Energy Security: Hinkley Point

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 10th March 2016 Lords Chamber

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, this is a commercial deal, as the noble Viscount should be aware. It is a matter for EDF if the costs increase: they are EDF costs. We have a strike price, as I have indicated, which is firm and unchanging and will guarantee us energy up to and beyond the 2030s—for 60 years from when this comes on stream.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords—

[Lord Lea of Crondall (Lab)]

My Lords—

[The Lord Privy Seal (Baroness Stowell of Beeston) (Con)]

My Lords, my noble friend has been trying to get in on several Questions for several days.

[Lord Marlesford]

My Lords, is not one of the problems that, in negotiating with EDF on the two nuclear power stations at Hinkley and Sizewell in Suffolk—I declare my interest in the latter—the Government were outfoxed by EDF? EDF has shown an astonishingly ruthless determination to get exactly what it wants, lacking, in some cases, in integrity. To give one example, in Suffolk, in order to persuade people that there was support for its local transport plans, EDF summoned a meeting at which £20 notes were handed out and the people were filmed.

[Lord Bourne of Aberystwyth]

My Lords, I have no knowledge of that particular evening in Suffolk. I wish I had known about it—I could have been there. I return to the point that this is a good deal for the Government. It was a good deal when it was struck and it is a good deal now. It will provide 7% of the energy needs of the country, which is enough to power London twice over when it is fully on stream in the 2020s.