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Fracking: MPs and Lords have derelicted their legal duties – now they must pay the price! Updated for 2026

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On 13th January, just before the Parliamentary Committee on the Infrastructure Bill was to report back to the House of Commons, I put every single MP in the UK (and more recently, all the Lords with a policy interest in Energy and the Environment) on legal notice.

The point I made in my ‘Letter before Action’ was that if they passed the Bill with the clauses promoting 1. economic recovery of petroleum; and 2. fracking; and if harm ensued thereby, they might find themselves in breach of their moral and legal duty to the nation set out in The Code of Conduct for Members of
Parliament.

Among other obligations it reminds MPs that they “have a general duty to act in the interests of the nation as a whole; and a special duty to their constituents”, and that they must “take decisions solely in terms of the public interest”, the latter obligation also applying to members of the House of Lords.

As public servants both MPs and Lords are, moreover, “accountable for their decisions and actions to the public and must submit themselves to whatever scrutiny is appropriate to their office.”

So what about the risks of fracking?

I also sent them the introduction and executive summary of this document detailing the risks and harms of fracking – a document instrumental in New York State’s decision to ban the practice last December.

I sent the 657 letters by recorded delivery (it took the local post office 10 hours to process), so even if the MPs didn’t even look at them, from a legal point of view those letters will have been deemed as read.

Interestingly, a flurry of amendments to the Bill ensued, mitigating the clauses allowing fracking and even calling for a moratorium. Was this a complete coincidence, or did some of our elected representatives check with their lawyers and find that the Code of Conduct for MPs holds weight in a civil court?

I have taken legal advice from a barister and it does, in case you’re wondering.

I received a number of replies from MPs, many saying they had passed the information to my own MP, Neil Carmichael (Conservative), according to “strict Parliamentary protocol”.

This made me wonder: did the industry lobbyists who clearly had a major hand in drafting the Bill also get asked to make contact only via their own MPs? Either way, no MP can now legally deny prior knowledge of the risks and harms of fracking.

The public and national interest trampled underfoot

The Commons proceeded to significantly amend the fracking clauses in the Bill, and if their amendment 21 had stood, fracking would not have been permitted in AONBs, SSSIs, National Parks, under aquifers, etc, and drilling companies would have had to go through a number of procedures in order to frack including individual notification of local residents.

However, the Lords replaced this amendment in short order, doing two things:

  • watering down the safeguards proposed by the Commons so as to make them toothless and dependent upon secondary legislation; and
  • applying those weakened safeguards only to fracking using over 1,000 cubic metres of fluid, meaning that all exploratory and potentially even medium scale production could escape the safeguards altogether.

The Lords made these replacement amendments at the final ‘ping pong’ stage of the bill, and the Commons were assigned a paltry 1 hour’s discussion to address them. The Commons vote showed that MPs were now strongly divided about fracking (257 in favour of the Lords amendments, 203 against), but the amendments were still passed.

Only Caroline Lucas MP (Green) pointed out the farcical nature of these phantom safeguards, but there was no time to explore further. The following morning on 12th February, with truly unseemly haste, the Bill was made law.

We now have a situation where, by law, drilling companies can frack wherever they like with no special permission, as long as they use less than 1,000 cubic metres of fluid – about the volume of a large municipal swimming pool.

To our knowledge, all fracks carried out to date in the UK have used significantly less. Certainly what this means is that all future drilling that uses less than 1,000 cubic meters of fluid is exempt from all the safeguards drafted.

Goodbye ‘Green and Pleasant Land’

Reading the Hansard scripts of the discussions that took place on this Bill, we don’t think any of those in favour of the Act that was passed have a clue what fracking actually looks like in production. They seem to be chatting about a well or two here or there, nothing to disturb a national park … do they really not know? It requires hundreds of wells, four to every square mile, to make a viable production facility.

This government has an aggressive expansion policy to put in place up to 30,000 wells. Goodbye ‘green and pleasant land’! Use Google Earth to have a look at Texas or North Dakota and you’ll pretty soon get the idea.

 

Then – health hazards aside – there are the thousands upon thousands of HGV journeys required to service the site. And the disposal of the millions of gallons of toxic waste from the process. This is not easy, cheap, abundant gas and oil. It’s an expensive post-apocalyptic nightmare and an environmental disaster.

