Tessa Munt
Main Page: Tessa Munt (Liberal Democrat - Wells and Mendip Hills)
Tessa Munt (Wells) (LD)
Sir Michael Pitt from the Infrastructure Planning Commission, supported by the Department, requested a fair, independent and transparent report on the cost of undergrounding and any alternative to cables and pylons. Now that KEMA has been sacked, the Institution of Engineering and Technology cannot endorse a report because there is not one. National Grid is implicated for not providing the figures that are necessary for whole-life costs. The public are left with buried figures rather than buried cables. What can the Minister do to get information on costs available to people before the development consent applications have been received by the IPC?
Chris Huhne
I am grateful to my hon. Friend for her question. She is a particularly doughty campaigner on this issue, and I am aware of how significant it is in Somerset. All I can say is that we will try to be as open as possible about all the information. If we have in any way failed to be open, I ask her to get in touch and we will make sure that we are being so. My understanding is that the costs of undergrounding are roughly 10 times as high as the costs of pylons, and that pylons are going to be quite important.