Martin Horwood
Main Page: Martin Horwood (Liberal Democrat - Cheltenham)National Policy Statements (Energy)
Martin Horwood Excerpts
Martin Horwood (Cheltenham) (LD)
I rise to speak to the nuclear national policy statement in particular on behalf of the Liberal Democrat party, and to state our clear and unchanged view that nuclear power is unsafe, unaffordable, uninsurable, unpopular, not renewable, not decentralised, not particularly reliable, and not the kind of energy that the greenest Government ever should ever be caught promoting. When we are already paying £1.5 billion a year in nuclear clean-up and decommissioning costs from the previous generation of nuclear power stations, when we still do not know how, when or where we will dispose of the last 64 years’ worth of radioactive waste, and when country after country is abandoning nuclear power, it is extraordinary that one of the national policy statements before us today seriously proposes embarking on a new generation of nuclear power stations.
Mr Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab)
I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, but he must desist from peddling the myth that the decommissioning costs that this country faces are entirely due to the civil nuclear programme. Does he not accept that most of those costs are due to our military programme?
Martin Horwood
I accept that a percentage of them are—we have debated this at length in relation to the Energy Bill—but the hon. Gentleman must accept that a huge bill is still falling on taxpayers in this country as a result of the last generation of nuclear power stations. Why would we want to risk repeating that mistake?
I acknowledge that nuclear power is a relatively low-carbon energy source, but it is not renewable. Uranium is very far from being a renewable resource, and may prove to be very expensive if more of the world chooses to follow us down this dangerous path, although few would do so if even the insurance costs of nuclear power were accurately reflected in its price. One estimate suggests that French nuclear power might be four times as expensive if the French taxpayer were not the insurer of last resort.
I also acknowledge—I agree with the Minister on this point—that fulfilling our future energy needs is a challenge. The overarching national policy statement sets out the need for urgency, with one quarter of the UK’s generating capacity due to close by 2018, but the nuclear NPS states on page 235 that applicants only have to provide a plan that is
“credible for deployment by 2025”.
It even states that
“a detailed project plan…will not normally be needed.”
The worldwide experience is that not a single nuclear power station has ever been built on time, on budget or without public subsidy. It is very doubtful what contribution nuclear will make to closing the energy gap.
Albert Owen
The hon. Gentleman has made his party’s position on new nuclear very clear, but where does it stand on extending the life of existing nuclear plants so that low-carbon generation can be extended to bridge the gap that he talks about?
Martin Horwood
There is already an issue relating to existing nuclear, as the floor price for carbon will give it an undeserved subsidy for no actual change in behaviour.
Planning for the energy gap pales into insignificance beside the time scales that have to be imagined for waste disposal and site safety. It is those long-term dangers that should concern us most. Politicians are often criticised for a lack of long-term foresight, but certainly not this Government. The historian in me is delighted to report that we are making policy today for the mid-22nd century and beyond. On the very long-term scale there is the moral question of whether material that is likely to be dangerously radioactive for millennia should ever be intentionally created, however safely we plan to store it. We can know as little about societies 1,000 years from now as the Anglo-Saxons could have known about us. To talk of long-term storage, accessibility and monitoring arrangements over such time scales is utterly meaningless. We are leaving a toxic legacy to future generations about which we can know absolutely nothing.
The NPS does not appear to pay any attention at all to those issues, but it does have something to say on rather shorter historical time scales. In relation to those, Ministers are acting not so much like Anglo-Saxons making policy for today, but like Gladstone or Disraeli trying to determine our current waste disposal policy. The NPS states, on page 239:
“Geological disposal of higher activity waste from new nuclear power stations is currently expected to be available for new build waste from around 2130”
That is on the assumption that spent fuel rods kept on site will have cooled sufficiently for disposal in geological disposal facilities. Every decade of activity will add another decade to the end disposal date.
