MP’s bid to get fracking banned “with immediate effect”

AN amendment to the Queen’s Speech, which if passed would ban all fracking in the UK with immediate effect, has been tabled by Warrington South MP Faisal Rashid.
He said: “Since fracking began, we have seen record-breaking earthquakes in the North West. People don’t want it.”
Mr Rashid publicly called for fracking to be banned after a record-breaking 2.9 Richter scale earthquake hit Lancashire on Monday August 26. This earthquake was significantly larger than the 2.3 magnitude earthquake that struck in 2011, following which fracking operations were suspended in the UK for seven years.
Along with the fear, disruption and potential damage to property caused by fracking, the Committee on Climate Change has concluded that fracking on a significant scale is not compatible with the UK’s climate change targets.
A government report from 2015 concluded that fracking increases air pollution, with substantially higher impacts at the local level where activities are clustered. Fracking also generates large amounts of wastewater, which poses contamination risks to local ecosystems from spills and mismanagement.
Mr Rashid said Labour had called for an immediate ban on fracking. But Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, Andrea Leadsom, had previously dismissed criticism of the practice as “scaremongering” and called it the answer to Britain’s energy conundrum.
Mr Rashid said: “ Local people don’t want it – only large oil and gas companies do. It is a harmful and dangerous practice which local people would pay the price for.
“We need a Government that will stand up to big companies who want to profit from this industry at the expense of our planet.
“It’s the next generation and the world’s poorest who will pay the price if this Conservative government puts the interests of a few polluters ahead of people.
“That is why I have proposed an amendment to the Queens Speech which calls on the Government to ban all UK fracking with immediate effect.
“Fracking is not the answer to any of our country’s problems. It must be stopped.”