Electricity Grid Upgrades

John Hayes Excerpts

Tuesday 26th November 2024 Westminster Hall

[Ms Billington]

I am perfectly happy to acknowledge when the Opposition are right and I am afraid to say that on this one they are not. We need to preserve the nature we have, while increasing efforts to restore nature. To restore nature by 2030 by 30% is one of our manifesto commitments, and that has to be taken into account with planning and national infrastructure projects. We will not reach our ambitious climate targets without it. I am disappointed there was no reference to the impact of this kind of infrastructure on nature by the hon. Gentleman. Reaching our targets will require a strong land use framework that intersects with an energy special plan, to which we have committed, and an updated national planning policy framework. I am delighted that the Government are currently working on all three of these documents and I look forward to seeing more detail on them.

It was interesting to hear the hon. Gentleman refer to the importance of public consent and support. For anyone who is aware of my work before I came to Parliament, public consent and support are absolutely vital for us to be able to undertake the transformation that we are discussing. That also involves benefit for communities, and ownership and accountability for those communities, in the form of local energy projects to help us build a more resilient grid.

[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

As a former Energy Minister and therefore someone who has been involved in strategic energy policy, including introducing, through the Energy Act 2013, the capacity market—still a critical part of what is used to determine from where we get our energy—and through my long experience in this House, although not as long as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin), I say that public support for these things, linked to public benefit, is often an illusion. I have seen many developers, not just on energy projects, who have promised great public benefits and then they disappear like dandelion seeds on the wind.

[Ms Billington]

The right hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. It is unusual that we agree—it is certainly the first time, although perhaps not the last—that developers end up having far too much say in these things and that the community does not have enough. I agree that we need to talk about how we change that.

An important part of the assessment by NESO and by the Government is that 8 GW of energy could be generated by local and community projects, reducing the need for further strengthening of the grid and enabling smart, local, flexible energy. That would increase our resilience and, if we stop the idea of developers simply trying to buy off local communities with either compensation or spurious benefits, instead having proper, locally owned energy projects, would build public consent and support. Putting energy closer to where it is used will alleviate stress on the grid and help to handle bottlenecks. It is crucial to point out that that needs to be done as well as grid upgrades.

The idea that grid upgrades will not happen is wrong. GB Energy is crucial in helping to develop those projects across the country. I note that Opposition Members voted against GB Energy. I would be interested to know how they think we are going to be able to achieve our goals without it, especially when the right hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings (Sir John Hayes) mentions the vagaries of private developers and their ability to bulldoze local communities.

Locally led energy is going to be crucial, and GB Energy will be able to do that, embracing a locally led approach to building grid infrastructure. By integrating a focus on local place-based energy projects, we can build the grid we need by working with local authorities and communities across the country.

A locally led approach is crucial for building consent among communities, whose members want to see infrastructure built—the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex mentioned that—but want to be included in how it is built. That is why the rules need to be changed. I am pleased to see that there is at least consensus on that. If we are talking about the risks of damage to the environment as well as public consent and support, we need to be aware that a significant amount of undergrounding is more damaging for our climate goals and for protecting nature than some of the proposals on pylons.

This is not a debate about if we upgrade the grid; it is a debate about how we build it. I am assured that the Government will hear my representations on combining our ambitions on a clean energy superpower with restoring nature by 2030.

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[Sir John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Christopher, and to speak in this debate. I am going to speak about five things: the environment, efficiency, energy, economics and ergonomics.

I will start by talking about the environment, because this debate is clearly couched in a critical and shared understanding that the environment matters. But what is the environment? At a philosophical level the environment is, in a sense, our connection with reality. It is our link to the natural world through the experience and character of the places we live, and the places we live matter because they inspire us or disappoint us; they encourage us or leave us wanting.

Everyone deserves their chance to experience beauty. I make no apology for making the case for beauty; I have done so many times as a Minister, shadow Minister and Back Bencher. Everyone deserves their chance to experience beauty because, as Keats understood, beauty and goodness are inseparable. Beauty and truth are indelibly imprinted one upon the other. So when we speak about the pylons, let us speak about the effect they have on the places in which people live.

