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Mr. Brian Wilson (Cunninghame, North) (Lab): I will speak briefly, because I very much endorse the points made at the opening of these proceedings on the need to make time for a full discussion of the last group of amendments later on. It would be scandalous were there not time left for discussion of those important issues.
Briefly, I want to support the new clause on micro-generation. In doing so, I declare a relevant interest, as contained in the register. My real interest, however, is to allow the largest number of individuals to participate directly in the growth of renewable energy. Up until now, that has been almost entirely missing. Millions of people support renewable energy, and want to participate in it, and every petition against renewable energy and every campaign locally or nationally against renewable energy opens with the preamble, "While I am in favour of renewable energy in principle . . . " What we want is an opportunity for people to participate in practice.
Perhaps it would be easier to introduce a large number of small renewable energy units than it is proving to be to get a relatively small number of very large renewable energy units. The references in today's debate to combined heat and power offer a timely warning: setting targets, commissioning reports, and doing all the mechanistic things to show good intent are easy, but they do not in themselves deliver a single watt of electricity. While the targets for CHP were more ambitious than those for renewables—which is not widely realised, because they were expressed in quantity terms rather than percentage terms—when I was in the job that the Minister for Energy, E-Commerce and Postal Services now holds, the actual performance was
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going down rather than up. Setting targets is not much good in itself. For any of those things to be effective and to be implemented, they must be carried through on a cross-government basis. Every propeller must turn in the same direction if there is to be delivery as opposed to fine words and poor outcomes.
In commending my hon. Friend for the new clause on microgeneration, I want to raise one issue, which is crucial to delivery of the good intentions—planning. Unless something is done on a radical scale, and rapidly, about planning, it will end up in the same impasse in which so much else in relation to renewable energy is currently languishing. What is needed, whether people want to install wind, solar or any other micro-units in their homes, is some simplified, generalised planning procedure on the same principle as that for satellite dishes. We need a general permitted development order rather than the absurd situation in which local authorities must deal with every application on an individual basis, making the whole process unwieldy and unviable.
I cannot resist returning to a story in relation to the protestations of the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker). In a similar debate, I remember drawing attention, in a ministerial capacity, to the antics of Lewes district council, of which he has some knowledge. While the Liberal Democrats were marching round the country preaching higher renewables targets, Lewes district council, under Liberal Democrat control, was busily turning down applications for solar panels in people's houses on the grounds that they were unsightly. I believe that the council mended its ways subsequently.
Norman Baker: I am grateful to the right hon. Gentleman for raising that issue while I am in the Chamber. When that application first came in, I wrote to the Government for advice on it. I wrote to the Department of Trade and Industry and the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister about what advice the Government could give to local authorities. The Government refused to say that local authorities should give permission to such applications. That advice was passed on to Lewes district council. He ought to examine ministerial advice before he attacks a particular council.
Mr. Wilson: I think that the hon. Gentleman is confused. I do not want to get into that argument, but my precise point is that if it is left to individual councils to make individual decisions, the result will be the sort of ideological confusion displayed by his local council. There must be some general principle. Government must be more proactive in giving guidance to local authorities to make that happen, rather than leaving it to the foibles of individual local authorities. As a follow-through to the welcome new clause, there must be rapid communication with the ODPM.
2.45 pm
To reinforce that point, someone who had written to the ODPM about the installation of small windmills received the following reply:
"I believe that the issue at stake is whether their design would require planning permission or whether it would fall within the remit of 'permitted development rights'. This is not something on
- which ODPM can advise you. Such a decision could, ultimately, only be made in the courts, but in the first place it would be a decision for the local planning authority, taking into account the location, size and surroundings of the proposed siting, together with the Government's planning and energy policies encouraging the use of renewables."
If that is to be the approach, we can have as many targets and as many reports back as we want, but in practice not very much will happen.
All that I ask for is a logical follow-through from the good will that has been expressed by the Minister today. Let us make this happen so that millions of people can participate directly in renewable energy.
Mr. Key: It is a particular pleasure to follow the right hon. Member for Cunninghame, North (Mr. Wilson), whom I had the pleasure of shadowing when he was a Minister, and we rarely disagreed about anything. Of course, that may be the reason why he is no longer the Minister. It is also a pleasure to have the current Minister here today—
Mr. Wilson: Has the hon. Gentleman considered the possibility that it is also the reason why he is no longer shadowing anyone?
