Onshore Wind Energy

Andrea Leadsom Excerpts

Thursday 10th February 2011 Westminster Hall

[Andrea Leadsom (South Northamptonshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair, Mr Walker. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for enabling me to introduce this very important debate about onshore wind farms.

First, I congratulate the Front-Bench team on their part in bringing the Localism Bill to Parliament. It is absolutely key that we in Britain reverse the tide of centralisation and start to give power back to communities and people. I applaud the intention to remove regional spatial strategies and to abolish regional renewables targets. Putting power back into the hands of local communities and better allowing people to determine the outcomes for their area is certainly something that we need to do, so I thank the Front-Bench team for that.

The debate about onshore wind farms goes to the heart of the question of localism versus the national interest. Where onshore wind farms are concerned, a big tug-of-war is going on. There are real issues of national interest that must be taken into account. I shall mention three, the first of which is the energy gap. Although this is not a party political debate, Labour’s leaving of our economy in such a shambles is one of the legacies that we are fighting. The other is the way that it left our energy situation. The sad fact is that between now and 2020, some 35% of British power generating capability through nuclear and conventional power stations will be retired due to old age.

[Huw Irranca-Davies (Ogmore) (Lab)]

I welcome the debate initiated by the hon. Lady. It is a good opportunity. I also welcome her saying that it is not party political, but will she note that in the middle of the economic recession that we had and the difficulties that we had, and still have, the wind sector grew by thousands and thousands of jobs? It was not coincidental that that growth began from 2007-08 onwards. Is that not a good story about green jobs started under the Labour Administration?

[Andrea Leadsom]

As I plan to say, wind energy plays a part, but what we actually needed to do was to rebuild conventional power sources, and start building new ones, that will genuinely meet the needs of the country in the next decades.

[Dr Andrew Murrison (South West Wiltshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on obtaining the debate. On the subject of conventional power stations, will she note that wind power will not alter one jot the number of power stations required? A report by Scottish and Southern Energy notes that receipts from its extensive wind turbine farm were down by 20% last year, beyond its expectations, showing that we simply cannot rely on there being sufficient wind to eliminate conventional power stations.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree, and will come to that point.

The second challenge where national need is tugging against local need is energy security and our dwindling North sea gas reserves. We are now a net importer of gas and will increasingly rely on potentially unreliable sources for importing power, so there is a great need to rebuild our own generating capability. The third “tug” comes from our binding EU target to meet 15% of our energy needs through renewables by 2020. Again, that presses us towards urgent action that at times can appear to go against local requirements.

I therefore welcome the Government’s focus and determination to solve these problems while at the same time taking account of what local people want. What are the solutions? The former leader of the CBI, Richard Lambert, said clearly that nuclear energy was the answer. It is low carbon and has a high base load. I am pleased that we are seizing that bull by the horns and pressing for more nuclear capability. That will be key.

As the hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies) suggested, however, the big race during the last decade has been for onshore wind, not just here but in Europe. Let me set the scene. At the moment, Britain has 350 operational wind farms, 260 either under construction or awaiting construction and 250 at the planning stage. That means that there are already 3,000 turbines in the country, with another 6,500 either awaiting construction or planned. To meet the 10,000 turbines needed to ensure that we hit our 15% renewables target by 2020 would cost us dearly in terms of the impact on communities and electricity prices.

At the moment, onshore wind farms provide for about 2.1% of total energy needs in the UK and they are by far the largest renewable source, but the big question is: are they worth it? To examine that, I shall consider the case of Denmark, which has led the way on onshore wind. It now has more than 6,000 wind turbines for a population of just over 5 million people. In theory, wind turbines could provide for one fifth of Denmark’s energy needs, but its national power company—DONG Energy—has stopped supporting new onshore wind turbines, for three reasons. The first is the enormous public backlash. Communities have just had enough. Secondly, electricity prices in Denmark are the highest in Europe. Since 2005, subsidies paid by businesses and consumers to wind farm developers have totalled some £620 million.

However, the key reason why Denmark is putting a stop to onshore wind farms is effectiveness. Electricity generated in Denmark could provide for 20% of its total needs, but not much of it is used in Denmark. Why? Because the wind does not blow at peak times in Denmark, so the country sells its surplus energy to Norway, Sweden and Germany, often at a substantial loss.

