National Policy Statements (Energy)
Debate between Charles Hendry and Mark Tami
Charles Hendry
I hope I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that that will not be necessary. When the decision is finally made, it will be legitimate to take account of the fact that if the disbenefits were considered to outweigh the benefits, consent would not need to be given. If it were felt that consent was being given to too much higher-carbon generation capacity and therefore that environmental issues—low-carbon issues—were seen to be more important, that would be a material factor to be taken into account. That can already be done through the system. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to point out that we have a significant amount of consented gas for which there is not currently construction. That also brings us to part of the problem: at the moment, we are not seeing anything like enough investment and construction work in our energy infrastructure.
Mark Tami (Alyn and Deeside) (Lab)
As nuclear stations take 10 years to build and the older stations are closing, and as renewables are not generating as much energy as the Minister would like, is it not inevitable that gas will fill the vacuum?
Charles Hendry
There is a continuing need for gas, and the hon. Gentleman has set out the time scales accurately. We face a challenge: we have to get twice as much investment in our energy infrastructure in every year of this decade as was achieved in the last decade. We need a step change in those investment levels, but as he rightly says, there will be a continuing role for gas as well.