Labour succeeded on Monday evening to get a total of 13 amendments added to the Infrastructure Bill to “tighten up” the regulations on fracking, including making water companies statutory consultees and banning fracking from taking place in groundwater protection zones.
However, in a debate on Thursday morning in the House of Commons, environment secretary Liz Truss said: “The majority of the proposals the government accepted were already government policy”.
She added that, whilst not in legislation, the government is already implementing these elements of “robust regulation” in conjunction with the industry, the Environment Agency , and the Health and Safety Executive on a voluntary basis.
However, shadow environment secretary Maria Eagle said the government had “caved into Labour’s demands for extensive and robust regulation.”