Severn Barrage

Lord Berkeley Excerpts

Monday 22nd April 2013 Grand Committee

[Lord Berkeley]

My Lords, I am afraid that you have me today, and not my cousin, who joined the House about a month ago. We both have fewer connections with Berkeley than the noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, who used to represent it in the other place. I certainly have a great interest in this project. Having worked briefly on it as an engineer about 40 years ago, I was interested to read a comment in the Financial Times on 18 December last year, saying:

“There are two varieties of Severn bore. The first is a regular surge of water up-river due to the funnelling effect that the English and Welsh coastlines have on the tide. The second is a regular surge of enthusiasm for slinging a barrage between said coastlines to generate tidal electricity”.

That probably sums up where I think we have got to today.

This is a very big project, if it happens, and much bigger than the Channel Tunnel, on which I worked for about 15 years. The difference is that the Channel Tunnel, although it was difficult to finance in the private sector—and Margaret Thatcher clearly and rightly said that it should be—used proven technology. The technology for boring a tunnel in chalk is well proven, but even so, finances were difficult for the tunnel.

However, for this project the small details available do not yet give me any confidence that the new technology is at all proven; the noble Lord, Lord German, mentioned turbines, which I was about to mention, there are locks, and there is the actual design of the, presumably rock, barrage itself. Bearing in mind that the Severn—or the Bristol Channel as it is quite rightly named—is very deep there, it has already got strong tides and wave heights of between six and eight metres. I do not know who has been in a small boat in a six to eight metre swell. I went to the Scilly Isles last week and the swell was quite big.

The force of the tide on a breakwater is pretty frightening even to conceive. About 30 years ago, a breakwater built in a place called Sines in Portugal had a similar storm attack it and it collapsed completely. I am sure designs have moved on since then, but we need to have confidence not only that the design is adequate for these very difficult conditions but that it can be built on time and on budget. The constructability is equally important. We have had no real answers to any of the questions that noble Lords have asked this afternoon, the noble Lord, Lord Cope, in particular. Until they are answered, I do not think one can talk about finance in the private sector.

I recall very early when we were trying to do the Channel Tunnel trying to get commitments from bankers to say it could be financed in the private sector. We got a variety of letters, but in the end they said, “If it does not rain next Tuesday and it does snow next Wednesday, we think we can finance it in the private sector”. That is not good enough nowadays. You need a lot more study, effort and investigation of all the effects, including on the ports, which are extremely serious. I am very doubtful. My recommendation is to cancel the thing now and start looking at smaller schemes, develop the technology and make sure it does not completely wreck the River Severn and the Bristol Channel.