Richard Tice

Yes, exactly. It may pay the hon. Member to listen. In Lincolnshire alone, there is some 10 years of shale gas—a decade’s-worth—for the United Kingdom, and that could generate thousands and thousands of jobs. The context is very simple. In the United States, fracking has been transformational to the US economy. It is the reason that it has much lower gas prices and much lower electricity prices. In Lincolnshire alone, as I was just explaining, the density of shale gas in the Gainsborough trough is believed to be double that of the most productive shale gas in Pennsylvania of the Marcellus shale. The opportunity is enormous. Even if hon. Members were to disagree with me completely, which I suspect may be the case, a middle ground might be to say, “Before we make a seismic decision, the answer might be to do a proper test, which could be independently monitored, supervised and checked for, let’s say, a year, or two years”—I am a generous man, of course—“and that can then be verified.” We could do that with a number of different wells using a number of different techniques, because there are indeed numerous different extraction techniques depending on the depth to which one goes. Some 11 techniques can be counted, including low-volume hydraulic fracking, high-volume hydraulic fracking, and acidic oscillation—on and on the list goes. Why would we be so dogmatic, so stubborn and, bluntly, so negligent against the financial interests and prosperity of all our citizens that we would refuse to use this glorious energy treasure that has made the United States so wealthy? The potential is enormous: tens and tens of billions of investment into our community; tens and tens and tens, and tens and tens, more billions of tax revenue potential, with enormous community benefits.