UK Nuclear Energy Programme

Caroline Lucas Excerpts

Monday 21st October 2013 Commons Chamber

[Caroline Lucas (Brighton, Pavilion) (Green)]

A 35-year contract that locks UK consumers into paying around double the market price for power does not sound like a good deal to me. If the Minister genuinely thinks that it is fair, will he agree to full examination of the terms by the National Audit Office? He talked about the developers being required to share waste management costs, so can he tell us how big the share will be that the public will have to pay for and what the expected cost of that additional subsidy will be? Finally, since there is a cap on the costs that EDF would have to pay for managing the radioactive waste, can he confirm that if those costs increase above the cap, the British taxpayer will have to pay for any top-up costs, however high they escalate?

[Mr Davey]

I thank the hon. Lady for her question. She might have missed it, but the NAO put out a press release earlier today stating that it will be looking at the details of our commercial agreements, which we welcome, because we are very happy for our proposals to be scrutinised. We have encouraged transparency because we believe that we can make our case. Unlike in previous generations, when the costs were not transparent, we are prepared to be transparent. She might be surprised, because she probably did not realise that the NAO would be looking at this so early. She asks about the public share of waste management. The truth is that the public will have to shoulder a large amount of the cost of nuclear waste, because a vast amount of nuclear waste that has to be dealt with is from the past, from the first two generations of nuclear power stations and from the military’s nuclear programme. That was paid for by the taxpayer and no provision was made for cleaning it up. That is why this deal is different and so good for the taxpayer.