Energy BILL [ Lords ] (Fifth sitting)

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 2nd February 2016 Public Bill Committees

[Philip Boswell]

We would be willing to discuss that, depending on the benefits. The RO was developed and evolved for good reason.

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

I understand the hon. Gentleman’s point, and I was interested in the intervention from my hon. Friend the Member for South Suffolk. My understanding is that in 2015-16, out of the £850 million spent on the renewables obligation, expenditure in Scotland was £520 million—60%. Is the hon. Gentleman saying that the Scottish Government are willing to take half a billion pounds of spending on board?

[Philip Boswell]

The short answer to that is no. We are looking for dispensation from paying the £92.50 strike price for Hinkley Point C—double the current electricity rate—that seems to have been imposed on the rest of the country by this Government.

It is also important to honour the Smith commission recommendations on how power is devolved to Scotland, where appropriate, so that Scotland can make its own decisions about its economic development. In the light of those developments, control over the renewables obligation must be returned to Scottish Ministers.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bailey. Given what the hon. Gentleman just said, I point out to him that as his party has a policy of achieving 100% renewable energy provision in Scotland, so much of it dependent on onshore and offshore wind, when the wind is not blowing there, Scotland—if it is independent—will have to come crawling to a country that will be setting a rate based on what it can sell on the market, rather than being generous. That is a hostage to fortune for any Scotland, future or past.

[Callum McCaig (Aberdeen South) (SNP)]

Does the hon. Gentleman acknowledge the statement from the Secretary of State on the renewed vigour with which the UK will pursue interconnections, to enable the UK to do exactly that?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

We had a conversation earlier—I believe the hon. Gentleman was in the room—about the importance of interconnections and what they bring, including risks, when it comes to our continent. To a certain extent, I agree with him.

I will start by doing something quite unique in this debate: quote the Conservative party manifesto verbatim, not because, as my hon. Friend the Member for North Dorset said, I did not read it in the first place—that would be a slur beyond belief—but because this whole debate is essentially dancing on the head of a pin about how words should be used. Let me start with the opening salvo. The bolded headline is:

“We will halt the spread of onshore windfarms.”

That is fairly definitive and certain: we are going to stop any more onshore wind farms. The manifesto goes on to say

“Onshore wind now makes a meaningful contribution to our energy mix and has been part of the necessary increase in renewable capacity. Onshore windfarms often fail to win public support, however, and are unable by themselves to provide the firm capacity that a stable energy system requires.”

This is the bit we are debating today:

“As a result, we will end any new public subsidy for them and—

to help the hon. Member for Stalybridge and Hyde, that is “and”, not “and/or”—

“change the law so that local people have the final say on windfarm applications.”

[Clive Lewis]

Will the hon. Gentleman read the next paragraph in his party’s manifesto, which talks of

“committing £1 billion for carbon capture and storage”?

I would like to hear his comments on that, because the Chancellor has clearly cut that £1 billion pledge, which was in black and white in his manifesto. Government Members chop and change when it suits them, which makes our point about investor confidence.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his points.

[Simon Hoare]

Picking up on the point just raised by the hon. Member for Norwich South, as far as I am aware the Minister has clarified that the carbon capture arena will now move within the purview of the OGA and it will be the OGA that will decide what is best to be done in that field, rather than the very costly blanket ban which the other place sought to impose on the Bill. The hon. Gentleman’s fear is misplaced.

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I thank my hon. Friend; I could not have put it better myself and that is handy, because I was quoting from a Library document and I could not have told hon. Members what the next paragraph would have been, so I very much appreciate my hon. Friend’s help.

I gave a bit of a history lesson explaining why I set up what was almost a caucus, to use American terms on the day we are getting the results of the Iowa presidential caucuses. I think I could say that the 101 Members of Parliament I got to sign a letter and then campaign pretty hard were a caucus. The caucus that I led—it was not just me leading it; there were plenty of people taking a strong lead in this area—was certain about what it wanted to achieve when it came to the future policy for onshore wind. We wanted to make sure that onshore wind received no new subsidies. We were fed up with the way our communities had been treated.

