Energy Bill [Lords]
Debate between Graham Stuart and Chris Heaton-Harris
Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen). I am not the expert that he is on these matters. I will focus on the bit of the Bill that is most controversial in this place—the removal of subsidies for the renewables obligation for onshore wind.
I will sketch out my own personal journey on this subject. I was a bit of a “greenie” when I was first elected to the European Parliament back in 1999, and I enjoyed working with the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) on certain things. It confused the hell out of her, but it did not do me any harm, and we actually had some interesting areas of agreement on policy. In 2001, though, I met a young gentleman called Bjørn Lomborg, and my journey to the light side has continued since then. Between then and 2010, I was interested in energy but did not really pay it much attention. As a Member of the European Parliament there are some big issues to talk about, but one does not look at individual policy areas in the way that one does when one becomes a constituency Member of Parliament representing, as I do, 72,500 people in the beautiful constituency of Daventry.
When I came here, I had one majorly controversial onshore wind farm development in my constituency, and I thought that I would do what everybody else in this place would do. I met the developer and representatives of the industry from the British Wind Energy Association, as it was then, to talk through the problems that my constituents had with their development. When that organisation later morphed into RenewableUK, I still spoke to it about how to include communities in decisions —how to incentivise them to take onshore wind in their area by working with them, perhaps even giving them some sort of rebate on their energy bills, so that they felt they were attached to local energy production for consumption in their areas. I have to say—and I am pretty sure that history will prove me right—that the wind industry decided to ignore all my counsel.
Bringing this forward to the present day, I suggest that how the onshore wind industry has treated communities up and down this country has done untold damage to how people see renewables in total as part of our energy provision. There is history to this that goes back further than the 2015 general election.
Graham Stuart
I am not saying that there is not a moral responsibility on businesses, but they will usually act in the way that they are incentivised to act, and it is up to us to create frameworks that get them to behave in the right way. The previous Labour Government’s refusal to listen on giving a voice to local communities meant that developers felt there was little point in engaging with and listening to the local community and just went to appeal to get the decision overturned. The then Government’s refusal to listen has led to hostility in many communities, including mine, towards the wind industry.
Chris Heaton-Harris
I agree, mostly, with my hon. Friend. That is why I welcome the tone of the hon. Member for Wigan (Lisa Nandy) when she said that her party would now recognise the views of local communities on these matters and consider how they could be engaged.
I had to learn this for myself first hand with regard to an onshore wind development in the beautiful village of Kelmarsh—along the A14, just down from the M1 junction —where a number of 126.5-metre turbines are currently being erected. I thought, as my constituents did, that if we formed a good local campaign with everything going for us, we could win the campaign and stop a proposed development being established on what was, in most people’s judgment, an inappropriate site—a grade 1 listed site. That view was borne out by the planning inspector. Because the local council did the right thing and turned the application down, the developer appealed. The gentleman from the planning inspectorate in Bristol came to visit and made a stunning, groundbreaking statement that changed how I dealt with these issues and culminated in the pledge on onshore wind that I am so proud of in the Conservative party manifesto that saw us into government.
The planning inspector said all the things that the local community had been saying about the development being on an inappropriate site and about it being damaging to local communities, and gave a whole host of reasons why he should not approve it, but he then went on to say that national policy trumped all this, and therefore, “You are having this onshore wind development no matter what you would like.”