Fylde
Open Letter

On 26 October 2022 the moratorium on fracking in England was reinstated. For now the nightmare is over! Great news!

But is that the end of the threat? The moratorium was put in place in 2019 following an earthquake in Lancashire. But it was overturned three years later, breaking a manifesto commitment, and with no new science to justify the decision.  What’s to stop something similar happening in another few years?  This time market turmoil brought down Truss’s agenda. Next time?

We need legal safeguards! The Climate and Ecology Bill, currently before the House of Lords, can provide that and protect communities and wildlife from such future unsound Government decisions. We must protect our countryside and heritage.

We’re calling on Fylde’s MP, Mark Menzies, to back the Climate & Ecology Bill. 161 MPs and Peers from all major parties are already backing it—alongside 200 local councils, many of Britain’s leading experts, and 450 organisations (from The Wildlife Trusts  to The Co-op Bank).

Ask your local MP to register his support for the Climate & Ecology Bill which can protect constituents from destructive processes incompatible with ‘keeping 1.5 alive’ and ‘halting and reversing the destruction of nature by 2030’. Add your name to Zero Hour’s open letter today.

• Read the full letter to Mark Menzies MP

  Dear Mark Menzies MP,

  We know you will welcome the news that on 26 October 2022 the moratorium on fracking in England was reinstated. For now the nightmare is over!

  However, we said that in 2019 when the moratorium was put in place. Three years later a new Government decided to overturn the moratorium, offering no scientifically backed reasons for doing so and ignoring a great deal of scientifically backed advice to the contrary. What can prevent that happening again in another three years, or five, or ten?

  There needs to be a legal safeguard to ensure that local communities like ours are protected in future from similar destructive processes being imposed; especially when there is no credible and balanced weight of evidence to back up their use.

  We, the undersigned, are constituents, councils, businesses, schools and organisations from the Fylde constituency who invite you as our MP to take action by backing the Climate & Ecology Bill.

  The Climate & Ecology Bill, currently before the House of Lords, has been developed to address the gaps in current environmental legislation so that the UK:

  • Commits to a ‘carbon budget’ to keep warming to 1.5°C in accordance with the Paris Agreement
  • Actively restores lost nature in our countryside and towns, and ‘halts and reverses the destruction of nature by 2030’
  • Takes responsibility for, and reduces our full carbon footprint (including aviation, goods imported from China, US etc).

  The Bill is comprehensive. It has been drafted by leading UK scientists, economists and policy experts and now has the support of 160 MPs and Peers from every major party—including Sir Peter Bottomley and Sir Roger Gale; Baronesses Verma and Hooper; and more than a dozen Conservative-run county, district or borough councils across the UK, including Devon County, Derbyshire Dales, and Surrey Heath.

  Mark Menzies, as our MP, please would you commit to meeting Zero Hour, the CE Bill campaign, to discuss your potential support for the Climate and Ecology Bill to help protect our constituency from all destructive practices (including future fracking proposals) that threaten harm to our people and our country, and secure a future where we can all thrive.