Thank you for your generosity in allowing me to contribute to this debate, Mr Amess. I apologise for having to be absent for a short while.
I thank the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) first for bringing this debate to the House and secondly for laying out some of the points that I was going to make myself.
As the Member for Wells in Somerset, my constituency includes the Mendip hills, the southern fringes of the Chew valley and the very edge of the Bristol and Bath basin. It adjoins north-east Somerset and Bath. Both Bath and Wells are naturally completely intertwined with water—the clue is in the name, really. I, too, am delighted to hear of Bath and North East Somerset council’s recent unanimous, cross-party resolution formally to register with the Department of Energy and Climate Change its serious concerns about the potential impact of unconventional gas exploration and extraction in that critical area.
The source of the thermal waters feeding the Bath hot springs in the world heritage site is widely believed by experts to be in the Mendip hills. The hills also feed the city of Wells and the well known Somerset levels, with their several sites of special scientific interest and network of rhynes, most of which were dug under the aegis of the abbot of Glastonbury to ensure that there was water throughout the area. That beautiful and large environmentally sensitive area, with regionally important water supplies, is one of the most complex geological districts of the UK, and the state of geological knowledge of the lower coal measures rocks and the carboniferous shales is extremely limited. We simply do not understand the mechanisms by which those vulnerable hot springs are controlled.
The estimated economic value of the hot springs for tourism and employment is close to £100 million annually and, in my opinion, this is not an area in which any dash for gas can be allowed. The global embarrassment of damaging the world heritage site does not bear consideration. More concerning would be the unknown health and environmental effects of a pollution incident. The earthquakes in Lancashire triggered by lubrication of undetected and apparently still untraceable geological faults are an example of why it is crudely short-sighted to encourage a “drill and see what happens” approach for short-term commercial or revenue gain. Whatever the unconventional gas industry worldwide says, with the present level of technical understanding it is unable to rule out long-term disastrous impacts. Widely reported pollution incidents in the US and Australia seem to reinforce that.
I have no interests to declare, other than those of my constituents, their children and their grandchildren, in particular those who live in Compton Martin, Ston Easton, Glastonbury and Wells, but also the many residents of the villages and towns in the area where I have attended meetings and heard their concerns expressed. I am deeply concerned that any hasty legislative or regulatory streamlining that fast-tracks exploration will inevitably set us up for future environmental and geological failures. The precautionary principle must take precedence.
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