Energy Security: Hinkley Point

Baroness Young of Old Scone Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Lord is absolutely right about the importance of small modular reactors. He will know that £250 million was announced in the spending review specifically for that purpose in this Parliament. We will bring forward proposals on that early this year—that is, in the spring.

[Baroness Young of Old Scone (Lab)]

Is the Minister aware that the Chancellor is making the situation worse by flip-flopping our energy policy from the Treasury and cancelling the carbon capture and storage project, onshore wind, the feed-in tariff arrangements, the zero-carbon homes and the Green Deal, and causing huge investor and company unrest and insecurity? We will not deliver an energy supply that is secure for the future as long as that continues. What are the Government going to do to stop the Chancellor flip-flopping energy policy and to restore investor and market confidence?

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, the noble Baroness is wrong: there is no flip-flopping over energy policy. It is absolutely clear and it was set out in my right honourable friend the Secretary of State’s speech that we regard security as the number one proposal. We are ending subsidies. We are moving away from subsidies to a market-based approach, which is the right thing to do. It is important that we balance the interests of the public purse with the interests of decarbonisation and security, and that is what we are doing.