Not only that. One clause of the Infrastructure Act remained virtually unchallenged from start to finish, and that is a clause adjusting the Petroleum Act 1998, apparently making it a legal obligation for the Government to “maximise the economic recovery of UK petroleum” and for the relevant Secretary of State to create a strategy for doing this in whatever way he sees fit.

A legal duty to maximize petroleum recovery

This clause is so astonishing that it bears printing in full:

PART 1A

Maximising economic recovery of UK petroleum

9A The principal objective and the strategy

(1) In this Part the “principal objective” is the objective of maximising the economic recovery of UK petroleum, in particular through-

(a) development, construction, deployment and use of equipment used in the petroleum industry (including upstream petroleum infrastructure), and

(b) collaboration among the following persons-

(i) holders of petroleum licences;

(ii) operators under petroleum licences;

(iii) owners of upstream petroleum infrastructure;

(iv) persons planning and carrying out the commissioning of upstream petroleum infrastructure.

(2) The Secretary of State must produce one or more strategies for enabling the principal objective to be met.

(3) A strategy may relate to matters other than those mentioned in subsection (1)(a) and (b).

This appears to be no less than a legal mandate to fill the coffers of Halliburton, oil infrastructure supplier par excellence, and other industry players, with a clause to cover the arse of any Secretary of State who implements this.

Our Government has effectively just passed the ‘Support Halliburton’ Act 2015, with a few subsections making it easy to frack, and a bunch of transport, planning and other elements thrown in for infrastructural support and general confusion.

How exactly is this in the ‘national interest’ or that of constutuents? Isn’t the real national interest the health and happiness of the inhabitants of this country and the land we live on? Shouldn’t all economic activity be serving that, not vice versa? Is this not the true legal mandate of anyone in public service?

Anyone in either House who supported this corrupt, dangerous and ridiculously rushed piece of legislation has acted in blatant contravention of their legally-binding Code of Conduct, and failed miserably in their duty of care. We must prepare to sue.

 

 

Jojo Mehta is a mother of two young children based in Nympsfield, Gloucestershire, and a campaigner on environmental and democratic issues. Together with Katy Dunne, she is a co-founder of Frack Free Five Valleys.

 




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Greening transport – we can do it, if we want to! Updated for 2026

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Lou Gerstner, when CEO of IBM, famously observed of behaviour in organisations that “you get what you inspect, not what you expect.”

So if we who travel are to expect greener ways of getting from home to work on public transport, for example, why inspect mainly cost and punctuality, as transport regulators and managers do?

A well-functioning transport system should of course run to time and not cost too much, but greener travel will require a lot more than that.

In 2010, 39% of the UK’s use of energy was attributable to travel and transport. Reducing this significantly is a necessary contribution to reducing the UK’s overall carbon emissions by 80% of the 1990 level by the year 2050, as mandated by the Climate Change Act of 2008.

It’s also entirely feasible – and urgent, because the Act is only a reflection of the harsh realities of climate change: even if we make this reduction in time, we stand barely a coin-flip chance of maintaining a reasonably equable global climate.

Where’s the political leadership to drive change?

Although there’s no strong political leadership (except in the Green Party) or policy framework aimed at reducing carbon emissions attributable to travel and transport, some useful changes in behaviour and policy are taking place.

For example the railways are being progressively electrified, people are choosing to switch to smaller, more economical cars, hybrid and electric vehicles are increasingly popular, and some cities are improving their cycling networks. And crucially, video Skypeing is making a lot of journeys unnecessary.

These changes are welcome, but more needs to be done on both national and local scales. And sadly our national and devolved governments are slow to act to make public transport work better, even on those matters where only they can make it happen.

Travel by public transport is significantly greener than simply hopping into the car (think of the pollution and congestion as well as the carbon footprint) – but how can we expect people to change their travel habits and leave the car at home if public transport regulators and managers don’t inspect the right things?

Whether we’re travelling in order to work, socialise or shop, all but the simplest journeys on public transport are multi-modal – that is, they involve several modes of transport. Perhaps we take a bus or cycle to the station, then take a train, and finish our journey by bus, taxi, tube or a short walk.

But then again, perhaps we can’t – because the bus and train timetables are out of kilter, services are unreliable, there’s a dangerous roundabout you don’t dare cycle across, the cost of that taxi ride at the end is prohibitive, and the bus you need to catch only runs on alternate Tuesdays, or the day’s last service leaves at 2.30pm.