Another key issue in Denmark is that the Danes have failed to close a single conventional power station. Why? Wind energy produces excesses of power at times when it is windy and when it is working, but at other times it is not useful to them, so it has not significantly reduced their carbon footprint. In addition, they have to keep their power plants ticking over because the carbon footprint from constantly ramping up power stations when the wind drops is counter-productive.

The other reason why Denmark has stopped building onshore wind farms is that subsidies have been reduced significantly by the Danish Government. Of course, that points to the fact that the big push for wind is a result of taxpayer subsidies; that is why developers want to build wind farms.

What does that mean for the UK? First, in the UK we know that wind farms are unreliable. The intermittency causes a problem for the grid. Too much wind means that the turbines have to be turned off. No wind means that they are useless. Wind cannot be stored, and in the UK the average production from wind turbines is about 30% tops. That means that the theoretical capacity of 100% is only achieved to the tune of 30% on average because of the intermittency of wind. We therefore have to keep all our power plants going to provide a back-up source and we will have to build new power plants to cope with that.

Secondly, last December, when temperatures dropped to an average of minus 0.7° and demand for heat rose by 7%, there was no wind. Wind power contributed not a jot to meeting that 7% increase in demand for heat.

Thirdly, we have to consider the costs. It is difficult to establish the relative costs because they move all the time, but roughly speaking, wind energy costs about two and a half times the price of nuclear energy and twice the cost of traditional fuel sources. However, it is not just the fuel itself. There is also the cost of building the turbines. The costs of the raw materials for that are increasing, and as the demand for wind turbines increases, so does the cost of building them.

Finally, there is the cost of upgrading the grid to deal with the enormous amount of new connectivity that will be needed by 2020 if we are to have a total of 10,000 onshore wind turbines. The cost has been put at around £5 billion.

[James Wharton (Stockton South) (Con)]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point about the cost of wind turbines. Is it not the case that there is not only a cash cost, but that the carbon cost of manufacture detracts significantly from the environmental benefits that onshore turbines are supposedly meant to bring?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, although some would argue that the cost would be defrayed over a few months, once the turbines are built. Of course, it all boils down to how much energy the turbines produce.

Upgrades to the grid will cost about £5 billion by 2020. That alone will add 1% to every fuel bill, as it is consumers and businesses who will be paying the cost. In 2005, Paul Golby, the chief executive officer of E.ON, said:

“Without the renewable obligation certificates nobody would be building wind farms.”

In 2007, Ofgem said,

“we think there are cheaper and simpler ways of meeting these aims”—

the aims of reducing carbon emissions and promoting renewables—

“than the renewables obligation scheme which is forecast to cost business and domestic customers over £30 billion.”

In 2008, the Centre for Policy Studies predicted that meeting the 2020 renewables target would require a taxpayer subsidy of between £4 billion and £5 billion a year. That would add £3,000 to the total fuel bills of every household—that excludes the cost of infrastructure —and it takes no account of the fact that, in 2009, 4 million households were in fuel poverty. The cost of these things must be taken seriously into account.

I am delighted that the Government have announced that they intend to share the financial benefit of onshore wind farms with communities. That is important because there is no doubt that taxpayers will be paying the price; it is fair that the communities that host wind farms should share in the rewards.

Another cost of wind farms that is hard to quantify is the impact on communities. Hundreds of campaigners are fighting against having wind farms in their areas. Their concerns are wide-ranging. They include visual problems: many of the new wind turbines are bigger than Big Ben and taller than the London Eye; they are said to intimidate villages and ruin areas of outstanding natural beauty, and there is mess and disturbance while they are being built.

[Andrew Percy (Brigg and Goole) (Con)]

We have exactly the same problem on the Isle of Axholme in North Lincolnshire. Several local villages in my area were faced with about 14,000 vehicle movements for up to two years during the construction of a 34-turbine wind farm. The wind farm was refused permission by the local authority, but it was granted on appeal. It is not only what happens afterwards. It includes what happens during the construction phase, which is not a short time.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point.

[Mr James Gray (North Wiltshire) (Con)]

I am most grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way twice so quickly.

It is instructive that in the Chamber for this important debate there are, at a glance, some 26 coalition Government Members and only two Labour Members—one Whip and the shadow Minister. Does my hon. Friend agree that that is because the visual impact of wind farms is almost exclusively felt in constituencies represented by Conservative and Liberal Democrat Members, but that the constituencies represented by Labour will benefit as they will be using the energy?