Hon. Members are today being asked to make nuclear waste disposal policy well into the mid-22nd century. Of course, policy making on such a time scale is not remotely practical, and the NPS admits as much. On page 239 it says:
“it is possible that there could be waste on site for longer than the assessment has been able to look ahead. Predictions of potential climate change impacts become less certain the further into the future the assessments are for, and it is not practicable to consider beyond 2100 at this stage.”
That is an interesting contrast with the Weightman report, which explicitly evaluates risk only in so far as that is reasonably practical and does not even address the major cost of evacuation and dislocation that has emerged at Fukushima.
Why are we being asked to approve a policy with risks that will be significant into the mid-22nd century when the NPS itself admits that those are not practicable to foresee, and the Government’s own safety adviser has not even tried to address them? The NPS talks of additional safeguards to cover these risks, saying that applicants need to
“identify the potential effects of the credible maximum scenario in the most recent projections of marine and coastal flooding”
and demonstrate that they could take “further measures” if necessary. I suspect that Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and the No Need for Nuclear campaign, and all their lawyers, will no doubt take full advantage of those words, with scope for years of argument and debate. If I were an investor in new nuclear, I would not be holding my breath for a return on investment before 2025.
The jury is still out on the long-term effects of Fukushima, but it is already clear that even without a major Chernobyl-style meltdown 50,000 people have still been displaced, and there is a bill running to tens of billions of pounds—and, as always, the taxpayer is being asked to foot the bill.
The real lesson, if I can paraphrase this in parliamentary language, is: stuff happens, and when it does, nuclear power is the worst possible energy source to have lying in its path. At this of all times, we should reassess our national commitment to nuclear. I know that the radioactive tendencies in the Tory and Labour parties make the passing of this policy statement inevitable, but we must challenge every licence and its capacity to withstand the worst-case scenario of climate change, and we must challenge every hidden and indirect subsidy that will make nuclear power possible.
John Robertson
I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention. If anybody knows anything about nuclear power, it will be him, as Sellafield is in his constituency and he deals with it on a day-to-day basis.
My hon. Friend the Member for Merthyr Tydfil and Rhymney (Mr Havard) did well in speaking to his amendments in a very short space of time. He and the hon. Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), who is not in his place at the moment, said that they dislike incinerators. The good news is that people who live around nuclear power stations do not dislike them; in fact, they see them as a source of wealth and a way of developing further.
It would be remiss of me not to mention Scotland at this point. These NPSs apply to Scotland as well, energy being a matter that is reserved to this House. We can abide by all of them north of the border except on one thing, which is the most important in the development of any new technology or, for that matter, old technology—planning. In Scotland, planning can be used to stop new nuclear power stations or wind farms being built anywhere, whether offshore, onshore or anywhere else. That is wrong, and the Government and this House should take a careful look at it. Thousands of jobs and billions of pounds are involved in building a nuclear power station. The west of Scotland, in particular, will need 9,000 jobs in a few years’ time, and we are not going to get them thanks to a Government north of the border who use the planning rules to stop nuclear development, all because of a doctrine and an ideology followed by many people in this House—the hon. Member for Cheltenham is one of them—that has nothing to do with how real people have to live their lives now and in future.
I have heard the talk about Fukushima. Although everybody in this House regrets what happened there, the fact is that the problem was not the nuclear power station but the tidal wave that hit it.
John Robertson
No, I will not.
I do not believe that anybody has, as yet, been killed because of the nuclear power station. Tens of thousands of people have been killed thanks to the tsunami, but that is unfortunately the way things are going.
John Robertson
I have already said that I will not give way to the hon. Gentleman.
Base load for this country is very important, as is the cost of energy. Two of the big six have already put their prices up. It is the Government’s job to try to make sure that we bring these people to task, but we do not want to give them loads of money to build wind farms in places where they are no good and a waste of money, as we have seen in many places in Scotland. I want a level playing field in energy for everybody. If there are no subsidies for nuclear, there should be no subsidies anywhere else. If we are looking to try to promote low carbon, then so be it. However, my wee old ladies up in Drumchapel, an area of my constituency that is one of the poorest areas in the country, are worried about how they are going to pay their electricity bills at the end of this year. That is a bit more important than whether we build a wind farm in the middle of nowhere that is a waste of money and that we are subsidising.
