Navitus Bay Wind Farm

Angus Brendan MacNeil Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Richard Drax (South Dorset) (Con)]

What a pleasure it is to be in the Chamber with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. It is the first time I have spoken while you are in the Chair, so it is a double pleasure.

Before I begin, I want to thank several important contributors to today’s debate. Dr Andrew Langley, founder of the Challenge Navitus campaign, has provided me with information, updates, analysis and photographs over a number of years. Bournemouth Borough Council has made its extensive, commissioned research available. Mike Unsworth, the wind farm’s project director, has been most accommodating. Of course, there are also my fellow Dorset MPs, several of whom are in the Chamber.

We are faced with the daunting prospect of a giant wind farm off Dorset’s coast. Navitus Bay is a joint venture between two foreign energy companies: EDF and Eneco. Together, they formed Navitus Bay Development Ltd, which will hereafter be known as the developer. As with every infrastructure project of national significance, the proposals have been examined in depth by the Government’s Planning Inspectorate. Its recommendations have been passed to the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change and a decision is due by 11 September.

The purpose of tonight’s debate is to impress on the Government the contentious nature of the wind farm and how many people are opposed to it. I am most grateful that the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for South Northamptonshire (Andrea Leadsom), is in her place and I welcome her to her role.

The plan is to erect 121 giant wind turbines, each 193 metres tall. The nearest will lie a mere 9 miles off the resort of Swanage in my constituency. The wind farm will generate power for 700,000 homes. It will occupy 153 sq km, which is an area the size of Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch combined. A second, smaller so-called mitigation option for 78 turbines was submitted very late—I want to underline that—in the process.

Both proposals are hugely unpopular. The Planning Inspectorate received more than 2,000 interested representations during the examination period. That is more than twice the number received in respect of the Brighton Rampion project and the highest number for any proposed offshore wind farm the inspectorate has handled. In a test sample over nine days in February, 97% of emailed submissions to the inspectorate were found to be against Navitus Bay.

[Mr Angus Brendan MacNeil (Na h-Eileanan an Iar) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me and many people in the highlands of Scotland that locational price modelling causes distortions in the market? I can hear from what he is saying that the idea of these things being built is not very popular in south Dorset. Such things might be more popular in other areas, such as the Tiree Array, but locational price modelling makes it expensive to connect to the grid from some parts of the coast, whereas other parts of the coast are almost given a subsidy. That is distorting the market, seemingly to the detriment of his constituents.