Claire Young MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Sept 2026 · Fracking Ban · Hansard source

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  I quite agree. The hon. Gentleman better explains the point that I was trying to make, which is that other issues, such as the potential for groundwater contamination, are different in the situation of fracking for fossil fuels. Ministers tell us that the evidence base is not there to show that lower-volume fracking carries the same risk as fracking for shale gas, but I say gently to the Government that the evidence is there, and it is sitting in their own records. The earthquake at Preston New Road that triggered the 2019 moratorium did not follow some enormous injection, but a series of lower-volume stages, every one of which was below the legal threshold. The tremor that shook Lancashire, felt across the area at a magnitude of 2.9, came in the days after a stage that used just 142 cubic metres of fluid. The then Oil and Gas Authority concluded that it was not possible to predict the timing or size of these events. The volumes proposed at Burniston were higher than the volume that caused that earthquake. This matters well beyond seismicity. It matters for our countryside and for the rural communities and protected landscapes that would host this drilling and gain almost nothing in return. It matters for our waters, as has already been mentioned; parts of Yorkshire were under a hosepipe ban in 2025, yet we are asked to pump scarce water deep underground and accept the risk of contaminating the aquifers that families and farms depend on. It matters for the climate, too. Every new source of onshore gas means more methane, more emissions and a direct collision with the carbon budgets that this House has voted for—not to mention our net zero ambitions. There are voices—Reform Members among them—who say that the answer to high bills is to return to fossil fuels and to frack our way out of trouble. I understand the appeal of a simple answer, but it is the wrong one. Gas is priced on an international market. Drilling a handful of wells in the English countryside would not move that price, and the companies doing the drilling would sell at whatever the market pays. Fracking would not take a single pound off a family’s bill. What it would do is divide communities, tie up local councils in years of planning battles and lock us into the very fuel whose price swings caused the crisis in the first place. We would be more exposed, so I question their intentions.

• 16 Jul 2026 · National Planning Policy Framework · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Desmond. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this debate. My constituency is large and rural, containing the towns of Thornbury, Yate and Chipping Sodbury, as well as numerous villages and hamlets, and stretches from the internationally designated Severn estuary all the way to the Cotswold escarpment. A large part of the countryside that surrounds those communities is designated green belt, with all the protections that that used to bring, but now that protection is under threat. Before I go further, I will provide some context. Under the current administration, South Gloucestershire council recognises the need for new housing and has developed a plan to deliver its housing need, which recently went through its examination in public. More than that, the council recognises the importance of homes for social rent and has been punching above its weight in their provision. With around 0.6% of the population of England outside London, it delivered 1.6% of total new social rent completions last year. However, there is an implicit deal with local people in that local plan, which delivers homes while protecting the remaining countryside from speculative development. The Government’s grey belt policy fundamentally threatens that. Green belt land will now be parcelled up into cells for assessment, and it will be difficult to show an individual cell’s contribution. The changes to the framework around the grey belt essentially make purposes C and E void, and particularly C, which protects countryside from encroachment. The danger is that pockets of land will be considered in isolation and be judged only to contribute to purpose C. Indeed, the 2022 West of England combined authority report, in the local plan evidence, showed that the primary reason for just about all the land in the local green belt is purpose C. However, the cumulative impact of developing those pockets of land would degrade the green belt as a whole. Some of our green belt is very narrow, and it will only become more so if this is allowed to happen. Our towns and villages will slowly be swallowed up by Bristol, and the distinctiveness of our communities will be lost. My constituents do not want that, and I suspect that the good people of Bristol do not want it either, although some hon. Members may think otherwise. The Government rightly want to speed up housing delivery, but indiscriminate housing built by big developers with no regard for the environment or the people living nearby is not the answer. Ironically, far from increasing the speed of housing delivery, as the Government claim it will, in my area the grey belt changes the level of risk, creating more delays by distracting planning officers from the planned sites and from the Government’s new town proposal. Time will be wasted arguing with speculative developers about what constitutes grey belt, when it could be spent delivering local housing need through the local plan. I urge the Minister to listen to hon. Members across the Chamber, who are rightly raising concerns, and to advise the new Cabinet and the incoming Prime Minister that rural voices must be heard, and the NPPF revisited.