I rise to speak on fracking, an issue close to my constituents’ hearts and mine, and to reject clearly the unnecessary and transparently political new clause 12. Since I was elected to this place in 2017, I have spoken out against fracking, held debates, proposed Bills, submitted questions, chaired an all-party group, spoken at planning committees and hearings and appeals against QCs, and generally made a nuisance of myself to the Government Front Bench about fracking, because I wanted it stopped at Marsh Lane and in North East Derbyshire, and I make no apologies for that. I was delighted when the Government put a moratorium on fracking, and I am glad to have played a very small role in getting us to that place.
Yet suddenly, a year and a half after the moratorium was imposed, we have a burning issue—a problem so acute that a series of straw men have been wheeled out from the Opposition Benches over the course of this debate, creating the need to ban something that is effectively dead already. The hon. Member for Lancaster and Fleetwood (Cat Smith), who is not in her place at present, said we only have empty words. Well, empty words have a funny way of stopping any fracking happening since that moratorium in late 2017, and of ensuring that licences in her own county were partially handed back by the operator of the fracking area.
Why is it that 49 Labour MPs have suddenly decided that there is new urgency to legislate on this matter? There is not. We know there is no urgency, precisely because those 49 Labour MPs have shown almost zero interest in that issue in recent times. Forty-three of those 49 were in Parliament between 2017 and 2019. Where were those hon. Members when the all-party parliamentary group on fracking, which I chaired, talked about all these issues in extraordinary detail?
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Where were any of those hon. Members in the last debate held in this place on fracking, on 28 September 2020, called by a Conservative, when the Minister said that
“fracking will not be taken forward in England”
and that we should
“accept victory”?—[Official Report, 28 September 2020; Vol. 681, c. 133-34.]
How have they been using this place since the moratorium announcement in late 2017, if they think it is so deficient, and is now so clearly burnt in the depths of their souls? I could count on the fingers of one hand the number of times that any of those 49 people have spoken about fracking in this Chamber or in Westminster Hall since that point.
Let us be clear about what the amendment is. It is not a thoughtful, careful proposal that seeks to resolve an urgent issue. It does not solve a burning problem that burns up and down the land. The placards are not waving high for Government intervention. Nor does it necessarily, technically, fix the problem before us. The definition put forward by the Opposition would not have stopped any of the three fracks that have occurred since 2011.
Those of us who were involved in the campaign in the previous Parliament do not need the Labour Front Bench trying to hijack and politicise the issue once again, when it has been solved. We do not need the pretence that those who signed the amendment actually care about the issue, when they were nowhere to be seen when it mattered, when we were actually trying to stop this industry. It is almost as though, when the Opposition run out of amendments to table, they just pull out an old favourite and see which Bill they can attach it to.
Fracking is over. The battle is won. The industry has packed up. It is done. And I will not support an amendment that pretends otherwise, to a Bill that has nothing to do with energy, which will cause unnecessary worry to constituents who have been worried about it for many years, and which is clearly a shoddy attempt to play political games.
The shadow Minister opened her remarks by saying that she hoped to make this issue less party political. Great. Stop playing political games. Reject the amendment.