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Climate Change and Sustainable Energy Bill

I am grateful to you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for making that point. I make a plea to the Government to let the facts speak for themselves. If the facts are publicised, a lot of the mythology about the contribution that renewables can make to addressing climate change could be exposed for what it is. Another reason why I thought that it would be useful to produce the report to which new clause 3 refers was that it would point out the amount of energy that was produced by nuclear power in the previous calendar year. A lively nuclear debate is going on at the moment, and we are told that there will have to be less reliance on nuclear in the future. Indeed, unless new nuclear power stations are constructed, the amount of energy produced by nuclear will decline significantly. Of course, nuclear came under the definition of ““electricity”” in the statistics that I cited. The latest figures that I have on the proportion of electricity consumed in other countries that comes from nuclear are for 2002 and are contained in the energy White Paper. They show that the proportion of electricity from nuclear power in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development countries ranged from about 4 or 5 per cent. in the Netherlands and nothing in Poland, Portugal, Norway, New Zealand, Luxembourg, Australia and Austria to nearly 80 per cent. in France, almost 60 per cent. in Belgium, nearly 50 per cent. in Sweden, 30 per cent. in Finland, which is investing in new nuclear capacity, almost 30 per cent. in Germany, 25 per cent. in Japan and well over 20 per cent. in Spain. The amount of electricity from nuclear sources should be increased. The United Kingdom is pretty well down the league in terms of the amount of energy used that is produced from nuclear. If the amount of nuclear energy produced across the globe was doubled, that would deal with all the Kyoto targets at a stroke. Yet there seems to be almost a conspiracy among people who are taking decisions relating to energy policy to ignore or underrate the role of nuclear energy. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart) want to intervene? I cannot hear what he is saying from a sedentary position.