The Government's plan to allow fracking to restart has been described as a "charter for earthquakes", but how many were being recorded last time fracking went ahead?
Business and energy secretary Jacob Rees-Mogg described concerns around human induced seismic activity as "hysteria", blaming a lack of public understanding. He also said limits on level of potential earthquake activity that could be caused by fracking – 0.5 on the Richter scale – was too low and should be revisited.
He was responding to an urgent question from shadow shadow secretary of state for climate change and net zero Ed Miliband, who accused the Government of breaking a 2019 Conservative manifesto promise not to restart fracking unless it could be show to be safe. He said the Government had provided no evidence that it was safer and instead was changing the safety limits.
