Dear Dr Wollaston

Thank you very much for forwarding the response from Matt Hancock MP, Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, to our letter regarding the health impacts of fracking. You very kindly asked Mr Hancock for clarification on the Department of Health and Social Care’s position on the health impacts of fracking, and what plans the Government has to update and widen Public Health England’s June 2014 report, which is now nearly five years old. 

We were somewhat unimpressed by Mr Hancock’s brief response to your letter, which simply set out the very limited criteria which were used to compile the 2014PHE report and restated its conclusion. Mr Hancock also declined to answer your query about the government’s plans to update and widen the report, saying only that the PHE continues to review the evidence but has not identified anything significant that would make it change its views. 

This standard cut-and-paste response that there has been no evidence of the harms of fracking in the last five years is scarcely credible, given the large number of peer-reviewed papers and reviews published in the last five years that clearly indicate the negative health impacts of fracking. We listed many of these reports and their worrying conclusions in our original letter to you, and so will not take up your valuable time by repeating them here. However, it is extremely concerning that the Secretary of State appears so complacent about the situation that not one of the hundreds of studies published on the health impacts of fracking appears to warrant a review of the PHE report. 

Since the 2014 PHE report was published, a number of countries and states (including Ireland and Scotland) have effectively banned fracking, partly because of widespread public health concerns based on current published evidence. If there is sufficient evidence for other countries to prohibit this controversial practice, how can the PHE defend its position that the 2014 report should not be updated?

We would respectfully suggest that it is the responsibility of the Health and Social Care Committee to scrutinise Public Health England’s hands-off approach to p and challenge the Secretary of State on the fact that the PHE report has not kept pace with the growing body of research on the health impacts of fracking. We would therefore be grateful if you could ask Mr Hancock the following questions on our behalf.

1 What published evidence on the potential public health impacts of emissions associated with shale gas extraction has the PHE reviewed since 2014? Please provide the Health and Social Care Select Committee a list of all the research that has been assessed by the PHE since the publication of the 2014 report. 

2 The 2014 PHE report only considered the potential health impacts caused by the ‘direct release of chemical and radioactive pollutants’, and ignored the wider public health impacts caused by the increase of HGV traffic, 24-hour noise and light pollution, and numerous other health risks associated with fracking. Why is PHE not considering these wider issues and reviewing the large body or published evidence associated with these health impacts?

Finally, we would like to thank you for continuing to engage with us on this very important topic, and we look forward to hearing Mr Hancock’s responses to our queries.

 

Which led to this... We await the Ministers response