



On Tuesday, in a committee room in the House of Commons, the government will try to sneak through fracking regulations that are totally inadequate, completing their U-turn.



In January, under pressure from the public and MPs, ministers caved in and agreed to a crucial Labour amendment to the Infrastructure Bill. This ensured several safeguards had to be met before fracking could go ahead. It meant that fracking could not take place in areas where drinking water is collected or in protected sensitive areas. These areas include Britain’s glorious national parks and our vitally important wildlife sites.



Amber Rudd, now secretary of state for energy and climate change couldn’t have been clearer during the debate. She said: “We have agreed an outright ban on fracking in national parks, sites of special scientific interest (SSSIs) and areas of outstanding natural beauty.”



But just weeks after making this commitment, the government performed a U-turn in the Lords. Ministers sneaked in a weakened version of Labour’s protections. We responded by tabling an amendment in the Commons to reinstate the more stringent safeguards, but the Tories used parliamentary procedures to ensure that the debate overran so MPs were denied a chance to reverse those changes.

Now, the new Conservative government is once again using a parliamentary backdoor to put something through at the committee in the Commons this week. This isn’t good enough. This is a serious issue and it deserves a full debate on the floor of the House.

If these regulations are voted through on Tuesday, they will allow shale gas drilling to take place in drinking water protection zones and important wildlife sites (SSSI’s), as well as permit fracking under the ground below protected areas including national parks, areas of outstanding national beauty (AONB), the Broads and world heritage sites. In fact, the parent Act and the regulations are so contradictory, they risk potentially permitting fracking within and from the surface of these protected areas too.

We are going to be strongly opposing the government’s U-turn, and their weakened fracking regulations. We believe they fail to provide critical environmental safeguards: safeguards which we strongly believe must be re-introduced before any further developments in shale gas exploration can take place.

Labour believes fracking should be banned in our most sensitive and protected wildlife sites and landscapes. While uncertainties still remain over hazards to groundwater quality and water supplies, fracking should be prohibited in all water source protection zones. In the absence of these strong rules, fracking should not be allowed in this country.

We know that people up and down this country remain very concerned about the effects of fracking on their communities. These residents will not give up without a fight. As the chair of the Roseacre Awareness Group in Blackpool said “they [the Government] completely underestimated the scale of the opposition”. They were right, Lancashire county council rejected Cuadrilla’s application to frack for shale gas at Little Plumpton and Roseacre Wood.

This Government needs to listen to people’s worries and not railroad through changes to the legislation which may well have damaging and long lasting effects on our natural environment. It is completely hypocritical and inconsistent for Ministers to take control away from local people over controversial fracking decisions, while giving greater powers to local people to block windfarm applications.

The Government seems hell-bent on introducing fracking at any cost – more concerned about the potential cost of these protections for the industry, than addressing peoples’ legitimate fears about its environmental impact.

Labour has always been crystal clear that environmental safeguards can’t be cherry-picked. All the conditions need to be in place before we can be absolutely confident that any shale extraction can happen and must be done in a way which is consistent with achieving national commitments on climate change.

We hope MPs from across the House will join with Labour in voting against the government’s inadequate fracking rules on Tuesday.