Mid-Wales Connection Project

Daniel Kawczynski Excerpts

Wednesday 12th February 2014 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies]

Indeed I do. I am glad that my hon. Friend intervened, in part because he is a Liberal Democrat, which shows that the feeling in mid-Wales is cross-party. If my hon. Friend the Member for Brecon and Radnorshire (Roger Williams), another Liberal Member, were here, he would take exactly the same view. The people of mid-Wales as a whole, along with all their representatives, share the view that I intend to express today.

[Daniel Kawczynski (Shrewsbury and Atcham) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Glyn Davies]

It is the same in Shropshire as well.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I am grateful to my hon. Friend for including Shropshire in the title that he gave to the debate. We had to fight tooth and nail to prevent the power lines coming through my constituency—they will now, as he knows, be going through north Shropshire—and for a long time, there was tremendous anger and fear among residents in the western part of my constituency: the proposed lines might have been coming through the area where their homes are and they feared the impact of that. I completely concur with him on the devastation and misery that the project has caused.

[Glyn Davies]

I thank my hon. Friend for those remarks. There is quite a large part of the country in which the feeling is comprehensively the same.

I have two overall objectives today. I want to lay out the full appalling reality of what the mid-Wales connection project means for mid-Wales and Shropshire. Many people do not understand what the project is. Clearly, there is the 400 kV line, about 50 km long, from north Shropshire to the middle of my constituency, travelling up the beautiful, narrow Vrynwy valley. But because that line is dedicated to onshore wind farms, it is more than reasonable to conclude—in fact, it is blatantly obvious to anyone—that that will mean that there will be about 500 extra turbines in mid-Wales on top of what we have already; there are about 240 wind turbines now. On top of that, there will be about 100 miles of 132 kV cable criss-crossing Montgomeryshire all over the place, from the wind farms themselves to the 20-acre hub station in the middle of the county.

By any description imaginable, that is the industrialisation of the central uplands of mid-Wales and the Cambrian mountains. To many of us, it is an absolute abomination; I cannot believe that anybody with any sanity or appreciation—I am sorry, I am starting to go off on my usual rant. I will draw myself back.

[Glyn Davies]

I could not agree more. That was the inspiration for my taking an interest in the issue, as I have since 2005. I will come back to why that date specifically is important.

My second objective today is to ask the Minister to agree publicly that enough is enough and that it is time for a moratorium on onshore wind farms. Much as I would like him to, I do not expect him to be able jump up and say, “Yes, I absolutely agree—as from today, there will be no more.” But it is important to put on the record that a huge and increasing number of people think that there is a strong case for that.

I want to put the case that I myself feel there is for a moratorium. I have never been convinced that onshore wind power was the right way to go to solve the UK’s energy demands, but I have always accepted that it had a part to play in the mix, which is what Government policy usually says. The mid-Wales connection project became an obvious likelihood in 2005 when the Assembly adopted a policy the consequences of which very few people understood. I am deeply grateful to Peter Ogden, the director of the Campaign for the Protection of Rural Wales, who explained it to me in 2005. I became the president of that organisation three years before I came to this place because I so appreciated his understanding of what the impact of the policy would be. It was only then that I realised quite how bad the situation was.

It is not, then, that I have always been against onshore wind power in principle, but mid-Wales has 240 turbines already. Another 500 on top, with all the power lines as well, is simply beyond the scale of anything that is reasonable. I wanted to look at the Government’s policy, so I asked the Library about the issue. I know that the Government have an overall target of 15% of energy coming from renewable sources by 2020. I understand that there is no direct policy for targets within that on specific types of renewable energy, but the Government have expectations and aspirations, or whatever word we want to use, and the sort of total that is being looked at is 10 GW to 15 GW for wind power—that is the figure the Library told me in November. Now, 7 GW have already been installed, a further 6.63 GW are through the planning process and another 6.33 GW are already in planning. We have already reached anything that could reasonably be described as the Government’s expectation. There is no case for taking it any further.

If we look at Governments in Europe—Germany, Spain and the European Union itself—they are identifying that the cost of the subsidies is unsustainable. Indeed, those countries are all looking to cut back. We might find that we are committing ourselves in the United Kingdom to a massively expensive project in mid-Wales, but in 10 years time the policy behind it will have been abandoned, and we will have stranded assets. The cost of the project is huge: 10% of the capital investment will be added on to the cost of everybody’s electricity for the next 30 years. That is the scale of what happens with such a hugely expensive project. The only reason National Grid is going forward with it is because it has a statutory obligation to do so. It makes no sense at all.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

Does my hon. Friend agree that one crazy aspect of the matter is how far the site is from the national grid, and that the Government must provide some advice and management about where the pylons will be sited so that the countryside is not plastered over to connect places to the national grid?

[Glyn Davies]

My hon. Friend will not be surprised to know that I agree with that point.

I want to spend a little time on the impact on democracy in central Wales and perhaps wider. Democracy is the principle on which the Government and the House of Commons operate, and people believe they can have some influence on policy through their elected Members of Parliament. That is particularly apt, because the Government are committed to the principle of localism and legislated for that in England, although there has been no such legislation in Wales. Localism is a key part of the Government’s policies.

I receive dozens of e-mails, and I have one here from someone who says that National Grid is now at their door with a legal right of access to conduct a walk-over service for the forthcoming pylon route corridor, and that they feel the rope tightening around their necks but powerless to fight against it. That is standard. A research paper from Aberystwyth university referred to the hopelessness and helplessness felt by the people of mid-Wales when they see what is happening. They do not want the pylons, but they believe that they can do nothing about it. They feel helpless.

I have spoken before about National Grid’s behaviour, which makes me cross. I received a letter yesterday from Llansantffraid community council about the way National Grid behaves. Not only that, an 86-year-old woman contacted me after going to her county councillor. She had been subject to process service, whereby heavy-duty bailiffs turned up at her door and terrified her. The chairman of the council told her straightforwardly to agree with them and to do what they say for the sake of her health. That has happened umpteen times throughout my constituency. My point is not about proper behaviour, but about the attitude to our right to influence what we can do.