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Planning Bill

I am most grateful to my noble friend. At this hour of the night, my brain ceases to function properly. Those are projects that are actually going ahead. The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is seeking to attract interest in the sites where it is decommissioning nuclear power stations because it has the sites. As everyone has said about British Energy and the NDA, they have the sites. In those circumstances, it seems entirely appropriate that the national policy statements should clearly include that policy. In that way, we would be encouraging the local communities and removing any anxieties that other communities, which may not want a nuclear power station at all, may have one foisted on them. This is an important issue and, as other noble Lords have often said, there is a need to get ahead with this. We will be in considerable difficulties in five or six years’ time if we close power stations when there are no new ones to replace them. A recent book by Professor Fells emphasised this—he believes that the lights will go out in the middle of the next decade and that there is not much we can do about it now. The trouble is that it has all been left too late—10 years have been wasted. Those of us who said right at the beginning that we should have new nuclear build have been vindicated, but it has taken 10 years for us to make our point. I know that BERR is drafting a national policy statement on gas storage which it hopes will be ready by the middle of next year. But it is a little difficult for us to debate these matters when we do not have any examples in front of us, even in draft, of what the thing might be. We have to give the Government the maximum amount of freedom to decide how this will be done. I have a great deal of sympathy with what the noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, said about transport. Like him, I shall wait to see how the Minister responds. We must not be too specific about this. It is the heart of the new planning policy and it must be allowed to work properly.