Lord Cryer
Main Page: Lord Cryer (Labour - Life peer)Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
Each Urgent Question requires a Government Minister to give a response on the debate topic.
This information is provided by Parallel Parliament and does not comprise part of the offical record
Chris Huhne
The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, my hon. Friend the Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), discussed the stress tests recently at an informal EU Energy Council meeting in Hungary, and during bilateral meetings with Commissioner Günther Oettinger. Good progress is being made in defining the tests, and I believe that we will be in a position to make an announcement shortly.
John Cryer (Leyton and Wanstead) (Lab)
However much the Secretary of State tries to dress it up, is it not the case that the new carbon floor price represents a massive subsidy to the nuclear industry, possibly to the tune of £2 billion? Is that not why the nuclear industry has been lobbying for it?
Chris Huhne
I return to the point that I made in answer to the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas). As Lord Stern said, we have experienced the greatest market failure of all time. We will be able to provide the incentives that will lead all of us, in the private and public sectors, to change our behaviour only if we offset that market failure by incorporating the costs. What there will not be is any subsidy for the nuclear industry.