Gideon Amos

I support these measures. Contrary to what some have said in the Chamber today, the UK Energy Research Centre has found that two thirds of the increase in electricity bills since 2021 has been driven by wholesale gas prices. The leader of the Liberal Democrats, my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) was right, when he was Energy Secretary, to play his part in leading the UK to becoming the world leader in offshore wind. He was right—as, to be fair, was the Prime Minister—to oppose the reckless and illegal war in the middle east, which has driven up prices. It is crucial that we break the reliance on gas to bring down our energy bills. Our Liberal Democrat plan to halve energy bills in 10 years depends on doing just that. Our essential energy guarantee would discount half of bills right now, but we need to do more. Tidal range could have been generating more than Hinkley C, had the previous Conservative Government supported that proposal when it came up. My hon. Friend the Member for South Cambridgeshire (Pippa Heylings) was absolutely right to say in her excellent speech that community energy could be playing a much bigger part. One thing that Reform and the Conservatives have not talked about today is that their alternatives do not just mean more and more burning of oil and gas, despite the global warming we are experiencing today; they also want to frack our beautiful countryside to burn even more gas. Near my constituency in Somerset, shale gas licences were obtained, including for Quantoxhead and around Brent Knoll, just 16 miles from a nuclear power station and not far at all from my town of Taunton. The Reform party said that it would be negligent not to frack. Under their current leader, the Conservatives have recently opened the door to fracking, saying that it will form part of the mix, just as Liz Truss did during her short period in office. Fracking in Lancashire, let us remember, triggered 200 seismic events of magnitudes up to 2.9, which were felt across the whole Fylde coast. My neighbours in Taunton and Wellington want nothing to do with fracking, and certainly not just outside our town. Any proposals to restart fracking pose real dangers to Somerset, and constituents of Taunton and Wellington would bear all the risk: the earth tremors, the industrialisation of our rolling hills and the threat to the River Tone, while the financial gains would flow only to the oil and gas executives and to their backers. The seventh carbon budget provides the continuity of trajectory that lower bills and a stable climate depend upon, but we must go further. We must reject the dangerous alternatives from the Conservatives and Reform, and say no to fracking our wonderful countryside.