National Policy Statements

Thérèse Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 1st December 2010 Commons Chamber

[Tessa Munt]

rose—

[Dr Thérèse Coffey (Suffolk Coastal) (Con)]

rose—

[Charles Hendry]

I will give way to my hon. Friend, who has some issues in Suffolk.

[Dr Coffey]

Thank you. We do indeed have issues in East Anglia, and in Suffolk in particular. We have an enormous number of offshore wind farms, yet the green impact of pylons across our countryside is hardly palatable. I welcome the changes being made, and hope that we will have more detailed calculations of the costs and the impact of the benefits.

[Charles Hendry]

I shall give way again to the hon. Member for Wells and deal with both issues together.

--- Later in debate ---

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

Indeed. The hon. Lady will have noticed that between March 2010 and now an election got in the way. The national policy statements were in place, and this Government, had they so chosen, could have picked them up and run with them, or alternatively, as happened when we came into office in 1997 and had our policies ready to go having worked them up with the civil service, they could have got on with it straight away. We will be nine months delayed by the time we have these documents before the House for full consideration.

[Dr Thérèse Coffey]

rose—

[Huw Irranca-Davies]

I will make a little progress.

Although I welcome this debate, we now have only one hour and 20 minutes to debate issues that, as I am sure the Minister will agree, are critical to our national strategic energy needs and to the balance between those needs and democratic accountability at national and local levels. Unlike the over-long process of reconsultation, this short debate demonstrates all speed, but limited accountability. It will therefore be impossible to do justice to the six core energy documents and the accompanying materials. This must be seen instead as a useful staging post to a much longer debate in this place in Government time.

I will begin with some points on the reform of planning in relation to NPSs, in response to the Minister’s opening remarks.