In setting overall transport policy for the nation, how much thought is given to improving the cost, time and general convenience of switching between transport modes? Answer: distressingly little. And if regulators fail to inspect these matters, and require public transport operators to coordinate, for example, bus and train timetables, how can people be expected to change their established travel patterns and habits?

Joined up transport policy, joined up transport

Greens would address this by forcing operators to build a coherent and integrated national transport system in which multi-modal journeys are easy to plan, inexpensive to buy and convenient to take, and local authorities would ensure that cycling is safe and pleasant. This is the only way that people can be tempted to leave the car at home more often.

In some cases, this will require taking assets into public ownership. The railway system is a good example, because a joined-up railway system run for the common good (as opposed to private profit) is just common-sense. And though public ownership of the railways enjoys a high level of public support, only the Green Party is committed to this win-win policy.

Re-regulation is also a powerful policy instrument (which should be applied to buses outside as well as inside London), as are direct economic signals such as provided by congestion charging. This is something of a ‘stick’ to discourage city centre motoring – but there are plenty of ‘carrots’ to be had too, for example:

  • Greatly improved information about travel times, interchanges, fares and parking charges for planning a multi-modal journey, as well as real-time information while on a journey
  • Integrated timetabling, as found in Germany, where the departure times of bus, coach and local train services leaving a railway station are co-ordinated with the arrival times of longer-distance trains bringing passengers who want to change modes; and that will require …
  • … a higher priority for interchanges and transport hubs in infrastructure planning; which will require careful attention by town and city planners, and more investment. Busy interchanges like Clapham Junction and Crewe are far more useful to the travelling public than white-elephant ‘showcase’ schemes like HS2.
  • Integrated, contactless payment methods. The growth and development of the Oystercard system, now extended to suburban rail journeys in the London area, and the ability to pay by debit card for all journeys, bring convenience and lower fares to millions of travellers daily. Other conurbations with high travel density would benefit from similar, and ideally compatible, payment systems. As would the counties surrounding London.
  • Cycleways that are segregated from dangerous traffic, don’t come to a sudden halt just when you need them most, and follow travel ‘desire lines’. And no, repeat no, ‘Cyclists Dismount’ signs!


We can do it – but if only we elect politicans who want to

None of these elements of a greener transport system is difficult to bring about and all of them are measurable and inspectable. With the vision and political will, of course we can de-fragment our national travel and transport sector.

In the process we can attract more people onto public transport, improve the quality of the travelling experience, and reduce transport emissions. And curiously enough, by putting all this before the short term profits of public transport operators, we can actually grow the entire sector and so make it more profitable, not less.

If what I’ve said so far sounds on the right track to you, then take a look at the report I recently authored setting out a transport ‘greenprint’ for the greater Cambridge area to deal with the city’s very serious traffic and air-pollution woes.

All the proposals outlined above are contained in that document, showing that Greener travel can be achieved – lower carbon, less expensive, better used, more popular and providing a vastly improved service to travellers – provided we elect politicians committed to make it happen.

 


Rupert Read is transport spokesperson for the Green Party of England and Wales, and prospective Green candidate for Cambridge in the 2015 general election – a seat which registered the 3rd highest Green vote in the UK in 2010.

Web: rupertread.net

Twitter: www.twitter.com/GreenRupertRead

 




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Message to the UK: the fracking ‘bridge’ is burning! Updated for 2026

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On a week-long trip to the UK last fall, I was struck by how quickly the push to open up the country to fracking has been escalating.

Thankfully, activists are mounting a vigorous and creative response, and are more than up to the task of galvanizing the public to put a stop to this mad dash to extract.

A notable victory was scored yesterday when MPs forced amendments through the UK government’s Infrastructure Bill to keep fracking out of national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, and places where major aquifers would be placed at risk of pollution.

But still MPs failed to impose the fracking moratorium demanded by the Environmental Audit Committee, and the fracking industry will still enjoy carte blanche to exploit shale gas across most of the country. The fight ahead will not be an easy one.

In rushing to exploit the UK’s shale gas reserves, the industry has spent millions on public relations and brazenly overridden the democratic will of British citizens by overturning laws that had prevented drilling under homes. The coalition government, meanwhile, has done the sector’s bidding at every turn.

We’ve seen all of this before. Indeed what is happening in the UK is modeled so closely on the US experience that an October 2014 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal spoke of “plotting an American-style fracking revolution in Britain“.

