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Mr. Chaytor: Will my hon. Friend give way?
Dr. Ladyman: No, I am afraid that there is too little time.
My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North said that plutonium was the most toxic chemical known, but that is simply not true. I can extract from kidney beans a compound that is more toxic than plutonium, but people will still be happy to eat kidney beans with their chilli con carne in the restaurant tonight.
There is no doubt that plutonium is toxic, but for people to be affected they need to be near it, or ingest it, or breathe it in. Alpha radiation has such a short range that it cannot even pierce skin. If we are to have the rational debate that this matter deserves, we need to place such facts in the public domain.
Before I go on to the main points in my speech, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I apologise to the House on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Dumfries (Mr. Brown)? Parliamentary business means that he cannot be here tonight, but his constituents at Chapelcross are very anxious that new nuclear capacity be built there, as the local Magnox station is licensed only to the end of the decade.
I want to focus on the environmental issues. My hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North said that there were no environmental justifications for nuclear power. I completely disagree, and a look at the royal commission report into climate change will show why. The report presented four ways in which we might address the problem of global climate change by 2050.
First, the report suggested that this country hold energy consumption at 1998 levels for 50 years. That would be a huge task, but it is the easiest of the four scenarios that the report postulates. Even so, it requires that nuclear power be used to generate some of the energy that would be needed in 2050.
Two of the other three scenarios would require a reduction in energy consumption of 36 per cent. from the 1998 level. No one has any idea of how that might be done. One of those two scenarios proposes that, if we did not use nuclear power to provide the needed energy, we would have to increase the use of renewables by a factor of 18--and no one has a clue about how to do that.
As an environmentalist, I can tell the House that such an increase in the use of renewables would have environmental consequences. Tidal barrages create huge environmental problems: silt settles and fish die when the energy is taken out of waves.
Mr. Malcolm Savidge (Aberdeen, North): Will my hon. Friend give way?
Dr. Ladyman: I am afraid that there is too little time left.
The royal commission's fourth scenario does not require nuclear power, but it does call for a reduction in energy consumption of nearly 50 per cent., and even the commission said that it could not see any way to achieve that.
Anyone who has studied global warming has accepted that, on the balance of probabilities--and some scientists believe that the matter is beyond reasonable doubt--global warming is caused by greenhouse gases. We can meet our Kyoto reduction targets only by retaining a significant nuclear element in our energy production.
Mr. Savidge: Will my hon. Friend give way on that point?
Dr. Ladyman: No. I am sorry, but my hon. Friend the Member for Bury, North spoke for 34 minutes. That is why I must rush now.
The simple fact is that, if we want to tackle global warming, we have to have a nuclear element in our energy mix for the foreseeable future. That means that we need new nuclear build.
So far as the public-private partnership is concerned, we have in BNFL a world-leading team. I am the first to say that it has made some huge mistakes. I have been saying for the past two years that its watchword should be "openness". BNFL should tell us everything in future. If it tells us that it has made a mistake, that is bad; if Greenpeace or some other environmental group finds out and tells us, that is a disaster. BNFL has to be open in everything that it does. We have to get the private discipline into that organisation so that we have some real, solid, good management techniques to make sure that it is building for the future.
Not only do we need BNFL's expertise if we are to replace our nuclear capacity, but there is a huge task to be performed in the former Soviet republics. There is a bill to be picked up for cleaning the former Soviet countries of £1 billion. By that I mean a British billion, because when I was little I was told that a billion was a million million and then the Americans said that it was a thousand million. Well, I am talking about a million million pounds worth of clean-up to be done. We have only just scratched the surface. The only company in the entire world with the expertise to show us how to do that and to capitalise on it is BNFL.
For goodness' sake, let us start moving on building the public-private partnership. Let us accept that many of the errors discovered at BNFL were discovered because of the preparations for the PPP. Let us make sure that BNFL is equipped for the future, to make sure that we really can have the option of new nuclear capacity, because I believe that it is the only way to address global warming.
Global warming will not kill the environment of the world. It will happen because we leave environmental policy either to the ostriches, who would like to pretend that global warming is not caused by greenhouse gases, or to the witch doctors, who refuse to accept that science and technology is the way to think ourselves out of this problem.
Madam Deputy Speaker: I call Mr. Gibb.
