Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Alison Thewliss Excerpts

Report stage & 3rd reading
Monday 10th January 2022 Commons Chamber

[Alan Brown]

Unlike the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (David Morris), I do not support the Bill, which may come as a surprise to some.

The basis of the Bill, as outlined by the Secretary of State, is that the Government recognise market failure in nuclear power, with Hitachi and Toshiba walking away from the sites they were developing. It is interesting that the Government now admit what we have said all along, which is that Hinkley Point C is a bad deal for bill payers. The Secretary of State dresses it up as being the right deal at the right time but, if we look at the impact assessment, it says the new RAB model could save up to £80 billion. By default, the impact assessment is telling us that the Government believe the model for Hinkley Point C cost bill payers an additional £30 billion to £80 billion.

Looking at the 35-year contract for Hinkley Point C, this means the Government are now telling us that bill payers will pay an additional £1 billion to £2 billion every year of that 35-year contract if Hinkley Point C starts generating electricity. That is a disgraceful waste of money.

[Alison Thewliss (Glasgow Central) (SNP)]

My hon. Friend is making a good point about the waste of money. It sounds like he agrees with my constituent Maureen from Kelvingrove, who says she believes

“the money being poured into this would be better spent on smaller scale more local solutions such as tide, wind, solar, hydro…and of course the key to it all, energy storage.”

Does my hon. Friend agree?

[Alan Brown]

I agree wholeheartedly, and I said earlier that the £1.7 billion allocated for the final investment stage of Sizewell C could deliver two pumped-storage hydro schemes in Scotland—two schemes that provide dispatchable energy when it is required.

My other big concern about the Bill and the RAB model itself is that the savings will not accrue and, worse, bill payers will carry too much of the construction risk. We keep hearing how successful the RAB model has been for other infrastructure projects, but nobody can demonstrate that it is proven to work for delivering nuclear power stations. As we discussed earlier, the examples from the United States suggest otherwise. Abandoned projects are costing bill payers billions of dollars, including $9 billion for the abandoned South Carolina project.

At the present time, in the here and now, we have a cost of living crisis, so it is absolutely scandalous to commit an estimated £50 billion to £60 billion in capital and finance costs and pass those on to bill payers. The Government tell us that is only £10 per household over the construction period, but what they do not tell us is how much more it will be when the 60-year RAB model contract kicks in.

We are in a bizarre situation where the trade body Energy UK supports the RAB model while arguing that consideration needs to be given to the removal of levies from our existing electricity bills due to the impact on the cost of living crisis. That is contradictory. Why support a payment mechanism with contractual payments of some 70 to 75 years being added to our bills during the current energy price crisis? E.ON has confirmed that it opposes such a move, and particularly the concept of bill payers starting to foot the bill as soon as construction commences.

Instead, if we retrofitted 11 million homes with energy efficiency measures, it is estimated that peak heat demand could fall by 40%. That is where the Government should start the targeted investment. We do need to consider whether we need new nuclear at all, and therefore whether we need this Bill or alternative funding mechanisms. Of the eight existing power stations, Dungeness went offline last year, seven years early; Hunterston B has now stopped production; Hinkley Point B will stop later this year; and Heysham and Hartlepool will stop in 2024. So five of the existing eight stations will be down by 2024, way before Hinkley will be up and running.

If nuclear is so critical to baseload, how will we live without it for these years? It actually undermines the Government’s own argument, particularly when we realise how often nuclear power stations go down and outages need to be managed. The wind might not be blowing and the power stations might go down as well, so what is the answer then? That is why we need investment in alternative renewables.

Worse still, the proposed EPR model developed at Hinkley looks set to be used at Sizewell. There is no functioning EPR model anywhere in the world. Taishan in China is still shut down, and according to a French whistleblower more fuel rods are damaged than China has acknowledged. Indeed, at Flamanville in France, which is already predicted to be 12 years behind, construction has stopped again because the French nuclear authorities are investigating a possible flaw in the EPR design. Surely this Government would not be so daft as to sign a new nuclear contract with an EPR design that has still not been shown to work.

This Bill represents the wrong priorities for the Government. Instead of mitigating the cost of living crisis and the cost of energy crisis, they are looking to compound the misery by adding further burdens on bill payers. I know that the Labour party has said that it will support the Bill, but I strongly recommend that it reconsiders its position, given the commitment of £50 billion to £60 billion in capital and finance costs being added for bill payers. We do not require another Tory white elephant nuclear project. I will certainly be voting against it.