China cracks on with fracking... thanks to £87k of aid from UK!

BRITAIN has given thousands of pounds in foreign aid to support fracking in China, the Government has confirmed.

Since 2016 the Foreign Office has spent £87,000 on projects to help the country’s ‘environmental regulation of shale gas development’.

Meanwhile the fracking process – which involves breaking open rock layers to release underground gas – remains hugely controversial in the UK. It often triggers minor earthquakes and campaigners claim it causes water contamination and traffic pollution.

The Foreign Office argued that working with China was a national security priority and an opportunity to influence its future. But Alex Norris, Labour’s spokesman for international development, said: ‘The Tories are hypocritically spending UK aid to support fracking in China, while also announcing the climate crisis will be a top priority of their international development agenda. Fracking by the Chinese government has already been suspected of causing three earthquakes this year in Sichuan province.’

Critics have also questioned why ministers have given so much money to China, when it has been hailed as the next economic superpower. Nerissa Chesterfield, from the Institute of Economic Affairs think-tank, said it was time to cut the aid budget and ‘offer genuine aid for countries who need it’.

‘Police budgets have been cut and schools work on a shoestring, and yet our foreign aid budget remains ring-fenced and used to advise the world’s second largest economy on environmental regulation,’ she added. Foreign aid was championed by former prime minister David Cameron, who pledged in 2010 that ministers must spent at least 0.7 per cent of national income on international development.

Last year the foreign aid budget swelled to £14.5billion, compared with just £6.4billion in 2008. But now ministers are under pressure to end the pledge at a time when funding for schools, policing and social care is being cut. There is currently only one site in the UK where fracking takes place, in Fylde, Lancashire, and drilling has been repeatedly suspended following tremors.

A Foreign Office spokesman said: ‘Britain’s aid helps the UK to create opportunities, peace and prosperity worldwide, which is in the national interest. In China shale gas is a “transition” fuel as the country moves away from coal.

‘Sharing UK expertise will help to ensure that the exploration and development of shale gas meets higher environmental standards.’