As I said on Second Reading and as I think the Committee has agreed, I was quite happy about the second part of the commitment—a change to the law so that local people have the final say on wind farms—because I thought that that was pretty much the case, until a particular wind farm planning appeal came about. That was the Kelmarsh wind farm appeal, when the planning inspector ruled in favour of the development going through because he said that national policy in the area of renewable energy trumped all local concerns. And those local concerns were huge: they were concerns about a grade 1 listed building built in 1732 and about the site of the battle of Naseby. The inspector said in his report that this wind farm would have a “distinct visible presence” over Rupert’s viewpoint, King Charles’ oak viewpoint, Sulby hedges, the Royal Observer Corps lookout post and Mill Hill viewpoint. These are places and viewpoints from the battle of Naseby which I would argue—and I do argue with my colleagues—was the battle where Parliament fought for itself properly and won properly for the first time. The birthplace of Parliament was going to be overlooked by massive turbines, nearly the size of the London Eye.

The inspector said that national policy outweighs

“any harmful impacts it may have in terms of the setting of heritage assets, the living conditions of local residents in terms of visual impact and noise in particular, the…enjoyment of the countryside, biodiversity, notably bats, and other matters”

What I thought was a local issue to be dealt with local planners, which is where I think the whole Committee wants to return such matters, was being elevated to national policy level.

[Clive Lewis]

The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way. Will he be joining the community of Balcombe and other communities across the country who are opposing fracking in their areas? Will he be supporting them in the local decisions they are making, very powerfully, in opposing fracking? Fracking, as we have heard, will potentially have a national contribution to make, but locally, they do not want it. Will he respect their opinions as well?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

As I said on Second Reading, we need to evolve our planning system so local communities benefit very much from any developments. I cited the French system which my fellow Eurosceptic colleagues will be very uptight about. There is a better way of dealing with planning when it comes to helping local communities to decide whether to take onshore wind, fracking or other things, but I do not think we are there yet.

To return to what happened in my constituency with onshore wind, with which this part of the Bill deals, we launched a very simple campaign. We got on board, some Members will recall, the former Energy Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Mr Hayes), who said, “Enough is enough. We are going to make changes.” I thought that was a good signal that the Conservative manifesto might have something fairly solid on this. The following Energy Minister, my right hon. Friend the Member for West Suffolk (Matthew Hancock), said on the Floor of the House on 6 March 2015—a date that in my mind definitely came before the General Election campaign:

“We have made it absolutely clear that we will remove onshore wind subsidies in the future, and that the current 10% that is in the pipeline for onshore wind is plenty.”—[Official Report, 6 March 2015; Vol. 593, c. 1227.]

I thought that was probably enough of a signal as to where our manifesto was going. Forget the petitions, the questions, the debates and all the other points that were made on the Floor of the House. I was very pleased when I saw the Conservative Party manifesto.

If Opposition Members choose to dance on the head of a pin about whether “new public subsidy” refers to renewables obligation certificates or anything else, perhaps that allows me to talk about things in the second part, which we have all agreed. Let us talk about the way that local people can have the final say on these matters. Let us talk about something the Committee has agreed on previously—how we decommission big energy projects.

It cannot be said that these are not big energy projects. Supposedly, decommissioning is a given—the costs are being set aside when it comes to the North sea—but it is not yet part of the Bill when it comes to onshore wind. The Committee debated earlier the jobs, the supply chain, recycling, the sites that are properly and safely returned to nature—all phrases used by the hon. Member for Southampton, Test about the decommissioning of oil and gas. Yet we currently have a system in place that simply does not allow for decommissioning bonds or any way to ensure that the developer ends up paying to decommission a huge chunk of metal being stuck in the countryside. If we are talking about making sure that local people have the final say on wind farm applications, perhaps we should allow them to include the costs of decommissioning to be stuck into a fund and subtracted from subsidy at source.

