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Mr. Walter: I can probably add to my hon. Friend's list. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome (Mr. Heath) and I successfully campaigned against a wind farm on our respective borders.
Richard Ottaway: My hon. Friend gives an answer to the question that I posed about whether democracy can respond to climate change. As he says, in order to achieve that, we need to build consensus. I say to the Liberal Democrats, "Stop playing games with the environment; it is a very serious subject indeed." They should work with people, instead of engaging in short-term posturing, which is what they do. If we look at the United States, Sheffield or Devon, we can see that the answer to the question is that democracy is struggling to combat climate change. A consensus is needed.
Ask the man in the street if he cares about the environment, and he will respond, "Yes, of course." It is one of those issues we are all signed up to, but it needs more than words; it needs action. My party would provide the lead that is necessary.
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Vera Baird (Redcar) (Lab): Rubbish. That has nothing to do with recycling, but is a comment on the asinine Opposition motion that states that the Government intend to meet their renewable obligations by relying exclusively on onshore wind power.
I admire and support the Government's commitment to renewables. They are spending £117 million on offshore wind power. That is good, in that the round 2 offshore wind farms are a minimum of 8 km offshore, and 13 km where nature interests require that. They are located way out in the sea, and subject to navigation and fishing rights; nobody goes there. They are ideal locations for wind farms, and they are, inevitably, the thrust of future wind farm policy.
I want to sound a quick caution that we should not override the concerns of people local to the last of the round 1 wind farms, which are to be built much closer to shore. There is concern that, as the Government amendment states and the Minister made clear, although the planning regime allows all-round consideration of onshore wind farms, the procedure for offshore wind farms is less clear; it is not so open, obvious or public, in the sense that there need not be a planning inquiry. That gives rise to real fears, which I hope my colleagues on the Treasury Bench understand, that no matter what or how rational the local objections, they can be killed in the understandable rush to renewables.
Teesside is faced with an application for the last of the round 1 offshore wind farms. The round 2 wind farms—admittedly bigger than those in round 1—are between 8 and 13 km offshore, whereas no round 1 wind power station is less than 5 km offshore except for Scroby sands, where the nearest turbine lies about 2.5 km offshore. The proposed Redcar wind farm would be half as far away as that: 1.4 km off the esplanade in Redcar to the nearest turbine. There would be 30 turbines, each 450 ft high and about 5 m in diameter—they are pretty big. They would run 200 yd apart, with 600 yd between the three rows, straddling the whole of the bay on which Redcar town lies. The easternmost would be 1.4 km off the tourist office in the middle of the town, and the next would be opposite the seafront cinema.
Redcar is an industrial constituency, but as one travels toward the sea to the town of Redcar, one leaves behind the chemicals and eventually the steel industry. There is a wonderful 5-mile long wide sandy beach where swingboats, bouncy castles and sports activities all occur in summer. It is the proximity to the industrial area that makes Redcar town such a special treat for the local people, who go there to breathe its free air, refresh their mind with the clean sea view, and lift their horizon from the humdrum. There are real concerns about the impact on the area of such an industrial installation.
Let me add that there is already a plan to have between 18 and 32 equally large turbines on land, onshore, adjacent to the steelworks in the industrial landscape—a plan to which nobody in Redcar has a real objection. Furthermore, Redcar already makes a big contribution to clean energy: our SembCorp power station has now been burning tallow—a renewable fuel—for a year and has ambitions to build a biomass
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generation facility; and we have well developed plans in the area for hydrogen fuel cell technology. We would be pleased to do more, as tidal and wave power develop.
Mr. Peter Pike (Burnley) (Lab): My hon. and learned Friend is making a valuable point. Wherever the wind farms are, is not the most important thing that they are sited as appropriately as possible? My constituency is in the hilly country near the Pennines. We have one wind farm, but if Burnley were to be surrounded by wind farms, the impact on the environment would be disastrous.
Vera Baird: My hon. Friend makes an apposite point, because the 18 to 35-turbine onshore station that, it is already accepted, is coming to Redcar will result in a huge estate being sandwiched between it and the shore. If an offshore station were erected, people would be living between two wind farms, which is probably not tolerable. The point is that in an industrial area such as mine, we should not extend industry into a seaside oasis.