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a good point, and I would add to it. The rush to build wind farms under Labour’s top-down planning now makes it difficult for Opposition Members to stand on a localism ticket.

[Tony Cunningham (Workington) (Lab)]

I hope that the hon. Lady will wait and listen carefully to what I shall say.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I look forward to that.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I thank the hon. Lady for giving way again in this good-humoured debate. May I point out that the comments of the hon. Member for North Wiltshire (Mr Gray) are a complete fallacy? In the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham) and in many places in Wales, including in the uplands of south Wales, more than 60% of the land is within the TAN8—technical advice note 8—area for development. It is not true to say that wind farms are to be found predominantly in Conservative or Liberal Democrat areas. That is not how the mapping is done.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank the hon. Gentleman, but the fact remains that not many Opposition Members are present in the Chamber.

[Stephen Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

Further to that point, may I suggest that one reason for that may be that the leader of the Labour party was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change? He signed legally binding targets that are highly questionable. Indeed, the Labour Chair of the Public Accounts Committee was behind a report that concluded:

“We are concerned that the Department agreed to the legally binding EU-target”—

the 2020 target—

“without clear plans, targets for each renewable energy technology, estimates of funding required”,

and without understanding other factors such as planning issues. We will come later to the fact that the legally binding target, which will require 10,000 new turbines by 2020, notwithstanding the fact that 40% of planning applications fail, is beyond the control of the Department that signed it.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend is right to raise that point. As I said at the start, that binding target is one reason why we have a tug-of-war between the national interest and what local communities want.

I was talking about the visual impact of wind farms. One of the main problems is flicker. Sunlight on the rotating blades disturbs many people; it creates genuine hardship because it is constant when the wind is blowing and, obviously, when the sun is shining.

Turbines also have an aural impact. They are audible at a great distance—potentially, as far as two miles, depending on the landscape. I have been given some wonderful descriptions of the sound. It is described variously as like an aircraft continually passing overhead, a brick wrapped in a towel turning in a tumble drier, someone mixing cement in the sky or a train that never arrives. Wind turbines are often noisiest at night, and the sound is constant. One cannot get away from it and it does not stop.

Wind turbines also have an impact on wildlife, as we heard earlier. A survey estimates that 350,000 bats have already been killed by turbines, as have 21,000 birds of prey and millions of small birds, and that each turbine kills between 20 and 40 birds a year. Larger animals, particularly horses, seem to find turbines disturbing.

[Mr Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate, and on her powerful speech. I visited the Davies family in South Lincolnshire a couple of years ago. They were forced out of their home by the noise of the local wind turbine. I am sure that that is why so many hon. Members are here today: they do not want their constituents to suffer that sort of imposition, especially as local decisions are overturned by central authorities.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank my hon. Friend for that excellent contribution.

Another key concern cited by communities is interference with television and radio. Emergency services are concerned about the impact on their frequencies. The Ministry of Defence is concerned about interference with radar, and that some of these huge turbines might be a threat to aircraft.

There is also the question of house prices. It is much disputed, as it is not clear whether turbines have an impact on house prices across the board, but it has been the case in some areas. In Denmark there is a requirement for wind farm developers to compensate home owners if there is proven loss in the value of their property. Therefore, at the moment, planning favours the wind farm developer.

Only one in three wind farms are approved by democratically elected local authority planners. I hope that the Minister can shed some light on this, but I wonder how many of the other two in three wind farms go on to be approved on appeal, rather than being rejected in their entirety.

[Simon Hart (Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend share my concern that local authorities might be tempted to be both judge and jury when it comes to applying for and granting consent for wind farms on property that they own?

[Andrea Leadsom]

I agree with my hon. Friend. When planning for onshore wind farms, the views of people who have to host them should be taken into account, no matter who owns the land.

[Justin Tomlinson (North Swindon) (Con)]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for giving way once more. An Ecotricity application for three wind turbines adjacent to the South Marston village was deferred on Tuesday. It is as if the planning process is fearful of the inspector, and that all the concerns listed by my hon. Friend—the tangible effects on local residents—are almost irrelevant as planners seek to avoid dealing with them; ultimately, the unaccountable inspectorate will give the approval.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I quite agree and that has certainly been explained to me by many councillors in my own district.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for giving way and I congratulate her on securing this debate. The village of Yelvertoft in my constituency has, hanging over its head, the prospect of eight turbines the size of the London Eye being built. Some 72% of the village were against it, including the local council, me, as the MP, and the MEPs. The decision went to appeal. One person from the planning inspectorate turned up for a few days and overturned that decision, which is why these turbines are now being built. That is not localism.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I completely agree with my hon. Friend that that is outrageous.

