Lord Howell says fracking should be carried out in ‘desolate’ North East

Lord Howell has got himself into a spot of fracking bother this afternoon. The Newcastle Chronicle reports that George Osborne’s father-in-law says fracking should be carried out in ‘unhabituated and desolate areas’. Nothing too controversial about that, except Howell singled out the north east of England, where there is apparently ‘plenty of room’. Howell — an energy secretary under Margaret Thatcher — said at Lords’ questions:

‘I mean there obviously are, in beautiful natural areas, worries about not just the drilling and the fracking, which I think are exaggerated, but about the trucks, and the delivery, and the roads, and the disturbance, and those about justified worries.

‘But there are large and uninhabited and desolate areas. Certainly in part of the North East where there’s plenty of room for fracking, well away from anybody’s residence where we could conduct without any kind of threat to the rural environment.’