15:25 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat)

I could not agree more. We have such a long way to go before we become carbon zero and it is so important. What are the Government doing promoting fracked fossil fuel over renewables? We are living through a global climate crisis.

I completely agree with the hon. Lady that we should not open up a new fossil fuel front and increase the contribution to climate change; she is absolutely right about that. On planning, my local authority has now twice voted overwhelmingly against fracking in nearby West Lancashire, which affects my constituency as well, but the authority’s views are completely ignored by the approach the Government are taking. Does that not demonstrate that significant local interests should be taken on board? It cannot just be a national Government issue in respect of permitted development rights.

I am enjoying the comments of the hon. Lady, my constituency neighbour, but for balance could she remind the House which country is top of the league table in the G20 for decarbonisation?

This country has made great strides, and we are leaders, but we will fall behind badly if we do not keep up that lead. That is what worries me. Things have gone badly wrong in the last three years. We are living through a global climate crisis and we must align our policies to become carbon zero before 2050. I am sure the Government have read the report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change.

On building infrastructure around these sites, does the hon. Lady agree that it is slightly hypocritical that the development arm of CDC Group—the Government-backed development bank—that invests in infrastructure outside Britain would not invest in shale gas because of the infrastructure and climate change risk, but for some reason we are happy to do it in our own country?

Let me turn to the climate crisis. The big problem that we face is the Government’s energy strategy and our continued reliance on fossil fuels. Fracking is not sustainable, and even classifying it as a transitional fossil fuel does not stand up to the science. It recently emerged that investing in fracking would produce as many carbon emissions as 300 million new cars. It is blatantly obvious that the Tory Government favour fracking over renewable energy. The Environmental Audit Committee found that investment in renewable energy had fallen by 56% in 2017, which was the greatest decline of any country that year. In May 2018, investment in renewables was at its lowest in 10 years, despite the claims by the Government that renewable energy is booming. That must be wrong if we must now urgently turn our attention to becoming carbon zero before 2050.

The recently released IPCC report states that globally we must become carbon zero by 2050, if we are to limit a global temperature rise to 1.5 °C. Scientists have concluded that a temperature rise that is higher than that will bring irreversible damage. The IPCC report gives us 12 years to completely transition away from fossil fuels in order to prevent this from happening— 12 years. With the proximity of that deadline, how can this Government argue that now is the time to be rushing into a massive national project of shale gas production? My view, which I hope will be shared by others in this House, is that they absolutely should not. We must reinvest in renewable energy. This Government have removed subsidies for onshore wind and have spearheaded a 65% cut in subsidies for household solar panels. The 2017 Budget ruled out additional investment in renewables before 2025. Yet communities up and down the country are asking for more investment in renewables. Only a few weeks ago, our streets were filled with schoolchildren who were making their voices heard and saying that the climate crisis is the biggest issue for them.

We urgently need a culture change. All Government Departments should have sustainability and a zero-carbon target at their core. As a developed country, we should lead the fight against climate chaos, but this Government have gone in completely the opposite direction. Policies such as those proposed by the Government stand in the way of progress. This Government cannot keep prioritising big oil over the urgent need to combat climate chaos. They have to drop these proposals. As a country, we must legislate in a way that restricts fossil fuel industries and instead invests heavily in renewable energy. There is no time to lose. We owe it to ourselves and future generations.

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15:41 Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)

I was elected in 2010. At the point of my election, it became very clear that shale gas activity—or, at that time, just gas activity—was taking place in my constituency. I would urge caution on Labour Members before they make this whole thing very political, because it was the actions of the previous Labour Government that delivered shale gas to my constituency. I say to the Liberal Democrats that it was a huge privilege to work in the then Department of Energy and Climate Change as Parliamentary Private Secretary to the then Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey), who is in his place today. Much of the work that was done on putting in traffic lights and some of the regulatory framework should have been done by the Labour Government before they gave the green light to proceed with shale gas and fracking, but none of it was.