In Lincolnshire, particularly in my constituency, a row of huge pylons as big as Nelson’s column in a flat landscape will have a devastating effect on the vistas and views of not just the people who live in their immediate proximity but people from miles away. We will see those structures across the flat fens for 5, 10 or perhaps even 15 miles, which is unacceptable. It is an imposition on a flat landscape that historically has never enjoyed tall structures, with the exception of the churches, and they were built to the glory of God. The pylons certainly are not that, and I do not think even the Minister would defend them on that basis—their holiness, that is. So when we think of this immense row of pylons stretching down the east coast, let us understand their connection to the day-to-day environment and the things that affect people’s local sense of wellbeing. I hope the Minister will recognise that, for that reason, the more we can mitigate their effect, the better.

[Patrick Spencer]

May I put on the record my apologies for fluffing my speech a moment ago? One of the points I wanted to make is that we take into account our natural environment when we look at housing and planning policy. The reality is that when we want to build a development on the side of a village, put an extension on a house or expand our housing stock, planning authorities demand that we take into account the natural environment. That importantly includes the aesthetic, which we talk about a lot, as well as the preservation of our landscapes.

[Patrick Spencer]

If the Government choose to solve the housing crisis by taking into account our environment, why can we not do that with energy policy as well?

[Sir John Hayes]

We can and do. Contrary to what was said earlier, the existing planning policy does take into account the effect on the environment. That is why, for example, we do not build unsuitable things in areas of outstanding natural beauty. That is also why sites of special scientific interest matter in the planning system, as we mitigate what we can do by them, in them and near them. By the way, these pylons will run alongside one of the most precious natural environments in our country: the salt marshes that run along my constituency. They are a site of outstanding importance because of the bird life they sustain, which makes them a unique environment.

Let us be clear about the need to mitigate all else in the pursuit of maintaining those things that are already embedded in our planning system as highly significant, such as those of the kind suggested by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Suffolk and North Ipswich (Patrick Spencer) in his pithy and powerful intervention.

[Ms Billington]

Salt marshes are very much a unique environment. Does the right hon. Gentleman have concerns about the possibility of trenching through salt marshes as opposed to using pylons, which actually have less impact on the environment, particularly given the climate sink value of salt marshes? Would he concede that there might be a need for us to reconsider the way in which we tackle fragile environments such as salt marshes, rather than simply trenching them, which has done long-term damage?

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[Sir John Hayes]

That is a good point, and it is why Lincolnshire county council’s submission to National Grid specifically takes into account the trenching problem that the hon. Lady raised. It suggests an offshore grid, but obviously one that avoids the damage she mentioned. I recommend that she studies that submission—it is in the public domain—to see how we can offshore that grid without damaging the salt marshes in the way she suggests.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

The hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) made the relevant point that there are balancing factors. First, once cables are undergrounded, they are maintenance free, but pylons require constant maintenance, which therefore adds to their carbon footprint. Everybody has seen that. Secondly, salt marshes are very often Ramsar sites and migration bird sites, and we do not want overhead power lines interfering with the migration of birds. We often see that scores of swans have been killed on power lines because they are not very good at navigating around these things.

[Sir John Hayes]

With the insight for which he is known, my hon. Friend has anticipated two of the points that I was going to make. The problem with pylons being so close to SSSIs is that the birds do not know boundaries. Of course, the salt marsh in Lincolnshire matters because, exactly as my hon. Friend said, it is important as a site for geese and duck in particular. To run the pylons so close to that is at best highly contentious and at worse wholly destructive. The offshore grid that my hon. Friend describes can be run further out to sea, which is what we do with cables routinely. If we were able to see the ocean bed around our islands, we would see any number of trunked cables that run through them, which provide vital power and communications infrastructure.

[Luke Murphy (Basingstoke) (Lab)]

There is an interesting discussion about the balance of trade-offs. One of the other considerations is cost, and the cost of undergrounding is multiple times the amount of overhead pylons. The previous Government were not able to demonstrate that they could do it at the same cost, so how does the right hon. Gentleman balance that factor? Does he not think that his constituents, and constituents throughout the country, might consider the loading of those costs on to them unacceptable?

