Barry Gardiner
Main Page: Barry Gardiner (Labour - Brent North)
Chris Huhne
My hon. Friend is absolutely right to highlight that matter. The effect of failing to take account of these costs can be seen very dramatically in my own Department’s budget for dealing with the nuclear legacy of the very many years when we failed to make adequate provision for waste and decommissioning. It is precisely because of those warnings that we in the ministerial team are absolutely determined that that will not happen again.
Barry Gardiner (Brent North) (Lab)
The Secretary of State implied that my hon. Friend the Member for Wansbeck (Ian Lavery) and the shadow Secretary of State were in some way misleading—in fact, I think he referred to fantasy—in their suggestions about his prejudice against nuclear power. Does he recall his own representation of 5 November 2007, in which he said,
“Ministers must stop the side-show of new nuclear power stations now”?
Can he reflect on that representation and see whether he is going to take it on board?
Chris Huhne
The hon. Gentleman knows very well that my line on new nuclear has always been based on scepticism about the economics. As he knows, no nuclear power station has been built on commercial terms anywhere in the world since Three Mile Island. That may be about to change because of the framework of prospective oil and gas prices and carbon prices. It is up to investors to take those decisions.