Recently, David Cameron spoke to TV cameras about figures concerning community benefits and potential job creation from fracking.

The figures are almost double those from his own advisory bodies.

He talks of the best regulation in the world, when the only regulation is from the companies the industry subcontracts. He has also cut 15% of the workforce of an already overstretched Environment Agency.

He has been in Brussels and has proudly lobbied for environmental safeguards to be dropped, which are in place to protect the wellbeing of citizens, the purity of their water and their land.

He has just taken away liability from the oil and gas industry for any pollution accidents from high-volume hydraulic fracturing and made it the responsibility of the British taxpayer.

He often quotes the Royal Society and Royal Academy of Engineering but then dismisses all the safety recommendations they have urged the Government to take out.

As a Conservative, I am dismayed. How can I believe anything that comes out of the Prime Minister’s mouth?

Juliette Harris, Oldlands Avenue, Balcombe

Your Soapbox piece headlined “Fracking supporters are ignoring the evidence from US” is misleading (The Argus, January 16).

You say that more than 600 chemicals are used. Only five to ten chemicals are used at any one time, out of a list of up to 600. Some of them are carcinogens, yes, and carcinogens have been in our drinking water for more than ten years. They are also in our air, food, cosmetics, pesticides, and countless manmade materials.

The liquid does not seep into the rocks and ground water; the shale wells are thousands of metres below the water table.

It’s already been shown that the families holding lighters under their taps in the film is nothing to do with chemicals in the water; the residents of the neighbourhood in which the scene was filmed have been able to light their water since the 1930s, long before people began producing gas in the area.

It has also been disproved that the contaminated rivers had anything to do with chemicals introduced through fracking and that it is an entirely separate issue. A lot of Americans are very happy. It’s a small majority who are not. Your writer based her argument on someone else’s anti-fracking film.

Investing money into harnessing tidal energy is massively expensive and can endanger wild birds and water mammals by changing the water table.

Shale gas is a cleaner fuel than liquid natural gas and oil, which we are currently using.

Wind and solar have been invested in. People have been incentivised to install solar panels but other forms of energy are needed.

I like light and heat, as I’m sure others do too, so I want the shale gas industry to succeed.

Look again at the information out there and ask yourself where the anti-fracking evidence is and don’t just accept anti-fracking propaganda at face value.

Nicola David, Ockley Lane, Hassocks