New Pylons: East Anglia

Bernard Jenkin Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Before we start the debate, I want to say something about the exceptional heat. While the heat remains at this level, I am content for Members not to wear jackets or ties in Westminster Hall. Mr Speaker has announced similar arrangements for the Chamber. When the House returns in the autumn, Mr Speaker and the Deputies will expect Members to revert to wearing a jacket, and will strongly encourage male Members to wear a tie when speaking in the Chamber and Westminster Hall.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin (Harwich and North Essex) (Con)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered new pylons in East Anglia.

It is my great pleasure to introduce this debate on the prospect of new pylons in the east of England, and I thank the Backbench Business Committee for granting us time to discuss the new electricity transmission infrastructure in our constituencies, which will have a high impact if it goes ahead as proposed.

I am introducing the debate barely 24 hours after the death of my mother. She loved the countryside, she loved Essex and she lived in Suffolk; and she would have wanted me to carry on with the debate, I am absolutely certain.

East Anglia Green Energy Enablement, or GREEN, is the title of the project that proposes to build a new high-voltage network reinforcement between Norwich, Bramford near Ipswich in Suffolk, and Tilbury on the Essex coast. As an MP, I have never received as many emails from my constituents about a single topic.

Today, I speak as chair of the Off Shore Electricity Grid Task Force, or OffSET, which does what it says on the tin. We are calling on National Grid to publish a fully costed offshore alternative to East Anglia GREEN. Yesterday evening, we had a helpful meeting with National Grid and Electricity System Operator, or ESO, and National Grid informally made the commitment that it would produce those costings and plans so that they can be compared with the proposal it is making. We urge National Grid to make that commitment publicly.

In Scotland and Wales, new transmission infrastructure faces a similar backlash. Scottish and Welsh MPs kindly signed up for the debate to explain their frustration over the development of infrastructure in their constituencies, and if they are not here today, that is probably because of the heat, although their moral support is certainly with us.

The environmental and societal impacts of East Anglia GREEN will fall disproportionately on my constituents in North Essex, although they will see little benefit from the new infrastructure in their own lives. On the contrary, the impact is all negative. The new transmission infra- structure is primarily required to transport electricity from offshore wind farms off the east coast and from new nuclear builds on the coast to London.

The East Anglia GREEN background document states that the reinforcement will require

“underground cabling through the Dedham Vale Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty”.

That is obviously a mitigation, but it will create another problem. The construction phrase “undergrounding” will impact local habitats and archaeology—Dedham Vale is an ancient archaeological site as important as Stonehenge, only the henge in Dedham Vale was wooden, so it is not standing today, although its imprint still exists—as well as destroying valuable agricultural and arable land. Local farmers are concerned that undergrounding will disrupt soil layering and impede drainage.

The national planning framework states that development within area of outstanding natural beauty settings should be

“sensitively located and designed to avoid or minimise adverse impacts on the designated areas.”

In my constituency, I am particularly concerned about the construction to the south of the area of outstanding natural beauty, which leads to and from the proposed site of the Tendring substation. It will require a double run of cables, to the substation and then back from the substation towards London. That double run of pylons will adversely impact local communities to the north of Colchester.

I do not understand the rationale whereby because a community—Ardleigh village, in this case—already hosts existing infrastructure, it is seen to be best placed to host new infrastructure. Ardleigh has a small substation, but the planned new Tendring substation is much larger than the existing one and will cover 20 hectares, spreading into three different parishes. Two further customer substations may also be located nearby.

The House of Commons engagement team has kindly spoken to many constituents in all our constituencies about their experience of the National Grid consultation, and I thank all those who contributed, including two of my constituents. Laura, who stands to have pylons on three sides of her property, was told by a local estate agent that the value of her house could decline by 30% to 40%. That is not costed into any proposal; it is a hit that she and her family take, not something that National Grid or anyone else has to pay for. Julia, who was recently widowed, is struggling to sell her family home of 28 years because of uncertainty surrounding the East Anglia GREEN. The proposals are already blighting people’s lives.

[Mr Mark Francois (Rayleigh and Wickford) (Con)]

I am sure I speak for all of us here today when I offer my hon. Friend my most sincere condolences on his grievous loss.

The National Grid plan does not come through my constituency of Rayleigh and Wickford, but it runs relatively close. However, having checked with my office yesterday, I was given no notification at all about this consultation and, as far as I know, neither were my constituents. Does my hon. Friend agree with me—I say this to the Minister through him—that the consultation should be rerun, so that all Members of Parliament and the people they represent can have their say?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for his kind words. I agree with him completely. One of my arguments is that this consultation is completely inadequate. All the respondents to the House of Commons engagement team’s inquiries expressed a strong preference for an offshore transmission system, which would avoid the blighting of farmland, and people’s homes and communities. That barely figures in the consultation and it was only in yesterday’s discussion that National Grid started to explain why it had not really considered that, but it has not published the reasons, figures, assessment or analysis as to why that has been dismissed so quickly.

