National Policy Statement for Nuclear Energy Generation

Baroness Coffey Excerpts

Wednesday 21st May 2025 Grand Committee

[Baroness Coffey (Con)]

My Lords, it is an honour for me to follow my noble friend Lady Maclean of Redditch. As noble Lords have already heard, my noble friend is quite happy to spice things up a bit, but her principles are based on a genuine belief in family, faith and freedom. I am sure that we will hear those principles come through in many ways, as she contributes to the work of the House.

Family is certainly very important to my noble friend, and I am pleased to share that she recently became a grandmother for the third time. I know that your Lordships will say that she does not look old enough, but what a welcome blessing that is. I know how important her four children and her husband are to her. I was not going to include her two rescue dogs, but perhaps I should, as they are part of the wider family too. She will continue to be interested in a variety of those elements.

Something that also came out in my noble friend’s contribution is what we can do. Her family went with her when she and her husband set up a business together, a business that is still going strong. In publishing, it is now the largest company in the UK for technical and IT content. I hope we can share the experience that she will bring in our consideration of a number of pieces of legislation.

Family is important to my noble friend in a different way. It was her daughter who encouraged her to run for election because there were not enough women MPs. She did that, and she delivered. She delivered for the people of Redditch in a variety of ways, including the extensive efforts that she went to in keeping services in the Alexandra Hospital in Redditch so that people would not have to travel to Worcester.

It may not be known that my noble friend served in three different ministerial roles, although one of them was a joint role between the Home Office and MoJ. Tackling knife crime and violence against women and children was something about which she was particularly passionate. From speaking to people who have worked with my noble friend, I know that she goes deep into the detail and is not superficial. Candidly, that is something to be welcomed in people who are dedicated to being government Ministers.

One final point that might be worth sharing is that I am slightly surprised that my noble friend is dressed in just blue today because in the other place she was well known for being absolutely fabulous in the colours of her clothes. She normally has wonderful glasses, with bright, radiant elements in them. She was particularly known for her tights. I learned only today why they particularly stood out: they came from a factory in her constituency, so she was wearing Redditch at all times in the Chamber. I think she will continue to champion family, freedom and business, while she is also driven by her faith.

I still live in Suffolk, very near an operating nuclear power station, Sizewell B, and Sizewell C is being built as we speak. I have to say that it has been quite a long journey, but one that has needed to take time for reasons that I will explain. In thinking about what happened with EN-6—not for long, because I know that we are here to debate EN-7—we need to go back a bit and think about some of the context. Not only was Sizewell C cancelled, in effect, in the mid-1990s, but, to fast forward to going into a coalition Government in 2010, we were in a situation where the policy of our Liberal Democrat coalition partners was to oppose nuclear power. To try to make all this come together in order to get on with nuclear power, the coalition agreement was clear that the Liberal Democrats would not oppose the construction of nuclear power, but they certainly did not want to see any public subsidy. Candidly, this was one of the things that led to the creation of contracts for difference and to how expensive Hinkley has turned out to be. Fortunately, in the previous Parliament, the RAB model was extended to nuclear power, which is very sensible. I am sure it will be applied in many more nuclear or other energy generation sites going forward.

When I was considering this in the other place, I recall from the debate that several sites felt that they had lost out. I am thinking in particular of Dungeness, which was devastated; obviously, there was a site there. My noble friend Lord Howell of Guildford asked about some of the other sites. Sizewell A is certainly still there. It has had all the nuclear fuel removed, but I am afraid it cannot be touched for quite some time, as we see aspects of the process continuing its natural way of, in effect, decomposing.

There are some risks. One reason I strongly supported Sizewell C was that we had already had nuclear power in that area. However, I should warn noble Lords that they should not be surprised if other sorts of electricity generation suddenly come along where they live. You start to feel almost dumped on, which is how many people in east Suffolk feel with the need for substations, more cabling and so on. This brings me to siting.