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15:48 Mark Hendrick (Labour)

It is good to see the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) in his place. He was the Secretary of State at the time, and I recall being present in his office when he gave a great number of assurances about how fracking would be conducted in Lancashire. Of course, things have turned out rather differently from what he said at the time. He was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change between 2012 and 2015, and he made the following statement to The Guardian . He said:

“I wanted to make sure that…we have tough regulations to tackle things like methane emissions and any pollution to make sure that we have got things like water sustainability right.”

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16:03 Ed Davey (Liberal Democrat)

On that point, does my right hon. Friend agree that it is interesting to compare the Government’s planning approach to fracking with their planning approach to renewable energy?

I bring that to the House’s attention because those are completely the wrong priorities, not least because of the climate change crisis. If anything, I have got more sceptical about fracking over the years, because the evidence—particularly after Paris—is that we need to be even more rigorous in reducing our fossil fuel usage. Now that we have gone from a 2° target to a 1.5° target, we have to push the renewable agenda further forward.

I would say to the Minister that when we were thinking about shale gas, we were thinking about making sure it was linked to technologies such as carbon capture and storage, which are now in abeyance. Without CCS, there is much less of an argument for fracked gas. Moreover, renewables technology has increased and improved dramatically. Prices have come down much further. We have seen storage technology come on. We are not going to need the gas that people thought we would need just a few years ago.

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16:08 James Heappey (Wells) (Con)

There is, however, an important distinction to make, which my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) tried to introduce to the hon. Lady during her speech. We should not conflate fracking—where we get the gas from—with the role of gas in our energy system in the interim. I absolutely understand the point she made about methane leakage and the potency of methane as a greenhouse gas. Fundamentally, however, the decision over whether to go big on fracking now in the UK is an immediate decision—it is a planning decision and an energy policy decision—and there is a clear argument against it. However, if we conflate that immediacy with the more measured approach that we need to take to removing gas from our energy system, that risks diluting what is a very important debate.

I commend to the hon. Member for Bath, and other Members, the work that I have been doing with the right hon. Member for Orkney and Shetland (Mr Carmichael) and the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) on the future of the gas grid. There is a real opportunity to introduce low-carbon gases into the natural gas mix in our gas system immediately, and to start to decarbonise, which will have a profound impact on the decarbonisation of heat. The longer-term goal is the arrival of a hydrogen based gas system that would meet the needs of decarbonising heat, and will also have an exciting role in transport and for inter-seasonal long-term energy storage.

Interestingly, the right hon. Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Sir Edward Davey) mentioned carbon capture and storage. The real opportunity with hydrogen—particularly pre-combustion carbon capture and storage technologies—is that instead of CCS being something that one spends £1 billion a time on, if it is linked to the production of hydrogen and the emergence of a hydrogen economy, CCS becomes more affordable because it is part of that whole package, which is an exciting proposal.

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16:19 Thangam Debbonaire (Bristol West) (Lab)

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North East Derbyshire (Lee Rowley), who argued very well for his community. I recently said in this Chamber that I wanted to be able to look the next generation of Debbonaires in the eye when they are 18 and say that I had fulfilled my promise for us to stop climate change—for us to be the generation of policy makers who halted it and even managed to reverse it—but we are not going to do that unless we stop taking new fossil fuel sources out of the ground and invest instead in renewables.

Bristol has declared a climate change emergency. Local communities in my constituency are taking part in many different initiatives to do their bit, but local communities can do only so much, and we need national leadership. I really would like the Government to consider following Bristol’s lead and that of many other local councils around the country and declare a national climate and environment emergency, as Labour did earlier today, and take the policy actions that are needed. That includes stopping fracking.

In 2015, the Government declared that there would be no fracking in national parks and sites of special scientific interest, but I sat on a Delegated Legislation Committee—oh goodness, the thrill of those DLs—in which Government Members were suddenly shocked to realise that my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) was pointing out that the Committee was about to pass a regulation allowing fracking under national parks and SSSIs in certain circumstances. The most that they were able to muster was an abstention, but we voted against it. That was not what we were led to believe when the Infrastructure Act 2015 passed through Parliament. The public and Members were led to believe that there would be no permitted fracking under national parks and SSSIs. As well as the argument about climate change, there is an argument about protecting the countryside.

