El Sheikh and the lack of progress on the climate emergency is brought to international attention, it would be disastrous for the UK to start novel types of fossil fuel extraction. We need to find ways to keep fossil fuels in the ground, not waste effort looking for ever more inventive ways of extracting them.

Local communities affected by fracking have already expressed their opposition to the lifting of the moratorium; so, too, have the vast majority of the British people, who in 2019 voted for parties that opposed fracking in some form or another. Fracking simply will not bring down our energy bills, and if we are to address the energy problems the country faces, we must rapidly invest in renewable energy sources. The science has not changed either, and fracking is just as unsafe and unreliable as it was three years ago. I would welcome the Government’s confirmation of that point.

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09:49 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat)

Fracked fuel is a fossil fuel. Fracking flies in the face of our net zero commitment. The Government’s own experts said that seismic activity caused by hydraulic fracking was not safe. Fracking has been linked to multiple health defects. It is disgraceful that the Government even considered lifting the ban and putting the population at risk.

The Government’s flirtation with fracking proves their unserious approach to climate change and the environment. I am afraid that will not change under the new Prime Minister. When he was Chancellor, the Prime Minister introduced a windfall tax incentivising firms to invest in fossil fuel extraction. As Prime Minister, he had to be dragged to COP27. Those are not the actions of someone who will treat the climate emergency with the urgency it demands.

Investing heavily in renewables is clearly the answer to the UK’s energy crisis. However, securing local consent is vital, even for popular solutions such as renewables. Local communities must be brought on board for the net zero transition; after all, they are the ones who will have to bear a lot of the costs, host new infrastructure in their neighbourhoods, and alter their routines and behaviours. Without that, there is a risk that people will not welcome or accept the necessary changes. The consequences of that would make our progress to net zero much lengthier, more costly and more contested. It would be less inclusive, equitable and environmentally sustainable.

Local consent is what we Liberal Democrats always ask for. The most successful net zero projects have local consent. Where possible, should projects not be undertaken by local people with a stake in them? Local communities are best placed to provide detailed knowledge of their local area. They have expert understanding of how their area functions and what their communities value.

The Government must remove the shackles from local authorities and give them the powers and funding they need as partners in reaching net zero. In Bath and North East Somerset, domestic and business solar capacity has doubled since our council declared a climate emergency in 2019. These local initiatives should be encouraged by the Government but, instead, they are being restricted by hollowed-out local authority budgets and our planning laws.

Community energy projects must also be encouraged. They allow people to purchase clean electricity directly from a local supply company or co-operative. That ensures that every pound spent on powering our homes or cars is recycled back into the local community. Energy projects should be carried by our local communities, and they are the ones who need to provide consent, whatever the solutions. Community energy is one of the few tried and tested means of engaging people in energy systems. In my constituency, Bath and West Community Energy has installed enough renewable energy to power nearly 4,500 homes. I take this opportunity—it is a good opportunity, because we are talking about local consent and local energy provision—to ask the Minister again whether he will back the Local Electricity Bill, which is supported by more than half of MPs across the House.

Achieving local consent is crucial if we are serious about meeting our net zero targets. Gaining local consent for fracking was never going to happen. However, local communities passionately support renewable projects. They just need the Government to empower them to deliver those projects—and we need a Government that finally bans fracked fuel, which flies in the face of our net zero commitments.

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09:55 Kerry McCarthy (Labour)

Is this not also a sign that the Government are entirely behind the curve? When fracking was mooted a decade ago as a transition fuel, it might have been something that could be considered, because the legislation at the time was aiming only for 80% renewable energy by 2050. Since 2018, we have known that we need to get to 100%, so transition fuels are a complete nonsense. Does the hon. Lady agree?

The Minister for Climate, the right hon. Member for Beverley and Holderness, tried to gaslight the British public with his recent claim that fracking is green. He has also tried to say that oil and gas exploration in the North sea is green because the alternative is importing it, so we would have the extra costs of importing from elsewhere. Clearly, the green alternative is renewables. I would ask the Minister for Climate why, if he was right to say that fracking is a green option, it is opposed by so many of his colleagues, including the right hon. Member for Reading West (Alok Sharma), who was the President of COP26, and the right hon. Member for Kingswood (Chris Skidmore), who is conducting the net zero review. Extracting fossil fuels will never be green, and I hope that the Minister who is here today will make that clear when he replies to the debate.