One of the biggest criticisms about the planning system for onshore wind farms is that there is no requirement, at the moment, for the developer to prove that the place is actually windy. You would think, Mr Walker, that before the taxpayer was expected to fork out billions of pounds someone would require the developer to find—as Winnie the Pooh put it—a windy spot. It is a fairly basic requirement. That brings me on to South Northamptonshire, which is not a windy spot—other than my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris), who, I am told, can be full of wind at times. [Interruption.] Yes, hot air.

[Andrew George (St Ives) (LD)]

Before the hon. Lady moves on geographically—I come from a totally different part of the country—let me congratulate her on the way in which she has constructed a very strong argument against wind energy, although it is not one that I entirely sign up to. However, I feel that she has overplayed the negatives. Turbines, for example, are not operational for about 100 hours a year as a result of strong winds. She has also rather underplayed the economic benefits to the manufacturing sector in the UK. Does she not agree with the way in which this Government are approaching this issue? They are constructing incentives for communities to benefit from wind farms rather than simply having them established in the landscape with no benefit to the local community. Does she think that that might help to change people’s attitudes towards them?

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. Many colleagues want to speak. Can we have pithy interventions?

[Andrea Leadsom]

Absolutely. As I said earlier, I completely applaud the Government’s intention to enable communities to share in the benefits of wind farms; it is absolutely right. It should have been done before now. I completely agree that where wind farms go ahead, communities should benefit. None the less, I slightly take issue with the point that my hon. Friend made about the amount of time that wind turbines are actually working. The latest statistics show that, on average in the UK, they operate between 25% and 30% of the time.

[Andrew George]

The figures across the board show that the turbines operate about 70% to 80% of the time. About 100 hours are lost when they have to be shut down as a result of excessive wind speeds. That is 100 hours a year per turbine.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I thank my hon. Friend for that, but I think that we are talking about two slightly different things. I am talking about 30% of wind farm capacity being effective at any one time.

I move on to my own constituency of South Northamptonshire. The Met Office confirms that it is one of the most sheltered parts of the UK. Our average wind speed is around 8 knots, which means that we are towards the lower end of effective speeds for a wind turbine. Nevertheless, I have four applications for wind turbines in my constituency—one in Greatworth and Helmdon, one in Roade, one in Alderton and one very recently in Paulerspury. A local study suggests that the capacity of the wind turbines would be around 19%, which is extremely low. We will, none the less, face massive disruption during construction.

Having spoken to a number of developers, I am told that the factors that attracted them to South Northamptonshire were the excellent roads, the convenience of the sites to the motorways, the good links to the grid, and the ROCs. They did not say that they were attracted to Northamptonshire because it is an exceptionally windy place. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Minister on today’s announcement, which he kindly sent to my office this morning. It said that the Government will consider giving wind farm developers a new incentive to build in windy places rather than in constituencies such as mine where there really is not enough wind to be worth the cost.

[Sir Alan Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) (LD)]

That is slightly worrying to those of us who represent rather windy places. In the hilltop village of Wingate, in my constituency, residents faced the prospect of being encircled by wind farms, which were separately applied for by different developers, and that is a planning process that they find very difficult to cope with.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My right hon. Friend makes a good point. I agree that the issue of the local need versus the national interest still applies. Let us start from the basis that we build wind farms where it is windy and not where it is not windy.

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

On a point of order, Mr Walker. The hon. Lady intrigues me. It is a very good debate and she has put some powerful points. However, has there been some policy announcement today? From what she has said, it sounds as though it may be beneficial. Are we hearing here and now a policy announcement?

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

That is not a point of order. In his summing up, the Minister might want to refer to the letter that he sent to the hon. Lady, but it might just be a personal letter that we all receive from Ministers.

[Andrea Leadsom]

I can confirm that the letter was simply a piece of information that was put on the Department of Energy and Climate Change website. The Minister’s office sent me a link to it, so I can confirm that the information is in the public domain.