Most of all for me, however, the argument is about climate change. I want this to be the generation of politicians who declared that national and international climate emergency and put it into every single one of our policies, making sure that with every single decision we take, we think about how it will either contribute to or mitigate climate change. The young people I met outside in Parliament Square three weeks ago and in my constituency on other climate strike demonstrations and in schools want us to do that. They want us to stop fracking and to invest in carbon-neutral technologies. They want us to be the world leader that I know we can be, and I urge the Government to follow their lead.

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16:28 Justin Madders (Labour)

The Prime Minister has said that our climate is the most precious thing that we can pass on to the next generation, and we would all agree with that, but how can those fine words possibly be consistent with these proposed changes? The Committee on Climate Change has stated categorically that supporting unconventional gas or oil extraction is incompatible with meeting our binding targets under the Climate Change Act 2008. We have spent months in here trapped in a Brexit mess of our own making, and all the while the impact of climate change both at home and abroad is happening around us. Are we so wrapped up in our own squabbles that we fail to fully appreciate the enormity of this?

I fear that when we put all that together it is clear that we are sleepwalking into a climate catastrophe, and that unless we really begin to face up to the fact that we need to shift away from carbon-producing energy sources and we need to do it now, we will be the last generation to enjoy the benefits of industrialisation and it will it be the next generation who suffer the consequences of our selfish inaction.

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16:31 Geraint Davies (Swansea West) (Lab/Co-op)

Shale gas is 95% methane, and according to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change methane is 85 times more powerful than carbon dioxide for global warming, although the Government have kept to the 2013 figure of 36 times. That means that given that fugitive emissions are 5%, fracking is almost twice as bad as coal for global warming, and NASA has satellite imaging showing that the amount of methane has grown exponentially, having plateaued in the 1990s. So if we are to fulfil our Paris commitments, we cannot go forward with fracking. But instead, we see safeguards, tax incentives and the displacement of renewables; we see the end of onshore wind, nothing much in terms of solar, not having the Swansea tidal lagoon and so forth. We should be going in a completely different direction.

Our children are telling us about climate change. We should take that seriously, but with the possible advent of Brexit we may be in the hands of big multinationals using tribunals to fine us. If once they start fracking we withdraw tax concessions, they will fine us. In the case of Lone Pine v. Canada they charged the Canadian Government hundreds of millions of dollars because Quebec had a moratorium on fracking. Similarly Wales does not want to do any fracking, and if we go ahead with Brexit and with fracking as we are planning it, we will be under the cosh of multinationals as well as breaking our Paris commitments and ruining the future for our children.

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16:34 Matt Rodda (Labour)

It is a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Swansea West (Geraint Davies). For me, the context of this debate is quite simply the deeply worrying issue of climate change. We face a stark choice if we are to avoid extreme and potentially unstoppable change to the climate: do we continue to develop and exploit fossil fuels, or do we leave them in the ground? It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to stop dangerous climate change if we do not leave fossil fuels, including gas, in the ground. We can and must take a more responsible and sustainable approach, and that is why we need to stop the exploitation of shale gas.

I am conscious of the time, but I just want to add my support for a range of other points that have been made today. In particular, I would like to support and endorse the concerns that have been expressed about the relative weakness of the planning system and about the Government’s policy on energy—particularly renewable energy—and their deeply mistaken policy of cutting the feed-in tariff and not investing in wind power, solar energy and other renewables such as the tidal power project in Swansea bay. These mistaken energy policies stand in stark contrast to the policies of many other Governments, including the last Labour Government.

We have just 12 years left to reduce carbon emissions dramatically. Local communities around the country have serious and substantial concerns about fracking. Given the climate crisis and the need for radical change in energy provision, and given the indisputable local concerns, shale gas exploitation has to stop, and it has to stop now.

