The Government is making a big mistake riding roughshod over the people of Yorkshire with fracking - Ed Miliband

But the only viable, long-term route to lower bills and energy security is to get off the fossil fuels—oil and gas—which are subject to the wild price swings we have seen.

Fortunately, there is an answer staring us in the face. Clean energy, like solar, wind, tidal, hydrogen and nuclear. Solar and wind power, for example, are nine times cheaper than gas.

This is why Labour has set out plans for a clean energy sprint for our country to cut bills.

What's more, these measures can create the well paid, good jobs that people across our region are crying out for. As well as this we need a massive programme to insulate homes and cut bills.

That’s why we would invest billions of pounds in a national mission to insulate 19 million cold draughty homes.

It could save families up to £1,000 off bills, and reduce our need for imported gas, as well as cutting carbon emissions—and creating even more jobs.

What about fracking—extracting gas from across our countryside? I’m all in favour of sustainable, safe, clean fuel sources which will make a difference to prices, but this certainly isn’t one of them.

The government’s decision this week to lift the ban flies in the face of the evidence, legitimate concerns about safety, its own promises and what people in Yorkshire actually want.

The problem starts because it will make no difference to gas prices —that’s because gas is sold on an international market and costs the same whether it’s extracted from across Yorkshire or from overseas, a fact that has been acknowledged by the current government.

Next, is it safe? The government banned fracking because they said it wasn’t after earthquakes at a fracking site in Lancashire.

They commissioned a report to see if safety could be guaranteed. That report, published last week, said it couldn't.

And what is the government response? To go ahead anyway and move the goalposts—raising the safety limits.

The Business Secretary, Jacob Rees-Mogg, even says we need to tolerate more “risk and disturbance”. Very easy for him to say.

So could people have expected this at the last General election. Does the government have a mandate for fracking across Yorkshire? Not a bit of it. They promised the opposite. Their 2019 manifesto said “We will not support fracking unless the science shows categorically that it can be done safely.”

Finally, do people actually want fracking? No. Only 17 per cent of the whole population actually support it.

And there is huge opposition in the places where fracking is being planned, including here in Yorkshire.

So as long as the government sticks by Liz Truss’ promises that there must be ‘local consent’ it sounds like it wont go ahead.

I wish that were the case, but when pressed repeatedly in the House of Commons about what local consent meant and whether he could guarantee he wouldn’t go ahead with fracking if local people didn't want it.

Jacob Rees-Mogg was totally evasive. To the fury of MPs across the House of Commons.

You might well then ask why the government is doing this if the case is so weak? The problem is that it reflects a government that is captured by a large, well funded industry and that is driven by the idea you can get out of a fossil fuels crisis by doubling down on fossil fuels.

They’ll never take the measures to tackle the climate crisis and they are putting the interests of those big powerful companies ahead of the people of Yorkshire.

Jacob Rees-Mogg even had the nerve to suggest that local opponents of fracking were somehow being funded by Vladimir Putin. What a total insult that is.

I urge readers of The Yorkshire Post to show him how wrong he is. Speak to your Councillor and MP and let's show the government what a big mistake it is making in insulting and seeking to ride roughshod over the people of Yorkshire.

Let’s stop fracking in its tracks and make Yorkshire the home of the clean energy revolution we need, with tens of thousands of jobs for local people, lower bills and doing the right thing by future generations.

Ed Miliband MP is Shadow Climate Change and Net Zero Secretary.