Electricity and Gas Transmission (Compensation) Bill

Debate between Gagan Mohindra and Liam Fox

Friday 25th November 2022 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gagan Mohindra (South West Hertfordshire) (Con)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend on his impassioned speech. Does he agree that we in this place should always encourage people to do the right thing, as the Bill hopefully will? I am concerned that it sounds, from his introduction, as though that company is not doing the right thing.

[Dr Fox]

I am not questioning whether the company wishes to do the right thing, but in practice it has not behaved in a way that is acceptable to me as a representative of the people of North Somerset. I therefore suggest that we need new mechanisms to ensure that what I regard as genuinely fair practice is enforceable. That is one of the problems with the current system. I shall now illustrate the generic case with some specific examples from the experiences of my constituents.

For those who are unfamiliar with the background, in preparation for the Hinkley C nuclear power station coming online, the Hinkley connection project is a new high-voltage electricity connection between Bridgwater and Seabank, near Avonmouth. The new connection will be 57 km long, consisting of 48.5 km of overhead lines and 8.5 km of underground cables, mainly through the Mendip hills area of outstanding natural beauty. The existing 132 kV power lines will be replaced, as they will be across the country, by new 400 kV overhead lines using very much larger T-pylons, with the removal of most of the existing pylon system, which we are used to seeing in our towns and countryside.

It is not my intention in the Bill to argue the pros and cons of the new pylon system, controversial though that it is, or to argue for the relative merits of pylons or undergrounding of new cables. My intention is to ensure that where the interests of our constituents are materially affected they are given due protection. A number of my constituents in North Somerset have been battling with National Grid for over 10 years now to try to protect their homes and livelihoods.

My first constituent’s circumstance has resulted in the value of their property being materially impacted by the project, which is perhaps an unavoidable consequence of this type of infrastructure upgrade. My second constituent is a farmer whose livelihood is being destroyed by the same scheme. In both cases, National Grid seems to believe that it has no responsibility to take due regard of the emotional, social or economic consequences facing my constituents, whose only redress is therefore through the courts at the Upper Tribunal. In the case of my first constituent, who was forced to pursue that route, that ended up costing them a staggering £200,000 in legal fees.

In that first case, the family bought their home in January 2008, with the intention of knocking down the old house and building a new one. They carried out all possible searches from a conveyancing perspective, as the project was their magnum opus that was going to use their life savings and ultimately provide their pension in years to come. The Hinkley scheme never showed up on any searches undertaken and, by its own admission, National Grid accepted that the Hinkley connection project would not have been visible in any searches undertaken at that point in time.

Once the project was formerly announced in 2010, my constituent made representations at every possible hearing, to both National Grid and the inspectorate, asking factual questions around pylon location and impact. For years, no one was able or willing to provide any specific answers or assurances on whether and to what degree the project would have a material impact on the value of their house. As hon. Members can appreciate, that caused, and is still causing, an unimaginable amount of stress for the family. The feeling of being effectively powerless in a stand-off with one of the world’s most powerful multinationals has left them with a level of fear and anxiety that I leave the House to imagine.

The detail of the scheme was to put two 132 kV lines under their drive, which includes their garage come office, and a 400 kV T-pylon close enough to the property that, were it to fall, would fall right to the edge of the house itself. That is in addition to building an access road that now abuts their property. Where once there were only fields and sheep, there will now be a massive new pylon outside their home.

Additionally, they have been served with restrictions around permitted development rights of their property and National Grid and supplying parties have been granted access rights to their property, which would allow them to break down their gate or knock down their garage and office in order to carry out any necessary reparations to the undergrounded line. Perhaps those are necessary rights, but they have a detrimental effect on the sale price of the property.

Although my constituents were constantly engaged with National Grid, all conversations were completely ineffectual as National Grid did not have to listen or provide any answers to their questions because it was able to point to the development consent order—the DCO—that seemingly gave it carte blanche to do what it wanted. Unlike other large infrastructure schemes such as High Speed 2 or Crossrail, no discretionary compensation scheme was established for the project, so National Grid has simply focused on what it has been legally allowed to do, with little regard for the impact on individuals’ existing properties, and irrespective of the personal or financial impact. Hon. Members may want to think about that in respect of future potential cases. Consequently, the only route left open for my constituent to protect their home and life savings was to pursue a blight claim through the Upper Tribunal—which for reasons that are readily apparent they did not want to do.

Given the rarity of statutory blight claims, my constituents recognised the enormous risk in undertaking such an action, and they did not take it lightly. However, since they had no other avenues to pursue, they were compelled to do something to avoid financial ruin. To be clear, all they were trying to protect was their right to sell their house at a fair market value at a time of their choosing. I would like to think that hon. Members on both sides of the House would regard that as a basic right.

The odds are stacked against individuals in such cases. Even the small win that my constituent made in the judgment—the recognition that there would be a 5% diminution in the value of their property—was pointless, because National Grid will no longer accept and pay compensation as it says that the rights that it now requires over the property have changed. A constant moving of the goalposts as well as a refusal to accept responsibility for its actions—or decisions that go against it—have been constant features in National Grid’s behaviour. Its response is all too typically to challenge individuals to take it to the Upper Tribunal, with a potentially huge new tranche of expense.