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Severn Barrage

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Livsey of Talgarth, for giving us the opportunity to debate this very important issue. There is no doubt that climate change is the biggest economic, social and environmental challenge that we face, and we must do everything that we possibly can to address it, including creating more low-carbon renewable energy generation. However, the Severn barrage, attractive as it may seem in principle with a claim that it will reduce carbon output by 3 per cent, has some pretty big snags attached to it. The first is economic: it is a very expensive way to reduce carbon and to generate electricity. The sustainable development report’s verdict was that it would not be viable as a commercial investment proposition and could go ahead only if it was provided, run and financed by the Government on cheap government money. There are many cheaper ways of reducing carbon, including some energy efficiency measures and, indeed, nuclear power. If the Government decide to go ahead with a new nuclear programme and we are going to build 10 or 12 reactors, why not build 14? I refer noble Lords to some very interesting work done by McKinsey on the costs of generating low-carbon energy and mitigating greenhouse cases. It looks at the costs and benefits of more than 120 greenhouse gas abatement options. We have a policy conflict looming in this area. Heads of state recently signed up to the European renewables target which may increase renewable energy generation but perhaps on a very expensive basis. My view is that the touchstone ought to be how we get least-cost carbon reduction rather than an artificial renewables target that may not be least cost. Perhaps everyone expects that the issue on which I will focus more than others is biodiversity and why the Severn is important. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Livsey, for going through some of the features of the Severn. Its irreplaceability is on the basis of the extent of its tidal range. This proposal would considerably reduce the tidal range of a large part of the estuary. The estuary is designated under the habitats and the birds directives, and I am proud that I was chairing English Nature at the time that that designation was put forward to government. That was 10 years ago, and the Government have only recently put it forward to Europe for final endorsement. The designation is a sign that the Severn is one of the more important estuarine systems in Europe and, indeed, globally for its salmon rivers, its intertidal habitats and the mobile sandbanks mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Cope, which are some of its most distinctive biodiversity features. It is a globally unique river. If for reasons of overriding public interest, which is the technical term under the habitats directive, the barrage were to go ahead, I can assure the House from my background of 20 years as a conservationist that it is not possible to create a replacement habitat elsewhere in the country to replace what was lost in the Severn. There have been proposals and suggestions that a replacement habitat could be created in the east of the country, perhaps in East Anglia in or the Humber. I should here declare an interest as chief executive of the Environment Agency, which struggles each year to create about 100 hectares of replacement habitat in response to its flood-risk management programme. I am not sure how the Environment Agency would see 14,000 hectares of habitat being created in East Anglia. Indeed, it would be interesting to hear the reaction of East Anglian landowners and farmers if it were suggested to them that 14,000 hectares of their land should go underwater in the interests of a Severn barrage. Nor should we kid ourselves that it would truly be replacement habitat. Nobody in the world has yet recreated a salmon river or a tidal estuarine system. We should also regard with a little caution the siren words of the Sustainable Development Commission report that habitat creation in the east would be an exciting opportunity in the face of climate change. The big question is whether we are prepared to allow, as some would put it, a few fish and few birds to get in the way of important measures that are necessary to meet climate change. I shall highlight why the Severn is important in itself and for government. It is one of the few sites in Britain that is designated to the highest level. It is important not only for the wildlife it protects but because of its signal value in terms of government commitment to protecting the few very high-value wildlife sites when, generally speaking, our biodiversity is diminishing across the board. It is not just a signal within the UK, but also in Europe. We hear very strong mutterings from, for example, Poland as a new entrant to the European Union and we see signs of backsliding in Spain, Italy and Greece against directives such as the habitats directive. If we were to override the protection of one of our few most highly protected sites, it would become open season and any proposition that had to respond to climate change would be capable of overriding these important designations. It would happen a bit here, but it would happen a lot across Europe. All of this is to be tested in the feasibility study, but I am nervous about the way it was announced. When John Hutton announced it at the Labour Party conference, he did not refer to it in a neutral tone of voice, but said in his statement that he was quite excited about the prospect. That seems to imply that there is already a degree of government commitment to this proposition before the feasibility study had even begun. Indeed, the tenor of the work in the feasibility study seems not to be whether this barrage should go ahead but how it can be allowed and enabled to go ahead. The big problem with high-profile, charismatic and politically led announcements is that they are difficult to back away from. I vividly remember in 1997 appealing to the newly appointed Secretary of State for Scotland to regard the funicular up Cairngorm as the white elephant that it has undoubtedly become since there is now no snow up there, and to use the opportunity of his arrival in post to cancel that high-profile, politically statemented development, but by then it was too late. We must watch that there is not an inexorable momentum behind this proposition so that Governments of any complexion will find it difficult to go back on it. I urge the Government to consider the barrage and the feasibility study in the context of what could be achieved by investing this scale of finance in cheaper carbon reductions; for example, perhaps in less damaging tidal technologies such as lagoons, in major programmes of energy efficiency, other renewable technologies or cheap nuclear that does not destroy the distinctiveness of this globally important biodiversity resource. I hope that we are not in a position where for the future we are of the belief that we cannot solve the challenge of climate change without junking other environmental resources. For me, that would be very much throwing the baby out with the bathwater.