Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg has called on the UK to start fracking its own gas rather than importing fracked gas from America.

Speaking on GB News, he said: “This country needs one thing, and that is cheap energy. In 2000, the British economy was 90% of the GDP per capita of the United States. It’s now 60%.

“In 2000, electricity prices in this country were, on average, broadly the same as in the United States. They are now four times higher.

“Energy policy has been a failure, as we have become obsessed with net zero and thinking that the world will follow what we do by making ourselves cold and poor.

“We have huge natural resources. Not only do we still have some reserves in the North Sea, I accept we’ve taken many of them out. Though often, as you develop and evolve, you find that there are more reserves than you initially thought, we also have the opportunity for fracking.

“We are sitting on trillions of cubic feet of cheap gas. One of the things that has made the American economy so strong in this period is that it has used its cheap gas to be efficient, and we’re now importing it.

“It comes in the form of liquefied natural gas, shipped over the Atlantic, and then re-gasified so that we can use it. For which, of course, we pay a huge premium.

“And if your concern is emissions, the emissions are much greater because of the transport costs, the gasification costs, and the liquefaction costs before you transport it.

“All of this has made us colder and poorer. And we have billions that we’re supposed to spend on the grid, at least £70 billion, potentially much, much more. Some of this would need to be spent in normal capex on the grid anyway.

“But changing from a system that has a few large generators to one that has many many small generators is enormously complex and expensive.

“All of this is pushing prices up. So yes, Jackdaw is a very good straw in the wind. But we don’t just need straws; we need bales of hay and a hurricane to carry them as we finally get a sensible energy policy.”