New Pylons: East Anglia

Kerry McCarthy Excerpts

Tuesday 19th July 2022 Westminster Hall

[Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to see you in the Chair as always, Mr Stringer. I congratulate the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) on bringing the debate and extend my commiserations to him on the death of his mother.

When I found out that I was speaking for the Labour Front Bench in this debate and saw that the subject was posited as local opposition to renewable energy projects, the first word that came to mind was nimbyism. Such debates can be about people not wanting something that spoils their view, but it has been made very clear that the debate today is not about that.

In his opening remarks, the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex was quite right to point out that it does matter if there is an impact on people’s house prices or on the aesthetic appeal of living in the countryside. We should not dismiss those things lightly. He also spoke about food production and the hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds (Jo Churchill) spoke eloquently about the importance of regenerative farming. Ukraine affects this debate, as it affects so many things, both in our energy security and in our resilience, including the sort of crops that could be grown in East Anglia. We ought to be doing far more to support farming there.

The frustration that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex expressed with the current processes and the discussions that have taken place was clear, and he talked about the lack of national control. Does the Minister think that the process is accountable and transparent? Could it be improved? Do we need a longer-term, broader-ranging strategy from the National Grid?

There were calls for National Grid to publish costed offshore alternatives to East Anglia GREEN. I welcome the fact that a meeting took place yesterday. That sounds as if it was a productive step on the way to trying at least to put more options in front of East Anglian communities, and I welcome that.

We heard from the hon. Members for Broadland (Jerome Mayhew) and for Bury St Edmunds that this was a case of putting the cart before the horse. It came across very genuinely that this is not about people trying to delay something by throwing in lots of obstacles, almost like “Wacky Races”, where lots of rocks are thrown in front of the vehicles so they will not reach the finish line. These are genuine concerns that are being raised.

The hon. Member for Bury St Edmunds talked about the broader issue of energy resilience and critical national infrastructure. This is one local example of how we need to get it right but, as she says, we need more clarity on the issue nationally as well.

I was interested to hear the comments made by the hon. Member for Waveney (Peter Aldous), not least because, having served on the Environmental Audit Committee with him, I know that he is genuine in his commitment to environmental concerns. He said that there should be no hold-ups to rolling out offshore wind, and I entirely agree with him. There was a debate with the hon. Member for South Suffolk (James Cartlidge) about whether the existing framework would permit alternative options to be considered. I will leave it to the Minister to go into who is right and what has been said about that, but that goes to the need for greater transparency in the process.

The hon. Member for South Suffolk also said that all East Anglian MPs support net zero. Having listened to some of the contributions to the Conservative leadership contest, I am not entirely sure whether the hon. Member for Saffron Walden (Kemi Badenoch) would say the same, but that is a debate for another day. The hon. Member for South Suffolk said that the consultation was inadequate and did not cover the offshore options, which were buried in the small print. Again, I will leave it to the Minister to say whether he feels that the consultation was adequate. The hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr Bacon) also said that the consultation was not adequate and warned about getting lawyers involved, which we would probably all want to avoid. I speak as a lawyer myself.

Let me conclude because it is important that the Minister has plenty of time to reply. The need to make the shift to low-carbon energy is real and urgent, and the push for 50 GW of offshore wind by 2030 is very much part of that. In recent weeks, the Government have been criticised by the Climate Change Committee for the inadequacy of their plans to reach net zero, although they are doing better on energy than on some other aspects, and only yesterday, Friends of the Earth successfully brought a court case against the Government, which will require them to rethink their net zero strategy.

I hope that there will be a revised strategy as a result of the court case and the criticisms of the Climate Change Committee, and that must include a big push to get the right low-carbon infrastructure in place. Opposition to onshore wind has been a disaster for efforts to ramp up renewable energy capacity in the UK, and it is now easier to build a road than to put up an onshore wind turbine in this country.

On this project, while I bow to the local MPs over the points that they want to put on the table, it appears to me that we need the strengthening cable to facilitate the landing and transportation of power from new wind farms. Undergrounding has been discussed, although I note that the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex said that undergrounding would not work as well in practice as in theory. In Scotland, quite a bit of undergrounding has been done, but the hon. Gentleman was concerned that it would still have an impact on the Dedham Vale area of outstanding natural beauty. There was also discussion of whether alternative offshore routes are viable. I wait to hear from the Minister whether he thinks they really are an option.

I have a final question for the Minister: if there were additional costs associated with pursuing the offshore route, would they fall on customers through the transmission element of bills? I hope that that would not be the case. We all know the impact of rising energy prices, so will the Minister clarify whether, if a more costly option were deemed appropriate, for all the reasons the MPs here today have mentioned such as there being a problem with the cheaper option that is being posited, the Government would provide direct support to avoid that cost falling on customers through their bills?

[James Cartlidge]

To clarify, we are not saying that options with, for example, a higher theoretical up-front capital cost are necessarily more expensive over the long term. The key issue is the horizon over which we look. We feel that, based on National Grid’s own figures, if we had a co-ordinated grid, that would be much cheaper in the long term for constituents.

[Kerry McCarthy]

I pose this question to the Minister: if a different option were adopted that turned out to be more expensive, would that cost be passed to the customer? I am by no means in a position to judge which option is more expensive.

Let me conclude. There is no perfect solution, and I am pleased that discussions are taking place and that National Grid has met MPs. I hope that those discussions continue, but the ball is now in the Minister’s court for him to respond to the Members present for today’s debate.

[Graham Stringer (in the Chair)]

May I ask the Minister to leave a couple of minutes for the hon. Member for Harwich and North Essex (Sir Bernard Jenkin) to make his winding-up speech?