Energy Bill [Lords]

Graham Stuart Excerpts

Wednesday 20th April 2016 Commons Chamber

[Callum McCaig]

There were two different aspects, and we had a number of debates. The hon. Gentleman asked how we would do something, but we cannot do it—pure and simple. Let me return to the nub of the matter. People would like pragmatic government, but we are seeing dogmatic government that dismisses the views of communities.

[Graham Stuart (Beverley and Holderness) (Con)]

Will the hon. Gentleman give way?

[Callum McCaig]

I am coming to a close. Such dogmatic government is making communities withdraw their support, and I urge the Government to show pragmatism today.

--- Later in debate ---

[James Heappey (Wells) (Con)]

I think we all hoped that the Energy Bill would by now have completed its progress through Parliament. It is a shame that it has not, especially because the closure of the renewables obligation for onshore wind was a clear manifesto commitment by the Government before the last election. That was a popular pledge, especially in my constituency, where opposition to wind farms in the Mendips and at Pilrow is widespread. It is difficult to explain to my constituents that that manifesto commitment, which the Government have a clear mandate to deliver, has not been enacted because of the intervention of the unelected Members of the other place.

That is especially true, as has been noted by a number of my hon. Friends, because the Opposition has been abetted in the House of Lords by a party that was roundly rejected in Somerset, in the south-west and across the country. Not one of its elected Members has come to this Chamber today to justify the actions of their unelected colleagues in the other place. The illiberal undemocrats have a great deal to answer for. I want to congratulate the Secretary of State and the Minister of State on their forbearance in seeing the Bill through Parliament. I understand that the other day, the Secretary of State spent some time at the Bar of the other House eyeballing those who were delaying the legislation. Sadly, they had their way, and we are here yet again to debate it.

It is important that we do not allow the closure of the renewables obligation for onshore wind to be cast as anti-green. The deployment of onshore wind has been widespread, despite strong opposition in this place—with my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) in the vanguard—and in communities across the country. As a result of £800 million of subsidy, there are 490 operational wind farms and just under 5,000 operational turbines, so the measure is not anti-wind or anti-green.

The Government need to deliver their manifesto commitment to ensure that bill payers are not expected to foot the bill for the excessive deployment of this type of generation. Let us be clear. The Government are well on track to achieve 30% of electricity generation from renewable sources by 2020, and we should congratulate them on that. They are serious about decarbonisation and serious about security of supply, but they are also serious about keeping bills down. A line must be drawn somewhere, and the Government’s decision on the matter is, in my view, entirely reasonable.

Let us reject Lords amendment 7T and stop the onshore wind industry impeding the progress of a Bill that, principally, establishes the OGA, with all its important functions in reinvigorating the UK’s oil and gas industry, safeguarding hundreds of thousands of jobs, contributing billions to our economy and protecting an essential component of not only our energy security but, I argue, our national security. It is high time that we moved on with the Bill, and that the Lords accepted the will of this elected Chamber. It is time that we focused our energies not on onshore wind, but in using the Government’s subsidy structure as a lever to encourage the technologies, such as offshore wind and new nuclear, that we envisage will be part of our energy mix for the next 20 or 30 years.

[Graham Stuart]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[James Heappey]

I am just wrapping up, but I am pleased to give way.

[Graham Stuart]

My hon. Friend is making a powerful and well-informed speech. Does he agree that although we are ending the subsidy for onshore wind, there will still be a role for it? We must continue to make sure that, while it is not subsidised, onshore wind does not lose out in comparison with the strike prices granted to other technologies.

[James Heappey]

I accept my hon. Friend’s point to a degree. This is not the end of onshore wind in that onshore wind is not being banned, but is simply being told that it is time to find its own feet and to go it alone, where it can be sited in a permissive planning environment. I regularly drive up the M5 past the onshore wind turbines at Avonmouth, and one might argue that they are entirely reasonable in that industrial setting. Provided turbines can be sited in a permissive place and they do not require any further Government subsidy, they may of course continue. However, it is important that the subsidy ends and that it does so with the passage of the Bill.

It is also important to note that the Energy and Climate Change Committee has recently begun pre-legislative scrutiny of the next energy Bill. There is a great deal in it that is quite exciting, in my view, so let us get this one done and get on with that one.

[Graham Stuart]

It is a pleasure to take part in this debate, in which there have been interesting speeches by Members on both sides of the House. On ending the subsidy for onshore wind, the whole aim of subsidy regimes for renewable technologies is to encourage costs to fall and to drive them down over time to the point at which they no longer need a subsidy. The Government put that in their manifesto.

I think a lot of this is down to Labour Members, because they would not listen to communities, such as my own, which felt that wind farms were being imposed on them that blighted their view of the landscape. The sense of a loss of control, even more than the imposition of the turbines themselves, created a great deal of resentment. We have ended up in a position in which the party that won a majority at the general election stood on a manifesto promise to end this subsidy.

The Government have made provision to ensure that onshore wind, where it goes ahead, has the support of the local community. I have said previously in the House, so I will not go on about it at too much length, that that issue should have been sorted out. If it had been sorted out sooner, we might not have had the backlash that has found its form—not least through the agency of my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris)—in saying, “We feel that this subsidy regime is imposing these turbines on us.” The permissions, not the subsidy per se, was the central issue, but we are where we are.

Further to my intervention on my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (James Heappey), I want to make this point. Given that we now have an energy market in which the price producers charge for energy is far less than that at which anyone can afford to commission new production, we have a rather artificial market. I hope and expect we will make sure—I know Ministers are looking at this—that future regimes, for contracts for difference or whatever else, do not artificially block onshore wind from getting access to the market because of how pricing within that market operates. It is perfectly possible to ensure that there is no subsidy for onshore wind while ensuring that onshore wind alone is not deprived of access to the mechanisms that drive new commissioning for every other technology. I hope that Members on both sides of the House can agree to that. As long as communities have the final say on whether new wind farm capacity is brought into their area, and as long as onshore wind is treated no differently from other technologies, including fossil fuels such as gas, that is the situation we need to bring about.

[John Redwood]

Does my hon. Friend agree that it is quite difficult to attribute cost to stand-by power for wind? Wind uniquely needs such a power in a way that other forms of energy do not.

--- Later in debate ---

[Graham Stuart]

I agree that there are such issues. In his speech, my right hon. Friend did not reflect on the success of the Government. I know he is sceptical about both climate change and the Government’s approach to this over the years, but what is undeniable is the way in which the cost curve has accelerated downwards. We were previously in a situation in which clean energy was ridiculously more expensive than fossil fuels, which poison the air and also have climate risks attached to them. We have therefore seen a real driving down of that cost. Onshore wind is now in a position where it should be able to compete on a level playing field with new gas-fired power stations; we will not of course see any more coal-fired ones.