The potential problems arising from such close proximity—1.4 km—are not known. They never will be known, because all the future developments will be between 8 and 13 km offshore and no other round 1 wind farm will be situated less far offshore than the Scroby sands station. The only people to learn what the impact is of a very close wind farm will be the residents of Redcar after the proposed wind farm is built. The environmental impact assessment conducted by the would-be developers contains nine chapters that identify potential additional hazards to Redcar, apart from visual intrusion and interference with tourism expansion and sea sports, which we want to encourage. They include the risk of large quantities of sand being stripped from Redcar beach by the impact of the tide breaking on turbine towers very close to shore, as well as potential threats to some sites of special scientific interest, the seal colony, a Ramsar site and the European nature reserve, some of which are within half a kilometre of some of the turbines.
I have a question. What is the process now? In the summer months alone, between 5,000 and 6,000 have signed a petition against the proposed wind farm. Everybody in the town opposes it, as does the council and all four local Members of Parliament. I have a plea. It is imperative that in the rush to wind power, despite its merits, everything else is not driven before it.
Round 2 wind farms involve 15 leases that can generate up to 7.2 GW of capacity, enough for one sixth of households in the UK. They will all be 60 to 90 turbine wind farms and well away offshore. These plans make the UK one of the most ambitious in terms of future wind power, probably putting us in the world lead in offshore turbine development.
Clearly the round 1 wind farms will be built very soon. The turbines will be bought from Denmark and Germany, where there is an established turbine manufacturing industry. The current manufacturing base in the UK consists of a small blade factory and a turbine factory, which I think are both owned by the Danish company, Vestas; a turbine production facility at Loughborough and a Nordic wind turbine manufacturing facility at Fife.
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Mr. Andrew Turner: Will the hon. and learned Lady give way?
Vera Baird: No; I am afraid that I do not have enough time.
The future offshore zones are in three strategic areas and two of them are on the east coast—the larger one is on the Wash and the second on the Thames estuary. Together they should create in the UK a home market for an offshore supply chain of about £7 billion. In addition, European wind farms are planned on the north-east coasts of Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Those coasts are readily accessible from the north-east of Britain.
The north-east has a long history of, and a well-established capacity in, manufacturing. It has world class capabilities in the marine, offshore oil, gas and power generation sectors. It is currently completing a new renewable energy centre at Blythe, benefiting from £10 million of investment and creating a nucleus of renewable industrial activity. This centre will have the biggest wind turbine blade test facility in Europe.
The industrial and research skills base in the north-east is considerable and it is augmented by a large number of technical graduates from universities in the region. There is already offshore wind capability provided by Marine Projects International, which is based in Middlesbrough, and AMEC, which is based in Hexham. In addition to these strengths, offshore wind jobs will make, or can make, a vital contribution to reducing the north-east's economic deprivation. The unemployment rate in the region, which has been caused by a steady decline in traditional manufacturing, is about 6.5 per cent. although it has been slashed over the past few years.
In 2002, 18,000 of the region's unemployed were science and engineering professionals, skilled workers in construction, engineering and other trades or plant and machine operators. That demonstrates that there is a high availability of potential skilled labour for a new north-east far offshore wind energy industry. Rates of pay are extremely competitive compared with those in Denmark and Germany, where turbines are currently manufactured.
There is no doubt that there are the seeds of a major new industry that is entirely apt, but not exclusively so, to the north-east. The Government are to be congratulated on the fact that their future far offshore wind policy will not only benefit climate change but will simultaneously offer regeneration opportunities.
I make a nod in the direction of Greenpeace, from which I have taken some of the statistics I have cited. It is fine to do so. I hope that the worries that I have set out about Redcar show how important it is, particularly if we are to carry people with us to a renewables future, that it be acknowledged that wind power stations can be extremely intrusive, and that sometimes these intrusions must be allowed to prevail.
I hope that I have also made it clear, however, that sensible people can rationally oppose an individual installation on sound grounds while supporting and, indeed, encouraging the drive for renewables as a whole. All of the people in Redcar to whom I have spoken have that state of mind about renewable energy.
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