I’m committed to ensuring that our environment, water and air are not contaminated by an unregulated rush which puts public health and our environment at risk in the name of fracking. The safety standards for fracking that the Government is planning to introduce are set to be reduced by the new regulator, the Oil and Gas Authority, to lower standards than the Environment Agency would impose, so that water and air contaminated by fracking puts the public at risk. The standards need to at least be high enough to put public health and safety above corporate interests and to assure a transparent and reliable regulation.

In 2016, I produced a report which found that the impact of fracking on global warming is twice as bad as that of coal mining. You can read the report here.

Alumni of Council of Europe