[James Cartlidge (South Suffolk) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Did we not learn yesterday that the reason National Grid had not published those detailed figures and analysis is because it did not have them, and that its pledge to produce them by the end of the summer—to give us more information that it believes will show the justification for the decision—suggests it will be working in reverse? That is not how a consultation should be done.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

No, it is not, but to be fair to National Grid, it engaged openly with us and we were grateful for that engagement. I believe the people at National Grid are doing their best; of course, they are working within a regulatory framework and against expectations that have been set since the industry was privatised in the 1980s that are now completely out of date. Everybody is guilty of making mistakes, but this is not about blaming people for making those mistakes; we need to address why the mistakes are being made and put that right, without casting blame on the people who are doing their best.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commiserate with the hon. Gentleman on the loss of his mum. There is nobody as close to anyone as their mum, as I know, and we are very much aware of the hon. Gentleman’s sorrow at this time.

The hon. Gentleman has outlined the environmental impact. I know this is not in my neck of the woods but in East Anglia, but the issue is the same. Whenever these pylons are being put in back home, many of my constituents express concern about the health impacts. Is the hon. Gentleman aware of those issues? Have his constituents conveyed to him their concerns about the health impacts for individuals that could well be caused by pylons? For instance, he mentioned a lady in his constituency who will have pylons on three sides of her house. Surely she must have some extreme worries about that?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am not familiar with that issue, but the scientific literature on the health impact of pylons is still contested. There is no doubt, though, that they have a psychological impact, and that the psychological blight on people’s lives can be very serious.

People do not like living near pylons, which is why they tend to favour buying homes that do not have views that are blighted by pylons. It is a very sad development that National Grid is still proceeding in this direction, and I call this overground proposal a continuation of the patch and mend approach, as against the undersea option known as “Sea Link 2”. National Grid says that the “Sea Link 2” scenario would not provide the required capacity and would have required onshore transmission infrastructure as well. It should publish a like-for-like offshore alternative to East Anglia GREEN so that we can see not only what the additional costs would be, but what the additional benefits would be, and we could offset things such as property blight and damage to the environment, which is not costed into the proposal.

It is interesting to note that there is 10 times more total mileage of committed offshore transmission cabling in Scotland and the north of England than in the east of England. A constituent affected by East Anglia GREEN wrote to another National Grid consultation, and the community engagement team explained that the main reason for offshoring infrastructure from County Durham to southern Scotland was to

“significantly reduce its impact on communities.”

National Grid, again informally, now maintains that the reason for offshoring Scottish projects is that the electricity would have to cross multiple load boundaries, which is expensive. Again, it must explain that to the relevant stakeholders in detail. There is a complete lack of transparency about the process, which totally undermines public confidence in the decisions being proposed.

[Alex Burghart (Brentwood and Ongar) (Con)]

I extend my condolences to my hon. Friend at this time.

My hon. Friend is making an important speech. Does he agree that it is hard for us to explain to our constituents why an offshore route is not being taken when such routes clearly exist in other parts of the country? A number of colleagues in the Chamber today, and my hon. Friend the Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch), who cannot be here, feel that it is difficult for us to make the case to our constituents that the proposals are fair and right when we are not being given the evidence.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

That is absolutely right, but we also need to make the point that even if the evidence is made available and proves the point in favour of the present proposals, it is against benchmarks that are out of date and inadequate for the purpose. That is why I call this a patch and mend approach to the existing infrastructure, when the scale of the extra capacity required to be carried in the East Anglian grid is massive. It is a huge leap, yet there seems to be no strategic or controlling mind behind the planning of the national grid for the next 50 to 100 years. It is all on much shorter-term horizons.

[Mr Richard Bacon (South Norfolk) (Con)]

I extend my sincere condolences to my hon. Friend, in common with colleagues.

The lack of a controlling mind does seem to be one of the biggest problems. Does my hon. Friend agree that the only reason that the network needs to be reinforced from Dunston in the north of my constituency, going right across Norfolk and into Suffolk, is because of the perverse decision to route existing offshore wind connections to that part of the network, instead of following National Grid Electricity System Operator’s own advice, which is to accelerate the provision of an offshore transmission network, which would save up to £3 billion in capital expenditure and a further £3 billion in operating costs? Does he agree that now is the time to revisit that decision?

