Lord Smith of Finsbury, the former Labour cabinet minister and former chairman of the Environment Agency is to head a “task force” into investigating the benefits and risks of fracking.
Rather underwhelmingly Smith said the task force would:
“Go some way to answering important questions and tackling legitimate concerns [about fracking]”.
This was followed by the equally unhelpful response to the question on whether the task force represented an unofficial moratorium on fracking activity where Smith said:
“I’m not going to answer that I’m afraid, because it is an entirely hypothetical question.”
The plan however is for the task to issue an interim report in 2015 on “local issues” such as increased traffic around fracking sites.
However its report into the ever so slightly more significant threat to water supplies from leaks of methane and chemicals used in the fracking process is having to wait until 2016 to be published.
The task force itself is to be funded by none other than Cuadrilla, Centrica, Total and GDF Suez who have been busily stake building in acreage positions over the last few years, however Smith claims:
“Our funders have no say over how we operate.”
Confident?
No we aren’t either. What fracking needs is a sensible and objective debate, this couldn’t be further from that.