MP slams peer for derelict north comment

WARRINGTON North MP Helen Jones has hit back at a Tory Peer’s suggestion that fracking should take place in the “derelict” north.
This follows claims – subsequently denied – that initial tests, which precede fracking, are being proposed in the MP’s constituency at Glazebury.
Tory Peer Lord Howell made the suggestion in the “Journal of Energy Security”.
He wrote: “Trying to start in southern England and in the Home Counties or in rural and countryside areas is a guarantee of longer delays, higher costs and increased hostility from both green left and countryside right.
“Every time Ministers open their mouths to claim that fracking must start everywhere around Britain, and not just in carefully selected and remote (derelict) areas, they lose thousands of Tory votes.
“ In the North East, the North West and all the places where the industrial revolution has left the worst historical scars they do have such areas, they have the gas and they have the local wish to see fracking investment.”
He went on to criticise compensation offers which he described as bribes.
“Villages and their environs where homes are worth a million will be unimpressed by £100k offers and by assurances that ‘only’ two years of heavy truck traffi will disturb them.”
Helen Jones (pictured) said: “ My constituency is not ‘derelict’. It is made up of thriving communities and people value their homes as much as anywhere else.
“The Tories are prepared to dump fracking in villages like Glazebury when they would never accept it near their own homes.
“If the procedure is as safe as they claim why not start near Lord Howell’s Hampshire farmhouse.
“If it’s not good enough for them, it’s not good enough for us, either.”