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[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

My hon. Friend is completely right, but the real question is: to whom do we go to get it done? National Grid says it is locked into a regulatory and planning framework and has to operate in a certain way—that the assumption must be that overhead pylons are the right solution, unless there are other reasons.

The most difficult thing in the whole process is that not even the Minister for Energy, Clean Growth and Climate Change, my right hon. Friend the Member for Chelsea and Fulham (Greg Hands), is accountable for what is being decided; he will tell us, “This is the framework and this is what we have to stick to.” He will then tell us that there is going to be a new proposal for a different regime that would arrive at different outcomes, but that is not going to affect this consultation, and we will be left with decisions being forced down corralled pathways by an outdated regulatory and planning framework.

Who is accountable, today, for the decisions that are being made? Who is it? Who should we go to, and say, “You’ve got it wrong and you can change it”? If nobody can change it, it must be my right hon. Friend the Minister who is accountable. He must accelerate the new regime, which would allow us to look much more comprehensively and capably at a strategic plan. There is no controlling strategic mind in charge of planning the national grid. It is just something that happens, through an outdated market mechanism that was designed to sweat the assets of an industry that had far too much capacity in the 1980s.

We are now in a completely different world. We need a strategic planning framework, and it should be located, accountably, within the Department, so that Members of Parliament can hold Ministers accountable for what is being decided, instead of us just being shoved off into the system, where we do not seem to have any influence.

[Sir Oliver Heald (North East Hertfordshire) (Con)]

May I express my condolences to my hon. Friend? I am so sorry to hear his news.

Does my hon. Friend agree that this is a wider problem? Losing the quality of our environment is a big cost for people’s wellbeing. In this case it is utilities and electricity; in Hertfordshire, it is about the chalk streams. No value seems to be given to environmental factors. We have regulators, but it is all about doing it cheaply. Does he agree that the Government need to look at the issue again, from the point of view of wellness, the environment and preserving the really valuable things in our communities?

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I could not agree more. We have environmental policies and net zero policies that are costing the earth, even though they are designed to save the earth—they are very important policies and we put a great deal of money into them—and yet we have other policies that despoil the environment and communities. The damage they do is not costed into the proposals.

In a new regime, the effect on property prices, the loss of agricultural land and other non-monetised costs of the proposal need to be reflected in the costs; I think we would then find that the offshore transmission system would provide better value for money, and for the environment and communities. If it was worked out properly, an offshore ring main around the east of England down to London, with its connectivity, an interconnectedness to the continent, and direct connectivity from the onshore nuclear power stations and the new offshore East Anglia array—incidentally, the development of offshore wind is being held back by the lack of capacity in the national grid—could be the quickest proposal, because we would not have the same planning issues that we are tied up with here.

Dare I mention the words “judicial review”? If my constituents go for a judicial review—they are very well funded and well organised, and we are backing them—how many years will that hold up the proposal? Would it not be better for the Government to cut through and say we should go for an offshore grid, which has public support and which people recognise will help us to achieve our net zero targets more quickly and protect the environment and communities? That is what we should do.

The main point I will leave the debate with is that public opposition to infrastructure risks undermining the roll-out of renewable and nuclear power. The Government must balance what is best for local communities with what appears to be cheapest. The current approach is not serving my constituents in Harwich and North Essex. The current proposals, and the regime they reflect, command no public confidence at all in the Government of this country, and should change.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Before I call hon. Members, I offer my condolences to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin). I am sure I speak for everybody in this hall in doing that.

I will call the Opposition spokesperson at 10.40 am. I do not want to set a time limit; you can do the calculations yourselves. People usually take the appropriate time when it is left to them, rather than have the Chair set a time limit. I call Jerome Mayhew.

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[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

I am most grateful for your chairmanship of these proceedings, Mr Stringer, and to the Minister for his response and the care that he has taken over the matter. I am extremely grateful for the kind words that everybody has expressed to me today and for the high quality of all the contributions to the debate.

I am still very unhappy, because the Minister is effectively still disclaiming responsibility for the process that we are in and holds out no prospect of being able to change it. Environmental costs and community disbenefits are not costed into the scheme in any way; let us compare that with how much extra has been spent on High Speed 2 to mitigate its environmental and community disbenefits. Why are the Government not taking responsibility for the national grid in the same way as they take responsibility for railway or road development? It is inconsistent.

For the Minister to say, “Oh well, I’ll see what was said in that meeting,” and, “I can’t say anything because of the quasi-judicial nature of the process,” underlines that nobody is in charge and there is no strategic mind. It is for the Government to come to Parliament and ask for the powers necessary to be responsible, so that we can do something about this runaway train that is about to wreck the environment and communities—

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

Order.

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).