To frack or not to frack – that is the (latest) question to divide Labour and Reform.

On Wednesday (1 October), Labour’s Ed Miliband vowed to permanently ban the shale gas extraction method, slamming Nigel Farage’s party as a “bunch of frackers”.

“ Fracking will not take a penny off bills,” he told Labour’s conference. “It will not create long-term sustainable jobs. It will trash our climate commitments. And it is dangerous and deeply harmful to our natural environment.”

Reform UK, meanwhile, has pledged to “bring back” the practice. Deputy leader Richard Tice has described existing prohibitions on it as “grossly financially negligent to a criminal degree”.

“We’ve got potentially hundreds of billions of energy treasure in the form of shale gas,” he said last month.

Miliband’s speech

See Full Page