[Mr Gray]

Is it not an irony that the windiest places in the UK tend also to be the most remote from the places where the energy is being used? Therefore, the visual impact that my hon. Friend mentioned is doubled because of the necessity to have wires going from the windy place, such as Northumberland, to London where we are actually using the energy.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes a very good point. That will always be the issue—turbines being very close to the grid and therefore on top of a community or being further away from the grid and potentially having an impact through the connectivity issues. That will always be a problem.

We have painted rather a gloomy picture here and I can add one last bit of gloom, which is that sadly—before we all go out and shoot ourselves—we also do not benefit from the manufacturing of wind turbines. At a time when the renewable industry offers great potential in terms of business growth, it is something that we must take great strides to improve, and we are doing so in this Government.

[Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)]

In my constituency, Converteam manufactures components of turbines. It is working on gearless turbines, which will address the issues of noise that greatly concern both my hon. Friend’s constituents and my constituents. Therefore, there are some UK manufacturers of wind turbines, which means that there is some benefit to the UK economy.

[Andrea Leadsom]

That is music to my ears, and I hope that we will progress with that and go on to manufacture even more wind turbines and other sources of renewable energy in this country.

[Mr Graham Stuart]

We are a world leader in offshore wind turbines. We have the largest capacity of almost any other country. Siemens has announced that it wishes to come to Hull to create 700 jobs, and others will follow. We have a huge opportunity with large-scale wind turbine farms; we can drive down the cost until it can compete with fossil fuels. Surely we should be focusing on offshore wind where we have world leadership and manufacturing potential because that offers a real benefit for this country. Onshore wind upsets our constituents, contributes little and has many inefficiencies, which my hon. Friend has so powerfully explained to us today.

[Andrea Leadsom]

My hon. Friend makes an excellent point and it is one that I completely agree with.

There is now a fairly gloomy picture in this country, where it appears that the taxpayer foots the bill for wind farms, communities pay the price of the loss of amenity and the wind farm developer takes all the reward without even needing to prove that there is a benefit in terms of reducing our carbon footprint. So I again applaud the Minister for the way in which we are moving to a different environment, in which communities will have a greater say and will share in the proceeds that accrue from the building of wind farms.

Having looked into this issue in great detail in the last few weeks, I accept that there are marginal benefits from onshore wind. However, it is very difficult to suggest that onshore wind will mean that we can reduce our reliance on conventional power sources. By the very nature of wind, that will not be possible. Nevertheless, wind should be present in the mix of what we are trying to achieve: reducing our carbon footprint, plugging the energy gap, and ensuring good energy security.

Having said that, the benefits of onshore wind have been hugely exaggerated by the developers who stand to make huge sums from the taxpayer incentives. In addition, we are genuinely adding to fuel poverty in this country and costing consumers and businesses billions of pounds because of this battle to develop onshore wind. Another study, by the Centre for Policy Studies, suggested that 61% of people are either fairly unwilling or very unwilling to see their electricity costs rise to pay for onshore wind development.

So what are the solutions? First, as I have said, I welcome the Localism Bill. It goes a long way to providing solutions that will put people back in the driving seat. I welcome the commitment to sharing the financial benefits of wind farms between developers and the communities that host them. I thoroughly welcome neighbourhood planning, which will allow local communities to exclude or include wind farms within their neighbourhood plans.

Secondly, if those neighbourhood plans include wind farms, they can be up to a capacity of 50 MW. I urge my hon. Friend the Minister to take my proposed amendment to the Localism Bill as his own and to adopt it. What I have proposed, with a great deal of support from hon. Friends and colleagues across the House, is that the capacity for onshore wind farms that come under the neighbourhood plans should be 100 MW, in line with offshore wind farms, rather than the 50 MW that is the current capacity. The reason is that otherwise there would be the perverse incentive for developers to apply for planning for a 52 MW capacity wind farm to get around the neighbourhood plans. Therefore, I urge the Minister to consider my amendment seriously.

Thirdly, we need to look very carefully at the rights of communities, to ensure that we have the right balance in this sector. In Denmark, for example, there is a minimum distance from habitation of four times the height of the wind turbine and in Scotland the guidance says that there should be a 2 km exclusion zone. There is certainly more that we in this country can do to ensure that people can defend their immediate environment.

