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Industry and the Environment

It is my first and delightful duty to congratulate the hon. Member for South Swindon (Anne Snelgrove) on her maiden speech. Clearly, the people of South Swindon have gained another eloquent champion. Many of us on both sides of the House fondly remember her predecessor, Julia Drown, and the hon. Lady will be extremely welcome in the House. I can honestly tell her that I have never heard a better section of any speech about roundabouts. I congratulate all those who have made their maiden speeches, including the hon. Members for Burnley (Kitty Ussher) and for Llanelli (Nia Griffith) and my hon. Friend the Member for Wimbledon (Stephen Hammond). As one still young enough to remember my own maiden speech, but also as enough of an old lag to have addressed the House at every level of fullness and every stage of partisan excitement—even, sometimes, on occasions of wakefulness—I can tell them that they have gone through the most terrifying ordeal that they ever will in this place. The rest is easy. I want to deal with two areas affecting the environment and one other aspect of the Queen’s Speech. My overall verdict on the Government programme is that it shows alarming signs of hyperactivity, which is as wearing in a Government as it is in a small child. Forty-five Bills and five draft Bills are all to be put through the House by autumn next year. Given the parliamentary timetable, which, I observed during business questions, has been reduced again as we are having a longer summer holiday than we expected, there will probably be fewer than 40 weeks in which to discuss those 50 Bills. Are we likely to legislate well or wisely in those conditions? Of course not. The Government still seem to think, in the face of all evidence, that a bigger legislative programme means a better legislative programme. All our experience tells us that the opposite is the case. The Prime Minister is entering his self-proclaimed political twilight desperately scrambling for a legacy. I am afraid that he will not find it in this collection of Bills, nor will he find it in his record on environmental matters. Climate change is one of the big issues for him—he has been known to declare that it is the biggest issue facing us. At other times, the biggest issue facing us can be education, Africa or terrorism. With all those issues, he is like a butterfly: he lands for a few seconds, flutters his rhetorical wings and is then away, leaving no imprint. The Prime Minister and therefore the Government—I welcome the new Ministers to the environment team, both paid and unpaid; they can discuss the potential unfairness of that between themselves—have a genuine problem on this issue, but so, frankly, do all of us who are involved in the political process. The biggest question facing the Department of Trade and Industry and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—the two Departments whose work we are discussing today—is how we generate our energy and what effect that has on our environment. We have all known for a long time that that is the biggest problem facing them, yet we all chose not to discuss it during the election campaign. I am not naive enough to believe that election campaigns can raise the tone of political discourse, but it is a melancholy comment on us all that, faced with a vital but complex and difficult issue, we all agree that this is not the sort of thing that we should be talking about in an election period. When we consider why people feel increasingly disengaged from and disenchanted with the political process, we should perhaps reflect on that. We have not discussed energy and, in particular and most contentiously, the role of nuclear power until now, when the election is out of the way and we all feel it is safe enough to do so. As has been pointed out not only by my right hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Michael Jack) but by the hon. Member for Amber Valley (Judy Mallaber), there are two key questions in the debate on the role of nuclear power. First, can we meet our long-term emissions commitments without a new generation of nuclear stations? Clearly, the evidence can be used either way, but it seems to me that the answer to that question is probably not. Secondly, can we afford to build nuclear plants if we include the costs of waste? On the current evidence, the answer to that question is also probably not. That is why this is clearly a complex and difficult issue, even before we get into the realm of all the passions aroused by the very idea of generating electricity using nuclear power. The cold economics seem to clash with the long-term international commitments, which we have rightly entered into, to reduce our emissions of greenhouse gases. That leaves us, as a country, facing in both directions: we cannot do without nuclear power, but we might not be able to afford it. Clearly, we need to delve more deeply into those two questions and, in particular, into the question of affordability. On that, it seems to me that this country’s time scale for going from the idea of building a nuclear power station in a particular area to the point at which that station might come on stream and start to generate electricity is ridiculously long. Broadly speaking, we assume that it takes 15 years from start to finish. If we started building some stations tomorrow, they would not be on stream in time to avoid the stresses and strains on electricity generation that we will face in the next decade, especially if we are to meet our long-term commitments. However, we know that we will not start building any new ones tomorrow, because we have taken so long to take the decision in principle. It seems to me that some things could be done to reduce the time scale. First, we could change the planning procedure. We do not necessarily need lengthy public inquiries on new sites, because clearly we are now developing a range of sites that were involved in the original generation—in particular, Magnox reactors—and they could be reused. My experience is based on the two reactors at Dungeness, which are not in my constituency, but in the neighbouring constituency of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard). However, many of my constituents work at Dungeness and my experience tells me that, the reactors having been there for many decades, there is no local resistance to them or to the possibility of continuing nuclear generation there. Indeed, the reactors are welcome as a source of local employment, so some of the resistance that occurs in other areas would not be present. The other aspect that lengthens the time scale for getting from idea to fruition is the technicalities of building, but we have reached the stage at which there are almost off-the-peg solutions that can be had. There are enough different types of nuclear generator around the world to enable that part of the process to be shortened. Therefore, we do not necessarily need to consider a 15-year time scale in future. That in itself would have some effect on affordability. Moving to the other great problem—that of waste—there was a fascinating exchange in another place on 28 February between my noble Friend Earl Attlee and Lord Whitty.Earl Attlee asked whether the Minister thought that"““solving the waste problem and new build should be concurrent or consecutive activities.””" Lord Whitty replied:"““setting us on the course to resolve the problem of radioactive waste is essential””.—[Official Report, House of Lords 28 February 2005; Vol. 669, c. 10.]" The form of words used by the Minister is interesting. A complete resolution of the problem, which clearly would take some years, is not deemed necessary by the Government, only a ““setting on course”” to solving it. It may be that the Government have seen a way through this particular problem as well.