Onshore Wind Turbines

Julian Smith Excerpts

Wednesday 13th October 2010 Westminster Hall

[The Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Charles Hendry)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bayley. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) on securing the debate. It is a great shame for the whole House that he did not get an hour-and-a-half debate, because there is no doubt that he and the Members here today could have filled the time.

In the remaining 13 minutes I want to go through the issues raised so far and put them in the context of the role that wind has to play in our energy security and our move to a low-carbon economy. I assure my hon. Friend that I understand the concerns that he and others have raised, and as Minister I have taken some of the actions that are designed specifically to address them. Wind has a contribution to make and an integral part to play in dealing with energy security and tackling climate change. We cannot separate security of supply from a low-carbon economy, we cannot have security of supply without a low-carbon economy and we cannot have a low-carbon economy without security of supply. We see those elements as going together, and without them we will not have affordable pricing.

As hon. Members know, we have seen significant growth in the deployment of onshore wind in this country and we expect it to increase over the years ahead. It will be a low-carbon technology that makes the most significant contribution to enabling us to meet our low-carbon commitments in future, but that must be done in a way that takes account of the views of local communities, and one of the most important changes we shall make will address that: people will see the benefits accrue to their communities from hosting facilities that they may not have chosen.

[Julian Smith (Skipton and Ripon) (Con)]

Will the Minister give way?

[Charles Hendry]

I will give way this once, but I am concerned about answering the questions already raised.

[Julian Smith]

Is the Minister shocked at the behaviour of some wind companies? Speaking for my constituents, the bullying of local communities, particularly in rural areas, by wind companies has been shocking. I would appreciate his comments on that.

[Charles Hendry]

I am not aware of the specific cases to which my hon. Friend refers. If he writes to me, I will be more than happy to look into them.

We have to move to a greater spirit of partnership so that communities can see precisely what they would get out of hosting a facility and realise that genuine benefits would come to them—not necessarily from a wind farm but from other facilities, as well. Other countries have gone down a similar route and we are learning from the approaches that they have taken. We have also seen the significant number of green jobs generated here, albeit not as many as we would have wished from the supply-chain benefits coming to the United Kingdom, and the potential that that brings

I realise that my hon. Friends who contributed to the debate are less concerned about that aspect than they are about the implications of onshore wind for their constituencies, so I particularly want to address those issues. We have seen the benefits from offshore wind, but we recognise that communities often feel concerned that proposed wind farms in their areas will destroy the environment or have other negative impacts. We are convinced that, in the policy of localism that we are going to drive forward, local councils should be the driving force in deciding how they want their communities to develop. That is a fundamental part of the planning changes we are making.