Energy: Annual Statement

Lord Sentamu Excerpts

Tuesday 27th July 2010 Lords Chamber

[Lord Jenkin of Roding]

As regards the Statement made by my noble friend on the Front Bench, and perhaps at the risk of being accused of party squabbling, I must say that the party opposite attacking the Government on their nuclear policy takes some beating. The previous Government spent the first 10 years in office believing that they were going to dismantle the entire nuclear industry. It took a lot of argument before they were prepared to change that view.

My noble friend has made a number of important Statements, leading to the Bill and the final Statement in the autumn. It will not be his decision, but will he take note of the fact that this House would very much welcome the opportunity when we resume to debate the Statement that he has made and to express our views on the many issues?

I should like to raise two points. The first is that the Government have inherited a system of support for low-carbon electricity which is in fact fragmented. It is a whole lot of separate systems for different forms of low-carbon energy. Does my noble friend not agree that there is a case not for multiple markets for the different technologies, but a single market for all low-carbon technologies, as was advocated a short while ago in a very authoritative report?

My second point follows up on what my noble friend has said about dealing with nuclear waste. It does not make sense for this very long-term programme, which will stretch over many decades, to be financed on a series of three-year spending programmes. Will the Government take account of that? And when they publish their policy, which I understand will have to be after the comprehensive spending review, there should be a longer term financing structure to fund the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the many companies and bodies that work under its authority.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords—

[Lord Marland]

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, as always, has raised some fundamental questions. I hope very much that we will have a debate on the broader aspects of this subject. We will have assimilated and responded formally to the report of the Committee on Climate Change by 15 October, and that will give us an opportunity to have a major debate, as we did last year. On the low-carbon technologies, one of the important things we have announced in the Statement is that we are addressing the carbon price, which is one of the areas that needs to be fixed. I agree with my noble friend that to have one structure is obviously beneficial to the customer, so we will continue to review this. Lastly, we will have a review of spending, but as I said earlier, that will come after the spending review in the autumn.

[The Archbishop of York]

My Lords, I apologise for rising, but I thought that the Minister had already answered the question because the Statement included the statements made by the noble Lord. I, too, welcome the commitment to nuclear power, but I wonder whether we will do more than simply build new nuclear plants. Will the science improve sufficiently to lead us to nuclear fusion, because in the long run that is probably the area we need to go into. Are the Government looking at the possibility of researching it?

The Statement says:

“The cheapest way of narrowing the gap between energy demand and supply is to cut energy use. We need to address the state of our buildings. We have some of the oldest housing stock in Europe”.

I am confused. For example, the school rebuilding programme was aimed at addressing some of the worst school buildings, which can waste a lot of energy, but most of the projects that have been cut are those that were most needed. Is there still a commitment to this kind of rebuilding because the condition of some schools is really not good enough? Does the Minister see that the aim of using less energy requires a lot of improvements to be made to our school and other buildings? If so, why have these cuts been made?

Finally, the previous Government were at least committed to ensuring that listed buildings undergoing repairs and being made more energy efficient were able to claim relief on VAT. Some churches and other buildings consume too much energy, so part of helping to address this was to ensure that VAT relief was available. I have not seen anything about that relief in the Statement. Will it continue?

[Lord Marland]

The comments of the most reverend Primate the Archbishop of York are most welcome. The point about our building stock is that it is very old, and indeed one of the oldest in Europe because we are a mature country. The policy we have announced is the green deal, which will accelerate the use of cavity wall insulation, loft lagging and so on, which reduces carbon emissions and the use of electricity. Obviously this will naturally flow through to many schools and government-owned buildings because we are committed to a 10 per cent reduction in carbon emissions in such premises within 12 months. The issue of listed buildings is a significant problem which is outside my scope. However, it is without doubt a problem if you want to put a cavity wall in a listed building.