A LABOUR councillor and a Green Party leader clashed outside Oxford’s County Hall yesterday ahead of a council debate on fracking.

Oxfordshire County Council Labour group leader Liz Brighouse and Oxfordshire Green Party deputy chair Alison Williams exchanged words outside the New Road offices.

Mrs Williams accused her of not caring for the health of people in Oxfordshire, leading to the confrontation at the 9.30am protest.

Campaigners were outside the offices for a protest against hydraulic fracturing of shale gas, known as fracking.

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Mrs Williams said Mrs Brighouse told protesters the council would not be making any decisions at the meeting and would only debate the issue.

She said she decided to speak out after Mrs Brighouse “addressed the whole group in a boom”.

Mrs Williams said: “I said ‘you don’t care about the heath and wellbeing of the people in Oxfordshire and the environment’.

“She was incredibly angry. I think I hit a raw nerve. It’s a matter of a decision that they might or might not be making. It’s something that we need to think about very carefully.”

Mrs Brighouse told the Oxford Mail: “That was completely not necessary. It was absolutely out of order.”

Churchill and Lye Valley councillor Mrs Brighouse said she was addressing protestors when Mrs Williams spoke out.

She said: “I was simply outlining what the process was going to be and that we were going to have a discussion.

“But she started yelling at me. It was absolutely uncalled for and absolutely out of order.”

Parts of south Oxfordshire, north of Oxford and a small area of Westwell, West Oxfordshire have been identified as possible locations for fracking.

Companies across the county must apply for licences to search for shale gas and have been able to since July.

If a company is given a licence to “frack”, it has to submit a planning application to the county council before extraction can begin.

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