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Severn Barrage

My Lords, I congratulate my noble friend Lord Livsey of Talgarth on bringing forward this debate. It is particularly timely when we are thinking about climate change. I am very glad that he has kept the issue of the power of the Severn on the agenda. I should mention my interests in this subject. I live by the Severn and in fair weather I sail on it most days in the summer when I am not here. My husband chairs the Environment Agency’s flood defence committee for the Wessex area. I was given a dinner by the Severn Tidal Power Group, as were several noble Lords, earlier this week. As the noble Lord, Lord Rowe-Beddoe, so eloquently said, this debate has been going on for a very long time. I think there is complete consensus here that we should harness the power of the Severn. The big debate is over exactly how we should harness it. We should harness it because it is very predictable power and a constant power in its flow in and out. For those reasons, we have to get on with harnessing it. Perhaps the most depressing fact of the past few years is that the Government have really prevaricated over pursuing some studies that could have been going on; for example, into tidal lagoons. When we had the debate in your Lordships’ House with the noble Lord, Lord Sainsbury, we were pleading the case that this could be piloted, as the promoters wanted, in Swansea Bay. It is taking a pathetically long time to pilot such a scheme. That project, in the intervening time, could have been constructed and could be feeding in to the information that we will need when we come to deciding between the options—because that is what we are going to need to do. The noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, laid out extremely well why we should be very nervous of even looking at a barrage scheme. I completely concur with her conclusions about habitat loss. If we consider the small amount of habitat that would have been lost with the Dibden Bay proposal, it is quite clear that to replace the habitat that would be lost if the barrage were constructed would actually be impossible. The noble Lord, Lord Cope of Berkeley, spoke of the port of Bristol. If a barrage is to be constructed for very good climate-change reasons, we should also have regard to what will happen if we make shipping more difficult. Will more goods be air-freighted or will they have to take a much longer route to other ports? Some useful tables show what those longer routes would mean. As I live on the Severn, I see exactly how much that route is used. It is astonishing to see how much freight comes and goes. We must also bear in mind that the size of the ships will alter considerably. When the Panama Canal is reconstructed, with all the shipping that will come from China carrying the goods that we happily import from there, a completely different scale of ship will be required. I do not believe that that has been sufficiently factored into the barrage equation. I agree with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, about the amount of spin that has already gone into this. It is possibly the ultimate spin. When I watched the BBC programme showing days in the life of Her Majesty the Queen, I noticed that she mentioned the barrage and the 5 per cent that could be obtained from it. I wondered where that figure had come from. Was it from the Prime Minister’s briefing? There is obviously a considerable amount of interest in the barrage, but it would be extremely dangerous if the Government had already come to a conclusion about where the feasibility study is going; it needs to be done on an absolutely level playing field. In an earlier debate about a tidal lagoon those interested in tidal lagoon promotion had secured private funding and needed only the backing of the DTI but they had considerable problem in getting the then DTI to agree to meetings to discuss it. It took Defra and the efforts of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, to get everyone in one room. There is a history of not providing a level playing field. Possibly my only disagreement with the noble Baroness, Lady Young, is when she speaks of ““cheap nuclear””. I do not think there is such a thing. Another issue that may seem a small detail to your Lordships’ House, although it is not, is the historical elver run up the Severn. Some noble Lords have mentioned the migration of salmon. We do not know whether disruption due to the barrage will cause a complete and catastrophic failure of the elvers. What do I want? I want a completely fair and level playing field. Although we know we can get 5 per cent electricity from a barrage, that barrage will cost in the region of £15 billion to £20 billion and the Government should be looking at what they can harness from the Severn for that amount of money. I have done only a back-of-the-envelope calculation but perhaps the Minister can do a better one. I think that might provide for up to 150 tidal lagoons. The Minister needs to ask his officials to estimate how much power that would provide. There could be an enormous benefit as there would be less transmission loss. A barrage will send its electricity far greater distances, whereas tidal lagoons could feed through the grid into the local communities, in Wales or on the north and south-west coast. What will the national grid competition be? The Government say that they will commit to new nuclear build, so we are probably looking at a new Hinkley Point C, if they go ahead with that. We already have a commitment to an onshore wind farm at Fullabrook Down. I support the proposal—I should declare an interest as I chair the economic advisory group for it—for the Atlantic Array offshore wind farm north of Lundy Island. There are a lot of national grid pressures on that area. I wonder whether something centralised like the barrage is even feasible in terms of grid connection. Even if it were, the grid loss needs to be put into the equation. I hope that the Government will therefore put an extraordinary amount of energy into the feasibility study and make up the time that they have lost to date by dragging their feet on marine energy. I hope that there is a completely level playing field and that the extraordinary habitat represented by the Severn is not lost. However, our drive to solve climate change must not mean that we sacrifice everything else on that altar.