In response to the government’s proposal to make cash payments to families living close to fracking wells, Labour’s Barry Gardiner, Shadow Secretary of State for Energy & Climate Change has said:

“An incentive to do the wrong thing is properly called a bribe and Theresa May is using this bribe to set neighbour  against  neighbour. It is not right for communities and it is not right for the country.

"We need a clean, secure, low-carbon future in the UK not a dirty fossil fuel one.

"The government’s latest report  states that the cost of Gas generation in 2025 will be higher than the cost of both Solar and Onshore Wind so we need to question why Theresa May is trying to lock us in to a dirty fossil fuel infrastructure for the next thirty years rather than backing the clean technologies of the future.

"Labour recognises that a UK shale gas industry could create a number of jobs and increase the security of our domestic supply, but we have consistently stated that there should be a moratorium on fracking until all 13 environmental safeguards that we tabled as amendments to the Infrastructure Bill are in place. Currently they are not.”

Ends

Notes

Climate Change has said that three things currently stop shale gas being compatible with our legally binding climate targets:
•The leakage of methane from fracking sites
•Using domestic shale gas in addition to imported LNG
•Failure to offset its emissions through schemes like Carbon Capture and Storage.