[Dr Whitehead]

The hon. Gentleman has mentioned schemes that are in the pipeline and related that to the “Enough is enough” comment made by the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings. He has also mentioned local people having their say. Does he agree that a scheme on which local people had had their say and was therefore given planning consent was, first, “agreed by local people”, which is the first test of the Conservative manifesto, and secondly, “in the pipeline”, which is test two of the Conservative manifesto? Does he agree that that is a pretty accurate description of his position?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I agree with the first part of that, but I cannot believe that many of these developments are in the pipeline, as the hon. Gentleman says, at this point in time.

I want to discuss how the second part, which we all agree on, could be strengthened, should the Government choose to do so, were their clear manifesto commitment to be derailed, perhaps not here in Committee, but in another place. Members, particularly the SNP Members whom I heard on the Floor of the House only last week, have rightly been concerned about people’s safety, whether it is nuclear sites or energy sites generally. Everyone has been concerned about safety.

There is an element of safety that I believe could be built into the planning system. My hon. Friend the Minister knows that I have been lobbying hard for this to be included in the planning system in respect of onshore wind. This is a crucial difference between onshore and offshore wind: although they are similar technologies, offshore does not raise this concern about excessive amplitude modulation. That is the low thumping noise that people hear if they stand in the appropriate place away from a turbine. It is possible to predict where it will fall and it causes huge concern to local people near onshore wind turbines. Offshore wind does not have the same effect because there are no people living in dwellings nearby, supposedly.

The noise from wind turbines could quite possibly be the next big public health scandal. It has been known about for a very long time. There have been reports since 1995 on the phenomenon of how very low frequency noise generated by turbines, which has been defined to include infrasound, was the cause of annoyance reported by neighbours. The reports included numerous physiological responses that were described as sensations including a feeling of pressure, a sense of uneasiness, booming and thumping pulsations. A huge amount of work has been done in Australia, Japan and now in the United Kingdom on where turbines are situated and how that affects people’s sleep and patterns of stress.

Normally, one would expect this to be taken into account when a planning order is drawn up. In 1987, this was all well known but in the early 1990s, as more and more onshore wind turbines were built, there was a policy decision, I guess one might say, to ensure that concerns about noise limits and planning criteria would not affect where turbines could be situated. A document for noise called ETSU-R-97 was therefore drawn up. It has been massively criticised ever since, but until recently there was no silver bullet to show that it did not work properly because it did not measure the very low frequency background whumping sound that causes people great difficulty.

It could be said, and has been said in debates in this place, that this was a noise condition devised by the wind industry for the wind industry to promote the wind industry and ensure that local concerns about noise were not taken into account. It was certainly referenced in the Kelmarsh decision. Over the last decade or so, the wind industry has fought tooth and nail to defend those standards and guidelines. It has resisted every attempt by anyone to try to change them, but things have changed massively in the past couple of years. The Department itself has recognised that amplitude modulation exists and causes great concern. I FOI-ed every local planning authority in England to find whether they had had issues with noise from wind turbines. A large number had had such issues and had sent environmental health officers to investigate, but there was no central Government guidance on this particular type of noise, which is causing people to become sick. Just recently, the wind industry itself has recognised that amplitude modulation causes the issues I have described.

If we were truly concerned about amplitude modulation and how it might affect individuals up and down this country, we would allow local people—in line with the final part of the paragraph in the Conservative party manifesto that I mentioned—to stick in noise conditions for any planning applications that came forth for onshore turbines. We surely want to avoid a public health crisis in future. We probably recognise that we have not done enough in the past to ensure that people’s health is properly taken into account. There are ways in which the whole Bill can be tightened in this area.

--- Later in debate ---

[Clive Lewis]

Can the hon. Gentleman envisage a situation where he actively campaigns against wind turbines that are already established?

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

There are communities out there now that are directly affected by amplitude modulation from wind turbines. I can cite Cotton farm in South Cambridgeshire. That constituency is on the border between two local authorities, both of which have passed motions in the council chamber and written to the Government asking for stronger guidance on these points.