The frackers’ plan for the UK is rolling out …

So it’s worth playing close attention to how that earlier plot played out, both in the United States and in my own country, Canada. The US is not only where the gas companies honed various technologies used in fracking, but also where they honed their branding-like their pitch, originating in the early 1980s, that natural gas was a ‘bridge’ to a clean energy future.

As opposition has grown, they have cleverly funded studies stamped by big green organizations that understate fracking’s huge greenhouse gas impact; touted over-optimistic production forecasts; and in true shock doctrine style, tried to take advantage of geo-political crisis – like the gas cut-offs in Ukraine – to push through massive export plans that in any other circumstance could never gain legislative or public approval.

And when all else fails, government and industry have turned to criminalizing peaceful activism. They’ve dispatched heavily armed police against Indigenous communities blockading shale gas exploration in New Brunswick, Canada; gagged families impacted by drilling from criticizing the industry for an entire lifetime; and tried to charge as “terrorists” protesters in Oklahoma who unfurled a banner and dropped glitter at an oil and gas company’s office.

Yet even with such tactics, communities across North America are in full revolt. Last month came the huge news that New York State would ban fracking, following a steady stream of bans and moratoria passed in local communities, as well as years of sustained pressure from the activists and scientists – like biologist and author Sandra Steingraber, co-founder of New Yorkers Against Fracking – who have tirelessly documented and spread the word about the health and climate impacts.

The New York uprising continues in the Finger Lakes region of the state, where one Texas-based company hopes to create a massive “gas storage and transportation hub” – and where 200 blockaders have been arrested resisting its plans to fill abandoned salt caverns along Seneca Lake with enormous amounts of fracked gas.

A ban has also been passed in Vermont and there are moratoria in parts of California, as well as in the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.

And a month before the New York victory, the Texas town of Denton – the birthplace of the fracking boom and perhaps the most drilled area in the country-voted decisively to ban hydraulic fracturing.

The victory was achieved in a Republican town, in the face of an industry that poured hundreds of thousands into the battle – which was, in the words of a resident, “more like David and Godzilla than David and Goliath.”

Beware – the fracking industry knows no bounds of decency

The story of Denton has much to teach the growing anti-fracking movement in Britain. What it demonstrates is that, left to their own devices, the fossil fuel companies will come after your homes, your churches, your schools, your parks, your university campuses, and your sports stadiums – all of which have had wells drilled on or near them in Denton.

But despite all of the David Cameron government’s fanfare about “going all out for shale“, widespread resistance has already put the UK’s pro-fracking forces on the defensive.

A recent Guardian analysis found that only 11 new exploration wells are planned for 2015, with the industry bemoaning the “glacially slow” pace of the shale expansion-to say nothing of possible impacts from the global oil price shock now threatening extreme fossil fuels around the world.

Just last week, ahead of yesterday’s key Parliament vote on fracking legislation, green groups sent Cameron a petition with 267,000 signatures rejecting the dash for gas – something that undoubtedly helped to win key concessions.

Climate change minister Amber Rudd also came under pressure in yesterday’s debate, and was forced to concede that the government would cancel fracking licences if the Committee on Climate Change decided that exploiting shale gas would imperil the UK’s climate change goals, or explain its failure to do so.

It may seem that frackers in the UK and elsewhere will stop at nothing to have their way. But thanks to the rising global climate movement, the so-called ‘bridge’ is already burning. And it’s long past time to choose a different path.

 

 

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of corporate capitalism, and her recent book on climate change, ‘This Changes Everything‘.

This article was originally published on This Changes Everything, and has been updated by The Ecologist.

Photograph by Frack Free Denton.

 

 




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Message to the UK: the fracking ‘bridge’ is burning! Updated for 2026

Leave a reply




On a week-long trip to the UK last fall, I was struck by how quickly the push to open up the country to fracking has been escalating.

Thankfully, activists are mounting a vigorous and creative response, and are more than up to the task of galvanizing the public to put a stop to this mad dash to extract.

A notable victory was scored yesterday when MPs forced amendments through the UK government’s Infrastructure Bill to keep fracking out of national parks, areas of outstanding natural beauty, and places where major aquifers would be placed at risk of pollution.