[Sir John Hayes]

There is a big argument to be had about costs because we are planning a project that will last decades—perhaps even longer. When I was the Energy Minister, I was very conscious of the fact that we might be making 100-year decisions. It is very hard to gauge costs over time because of two things. First, there are the ongoing maintenance costs associated with any line that runs above ground, and given the changing climate, it is likely that extreme weather events will become more frequent, and extreme weather events will have an effect on anything above ground. Secondly, the relative costs of underground and overhead cables vary according to the kind of cable laid, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) said; and indeed some of the evidence from other places in Europe and elsewhere suggests that the cost of trunking cables underground is falling, whereas there is no similar reduction in the cost of overhead cables, which, on pylons, have been at the same cost for a very long time indeed.

The final point is about consent. The longer these things take, the more they cost. Certainly in Lincolnshire—and I imagine this is true in Essex, Suffolk and other places—there will be protracted legal challenges to the pylons, whereas, with local support and the support of local authorities like Lincolnshire county council, undergrounding would be a much more straightforward affair. Factoring in those costs is complex, but it needs to happen.

[Sir Bernard Jenkin]

Very briefly, the ESO review of the east of England network demonstrated that there is a higher up-front cost for undergrounding of an extra £1 billion from Norwich to Tilbury, but in the longer term it saves money. It is just not correct to say that undergrounding is automatically much more expensive. That is a departmental mantra that is now discredited—just read the ESO and NESO documents.

[Sir Christopher Chope (in the Chair)]

Order. Before the right hon. Gentleman responds to that intervention—he is being very generous in giving way—can I just say that we have to move on to the Front-Bench speakers at 10.30 am and there are many people who wish to participate? I have not imposed time limits; all I am saying is that there are 13 minutes left and probably seven people who want to speak.

[Sir John Hayes]

On that basis, Sir Christopher, I will not give way again, for as you have noted, I have been immensely generous. I will abbreviate my remarks without missing out any of the other four subjects that I promised to speak about. Let me deal with them very rapidly. Efficiency is critically important in delivering energy policy. As I have already said, if we want to get that policy pursued and delivered quickly, we need an approach that avoids the protracted debates and disputes I have described.

Let us speak more strategically about energy policy, on which the hon. Member for East Thanet (Ms Billington) made a powerful point; we need to understand that bringing supply closer to demand is vital at a strategic level. Successive Governments have failed at this. A lot of people have made comments about the previous Government—the previous Government would have done a lot better if they had listened to me more often. I hope this one will; then they will not go wrong. It is important to reconsider the relationship between supply and demand. No Government have done that with sufficient vigour, and I hope this one will.

On economics, putting in the pylons will also have a displacement effect, because Lincolnshire is perhaps the most important county of all in respect of food production. I understand that about 30% of the fresh produce we consume goes through my constituency. South Lincolnshire produces 20% of the vegetables we consume, 20% of the sugar beet, and so on. The displacement effect of energy infrastructure, including pylons and solar, will have a devastating effect on food production and therefore food security. I simply say to the Minister that energy security must not be made the enemy of food security, and vice versa. That is why the economics are more complex than they perhaps first appear.

Finally, on the cognitive ergonomics of Government, it is really important that in winding up, the Minister assures this Chamber that the Departments across Government are working closely together. We have talked about land use studies, and that is a good thing, but given the commitments that the Planning Minister has made to beauty and the commitments that the Environment Secretary has made to food production and security, it is important that we do not simply pursue a policy that is invidious because it contradicts the other priorities of Government. In my long experience as a Minister in a variety of Departments, I have found that lateral thinking in Government is a rare and precious thing; I simply recommend to the Minister a more lateral approach in combining those critical priorities.

Finally, my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and North Essex is right: we need to approach this in a bolder than partisan way, because we are speaking about fundamental decisions in the interest of our country. This is a matter of national interest, but it does not have to be a matter of national interest that compromises the common good.

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[Jack Abbott]

I will finish my point because it is directly related to the hon. Gentleman’s constituency of Central Suffolk. We already have pylons running through that part of the world. We have Mendlesham mast, which can be seen from miles around. We also have Eye airfield, big business parks, warehouses and farm buildings. We already have infrastructure in place.

[Sir John Hayes]

We already have horror; let us have more.

[Jack Abbott]

It is not horror at all; it is infrastructure that people desperately rely on. The right hon. Gentleman might want to live in a fantasy in which costs do not matter and there are no trade-offs. Well, that is not the case.

I also say to the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex: East Anglia and the fenlands, which he mentioned, are critical, because if we do not build the energy transition infrastructure that we need, guess what? There is no landscape. We will be surveying everything from a boat. That is the reality.