Phil Wilson (Sedgefield) (Lab)
We are all aware of the need to fight climate change and we all have a role to play. This is an issue we need to face as a nation. The question is whether we are facing it as a nation and whether all parts of the nation are playing the same part. Are we all in this together? I would say that we are not. Whether one can stake a claim to the accolade, “We’re all in this together” depends on where one lives.
I speak for a region and a county that can fairly say that they are playing their part in the fight against climate change. Our commitment to generating energy from renewable sources is exceptional. Durham county council was the first local authority to produce a renewable energy strategy back in 1994. In County Durham, 22% of our renewable energy needs are met from renewable sources, predominantly wind. We have 16 wind farms with 65 turbines that generate more than 120 MW of power. That provides for the energy needs of 69,000 houses. In Chilton in my constituency, Dalkia has built a biomass facility with the support of the local community, which generates up to 17 MW of electricity. The wind farms at Trimdon Grange, Walkway and Butterwick generate 44 MW of electricity from 21 turbines, which are all more than 100 metres tall or four times the height of the Angel of the North. The county also produces renewable energy from hydro and landfill.
My part of the country is playing its part, especially when compared with other parts of the country. In the context of the national policy statements, we should look at how the rest of the country is sharing the burden of renewable energy generation. The latest figures from the Department of Energy and Climate Change show that the north-east is producing more than 40% of its energy needs from renewable sources when all approved schemes are taken into consideration. That is equivalent to the regions of London, the west midlands, the south-east, the north-west, the east, the east midlands, and Yorkshire and the Humber combined. The north-east is producing 563 MW from approved renewable energy schemes, which is more than twice the figure for the south-east and the south-west.
The position on wind farms is even more telling. County Durham is again playing its part, but what about the rest of the country? There are significant schemes in Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Cambridgeshire and Yorkshire. Let us look at the members of the Cabinet. Only five host wind farms in their constituencies. The largest wind farms are in the constituencies of the Secretary of State for Scotland, the right hon. Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (Michael Moore), and the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, the right hon. Member for Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch and Strathspey (Danny Alexander). The former has 226 turbines and the latter 259. However, those constituencies are huge. The first covers nearly 1,500 square miles and the second approaching 2,000 square miles. That is equivalent to one turbine per 6 to 7 square miles. E.ON is to announce a wind farm in my constituency with up to 45 turbines. If that was added to those already in existence and in planning in the Sedgefield constituency, there would be 78 wind turbines in 151 square miles, which is one turbine per 2 square miles. Hampshire, where the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has his constituency, consumes three times as much energy as County Durham and produces zero of its energy from renewable sources. That is not all of us being in it together.
Over the past 30 to 40 years, Durham county council has done an excellent job in reclaiming the pit heaps that once scarred the landscape. It did not do that for the landscape to be reindustrialised, and this time without the thousands of jobs. It does not have to be like that. Renewable energy needs to be produced, but there must be more efficient ways of doing it.
Phil Wilson
I will not take interventions because I am thinking of other colleagues.
An example is the biomass facility in Chilton built by Dalkia, which produces 17 MW of electricity. A written answer that I received from the Minister of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change, the hon. Member for Wealden (Charles Hendry), last week stated that wind turbines are 21.5% efficient. Therefore, it would take 40 turbines to produce the same electricity as the one biomass facility in Chilton. Strangely enough, that is about the same number that E.ON wants to build on a 16 sq km site just to the south of the village and on part of a site of special scientific interest. No doubt the company will produce a handsome community chest for the area. However, when that is compared with the population of 40,000 and the increase in energy prices that my constituents face, not to mention the thousands of pounds to be received by a handful of landowners to see the area blighted for 25 years, it is asking too much.
Of course there is a need for renewable energy and for a national plan. However, that plan must involve the whole nation and it must share the burden, not just the benefits.