Jobs and Growth in a Low-carbon Economy
Debate between Simon Hughes and Lord Lilley
Simon Hughes
Clearly, he has gone out for his tea just at the moment. I will tell him off later, but even the ever-energetic Energy Secretary has to have a cup of tea some time.
I am glad that we are having this debate, and I pay tribute to the right hon. Member for Don Valley (Caroline Flint) for choosing this important issue. She knows my commitment to it and I am grateful for the acknowledgement of the work I have tried to do in this area for many years. The Labour Administration had many successes, the Climate Change Act 2008 being the biggest, and the Leader of the Opposition, as he is now, tried hugely hard at the Copenhagen summit, which I, too, attended, to rescue it, as far as was possible, from the disaster that was otherwise afflicting it. Happily, he made sure that there was good progress that could be built on in the years to come.
I have to say to the right hon. Lady that in some areas Labour clearly did not deliver. I do not wish to spend most of my time discussing the past, because we all have a duty to work together to ensure that we have the best possible present, but the renewables figures I cited were not speculation; they were the figures that are in the record. The energy figures for the EU show that we were the worst at achieving the renewable energy targets we had set. The table is commonly available and the share of renewable consumption as a proportion of our target showed us in the worst possible light. That was not acceptable and this Government will, I know, do better. It was a defeat of the Labour Government in the House of Lords that got the feed-in tariff system going and that was resisted by the right hon. Gentleman who is now the Leader of the Opposition. The European common energy market was never delivered in 13 years of Labour government. On all those things, the record was not all that the right hon. Lady might wish to make us believe it was.
There was one area in which Labour had a clear position with which I disagreed and with which I still disagree. I am not committed—the Liberal Democrats are not committed—to nuclear power. We do not think that it is the solution—[Interruption.] There had to be negotiation for the coalition agreement but we have made it clear that it is neither necessary for the future of British energy policy nor good for investment in jobs. It creates very few jobs compared with community-based and renewable energy schemes, and the criterion negotiated, while we retained our opposition, was that it would go ahead only
“provided there is no public subsidy”.
I and colleagues will remain eternally vigilant that there will be no direct or indirect public subsidy for nuclear. It is unacceptable in any other context and we have spent and wasted far too much on nuclear power in the past.
Mr Peter Lilley (Hitchin and Harpenden) (Con)
Without nuclear, where will my right hon. Friend get the base load supply of electricity that does not depend on fluctuating winds and variable sun?