Reform vows to lift ban on shale gas licences to extract 'billions'

Reform UK has vowed to lift the ban on fracking if it wins power.

Deputy leader Richard Tice said it would be ‘grossly financially negligent’ to leave ‘hundreds of billions of pounds’ worth of energy buried underground.

The party has already told oil and gas firms to prepare to make fresh applications for licences – and to get ready to ‘drill, baby, drill’ – four years before the next general election is expected.

It comes despite Labour ordering the last wells in England to be filled with cement this year as it vows to ‘ban fracking for good’.

Mr Tice said: ‘We’ve got potentially hundreds of billions of energy treasure in the form of shale gas.