9.22 pm
Mr. Nick Gibb (Bognor Regis and Littlehampton): Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker. I should like to add my welcome to you to the Chair.
As the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) pointed out, he and I, and other members of the renewable energy group, went to Denmark recently to see wind energy at its best. We went at the expense of National Wind Power, a subsidiary of National Power. Denmark produces 13 per cent. of its power by wind. I also spent two days recently at Sellafield, where I received from BNFL the same briefing as the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell).
I congratulate the hon. Member for Ochil (Mr. O'Neill) and other members of the Trade and Industry Committee on an excellent report on BNFL. It was both balanced and well informed, and follows other reports by the Select Committee focusing on energy issues. The report published in June 1998, in particular, focused specifically on energy policy.
It is commendable that the Select Committee is taking energy policy seriously. These issues matter. They go to the root of our industrial competitiveness and to the heart of our environmental policy. That is in sharp contrast to the Government, whose energy policy is in complete disarray. Their only major pronouncement on policy was the 1998 energy White Paper. Everyone knows that that was simply an exercise in trying to justify--albeit unsuccessfully--the gas moratorium, a decision now reversed, which was motivated entirely by internal Labour party considerations. It has cost industry millions of pounds in higher electricity prices and will lead to millions of tonnes of additional CO 2 emissions.
Nuclear power today provides 30 per cent. of our electricity consumption. It does so without emitting CO 2 and is thus a highly environmentally friendly source of energy. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) and the right hon. Member for Copeland (Dr. Cunningham), whose constituency includes the Sellafield site, pointed out, nuclear energy saves 79 million tonnes of CO 2 being emitted into the atmosphere every year.
The concerns about nuclear energy are focused on safety and on what to do with nuclear waste. We share those concerns.
The Select Committee recognised in its earlier report on energy that it would be wrong to allow those concerns to lead to a dogmatic abandonment of nuclear power. As the hon. Member for South Thanet (Dr. Ladyman) explained well, if we are serious about our international commitments under Kyoto to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to a level 12.5 per cent. below 1990 levels
by 2008-12 and--this is the important point--to keep them at that level beyond 2012, it would be foolish to rule out nuclear energy.Our goal must be to have a balanced and secure energy policy, which enables us to meet our carbon dioxide targets. At present, 30 per cent. of our electricity comes from nuclear sources, 30 per cent. from gas and 30 per cent. from coal. The switch from coal to gas in the past 10 years will enable us to achieve a 15 per cent. reduction in CO 2 emissions by the end of this year. From this year onwards however, the Government's figures show an increase in greenhouse gas emissions. From 2010, the increase will become steep.
The key factor, as other hon. Members have said, is the decommissioning of the old Magnox power stations in the next decade, as they account for about 8 per cent. of electricity production. Replacing that plant, even with gas, will still result in significantly higher carbon dioxide emissions.
Huge increases in the demand for electricity are also expected. Any notion that we can reduce our demand is nonsense. The increases will principally be caused by the internet. The Financial Times recently reported that demand for electricity in London alone would increase by 20 per cent. in the next four years, solely due to the building of 10 internet hotels there.
The draft climate change programme published by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions showed that, far from our achieving a 12.5 per cent. or a 20 per cent. reduction, CO 2 levels would be at or just below 1990 levels by 2020, which would represent a significant increase compared with the present level.
Therefore, we have a significant problem to tackle--a problem that is made worse by the decision to delay for three years the building of new gas-fired plant. It is encouraging to note that in a written answer on 30 October the Government abandoned any pretence that the gas moratorium was linked to reforms in the electricity market, when they said that the stricter consent policy would be lifted this month, notwithstanding the fact that the new electricity trading arrangements would not be up and running until March next year.
We need a serious and considered energy policy from the Government--one that is balanced and secure, taking into account the decommissioning of the Magnox stations, recent hikes in the price of gas and new developments in clean coal technology such as integrated combined cycle gasification, and tackling the nuclear issue without any ideological baggage.
The core of the debate is that if we as a nation are serious about fulfilling our long-term international CO 2 obligations, we have a choice between pushing up the proportion of electricity generated from renewable sources to way beyond the Government's present targets, which would result in significantly higher electricity prices, and dealing with the nuclear issue.
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