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Mr. Nigel Evans (Ribble Valley) (Con): I am grateful to be able to participate in the debate and to follow the hon. Member for Bolton, South-East (Dr. Iddon), who spoke a lot of common sense, particularly when he referred to the fact that if we rely on imports of energy, anything could happen, particularly in the light of the rise of terrorism. It would be completely stupid for any Government to have a policy that was based on that.
This is an important debate because 100 per cent. of the Lancashire Conservatives have spoken in it. Sadly, there are only two of us at the moment but, following the next general election, no doubt there will be more and we will not be able to get 100 per cent. of the Lancashire Conservatives speaking in a debate of this importance.
I speak as an environmentalist. I represent Ribble Valley, which is a beautiful, glorious, very rural constituency. I hasten to add that, to my knowledge, I have one wind turbine in Ribble Valley, and I hope to keep it that way. A British Wind Energy Association map shows where all the 1,100 wind turbines are in the United Kingdom. The map looks pretty crowded now, and if we carry on as we are we will add another 5,000 to 10,000 wind turbines to it. It will be absolute lunacy if we go down that path, for reasons on which I hope to expand.
The Bill talks about the security and integrity of energy being vital. The Secretary of State for Trade and Industry is responsible for that. It is an important role.
The hon. Member for Doncaster, North (Mr. Hughes) said that the current policy seems to be a free-market one. If that were the case and it were left just to the free market, I suspect that we would not have a single wind turbine in this country. If it were not for the subsidies, it would not be worth putting them up. It is important to get that right. If it were not for the amount of money that British taxpayers are paying for the erection of wind turbines, we would not be going down that path.
In 20 or 30 years' time, when some sanity comes into energy policy, and a father and mother are driving their family around and one of the children points at a wind turbine and asks, "What is that?" the parents will reply, "That is an example of the folly of the late 1990s and early 2000s, when the Government thought that it would be the answer to all our problems. They invented targets that they had to meet, and they thought that wind turbines were the answer." We all want the Government to meet targets that mean that we rely less on carbon energy, but, sadly, one will not have to drive far to see examples of such folly—they will be all over the place. They are all over Scotland, Wales and large swathes of the south-west and the midlands—there is one coming near you now if we carry on with that policy.
I want to rely not on my prejudices—I declare my interest as president of the Country Guardians, which opposes industrial furniture in the countryside—but on those of some other people. James Lovelock, the founding historical and cultural leader of environmentalism for environmentalists around the world, said:
"I was asked to open the windfarm at Delabole. At that time nobody was talking about a gigantic programme, getting 15 or 20 per cent of the country's energy from wind turbines. It was a kind of nice green gesture. I think, now that I know as much as I do, I wouldn't have touched it with a bargepole."
The second person is Sir Martin Holdgate, the now-retired chairman of the Renewable Energy Advisory Group, which in 1992 advised the Government to set out on an alternative energy path. He strongly favoured renewable technologies, he said, but in the right place and on the right scale. He was attracted to the idea of solar panels on roofs and said:
"The trouble with wind farms is that they have a huge spatial footprint for a piddling little bit of electricity. You would need 800 turbines to replace the output of a coal-fired power station."
I am not an expert, so I rely on those who know all about it. My third expert has an honorary degree from the university of Central Lancashire. He said:
"My main thing against them is that they can only work, if you are very lucky, for 30 per cent. of the time. Going by the ones in Denmark it is about 17 per cent. of the time. So how are people going to be able to boil their kettles, or how are we going to power our hospitals the rest of the time? It means that we have got to keep our other stations running, spinning in reserve, inefficiently and pouring out carbon dioxide and sulphur dioxide and the like."
That person was David Bellamy; no one could say anything against his environmental credentials, and he is someone with huge credence in the country.
We know that the demand for power will rise tremendously over the next 10 to 20 years and we need a policy to deal with that.
Brian White: The hon. Gentleman implies that the only renewable technology is wind power. Does he recognise that there is a panoply of renewable technology and that we ought to make sure that that wide range of renewables is encouraged?
