Senior Conservatives are considering pushing for a lifting of the moratorium on fracking in England to become party policy.
At the Conservative party conference in Birmingham, MPs are reflecting on the crushing blow they were dealt at this year’s general election and coming up with policies and ideas to rebuild the party so it can win in 2029. A leadership election is taking place and candidates are laying out their ideas to MPs.
One idea that has come up is fracking. The Conservatives have criticised the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, for Labour’s election pledge to end new oil and gas licences in the North Sea. Some are mooting a return to experimenting with drilling onshore for gas in an effort to lower energy bills.
There has been a moratorium on fracking in England since 2019 because of earthquakes caused by the method. Experts say extracting gas from shale would take years, is far less accessible than once thought and would do little to reduce energy bills. To frack, shale rocks, containing tiny pockets of methane, are blasted with a mixture of sand, water and chemicals to create fissures through which the gas can escape, to be siphoned off at the surface.
Andrew Bowie, the shadow energy minister, is supporting the shadow housing minister, Kemi Badenoch, in the leadership race. He said the next Tory leader should bring back fracking.
“I do support fracking,” he told a fringe event at the conference. “I represent an oil and gas constituency that is dependent in its entirety on the oil and gas industry. The experts will tell you that they are already fracking in the North Sea. I know it isn’t currently party policy to frack but I don’t know what Kemi will do on it.”
The shadow energy secretary, Claire Coutinho, suggested she would back lifting the moratorium, telling the Guardian: “What I am backing is cheap energy no matter where it comes from. If there is evidence that fracking would provide cheap energy then we would look at it. But I think what everyone wants is low bills and cheap energy and we won’t rule anything out.”
Badenoch did not rule it out: “I am not laying out specific policies yet, but I know there are colleagues who want to lift the moratorium and we will discuss policies at a later stage.”
The issue is hugely controversial among the public and in the Tory party because of the disruption to communities caused by fracking, including earthquakes. It also counteracts pledges to reduce oil and gas use in the UK.
The former prime minister Liz Truss tried to bring back fracking during her short-lived tenure and a chaotic vote on the matter is seen as one of the reasons for the collapse of her government. Shortly after her administration fell, her successor, Rishi Sunak, confirmed he would keep the moratorium, and that remains Conservative policy.
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The environment has not been mentioned much during the leadership contest. In a pitch to MPs at a 1922 Committee event on Sunday night, another contender, Robert Jenrick, said a vote for him would be “yes to net zero, no to Ed Miliband’s mad policies”.
His campaign manager, Danny Kruger, said at a fringe event that the “environmental lobby” had “overreached itself” and the Conservatives were now able to take on Labour’s “madcap” schemes.
Coutinho said she planned to hold Labour to account for “being quiet” on nuclear power, which she said was crucial to a cleaner, cheaper energy system. She also disagreed that the general public cared about the environment above other issues, saying: “We need to be very careful when we talk about what the public care about because predominantly they care about cheap energy. Renewables are not cheap in all circumstances. My view is that you have to prioritise cheap energy in your country.”