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16:36 Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)

We hear a lot from some people about the benefits of firing on with unconventional gas extraction, but not, rather surprisingly, from some Conservative Back Benchers today. Perhaps the Government should listen rather more closely to the voices in their own party on this issue. We have heard about the jobs that it will create and the energy gap that it will fill, and many of these extravagant claims are being made with quite Trump-esque glee. This seems somewhat at odds with the reality of what this messy, dirty process would offer. If the UK Government want to take an evidence-based approach, they will also be forced to take a little more seriously the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence supporting climate change. They must balance this fact against the rather weaker case for pressing down on the accelerator in the rush to frack the English countryside.

Even if it were established that fracking could be done safely, and even if the considerable environmental impacts of the process could somehow be removed, no amount of regulation would prevent it from being a fresh new source of greenhouse gas emissions, and that is really not the way to go. One can disregard the evidence on climate change, deny its existence, look the other way and whistle a happy tune but, like all destructive diseases, the longer it is left, the harder it becomes to fight. Climate change is the biggest man-made crisis facing this planet—far bigger, even, than the bourach known as Brexit. The schoolchildren who took to the streets calling for action are right, and they deserve to be listened to. They are fed up with politicians carrying on as normal—people who are stuck in the past, but who have the power to rob them of their futures.

It is undeniable that we have a long way to go to move away from our reliance on oil and gas, both economically and in our lifestyle choices. Offshore gas will still play a role in the UK’s energy mix for the foreseeable future, and I recognise the continued importance of the jobs that are currently dependent on the industry. However, Governments must pull together internationally to tackle climate change, and that will require us to move on from our fossil fuel dependence, not embrace new forms. Diving headfirst into onshore fracking explorations is completely the wrong direction for energy policy.

The good news, however, is that we do not need desperately to seek more gas under people’s homes in order to keep on the lights. We have the onshore and offshore renewable technologies needed to establish a successful and sustainable energy industry. Scotland is leading the world in marine renewable energy and is lucky to have a highly skilled workforce to deploy and the wind and the waves to be harnessed. With a quarter of Europe’s tidal and offshore wind resources and 10% of its wave potential, this is where the unwavering focus for Government support should be.

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16:42 Dr Roberta Blackman-Woods (City of Durham) (Lab)

To date, the Government simply have not addressed the serious areas of concern that I have outlined, so it is time for them to think again, not only about permitted development for fracking and using the NSIP regime for determination, but about fracking itself. Conservative plans to force through dangerous fracking would release CO 2 equivalent to the life emissions of almost 300 million cars. That would hugely add to climate change and undermine the Paris agreement, which is exactly what my hon. Friends the Members for Swansea West (Geraint Davies) and for Reading East (Matt Rodda) confirmed in the debate.

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16:49 Kit Malthouse (Conservative)

I thank all hon. Members who have participated in this interesting and fascinating debate. Domestic onshore gas production, including shale gas, has the potential to play a major role in further securing our energy supplies. The UK must have safe, secure and affordable supplies of energy with carbon emission levels that are consistent with the carbon budgets defined in the Climate Change Act 2008 and our international obligations. The written ministerial statements on energy and planning policy made by the Secretaries of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, and for Housing, Communities and Local Government on 17 May 2018 reiterated the Government’s view that there could be substantial benefits from the safe and sustainable exploration and development of our onshore shale gas resources.

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16:57 Wera Hobhouse (Liberal Democrat)

I thank all hon. Members from across the House for their powerful contributions to this important debate. There is real anger across the board about the Government riding roughshod over local communities, and not allowing local people a voice on shale gas exploration sites. Across the board, there are concerns about the environmental impacts, particularly the industrialisation of the countryside, water contamination and seismic activity. But most of all—I wish the Minister would listen—there is a concern that fracked fuel is a fossil fuel. The Government should entirely change direction and invest in renewables instead. Let us change direction, take some action on climate change and ditch fracking.

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