Right now, there is immense pressure at COP27 to secure genuinely ambitious agreements to leave fossil fuels in the ground for good. Sending a clear message about our commitment to net zero and the move away from fossil fuels is vital, but the Government have been sending out such mixed signals—as has been said, the Prime Minister was not even going to go to COP, and had to be dragged there. That sends a terrible message about our global leadership. If our climate commitments are called into question, how can we expect other people to step up to the plate? It is time to end any doubts about the UK’s commitment to climate action. Listening to communities and implementing a permanent ban on fracking, and bringing back onshore wind and solar, would be a good start.

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10:08 George Freeman (Conservative)

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley, in the absence of the Minister for Climate, my right hon. Friend the Member for Beverley and Holderness (Graham Stuart), who is dealing with these very issues at COP27 today. I congratulate the hon. Member for North Shropshire (Helen Morgan); she is a very exciting new Member of Parliament, and she has done well today in bringing this issue to the attention of the House.

Let me start by setting the scene. As someone who has been in this House for 12 years and has been watching it for about 30, I think it is fair to say—I can see that colleagues around the House feel the same way—that, as a country, for decades we have rather taken energy for granted. Until about 15 years ago we presumed it was something that would always be there, very cheaply, at the flick of a switch, and we did not have to worry too much about it. That position has changed, rather belatedly but dramatically, in the last 15 years. I pay tribute to the last climate change Minister in the Labour Government before 2010, who started a profound acceleration of our leadership on net zero. I am proud that the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition between 2010 and 2015, and then the Conservative Government, have taken that forward. Our leadership on net zero has come on leaps and bounds.

The scale of that success bears repeating. Since 1990, we have managed to grow the economy by about 40% and the net zero sector by around 70%. We have managed to demonstrate that it is possible to have green growth. There has been extraordinary progress. I accept, as I think everyone does, that as a country we were late to this. However, low-carbon electricity now gives us around half of our total generation, we have installed 99% of our solar capacity since 2010, the onshore wind industry is already generating over 14 GW and is happily accepted around the country—onshore wind is cheap—and we have put £30 billion of domestic investment into the green industrial revolution. Those are figures that, even 15 years ago, one might have been surprised to see. This country is genuinely leading in making the big transitional investments to move to net zero.

The Minister talks about the UK’s leadership in renewables, which is positive. Should there not be a Government ambition to be an exporter of renewable energy, since we have so many opportunities to share that with Europe? Is that not a brilliant opportunity when we are talking about global Britain and its leadership in renewables?

I thank the Minister for his detailed, helpful and comprehensive response. I read in the paper over the weekend about some of the innovation across the world on which we can interact with others. I understand that Morocco has an abundance of green energy, and, if the press are correct, that discussions are taking place between the UK Government and the Moroccan Government to export that green energy to the United Kingdom by an undersea channel. Is the Minister aware of that and if he is, could he elaborate on it?

As well as our groundbreaking leadership in the transition of our existing energy system to net zero supply, we are investing heavily in the technologies of tomorrow to ensure that we can be a global player in the great challenges we face. Agriculture and transport are the two biggest industries after energy that generate and use the most carbon and greenhouse gases, and we are hugely advanced in research and development in those sectors. I say that as a former Minister for future transport and for agritech. This country has a huge opportunity as part of the science superpower mission to generate solutions that we can export around the world, and I am proud of what we are doing.

The hon. Member makes an important point, which I personally agree with and the Government are sensitive to. Again, our constituents would think it perverse if, at the very time when our exposure to international food supply and agricultural supply chains has been exacerbated by the war in Ukraine and the pandemic, we were then to decide to take out of productive capacity huge areas of agricultural land. Agriculture is a great British industry and the agritech sector is developing net zero technologies that allow us to do clean and green agriculture. We do not want to undermine that industry.

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