Question

To ask the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, what discussions he has had with the US Department of Energy on licensing and regulatory regimes in relation to fracking in (a) Lancashire and (b) the UK.

Ministers in the Department have met their ministerial counterparts from the Department of Energy in the United States of America on a number of occasions and have had wide-ranging discussions.

All meetings between external organisations and Ministers in the Department of Energy and Climate Change are published on a quarterly basis on the Department's website and are available for download at this link:

http://www.decc.gov.uk/en/content/cms/accesstoinform/registers/registers.aspx.

As has been the case with successive administrations, it is not the Government's practice to provide details of all such meetings.