Noise is monitored on a regular basis by a set-up in the community to scientific standards. When an onshore scheme is mooted, noise readings are taken using the same equipment, verified by a third party. Because we can predict when amplitude modulation is likely to occur—it depends on atmospheric conditions, meteorological patterns and wind speed—and can see all those factors happening in front of us, we can predict where the noise will fall. The developer can therefore be asked to shut the turbines down so that they do not cause harm, as has happened in Cotton farm a couple of times. I can absolutely see myself campaigning with other communities up and down the country to ensure that the amplitude modulation from turbines that are already up does not cause undue concern in local communities.

Initially, 10 or 15 years ago, the equipment required to set these up was very expensive. Now, it can be done for about £3,000. Most communities, and certainly a number of developers, could afford that, which would possibly take this problem away. I am trying to make the point to the hon. Member for Norwich South that there are, as my nan would say, many ways of skinning a cat.

The Government have been particularly slow to implement these provisions. I would like them to go further. I am pretty sure I could get together a decent-sized political caucus to do that. If we seriously intend to argue against part of the Bill falling under the auspices of the Salisbury doctrine, and if we are going down the line of dancing on the head of a pin over these issues, the consequences further down the line for this industry will be a lot worse than if we accepted that the Government had a clear manifesto pledge that they are effecting today.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

It is a pleasure, Mr Bailey, to be on the Committee. I had not intended to make a speech about the group of amendments but, as ever, Government Members’ contributions have led me to get to my feet. Many of their arguments have not been robust enough; many of the positions advanced have, quite frankly, been flawed and deserve further attention.

My starting point is that anyone considering the needs of our energy system right now has to admit that the most pressing priority is to ensure that our credentials for investability are maintained and strengthened. Our energy system requires billions and billions of pounds of investment, partly because so much of our generating capacity is going off line in the next few years, at the end of its natural life; partly because the capacity market has not worked as well as was hoped in incentivising new gas; partly because Hinkley C is in as much trouble as it was always going to be—we do not know whether it will ever be there when we need it—and also because we need to take coal out of the system, as a clear priority shared by all political parties. The need, therefore, to ensure that our energy structure is an attractive jurisdiction in which to invest must absolutely be maintained.

Much of the argument that has been advanced has been about the changes to onshore wind being clearly signposted in the Tory manifesto—indeed, demanded by the windy caucus, which is a wonderful new term to add to our political discourse. I do not dispute that; ideological opposition to onshore wind has been a part of the modern Conservative party for some time. I do not disagree with the legitimacy of the move any more than I disagree with the legitimacy of all the other bad things the Conservative Government are doing to the UK, but my point is that there is surely a duty on the Government to ensure that the decision is taken in such a way as not to damage the UK’s overall credentials as a jurisdiction in which to invest.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I do not want to be pedantic and I hope that the hon. Gentleman takes this point in the way in which it is meant. On Second Reading, we did not have Storm Henry passing through and wind was therefore producing just about 1% of our energy. At any one time, the figure flexes between 0% and, I believe, up to 18%, but it always needs gas turbines churning in the background as a back-up.

[Jonathan Reynolds]

We are straying a bit beyond the narrow remit of the Bill, but the point is an important one. On Second Reading—the hon. Gentleman and I were there—the overall figure was 5%, not 1%. It was 1% at the specific moment that the hon. Gentleman spoke—I will give him that—but in that 24-hour period it was running at about a quarter of the energy produced by our entire nuclear fleet, which is not a small contribution.

I recommend that all hon. Members take the time to go to National Grid’s control centre to see the multitude of different generating assets that can be turned on, or brought off the system, as required to keep the system in balance. That is not done as a short-term response to the current level of wind. National Grid’s weather planning system tells it exactly what it will need on certain days, and it is tremendously effective. I do not agree with the simplistic point that every megawatt of wind energy will have to have a corresponding megawatt of traditional gas generating capacity to back it up. Frankly, the people who are skilled at running our entire network do not tell me that that is the case, and I am willing to believe them given how successful they are at running the overall system.