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28 Mar 2003 : Column 578—continued
Mr. Chope: I agree with my hon. Friend wholeheartedly. Does he therefore believe that the development of nuclear energy is part of sustainable development?
Sir Sydney Chapman: The issue of nuclear generation is controversial, but it would be of immense help in meeting those renewables targets if we had a second generation of nuclear power stations in this country. However, that argument is for another day. I am grateful to be called to speak, and I wish the Bill of the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East all good.
10.26 am
Dr. Desmond Turner (Brighton, Kemptown): It is a great pleasure to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White) on introducing his Bill in the House. It was a wise choice on his part to use the opportunity to raise a subject that is particularly close to my heart. I expect that hon. Members remember the chastening experience of the Home Energy Conservation Bill, which I introduced in the House last year. Happily, the key measures on energy conservation and fuel poverty in my Bill are included in the Bill that we are considering today. I hope that they will be endorsed by everyone in the House and will reach the statute book.
I was going to give a longer speech, but the Whips have prevailed on me to give a shorter one.
Mr. Blunt: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Dr. Turner: What, on the length of my speech?
Mr. Blunt: No—I am extremely grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way on the note of the Whips prevailing over him.
Is it not the case that an amendment to the hon. Gentleman's Bill tabled by my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) is part of the present Bill? When the hon. Gentleman talked out his own Bill in the House, he said that the amendment was effectively a wrecking amendment. Will he explain why he now appears to be a supporter of that measure?
Dr. Turner: I am happy to put the hon. Gentleman right. The agreed content of my Bill—agreed, that is, with the Government—is the same as that of the present Bill. There is no conflict whatsoever. The hon. Gentleman must know that that amendment was a wrecking amendment not because anyone disagreed with it but because, as the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle (Gregory Barker) must have known perfectly well, the Government were not prepared to accept it. It is as simple as that.
My hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, North-East tabled an early-day motion asking people to support his Bill. I did not sign that motion, not because I do not support the Bill enthusiastically, but because it began by endorsing the policies set out in the White Paper. I could not subscribe to that.
My speech is now much shorter, because I had prepared a piece-by-piece demolition job on the White Paper. Like an awful lot of papers, it is not worth the glossy paper on which it is printed, not because it does not contain much good factual material—it does—but facts are facts, and there is no particular disagreement about those. The crucial issue is that it is effectively a policy-free White Paper. It does not present any significant new policy; it does not commit to any significant new Government expenditure; it does not propose any new legislation that is not already in the pipeline. The Bill is a significant advance on my own because of the provision for Government reporting annually on progress towards the achievement of a sustainable energy economy.
The hon. Member for Castle Point (Bob Spink) pointed out that most people in the field are agreed that the aspirational targets of 10 per cent. renewable energy by 2010 and 20 per cent. by 2020 will not be fulfilled if we proceed as we are doing at present. The White Paper offers no measures to address that situation. That is the nub of the problem. The annual reporting process will expose for all to see the fact that we are not on course to meet our targets. We clearly will not reach 10 per cent. by 2010 unless progress is vastly expedited above its present rate, and 20 per cent. by 2020 is a pipedream unless we do something serious.
The very notion of sustainable energy development in as ruthlessly liberalised an energy economy as we currently have is an oxymoron. It is pointless to worry about whether Denmark's electricity prices are 7 per cent. higher than ours. That is trivial.
Mr. Chope: I did not say 7 per cent. I said 70 per cent., which is quite significant.
Dr. Turner: That still does not matter much. If we look at the economies with which we are in competition in the world marketplace, there is very little correlation between cheap energy and their competitiveness. It is clear that electricity prices per se are not a significant factor in competitiveness. If a modest increase in the wholesale price of electricity—remember that it is very low in this country at present: 1.6p per kilowatt-hour, but the consumer benefits very little from that—brought us the opportunity of a sustainable future, that would be the big benefit.
If we go on as we are doing, we will never get anywhere near the 60 per cent. CO2 reductions, and coming generations will simply fry. We all know that the most moderate climate change scenarios for the future that are predicated on the 60 per cent. reduction are still quite serious. Anything less than 60 per cent. starts to move into the disaster area. Against such a compelling driver, the odd 0.5p on the wholesale price of electricity becomes trivial.
The annual reporting process will reveal for all to see what progress we are making towards achieving sustainable energy. The 10 per cent., the 20 per cent. and even the 25 per cent. targets or aspirations are all perfectly technically feasible if we go about it in the right way. The Government have a leading role to play in that. We have seen from the example of Denmark and wind power what can be achieved by a determined Government, but in the White Paper there is no evidence whatever of such determination. The Government behave like a bystander, saying, "Oh, look. All these things are happening. If we stand back and let them happen, they may happen." They will not happen unless the Government adopt a much more determined approach.
Ms Shipley: I return to the subject of the building programme and the construction industry. Does my hon. Friend agree that we have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to build houses with green qualities on a mass scale never known before in Europe? Such building exists on a small scale, not on the mass scale that the Government have the opportunity to achieve with the unit price driven down by mass production?
Dr. Turner: I entirely agree. I have seen the future in terms of zero energy housing—in effect, housing that can feed back into the grid surplus photovoltaic energy. The technology is available. My hon. Friend is right. If it is exploited on a mass production basis, it will be affordable and the benefits will be enormous.
What do the British Government do? They spend all of £60 million investing in energy research and development and deployment. How does that compare with our international competitors? France spends seven times as much, Germany about four times as much, the United States 30 times as much and Japan 40 times as much. We will not get into any big league with that sort of spend. The level of spend in industry is abysmal. Since the privatisation of the energy utilities, their research and development investment has plummeted, so the money is not there. The major impetus for R and D in renewables is coming from small and medium-sized enterprises, which do not have the levels of finance needed to drive that on a major scale.
Our present energy policy is fragmented. Research and development is spread across five research councils. We have about four independent bodies such as the Energy Saving Trust and the Carbon Trust, none of which has very much money to play with, all doing their own thing. There is no central driving vision to make the aspirations come about.
On Thursday my Select Committee, the Science and Technology Committee, will publish our report, "Towards a Non-Carbon Fuel Economy". I am a little sad that the Energy Minister is not present in the Chamber today, but I ask his representative on the Front Bench, the Under-Secretary of State for Trade and Industry, my hon. Friend the Member for Edinburgh, South (Nigel Griffiths), to point out to the Energy Minister that the policy vacuum in the White Paper will be filled on Thursday if the Government have the wisdom to adopt the recommendations contained in the report, which convention prevents me from revealing now.
I can say, however, that there will be in the report a coherent, affordable, comprehensive and workable energy policy which, if the Government adopt it, will mean that when they come to write their annual report—assuming the Bill becomes law, as I very much hope it will—the Government will be able to present it to Parliament with pride, rather than shame. I hope that hon. Members will give the Bill a safe passage.
10.39 am
Mr. David Amess (Southend, West): I congratulate the hon. Member for Milton Keynes, North-East (Brian White) on his good fortune in winning a place in the ballot for private Member's Bills. It is a great honour for me, along with others, to be a sponsor of the Bill. When I say "good fortune", I had a conversation with an hon. Member recently who told me that the average length of service of Members of Parliament is seven years. If that is the case, many of us are living on borrowed time, and I cannot believe that.
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