But still MPs failed to impose the fracking moratorium demanded by the Environmental Audit Committee, and the fracking industry will still enjoy carte blanche to exploit shale gas across most of the country. The fight ahead will not be an easy one.

In rushing to exploit the UK’s shale gas reserves, the industry has spent millions on public relations and brazenly overridden the democratic will of British citizens by overturning laws that had prevented drilling under homes. The coalition government, meanwhile, has done the sector’s bidding at every turn.

We’ve seen all of this before. Indeed what is happening in the UK is modeled so closely on the US experience that an October 2014 opinion piece in the Wall Street Journal spoke of “plotting an American-style fracking revolution in Britain“.

The frackers’ plan for the UK is rolling out …

So it’s worth playing close attention to how that earlier plot played out, both in the United States and in my own country, Canada. The US is not only where the gas companies honed various technologies used in fracking, but also where they honed their branding-like their pitch, originating in the early 1980s, that natural gas was a ‘bridge’ to a clean energy future.

As opposition has grown, they have cleverly funded studies stamped by big green organizations that understate fracking’s huge greenhouse gas impact; touted over-optimistic production forecasts; and in true shock doctrine style, tried to take advantage of geo-political crisis – like the gas cut-offs in Ukraine – to push through massive export plans that in any other circumstance could never gain legislative or public approval.

And when all else fails, government and industry have turned to criminalizing peaceful activism. They’ve dispatched heavily armed police against Indigenous communities blockading shale gas exploration in New Brunswick, Canada; gagged families impacted by drilling from criticizing the industry for an entire lifetime; and tried to charge as “terrorists” protesters in Oklahoma who unfurled a banner and dropped glitter at an oil and gas company’s office.

Yet even with such tactics, communities across North America are in full revolt. Last month came the huge news that New York State would ban fracking, following a steady stream of bans and moratoria passed in local communities, as well as years of sustained pressure from the activists and scientists – like biologist and author Sandra Steingraber, co-founder of New Yorkers Against Fracking – who have tirelessly documented and spread the word about the health and climate impacts.

The New York uprising continues in the Finger Lakes region of the state, where one Texas-based company hopes to create a massive “gas storage and transportation hub” – and where 200 blockaders have been arrested resisting its plans to fill abandoned salt caverns along Seneca Lake with enormous amounts of fracked gas.

A ban has also been passed in Vermont and there are moratoria in parts of California, as well as in the Canadian provinces of Quebec, Nova Scotia, and Newfoundland.

And a month before the New York victory, the Texas town of Denton – the birthplace of the fracking boom and perhaps the most drilled area in the country-voted decisively to ban hydraulic fracturing.

The victory was achieved in a Republican town, in the face of an industry that poured hundreds of thousands into the battle – which was, in the words of a resident, “more like David and Godzilla than David and Goliath.”

Beware – the fracking industry knows no bounds of decency

The story of Denton has much to teach the growing anti-fracking movement in Britain. What it demonstrates is that, left to their own devices, the fossil fuel companies will come after your homes, your churches, your schools, your parks, your university campuses, and your sports stadiums – all of which have had wells drilled on or near them in Denton.

But despite all of the David Cameron government’s fanfare about “going all out for shale“, widespread resistance has already put the UK’s pro-fracking forces on the defensive.

A recent Guardian analysis found that only 11 new exploration wells are planned for 2015, with the industry bemoaning the “glacially slow” pace of the shale expansion-to say nothing of possible impacts from the global oil price shock now threatening extreme fossil fuels around the world.

Just last week, ahead of yesterday’s key Parliament vote on fracking legislation, green groups sent Cameron a petition with 267,000 signatures rejecting the dash for gas – something that undoubtedly helped to win key concessions.

Climate change minister Amber Rudd also came under pressure in yesterday’s debate, and was forced to concede that the government would cancel fracking licences if the Committee on Climate Change decided that exploiting shale gas would imperil the UK’s climate change goals, or explain its failure to do so.

It may seem that frackers in the UK and elsewhere will stop at nothing to have their way. But thanks to the rising global climate movement, the so-called ‘bridge’ is already burning. And it’s long past time to choose a different path.

 

 

Naomi Klein is a Canadian author and social activist known for her political analyses and criticism of corporate globalization and of corporate capitalism, and her recent book on climate change, ‘This Changes Everything‘.

This article was originally published on This Changes Everything, and has been updated by The Ecologist.

Photograph by Frack Free Denton.

 

 




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