We need to bring back fracking

Imposing a moratorium on fracking was one of the worst decisions taken by any government in the past decade. By most estimates, Britain has considerable shale gas reserves. One trade body calculates that if only 10 per cent were tapped, it would make the UK “self-sufficient in natural gas for 50 years”. In a monumentally short-sighted move, however, ministers effectively banned companies from exploiting it – too terrified of the green lobby to do something that was so obviously within the national interest.

This week, Kwasi Kwarteng, the Business Secretary, has a chance to reverse this error. The Government is awaiting peer review on a report into fracking’s safety. The tremors that excused the ban in 2019 were described by some as equivalent to a lorry rumbling past a window, yet the industry has faced a tide of propaganda designed to play on people’s worst fears about the fracking process.

Now, however, such extreme risk aversion is indefensible. The war in Ukraine has exposed the folly of winding down domestic fossil fuel extraction in the rush towards net zero. Already, the Government has had to end, at least for the time being, its opposition to the exploitation of North Sea oil and gas. Whatever environmentalists might claim, gas is likely to remain a vital source of energy for decades to come. Wind and solar are obviously intermittent, battery technologies are not advanced enough yet and on present trends it will take far too long for enough nuclear to come on stream. The Government’s misguided policies have almost certainly contributed to the huge rises in energy prices this year, which cannot be solely blamed on Vladimir Putin.

The United States has been fracking for years: the growth of a US shale industry has been transformational – and not just economically. Joe Biden’s feckless administration may have done its best to weaken US energy security, but the country is far less dependent on oil and gas from unsavoury regimes than it once was.

While the UK has already wasted valuable time, we should be aiming to do something similar. More could certainly be done to win over local people to fracking within their areas, including by ensuring they can share in the financial benefits. The energy firm Cuadrilla is exploring one option, namely to plough six per cent of shale gas revenue into local community funds.

Whatever formula the Government settles for, ending this ban is a golden opportunity for the UK. It would benefit some of the poorest regions in the country, not with top-down redistribution, but with economic growth, real jobs and, in the long-run, lower prices. aggressive posture towards the West and its neighbours.

One of the people who foresaw this in 1997 was Chris Patten. In his diaries, the former governor of Hong Kong described the Chinese communists who turned out for the handover as the “coelacanths of Leninism, rich, mighty, a bit seedy, cruel, corrupt”. Why, he asks, did we allow ourselves to be bullied by them? “All they can do is bully.”

Perhaps Britain had no choice: Hong Kong was the last significant outpost of the empire, and we were in no position to defend it. But we have at least taken a stand by offering Hong Kongers visas (the Home Office estimates that over 300,000 may choose to relocate), and the West, galvanised by Ukraine, is waking up to the necessity of a strong defence. What happened to Hong Kong is a warning from history: freedom can never be taken for granted.