| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury) (Con): I support the Second Reading of the Bill. We will no doubt go into the detail in Committee.
What makes Britain unique in energy terms is the variety of sources available to us as a nation. We need to start a debate such as this with a discussion of the national energy objectives. We might put them in a different order. I think that the most important one is to meet UK energy demands safely and at optimum price. Close behind that is ensuring the security of supply, achieving our environmental objectives, relying on a balanced range of alternative sources and encouraging the efficient production and consumption of energy. All of us here have a responsibility in everything that we say to bear it in mind that we need energy efficiency both in generation and in transmission. We also need efficiency in industrial use and consumption. If we wish, we can all make a difference, by switching off unwanted lights and so on.
I have often wondered why the Liberal Democrats simply cannot see what is obvious, but following the speech of the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) I now understand: it is only the Liberal Democrats who will put out the lights when they enter a dark room.
We need to optimise the contribution of renewable energy sources—wind, wave and solar. That is a given. However, we also need to recognise their limitations. They can never provide the base load generation that an industrial nation such as ours requires. We need a new generation of nuclear fission plants, possibly leading to fusion, and I think that we could then move into the hydrogen economy, which, although it may not prove to be the holy grail, could certainly be real progress for our nation. Of course, no Government, and therefore no taxpayer, will build another nuclear plant. If such plants are built, they will all be regulated private sector investments.
I particularly welcome chapter 1 of part 2, which introduces the nuclear liabilities fund and creates the nuclear decommissioning authority. That is extremely important. It is for me a great irony that, as I well recall, back in 1976 when I was a teacher of economics, the royal commission on environmental pollution produced a report saying that no nuclear power stations should be built without first dealing with long-term waste, but
10 May 2004 : Column 94
within days the Labour Secretary of State for Energy, Mr. Tony Benn, ignoring that, went ahead anyway. It is appropriate that this Labour Government are implementing something that they should have done in 1976. Until now, no Government have addressed properly the issue of nuclear waste. We have failed to address the need for a new generation of nuclear plant. We will put that right.
I was very heartened by the debate in the other place on 6 May when Lord Sainsbury said:
"It is not easy to predict the best combination of those factors for the future. Therefore we have stated clearly that we will consider new nuclear build as one of the options for the future."
"We cannot predict the future exactly, but the steps the Government are taking form a sensible response in order to reverse the situation we had when we came to power, which was one where the whole area of nuclear research had been closed down. We have been turning that right around so that if a decision on new nuclear build comes through, we shall be able to seize that opportunity."—[Official Report, House of Lords, 6 May 2004; Vol. 660, c. 1271.]
That is probably the most optimistic thing that the Government have said about nuclear power for a long time. We should all remember that although nuclear waste remains a risk for hundreds of years and it seems inconceivable that radioactive half-lives can be engineered down to short time scales, the half-life of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is also measured in hundreds of years and burning coal, oil and gas creates long-term wastes as well, so that to take the latter route is to bequeath to future generations a much hotter climate and less biodiversity.
I strongly support clause 128 on the renewable transport fuel obligation. There will be enormous opportunities, not only for the environment and for our nation, but for the farmers in my constituency and throughout the United Kingdom, when oilseed rape can be used for biodiesel, wheat and sugar beet can be used for bioethanol mixed with petrol, and set-aside land can be used to grow fuel. I acknowledge that the Government have made the right noises so far, but bioethanol needs more than the 20p a litre fuel duty reduction—that is insufficient to encourage major investment in bioethanol production. What we need is a duty reduction of about 30p a litre, or equivalent support in the form of capital grants. I hope that the Government will not seek to delete clause 128, which was inserted during proceedings in the other place after being proposed by a Labour peer who happens to be a distinguished Wiltshire farmer.
We should not neglect a further aspect of the Bill, which has not so far been mentioned: chapter 3 of part 2, which creates the civil nuclear constabulary. In 1986, I served on the Standing Committee that considered the Ministry of Defence Police Bill. That Bill was but the start of the tinkering with Britain's police service. We in this country have always accepted that policing is by consent and that control lies with local police authorities, which have at least a democratic element to them. However, we have seen the emergence of a number of national police forces—four of them, with perhaps more to come—which are in the direct control of Secretaries of State, are answerable to the House of Commons only indirectly, and are not answerable to local people. They are answerable only to various fairly disembodied boards.
10 May 2004 : Column 95
There is one glaring and extraordinary omission from chapter 3, in that the UKAEA constabulary is to have its jurisdiction reduced from 25 km to 5 km, and its officers are allowed to go beyond that only in pursuit of stolen nuclear or nuclear-related goods. Furthermore, they are specifically disallowed from assisting the civil constabularies—the Home Office police—in an emergency. That is bizarre—so bizarre that it runs contrary to the Government's recent actions in giving additional powers to, for example, the British Transport police and the Ministry of Defence police, which they have integrated more closely with Home Office constabularies, to the great advantage and protection of communities throughout the country. I hope that we can address that problem; I shall certainly pursue it in Committee.
