Energy and Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Damian Collins Excerpts

Thursday 27th May 2010 Commons Chamber

[Damian Collins (Folkestone and Hythe) (Con)]

It is a great pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North Antrim (Ian Paisley). It seems that his constituency has yet another passionate and powerful advocate to represent it in this Chamber. I am sure that Members will also have been delighted to see his father present in the Gallery to witness his speech. I, too, have the distinction of following in giant footsteps, and I am particularly pleased to have the opportunity so early in this Parliament to pay tribute to my predecessor, Michael Howard.

Michael Howard will be known by many Members on both sides of the House for his 27 years of service to his constituents and his fine record in Government, too, as Secretary of State for the Environment and for Employment and—I hope that my right hon. Friend the Member for Maidenhead (Mrs May) will allow me this observation at this moment—as possibly the finest Home Secretary that this country has seen since the war. He will also be fondly remembered by Members on this side of the House for his leadership of our party. He did not lead us to ultimate victory, but we would credit him with turning the corner of our fortunes and laying the foundations for the success that we enjoyed at the last general election. I was also privileged in my four years as the prospective parliamentary candidate for Folkestone and Hythe to benefit from his friendship, judgment and insight. I was very grateful for that.

In an interview for a book published recently, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister mentioned that Michael Howard had one of those brilliant lawyerly minds that meant that he could win an argument even when he was in the wrong. I am sure that all those who have known him and worked with him will have seen that quality represented first hand. He was undoubtedly one of the finest politicians of his generation in the Conservative party and we remember him warmly for that. He was also dogged and determined in the pursuit of the interests of his constituents. In that regard, he was certainly a man who had something of the fight about him and something of the right about him.

I have the distinction of being the fourth Member to be elected to serve the constituency of Folkestone and Hythe since its creation in 1950, although the Cinque Port towns of Hythe and New Romney, within its boundaries, have been represented continuously since the very first Parliament was summoned by Simon de Montfort in 1265. I am conscious—as were previous speakers, as the hon. Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) said—that I follow not just one distinguished predecessor, but a long line of people who have represented the people of Folkestone and Hythe in Parliaments over the years. That is certainly a great honour.

I should like to indulge the House with reference to two former Members whose careers might be particularly relevant to the political times that we find ourselves in today. Sir Edward Watkin, who was a Victorian railway magnate and responsible for one of the early attempts to build a channel tunnel at Folkestone, rebelled from his party in 1886 and sat as a Liberal Unionist in support of the Conservative Administration of the time. Sir Philip Sassoon, who created the beautiful Port Lympne estate in my constituency and was a cousin of Siegfried Sassoon, the war poet, was elected as a Conservative Member, but in 1920 served as the Parliamentary Private Secretary to David Lloyd George in a post-war coalition Government.

The constituency is large and varied. It stretches for some 20 miles along the coast, from the Battle of Britain memorial just to the east of Folkestone, to Dungeness and the Kent-Sussex border. Inland, it includes the unique landscape of Romney marsh and the beauty of the Elham valley and the north downs. The entrance and exit of the channel tunnel is based in my constituency. Folkestone itself, although no longer a seaport and ferry port, is undergoing a very exciting process of regeneration, as it becomes a new hub for creativity and the arts, and I believe that it has a very bright future.

The constituency also included for the first time in an election the Saxon Shore ward, taken in from Ashford borough, but true cartographers would probably say that the constituency’s boundaries are constantly changing, not owing to the pains of the Boundary Commission but because of the shifting shingle peninsula at Dungeness, which is constantly moving with the climate. The force of nature is seen by the location of lighthouses that were once offshore but are now hundreds of yards inland. It is a truly unique place in the English landscape. Charles Harper referred to it in his 1914 guide to the Kentish coast as

“one of the most remarkable places in England...a waste of shingle, with here and there a sparse patch of gorse, and stretching as far as the eye can reach.”

That landscape has not changed much but for the notable addition of the arrival of nuclear power in the 1960s. Nuclear power at Dungeness is an issue in which my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), the Minister for energy, knows that I have taken a strong interest, and on which I have corresponded with him. I should like to address some remarks in this debate to nuclear power at Dungeness.

Dungeness A power station was given approval in 1959, and a B-generation power station was commissioned in the 1960s and opened in the 1980s. That power station is due to start being decommissioned in 2017. There had been a long-held assumption in my constituency that we would be benefit from a new generation nuclear power station, as part of the Government’s new build programme. Earlier in the debate today, the right hon. Member for Doncaster North (Edward Miliband) cautioned us against sending out mixed messages on the future of nuclear power. Certainly, my constituents heard a very evident mixed message from the last Government: Dungeness was originally included on the Government’s list of possible sites for new build nuclear power stations and was then removed last autumn, and there has followed a consultation process in which my constituents have taken an active and lively interest.

There is a great deal of support for nuclear power in my constituency. I am sure that hon. Members who have nuclear sites in their constituencies know that there is a good deal of support for them, because they generate a huge number of jobs and important support for the local economy. In my constituency, the area of Dungeness and the Romney marshes remains a relatively deprived part not only of my constituency, but of Kent and the south-east of England. Nuclear power could play an important part in my community.

It appears from the consultation process launched by the last Government that one of the main reasons why Dungeness was taken off the Government’s list of potential sites was the objections of Natural England. It is one of the Government’s statutory consultees, and in some ways it is only doing its job, but its assessment, based on the habitats regulations, was that the loss of the vegetated shingle in the area around Dungeness power station could not be mitigated, as the landscape was unique. All of us in my constituency would agree that it is a unique landscape, but we are also mindful that the potential development land for the new power station is only 1 per cent. of the entire protected site of special scientific interest around Dungeness, Rye and Romney Marsh; we are talking about a relatively small area of development.

When, in 1959, the Minister of Power gave consent for the first power station to be built, he reached the conclusion that the mitigation necessary, and the damage to the area, was so small that it could not be said that the building of a power station compromised the integrity of the whole site. I know that my constituents will hope that the new Government can look again at the case for nuclear power in Dungeness and will draw a similar conclusion—that it may be possible to work to mitigate the impact of the building of a new power station without compromising the integrity of the entire site, which is greatly valued not only by my constituents but by people across the country. We see the great value that nuclear power has for our community, and we would like to encourage and support it.

In conclusion, my constituents believe that having a sustainable environment is foremost among everyone’s interests in the decades ahead, but we should also have a sustainable sense of opportunity for people, so that there is an opportunity for work, for a decent life, and for people to provide for their families and children, so that people can hope that their children will have a better standard of living than they have enjoyed. We might say that those are eternal dreams and ambitions, held by every generation, but they are only delivered and realised by the decisions that we take in this House every day.