Mr. Evans: I absolutely agree. Part of the problem is that we are reliant on one kind of energy but not on all the others mentioned in part 1 of the Bill. There are so many alternative energies that could be getting part of the subsidy that disproportionately goes to wind power. A lot of other technologies and renewables do not get a look-in for all sorts of reasons, and I hope that that will be addressed in Committee.
There is a one-sided debate, as we have heard this evening: everybody loves wind turbines, which provide free energy and look nice—one cannot say anything against them—but nuclear power is nasty and horrible. One has to decommission nuclear plants. A wind turbine can be decommissioned for £12.50, but nuclear power will cost billions to decommission. The arguments are one-sided and, for whatever reason, Governments of different persuasions have been slowly hooked on wind technology. It is now time we got off that hook.
The subsidy going to wind technology is enormous—about £400 million. The myths need debunking. I do not have a wind turbine in my constituency and I will keep fighting against it, as will a number of other people. That is why I intervened on the hon. Member for Hazel Grove (Mr. Stunell) to say that the Liberal Democrats were in favour of wind technology generally but against
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individual applications, which they know will lose them votes. People do not like wind turbines, which reduce the value of people's property.
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): Will the hon. Gentleman talk about offshore as well as onshore wind? He states that he does not have a turbine in his constituency, but appears to forget that we are talking today about turbines that are far out to sea and not in his constituency.
Mr. Evans: At one time, I thought that because people always said nice things about wind turbines I should not hit them too hard. I knew that they were completely inefficient, produced a piddling amount of energy and were noisy. I knew that people did not like huge farms in their area and that such farms were a scar and a blot on the countryside. I knew that they hit tourism.
If we shove them out to sea, we can pander to those people who think they are being environmentally friendly. We can put them on rigs out in the sea; it is hugely expensive, but who cares? We must pander to the green lobby somehow, despite the fact that it would give a small percentage reduction in carbon emissions. But, as the hon. Member for Crewe and Nantwich (Mrs. Dunwoody) said, there are a number of downsides to that scheme as well.
If we are looking at efficient ways of producing energy, we should spend a small percentage of the amount that we are ploughing into wind technology on energy conservation. If so, we would not need the wind turbines in the first place. There is hardly a mention in the Bill of energy conservation, which is remarkable. We spend money on lagging roofs and insulating doors and windows, and Ribble Valley council accesses Government grants to ensure it is able to do that. But why do we not do more? Why do we not invest more money to ensure that more people get access to cheaper lights that use less energy? They are expensive now, but why do we not bring the price down for everybody? Everyone could then get energy conservation bulbs, which would help a little. We could be doing all sorts of things on the conservation front, such as roof insulation, doors and cladding, which we are currently not doing.
Mr. Stunell: May I warn the hon. Gentleman that he is coming dangerously near to propounding Liberal Democrat policy? I remind him that we have just spent £243 million propping up British Energy—money that should have gone into energy efficiency.
Mr. Evans: I am old enough and wise enough to know that almost anything that I say comes close to propounding the Liberal Democrats' policy one way or another, because one of them will be saying it to some group of people. If only they had a coherent policy, at least we would know where they stood. They are in favour of and against certain things at the same time, which is part of the problem.
On the need to ensure that we preserve the countryside, and the ways of doing that—perhaps the Minister could address this point when he winds up—tourism is one of our fastest growing industries, with thousands of jobs reliant on it, so to scar the countryside
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with yet more wind turbines is a grave mistake. Even to push them out into the sea, at disproportionate cost, is a grave mistake. Let us look at all the alternative supplies mentioned in the Bill, and ensure that sufficient funds are going into research and technology at the university and industry stages, so that we can work out what to do.
Let us not turn our backs on nuclear energy, either. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr. Jack) said—I suspect that I, too, have about 100 constituents working at Springfields—France is reliant on nuclear energy, which produces well over 70 per cent. of its total. We are prepared to import that energy from France, but turn our backs on it here, as though it were not in our backyard. I must tell hon. Members that France is in our backyard. To import energy from there, at the same time as denying that source here, is completely disingenuous. We should get a grip on that issue.
8.36 pm
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