Mr. Key: The right hon. Gentleman is very kind, and we go back a long way.
The present holder of the office, however, has helped us in admirable ways through the passage of this Bill, but it is nevertheless good to hear the common sense being spoken by the right hon. Gentleman. Of course, he is right about planning. For all sorts of reasons, it was a great disappointment to me that the Government produced a Green Paper on planning that looked as if it was going to move forward, and within months, all the things that would take us forward had been abandoned and taken out of the original proposals.
I want to support Government new clause 4, for the reasons that my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) has suggested, and his new clauses 2 and 3. I feel that combined heat and power has been neglected for far too long. I have thought that for a very long time, and I have been disappointed that the Government have not seemed to know quite what they are doing about it. It must be some four years since I visited the combined heat and power plant at Slough estates, for example. Since then, the situation has steadily deteriorated. If we see what is happening on the ground on such an estate, and if we listen to the day-to-day problems in relation to the sources of fuel, rules and regulations, and different tax levels depending on what waste is being burned on a particular day, we realise that it is not being addressed seriously.
I was therefore particularly sorry, but by no means surprised, to read in Hansard this morning, in a written answer, in a section on combined heat and power, at column 878W, that the study on combined heat and power potential due for release in January 2004 will be published shortly. Come on—January 2004 was the date when we were told that it would be published, and it still has not happened. In the same section, there is a question from a Member asking whether the Secretary of State
"will publish details of the Combined Heat and Power Quality Improvement Programme mentioned in the CHP Strategy."
"In common with the other measures set out in the strategy that have not yet been implemented, this programme is currently in development."—[Official Report, 12 July 2004; Vol. 423, c. 878W.]
Here we are, in the closing stages of the Energy Bill, and the Government have simply not decided what to do about combined heat and power. I regret that very much, because it is extremely important.
I also want to support new clause 19. There was an interesting little dispute earlier—a little flurry. The Liberal Democrats showed a bit of amour propre, feeling that their new clause had been pinched by a Scottish Member. There is a lot of thinking behind it, from Friends of the Earth among others. If Friends of the Earth think that the Liberal Democrats can deliver anything at all in terms of energy policy, they are making a sad mistake—but of course they do not think that, so they are not making a sad mistake.
Many good Conservatives in my constituency support a number of Friends of the Earth's objectives. I just wish that Friends of the Earth would go a step further. Go the extra mile, Friends of the Earth, and admit that we cannot reach our emissions targets over the next 20 years unless we embrace a new generation of nuclear power. It cannot be done: there can be no argument about that. Come on, Friends of the Earth, get real. Then we can make some progress instead of sniping from the sidelines.
What I like about new clause 19 is the provision relating to employment in the United Kingdom's agriculture industry. That is hugely important, especially in constituencies like mine. Opportunities for the rural economy would be revolutionised if our farmers could produce crops for energy, not just for fuel, subject to the vagaries of the international markets. That would also make a real contribution to the energy security of our country.
Heat accounts for roughly a third of our demand for energy, and renewable heat is a low-cost way of reducing carbon emissions. Currently, however, it receives no dedicated support in the marketplace. There is no doubt that energy policy in this country is skewed in all sorts of ways, not least because we do not have a carbon tax. I do not think we believe in a carbon tax, but in my opinion we should reconsider. One reason for the imbalance is that energy policy supports renewable sources of electricity, but not of heat. As I have said, a third of our demand is for heat.
We are a long way from our national climate change target. Emissions levels since 1997 have remained virtually unchanged. Renewable heat is a low-cost form of carbon abatement. Under the climate change levy, tax on heating fuels is a third of that on electricity, 0.15p per unit compared with 0.43p. That implies that the buy-out price of a unit of renewable heat would be only a third of that for renewable electricity—£10 per megawatt hour. The Government could achieve carbon savings at minimal cost to the consumer and to industry. The new clause is an enabling provision which does not appear to commit the Government to any action, but maximises the legislative opportunity provided by the
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Bill. The results of consultations on renewable heat could be quickly enacted by means of secondary legislation.
Sources of renewable heat use proven technologies and can be quickly deployed. They include wood-fuelled boilers, biogas, solar thermal and ground source heat pumps. I am particularly keen on the latter. We have heard nothing about them during the Bill's passage so far, but we need only cross the English channel to see them being developed on the continent. There are one or two exceptions in this country: I believe that Leicester is using ground source heat pumps in municipal developments, and other towns may be doing the same.
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