Energy Infrastructure

Debate between Siobhan Baillie and Andrew Bridgen

Wednesday 5th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Andrew Bridgen]

Is the hon. Lady aware that Just Stop Oil protesters are paid up to £500 a day by their sponsors to take part so vigorously in protests? It is good money if you can get it.

[Siobhan Baillie]

I was not aware of that, but to anyone I meet and to schoolchildren when I go to schools, I say, “Do not lie down in the road, do not glue yourself to stuff and do not get arrested. Go and do your maths and your science, and you will be the champions of the future.”

My constituency is so packed with innovation and technology businesses that I could talk all day about it. I have chewed the Minister’s ear off about my hydrogen internal combustion engine campaign, so I will leave that for the moment. I will constrain my comments to two areas and projects that affect my constituents. The first is the Severn Edge nuclear site at Berkeley, where Western Gateway is doing an awful lot of work. The second is radiator sludge, which I have mentioned before and will expand on.

On nuclear, I do not understand why it is not completely popular across absolutely everybody. It is a zero-emission clean-energy source that the environmentalists should be entirely pro. The Severn Edge project, Berkeley Green, is a decommissioned nuclear site with a long history in the Stroud and Gloucestershire area. When I knock on doors every week, I get to meet nuclear scientists all the time. Some are retired, but it means we have fertile ground for the future generations of nuclear scientists. The Cotswold Canal Trust, packed full of volunteers, is stocked full of nuclear scientists sorting out the engineering. I give credit to the board at Berkeley. John Stanton is a good friend of mine now and keeps me up to date on what is going on.

Unfortunately, the Severn Edge gang lost out on the fusion bid. I think that was the wrong decision. I am very happy for Nottinghamshire, but the UK Atomic Energy Authority did a phenomenal job and so did we. We had a cross-party group of politicians—Gloucestershire County Council leader Mark Hawthorne, who was excellent; South Gloucestershire Council and the district councils—and we now want a small modular reactor. If the Minister can give me a bit of a nod about how nuclear is moving, I will get the band back together.

When we show what Berkeley and Oldbury can do, it is a really exciting prospect for the country. The Western Gateway has not rested. It has generated significant interest in the Severn Edge sites after the conclusion of the STEP—spherical tokamak for energy production—fusion process. They are, evidently, very attractive sites and they are ready to go with infrastructure and supply chains. Because the UKAEA did such a phenomenally thorough job on fusion, my sites have been literally investigated up the wazoo, so there is nothing we do not know about them. For any international and domestic investors who are interested, we can provide key information.

On what I want to see from Government, Government investment in accelerating the clarity and regulatory approaches for Great British Nuclear is critical. The international investors we speak to are presenting as funded and ready to go, but understandably they need surety for the route through regulation. We have the Berkeley Green University Technical College. I had students up today, young women in science, technology, engineering and maths, and they, too, are raring to go. They want apprenticeships, they want to be working. The Western Gateway is ready to support the UK Government in live discussions with investors about policy, because we can play a major role. One of the greatest things the Western Gateway did, and what we all did in our fusion project, was to bring the south-west together but also bring Wales in too, so it is a cross-country project.

If I may, I will run through a few of the selling points; I decided that we could use the Hansard record of this speech as something to send out about Berkeley and Severn Edge. As I said, the sites are ready to go and flexible, with a partnership of landowners and local authorities in support of the development. We have access to skills and a specialist workforce, with complementary industry and supply chain opportunities. We have Hinkley power plant, Barnwood, and world-leading strengths in advanced manufacturing, robotics and cyber. We also have a brilliant company called Vulcain in Stroud. It places people in the nuclear industry, so it knows where all the people and the jobs are. Our sites are well connected, with motorway connections. The Gloucestershire services on the M5 won the best services in the country award—it is a very good place for coffee. And we have a very understanding and supportive community, partly because of the history of nuclear in the area, which I mentioned, but also because we did a lot of work with the consultation for fusion, so we know that local people and children are really interested in this work.

Working with the Western Gateway teams, I will happily help them lead. A number of MPs have worked on this—it is not just me—from all sides of House and they are really keen. I want to give credit to our local press. The local BBC Radio Gloucestershire is having a bit of a tough time at the moment, but when we were working together for Berkeley and Oldbury, we had BBC Radio Gloucestershire; BBC Gloucestershire Tellybox people; Stroud News and Journal; Stroud Times; Ian Mean, a very experienced journalist who sits on Business West, writing for us; and Mark from Punchline Gloucester, who is absolutely brilliant. It is rare to get so much business and media collectively working together so much, but it is because we have such a good opportunity here. We need the investment from the Government and the pace to make progress.

The second thing I want to mention—I will not take up too much more time—is radiator sludge. It is becoming one of my favourite things to talk about and it is something I absolutely did not expect to be talking about when I entered this place. It is basically about energy efficiency. I want to draw attention to the significance of water treatment in heating systems, which I have learnt about through a company in my patch called ADEY International. It is a low-cost intervention, is already available and would have immediate and sustained positive impacts on energy consumption and carbon reduction.

The reason I am raising it with the Government, even on an estimates day, is that it is not going to cost much money. The Government have a campaign and a website to show people how they can make their homes energy efficient, but there is nothing about water treatment facilities and magnetic filtration. I have taken a little gadget in to the Secretary of State to give him a live demonstration of what magnetic filtration can do to boilers. It is my understanding that Worcester Bosch is already attaching these things to its boilers. Plumbers up and down the land already know that it is good, but the public do not, so I want to see it in the Government’s gov.uk campaign. ADEY International is a leading expert. It is in Gloucestershire providing jobs for us locally and we should be using its expertise.

Research shows that, without effective system testing, cleaning and protection from corrosion in boilers and radiators, energy efficiency drops up to 7% and up to 7% more carbon is emitted. Poor water quality is also the biggest cause of boiler breakdown, reducing the lifespan of a domestic gas boiler by up to seven years. Radiator sludge sounds quite funny, but it is quite serious and is having an impact on everybody’s homes. Research on 100,000 homes showed that 42% of homes are not working to the required efficiency, and are not protected from the risk of rising bills and boiler breakdown. That also applies to commercial properties. I would like the Government to look a bit more lively on that ahead of next winter and I would be very happy to assist the Minister with any of that information.