I entirely agree with that important suggestion.
I would also like to see a much clearer process for addressing community concerns in individual cases. For example, the Borras site is only a few hundred metres from the scene of the 1934 Gresford mining disaster, which killed 266 coal miners. Sincere, legitimate and profound local concern has been expressed about exploration in the immediate area, where the bodies of the deceased miners lie. At present there is no process for those views to be taken properly into account. Can the Minister please explain how such local concerns will be addressed by the planning and regulatory process that will be put in place for fracking?
I am also unconvinced about the local benefits that will accrue to Wrexham as a result of the process. I entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Bassetlaw (John Mann) that the benefits should attach not to the landowner, but to the local community. Wrexham, as an industrial town, still bears the scars of its industrial past, and not only the memories of events such as the Gresford disaster, but physical scars such as slag heaps, quarries and spoiled land. If fracking can be shown to be a safe process, then before it goes ahead I want to be sure that Wrexham and the local area will benefit. Fracking is not a sustainable energy process, and before the Bill passes into law I need to hear far more about how my community will benefit from the extraction that is taking place locally and causing a great deal of controversy.
I urge the Government to listen much more closely to the concerns about fracking being expressed up and down the country and to make it much clearer why they think it is so important that the process goes ahead. It is a non-renewable technology that can be of benefit to our community, but it is not being projected to our constituents in that way or with the intensity that it needs to be if it is to carry public support.
7.29 pm