Fourthly, we should look very carefully at how we ensure that developers go to those areas of the UK that are very windy and not to those areas that are marginal in terms of the amount of wind that they receive and that are only profitable because of the taxpayer benefits that they offer.

My fifth point is that we in this country should be looking much more closely at other sources of renewable energy. In particular, I want to highlight ground source heat pumps, which have been described as

“the most energy-efficient, environmentally clean and cost-effective space-conditioning systems available.”

There is an advert for them.

There are also tidal and marine technologies, which are more predictable and reliable than wind, and they are cheap to maintain once they are established. Hydroelectric power is even more reliable than tidal power, because it allows water to be stored to meet peak demand.

I also want to make a call for action on the renewable heat incentive. Last week, I saw a company in my constituency that turns methane from landfill sites into biofuel. The machines that the company uses to do that generate heat, which the company plans to use in polytunnels in Kent, allowing the strawberry-growers there to compete with our colleagues on the continent. What could be better than trying to use that long chain of renewable energy to provide yet more energy?

So what we need is cheap, reliable sources of energy and to have a better balance between onshore wind, which has such a high cost for communities, and other sources of renewable energy. In conclusion, onshore wind plays its part but as a country we need to balance the national priorities with the right of local communities to have their voices heard.

[Mr Charles Walker (in the Chair)]

Order. We have an extraordinary number of colleagues who wish to speak. We have an hour and 40 minutes left before the wind-ups by the Front-Bench spokesmen, so I will leave colleagues to do the mathematics.

--- Later in debate ---

[Andrea Leadsom]

Thank you, Mr Walker, for your chairmanship. Well, you heard it here—this is where the rubber hits the road, or more likely where the peregrine falcon hits the turbine.

We have heard some very impassioned speeches today from a number of hon. Members, none of whom are the sort of fashionable green activists who look at the theory of it all and think, “Onshore wind is the answer and you’re just going to have to lump it”. There has been a series of speeches from MPs who are speaking out for their constituents. I know from my own constituency that people cry over this issue and spend huge sums of their own money and hour after hour after hour of their own time to try to defend the community that they live in.

Onshore wind farms are rather unique in the renewables sphere in terms of the amount of intrusion that they create. Other renewables do not create so much intrusion, they are not as widespread and, as many hon. Members have said, they do not come back time after time after time. Communities do not end up with four hydroelectric plants, up and down the valley, one after the other. Therefore, Members here today are speaking out with genuine urgency on behalf of their constituents, and those on the Front Benches should take note of that.

Another important point to make is that nobody in Westminster Hall today is speaking out loudly in favour of there being more onshore wind in the energy mix. There is a very important issue here, which is that we already have 3,000 wind turbines in this country and 6,500 more are either under construction or in planning. That is an enormous number of new turbines and any new legislation that we introduce at this point is likely to come too late to deal with them. We could have three times the current number of onshore wind turbines before people can start to benefit from changes in legislation that might say, in fact, that their area was not appropriate for a particular number of turbines or that the turbines could not be put in a particular location. Those are important points to remember.

The hon. Member for Ogmore (Huw Irranca-Davies), who is the Opposition Front-Bench spokesman, was extremely good-natured and good-humoured during the debate, and he made very generous remarks to us. However, I still feel that his view is that of his party, which is that onshore wind development must happen to the exclusion of the views of local communities. He spoke out passionately in favour of onshore wind and did not apologise for the fact that his party embarked on this race for onshore wind when it could have looked instead at developing far less intrusive forms of renewable energy.

This is the key point—if we did not have this renewable target for 2020, would we now still be saying, “Let’s continue going for onshore wind”, or would we be looking at alternative forms of renewable energy that are much less intrusive? Those alternatives have been mentioned today: hydroelectric; marine and tidal developments, which will all be coming on board in 2022 and beyond; ground source heat pumps; photovoltaic cells, and other possibilities that would be far less intrusive for communities. Potentially the time frame that we are operating under will leave us with very little opportunity to pursue those alternatives fairly.

I thoroughly welcome the Localism Bill. It is going in completely the right direction and our Front-Bench spokesmen are making great strides to plug the energy gap, and to meet both our energy security needs and our renewable targets. We hear a lot of talk from our Government about fairness and localism, two principles that I subscribe to very strongly, and I urge our Government to uphold those principles for the sake of all our communities.

Question put and agreed to.