Something I want to explore is water, which I cannot quite work out, although I am sure it is here somewhere. One reason why it has taken so long for Sizewell C to get to the stage it is at today is that the water supplier suddenly said that it could not confidently guarantee that it could supply the water needed for the nuclear power station. Some quite complicated things were evolving. Some of this was the result of legal cases lost that started to impact how much water could be extracted from parts of East Anglia. That had knock-on consequences in other ways to the point that, not having had to think too much about the supply of the fresh water that is critical to nuclear technology as it is now, Sizewell C had to start thinking and to include desalination and building a reservoir, which bring their own challenges, so factors along the way have led to some of the hold-ups.

I am aware of the difficult construction process in terms of what is happening in Somerset. Nevertheless, in considering the important environmental factors to be taken into account, it is important for Ministers to be clear on how some of these places that have been chosen for siting are confident. I know that it is up to the developer to put this forward and to show that, but it showed that a critical issue that was not in the control of the promoter of Sizewell C caused it to reconsider its proposal. That is worth thinking about during further or final consideration by Ministers.

When I looked at the factors influencing the site selection, I saw that the Government have decided to retain the semi-urban population density criterion. I get that. When it all started, nuclear was probably a bit scary, even though we were leading the way, but it has meant that nuclear power stations are quite a long way from anywhere.

I know that the ONR, which split out from the HSE, has its critics. I should register, but not declare as an interest, that as Secretary of State for Work and Pensions I was, surprisingly, in charge of the Office for Nuclear Regulation. I felt I had to intervene at times to defend its integrity and independence because it is vital that we have good, effective nuclear regulation.

As an aside to noble Lords, when Fukushima happened in Japan, that was because there had been a breakdown. In effect, people were not prepared to reveal problems, perhaps from embarrassment, but the site had gone on for too long. Our chief nuclear inspector went out to Japan to address some of those issues on behalf of the wider, global nuclear approach. We should be confident that, while it may seem laborious and there are definitely improvements that could be made on how some of these situations are sped up or considered, it is important to recognise that we have very good nuclear regulation, and that is why we do not have issues.

Let us not pretend we are perfect in this country; we are not. There are parts of Cumbria now where, basically, people cannot go. Only robots can go into some of those sites. That is the reality of some ineffective nuclear regulation. It was early days, and we now know what we know. Given the long-term nature of these proposals, I caution that we make sure that, as and when ONR perhaps makes improvements in some of its processes, we do not forget what has happened in the past or around the world.

Having said all that, I am surprised that we are not thinking further about connectivity to the national grid. There is no doubt that this is causing a lot of grief around communities. If electricity is generated far from where it is used, transmission means that you end up losing electricity along the way unless you have a direct current cable, and I do not believe we have anywhere at the moment that has that. I believe we should be starting to consider whether it would be safer to move some of these future technologies. I appreciate that somewhere such as Sizewell C or Hinkley C is simply so big that it would be difficult to host it closer to the population, especially with the demand for water, but it is important that we start to consider the technology that we are seeing for the future. Some of the SMRs are still pretty big, but as this evolves we should be revisiting that, or at least starting to commission some research. I know about the issue of people getting away. I know that people in many towns and villages have iodine tablets. I know there are precautions to be taken, but I think it could be worth considering to make sure that we have energy generation close to where energy is likely to be used.

Overall, I think there is an effective interaction with EN-1, which went through in the previous Parliament. As has already been mentioned, there are some interesting elements coming up in the Planning and Infrastructure Bill. Trying to see quite how it works is proving quite interesting, not only the issues about biodiversity. I will be paying a lot of attention to Part 1 of the Bill when it comes to this place, as it includes, I think in Clause 2, parliamentary assessment of NPSs. This is not a criticism of the Minister—far from it—but it is not entirely satisfactory as it is, so we need to continue to look at it very carefully.

As a consequence, I support EN-7. It may seem a bit bland, but it is giving developers what they need, and that is to be welcomed. The quicker we can get on with additional nuclear generation, the better for the prosperity of this country, so I welcome this today.