Navitus Bay Wind Farm

Conor Burns Excerpts

Monday 15th June 2015 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to speak for the first time with you in the Chair, Madam Deputy Speaker. I congratulate you on your elevation. I also congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) on securing the debate.

For those Dorset Members who were here in the previous Parliament, the issue dominated our lives. I looked this afternoon at the number of times I have raised the issue. I did so first on 12 July 2011, when the former Member for Eastleigh, Chris Huhne, was the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change. I spoke again on 4 July 2012, 19 November 2013 and 5 December 2013. I posed written questions on 11 June 2014. I raised it at the Culture, Media and Sport Committee with the then Secretary of State on 19 January this year, and mentioned it as recently as 11 June 2015.

It is the biggest issue that confronts our constituents across Dorset. The point my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset made needs to be emphasised: every single one of us present tonight made it a major feature of our election campaigns. Opposition to Navitus and fighting its detrimental impact on my constituents in Bournemouth West was the No. 1 promise I made to my electorate in my personal election address. I am delighted to see new Members joining the fight—my hon. Friends the Members for North Dorset (Simon Hoare) and for Mid Dorset and North Poole (Michael Tomlinson).

I place on record the gratitude we all feel to Bournemouth Borough Council, and in particular to its leader, John Beesley, who has put the full resources of the council and its officers behind the opposition to the proposal.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset made an important point that is worth emphasising: more people registered as interested parties in this proposed development than in any other offshore development. I hope the Minister understands, but it should not be thought that opposition to the proposal is confined to those who live on the coastline or adjacent to it. When campaigning in my constituency, I was struck by the opposition of people in the north of Bournemouth—in Kinson and Redhill—and by the opposition in Alderney and Branksome East in the borough of Poole. I was struck by the opposition, too, when I campaigned with my hon. Friend the Member for Mid Dorset and North Poole.

Right from the beginning of the proposal, we said to the company and to Mike Unsworth that, if we could not see the development, and if the visual impact was minimal, we would be prepared to work with the company to bring it to fruition, but in the development zone that the Crown Estate provided to the company, it is strange that the only area it deemed capable of development was the area that is closest to the shore and that has the greatest visual impact.

I understand that the Government have listened intently to other colleagues and their concerns about onshore wind, and I understand the Government’s resolve to put the brakes on it, but I hope it is not the case that on is off and off is on. I hope the application will be determined on its merits. That is all any of us ask. We believe that the arguments against the proposal are absolutely compelling.

I hope the Minister also notes that, in everything all of us who have spoken about the proposal over the last Parliament and in the beginning of this one, we have not sought to take issue with the Government’s energy policy, and we have not sought to discuss the merits or demerits of renewables. We accept the Government’s energy policy to be exactly that. We contend that the application is potentially deeply damaging to our communities.

My hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset quoted from the advisory body to UNESCO, which said that, if the development goes ahead, it will take the Jurassic coast from being largely in a natural setting to being largely in a man-made setting. We should be under no illusion about the fact that UNESCO will revoke the coast’s natural world heritage designation. It has done it in Germany, and threatened to do it to Mont Saint Michel.

The Minister will rise to speak in a moment, and I have great sympathy for her. She will be able to say almost nothing about this matter, because the application is under consideration, and must be considered quasi-judicially. I can see that you want me to wind up my speech, Madam Deputy Speaker, but the Minister would probably like me to continue a little longer.

Our constituents cannot understand why the Planning Inspectorate’s recommendation—which followed a lengthy public inquiry that took place throughout last year and during the early part of this year, and which has now been put to Ministers in the Department—is secret. We think that that is quite wrong. In our view, the matter should now be out in the open, and debate on it should be welcomed.

Some people will naturally accuse us of being nimbys, but the backyard of Dorset Members of Parliament is a world heritage site. I plead with the Minister to implore her colleagues to reject this case on its merits. Were the project to go ahead, that would be the beginning of the next phase of the fight, because we are united in our determination that it shall not proceed.