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Nuclear Industry

I certainly have that aspiration, but I must also commend the Minister. When he was Minister for Energy, he worked with PILOT. There is no doubt it was the Government that put together the consortium that brought together their aspirations and those of the trade unions with the energies of the industry. The industry was turned around when it had been going in a similar downward spiral. I hope that those skills will be brought to bear on the question of the NII, which is the first organisation that needs to be considered. If the door is too narrow, we will never make the market that we require. The second thing that we should do is use the information that other countries use for licensing. For example, I have been told that one of the reasons why the building of Areva’s new generation in Finland has taken longer than was hoped—it is said that it is behind schedule—is that the Finnish authority is very strict and keeps coming up with more and more rules and regulations. If that is the case, the information used in that process should be readily transferable to a UK system, without our having to go and reinvent the wheel and ask for it to be done all over again. That is often what happens—companies spend huge sums, but when they come to the UK are told, ““We have the gold standard. We do not want to read that document. You will have to write it all again and we will take as long as we like to consider it.? We have to realise that, in the EU particularly, we now have comparable skills and standards in this industry. We should use that to shorten the process. The other question is about land use planning. I noticed that one of the recommendations, on page 77 of the Committee report, is for a review of the planning as well as of the licensing system. The oddest thing at the moment is that, when an energy source is being talked up as a solution, political parties are very keen. Then, when there is an application for a wind farm or something else in the locality, the very same parties at the local level are the biggest opponents—nimby, not in my back yard. [Interruption.] Or ““not in my constituency?. We have to deal with that. If we now have nuclear power stations in locus, and a new one is to be put in the same location, no logical question can be asked about whether there is permission for that land use. The process could, therefore, be very much foreshortened.