Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what assessment she has made of the potential merits of introducing a levy on shale gas companies to fund the cost of policing at shale gas sites.

The Home Office has provided funding to Lancashire and North Yorkshire Police through the Special Grant Process to reimburse the police for the additional costs of fracking protests. Policing costs as a result of protests against fracking have reduced as fracking operations at the key Cuadrilla site at Preston New Road have ceased since October 2019.