The Bill seems also to reflect an assumption on the part of the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry that the officers of the UKAEA constabulary are not properly trained police officers. They are. All training for their officers is Centrex approved and all detectives, chief police officers and counter-terrorist search officers are Home Office trained. We should have complete confidence in them. The UKAEA police have full constabulary power, but that is to be limited and, indeed, reduced. That is absolute nonsense. I am grateful to Mr. Barry Wright, secretary of the Atomic Energy Police Federation, for drawing the matter to my attention. It needs to be pursued in Committee.
I shall end my remarks at that point. A great deal of work needs to be done, and I am grateful to have had the opportunity to set out my modest agenda at this stage.
7.54 pm
Mr. Kevin Hughes (Doncaster, North) (Lab): When the Secretary of State opened the debate, she said that three themes run through the Bill. I think that there are four, and one of them is clearly that of missed opportunities. Everyone who has spoken after her has mentioned a missed opportunity. Energy is not really one of the other three main themes. We have to rely on part 1, which was inserted through amendments made in the other place, not only to provide a debate on energy in connection with this Energy Bill, but to set out clearly the important issue that we should be discussing: this country's energy requirements and security of supply. For what it is, the Bill is pretty good and worth supporting, but to call it the Energy Bill stretches the imagination a little too far. If it was on sale in a corner shop, someone would get done for misrepresentation or for offences under the Trade Descriptions Act 1968.
None the less, part 1 deals with important issues, on which I shall focus this evening. Important though NETA, BETTA, the NDA and Ofgem are, I shall stick to security of supply and the country's energy requirements. The Bill does represent a huge missed opportunity. To be frank, it beggars belief that any Government are prepared to leave our energy requirements entirely to market forces. I do not understand how we can do that. The Secretary of State's cunning plan appears to be that we will import 80 per cent. of our energy requirements and generate 20 per cent. using renewables by 2020. Presumably, we will be importing all our gas, oil and coal, we will have no
10 May 2004 : Column 96
nuclear energy, and all we will be left with in this country is a bunch of windmills that only work when the wind blows. The fact is that they work only about 30 per cent. of the time. I do not think that that is very efficient.
My hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone (Mr. Clapham) mentioned Hatfield colliery, which is in my constituency. Although I do not want to rehearse the arguments about why it closed, it is important to state that the colliery is closed. There are steel caps on the shafts. Some of us had hoped that the adjoining colliery at Thorne would form a super-pit with Hatfield to access the 100 million tonnes of UK coal that is there, but I learned today that plans have been started to fill in the shafts at Thorne. It seems that there is no longer a possibility of running the Hatfield and Thorne collieries together, which is a crying shame, because the opportunity available at Hatfield colliery was second to none. Many people write off the coal industry, but the new technology that my hon. Friend discussed—the integrated gasification combined cycle system—offers the opportunity to reinvent the coal industry, to use one of our greatest natural resources, and to generate electricity in abundance without the toxic emissions that we normally associate with burning coal. The IGCC technology does not burn coal in the traditional sense, and it is possible to capture CO2 emissions during the process. In fact, we can pump the CO2 down into our oil wells in the North sea and enhance the recovery of our oil wealth there.
I know, because it has been investigated, that were we able to keep Hatfield colliery open, a planning application under section 36 has been agreed. An IGCC power station at Hatfield would make it possible to pipe that CO2 up to the Scottish oilfields and enhance the recovery of the oil, so it has a dual function. But it is better than that—nitrates can also be captured during the process, which as we all know are used in the chemical industry. It gets even better—most of us understand that the way forward for energy is probably hydrogen power, and the IGCC process can also capture hydrogen.
Under the plans for Hatfield, which are there for anyone to see, to capture the hydrogen and produce the energy cells, enough hydrogen would be captured at that single plant to run the whole public transport system in south Yorkshire. That is a pretty huge amount. Unfortunately, that opportunity has been missed, because the Government are worshipping market forces. They believe that we can leave everything in the energy industry to market forces. I am sorry, but we cannot. The Government need to pump-prime some of that new technology. Allowing Hatfield to go under, as it has done, was a tragedy.
This Government put a lot of money into trying to secure the future of Hatfield, and my hon. Friend the Minister spent a lot of time with me trying to do so. Because it is left to market forces, and because of the problem to which my hon. Friend the Member for Barnsley, West and Penistone referred of accessing funds from banking for private industries, the bottom line is that it is difficult to access the type of capital required for that kind of project. Private industries would be expected to raise £30 million to £45 million to access the 100 million tonnes of coal available at Hatfield. Given what the Government published in the White Paper, and the looming large combustion plant
10 May 2004 : Column 97
directive, people in the City are hardly filled with enthusiasm for lending £30 million to £45 million to somebody who wants to exploit the coal reserves at Hatfield. Consequently, at present those plans are on ice. I am still hopeful that the present owner, Richard Budge, who is well known in the coal industry, will keep trying to access funding to open Hatfield colliery again, and to get the IGCC technology up and running.
The Government cannot sit on the sidelines wringing their hands. Our energy needs are at stake, and they need to get involved. Sometimes, that means putting in some money, pump-priming this technology and capital investment. I urge them to do that, because it is not yet too late. Certainly, it is not too late for the project at Hatfield.
8.4 pm
| Next Section | Index | Home Page |