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Localism Bill

My Lords, I was thinking, as that speech went on, what it would be like if we had been discussing, a couple of hundred years ago, the idea of opening up deep-mine coal in northern England. I think we would have been rather more aware of the dangers and that the dangers would have been rather more real. Houses do fall down coal-mines from time to time; the idea that they could fall down a hole made by fracking gas two miles deep is really not tenable. I am very sad to say this, as an ex-member of both Friends of the Earth and Greenpeace, but there is a typical, current environmentalist film around called ““Gasland””, which, as far as I can establish, peddles nothing but lies, including that tap. If you drill a well through coal-seams you get gas out of it. That is not surprising, and methane is not exactly dangerous anyway. We are talking about a technology that, by and large, chucks household chemicals two miles deep. There is a chance of them coming back to the surface, but I am sure we will be careful about what we allow to be stuck down the wells. I am someone who, although I do not have the pleasure of living in Lancashire, has lived in the Hampshire oilfields. Noble Lords may remember that in the 1980s there was a nice little mini-boom in wells all over mid-Hampshire, which we suffered happily without any great effect. There was a month when the drills were busy and then you were just left with a hut. That is really what happens with shale gas; you have a well every half kilometre or so and you are left with a garden shed that produces gas. It is not exactly an environmental problem, other than the interference when the drilling is going on. I think this is something that we will deal with extremely well within the boundaries of our ordinary and sensible systems for dealing with potential environmental hazards and for planning. In fact, the Bill will make things better, because one of the problems with such developments in the past has been that they have benefited the oil company, they have benefited the Government and benefited the landowner who is lucky enough to have the well drilled on his patch, but the local community, which has put up with the noise, the transport during the drilling and the continuing risk of something going on with the well, gets nothing. Under the Bill, of course—under neighbourhood planning—the benefit will be shared and that will be a great step forward.