Energy Bill [Lords]
Debate between Lord Lilley and Chris Heaton-Harris
Mr Lilley
When the Energy and Climate Change Committee produced its report, I voted against that project precisely because I was worried that we were committing to an unnecessarily high cost, although I am not against nuclear in principle. I do not agree with the hon. Lady that it is much more costly than offshore wind. In fact, I think it is less costly. It is still unnecessarily costly, however, and we should therefore look again at options such as modular nuclear. If she were to put forward a motion to reduce the subsidies for offshore wind so that they were equal to those for onshore wind, I would happily second it. I would happily join her in that because I am genuinely in favour of reducing costs.
Chris Heaton-Harris
Madam Deputy Speaker, I am sure you would agree that my right hon. Friend’s speech is spanking this out of the park. Does he agree that the way in which we have moved forward by introducing an element of the market into the mechanism of bidding for subsidy in our energy profile is the right way forward, and that the renewables obligation is the wrong way forward? I also support the Government.
Mr Lilley
I agree. It was very late in the day when we introduced that system, so at least we incurred the minimum cost of subsidy to achieve the given objective rather than just plucking out a number, which would inevitably have been high, given that civil servants always are rather generous with public money and set targets high, just so that they can say, “Oh look, we have achieved our quantitative solution, even if we have done so at unnecessary expense.”