Energy: Onshore Wind Farming

Viscount Ridley Excerpts

Wednesday 15th October 2014 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Ridley (Con)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, on securing this debate and on her eloquent introduction to it. She is truly a great champion of Northumberland and the north-east.

I declare my interests in the energy industries as listed in the register, and that includes an interest in opencast coal, so I am not against development in the countryside per se. As long as it provides good jobs, supplies affordable energy, does not stick up above the horizon and does not last for very long, I think it is an excellent idea.

Northumberland, as the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said, is an incomparable county. It is the county of Cuthbert and Hotspur, of Cheviot and Bloodybush Edge, and of Delaval and Dunstanburgh. The battles of Otterburn and Flodden, which are redolent of our history, have now been joined by less bloody but still very contentious battles, such as Fenrother, Wandylaw and Middlemoor. These are names of wind turbines that have been bitterly opposed by local communities. Virtually no community in Northumberland has been unaffected by these battles, and often it has split them, and families, right down the middle.

Yet Northumberland is, on the whole, bearing this pain on behalf of others, because there is no great net benefit to the county itself. These wind farms do not create great numbers of jobs, most of the profits do not stay in the region or even in the country, and they leave a legacy of high electricity bills, which go to subsidise the rich and are mostly paid disproportionately by the poor. Therefore, I challenge the party opposite to follow the courage of the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, in questioning whether it really is such a good idea to champion this regressive policy.

Meanwhile, I would say that this form of energy is having very little measurable effect on the climate and is unlikely to do so. It produces very little measurable benefit for the bird life—in fact, on the contrary, birds such as eagles are often killed by these turbines—and there is no benefit for the landscape. Indeed, in particular it is blighting tourism in many parts of the world. Many people believe that Northumberland’s potential for tourism is being seriously affected by wind turbines.

And all this to provide electricity for others, because the juice goes south from Northumberland to provide other people with light. We are delighted that people in the south want to turn their lights on but, as the noble Baroness said, Northumberland consumes just 0.6% of England’s electricity but produces 10% of England’s wind energy. It is doing far, far more than its share. From wind electricity it produces 172% of its total electricity needs—in terms of ratio, double that of Scotland.

This issue is of course for the planners but the county council is often overwhelmed by applications. There are many of them. The council finds it very hard to get the resources together to deal with them, and it is in a very difficult position. It needs support and guidance from a national level on how to cope with this flood of applications. As the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said, the county has a relatively small population to support battles of this kind.

I hope that the Minister will agree to look at this iniquitous imbalance, which was never envisaged when we embarked upon the dash for wind. We never envisaged that the weight of this industry would fall so heavily on one county rather than be distributed equally across the country. I hope that she will agree to look at the planning system to see whether there is some way of equalising the balance. Why must the people of Northumberland bear the brunt of this often bonkers policy? Why must we spoil our landscape so that rich landowners can grow richer and rich Greens can look more smug? As the noble Baroness, Lady Quin, said, here is the final irony: Northumberland is not even that windy a county.