Is fracking the future or a blight on the land?

MANY people, including university lecturers, teachers, business consultants and industry advisers, are opposed to the Infrastructure Bill, and many will be turning up today to ask Parliament not to pass it. The Bill will make it a legal obligation to ‘maximise the economic recovery of UK oil and gas’, flying in the face of climate change targets. It paves the way for oil and gas companies to drill without permission and leave ‘any substance or infrastructure in the land’. This could include the chemicals and radioactive waste associated with fracking, nuclear waste, or gases such as methane. Of the 40,647 people who responded to the consultation on this matter, 99 per cent objected. Many MPs have called for the Prime Minister to release an unredacted version of the Defra report on Shale Gas and Rural Impacts. HELEN SAVAGE, Balcombe, Sussex. IF The Co-op Bank is to be taken seriously again, it must ditch the ‘ethical’ policy preventing it from investing in fracking. Fracking will be a valuable energy resource. ‘ethical’ sounds fine, but it depends how it’s interpreted.

TERRY McDONALD-DORMAN, Darlington. FRACKING has changed the political face of the world, and no longer does America have to pay lip service to the Arab states. It now has its own energy source — and there’s little doubt that Britain, too, will have to start fracking. Fracking is going to have to happen, but we need to make sure the process is safe, we must monitor water pollution and we must make sure the benefits of fracking aren’t squandered by governments and business. But the reality is that we need the gas and the oil. Shale gas is part of the answer to the future. Let’s not waste it; let’s make sure we benefit from fracking. We want to be citizens of the future not slaves of the past.

S. T. VAUGHAN, Birmingham. AS A Lancashire resident, I’m not surprised to hear that my county councillors intend to ban fracking (Mail). If they had their way, we’d still be living in caves, lit by candles, and surviving on foraged food.

ALAN RICHARDSON, Blackpool.