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Energy Security

I am pleased to follow the right hon. Member for Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley), who speaks with great authority on these matters. I want to step back from the problems caused by the cold weather snap and try to examine some of the more strategic issues. Energy security is inescapably a duty of Governments, and this Government have let matters drift. We have heard in this debate about the decline in oil and gas reserves in British waters, the retirement of coal-burning stations because of emissions controls, and the predicted decommissioning of nuclear stations. What is even more worrying is what is coming at us in the opposite direction because of tightening world markets and global trends, one of which is the simple fact of population increase. The population of the world is still going up by nearly 1 million every five days. If these people are to have any kind of standard of living, they are going to use increasing quantities of energy; during the next 50 years, the human race will probably consume more energy than it has used in the entire course of human history to date. There are also political developments, with countries such as China seeking to secure their energy supply chain in a new scramble for Africa. Countries such as Russia and Venezuela are explicitly using their energy reserves as a foreign policy weapon. All that adds up to an extremely worrying global situation, just as the Government have completely taken their eye off our domestic needs. There is also our economic vulnerability; we are already running a very big balance of payments deficit in energy. That will get worse. We have had a currency devaluation, which has made us all poorer in world terms. That will not cure the problem of the financial deficit in energy unless the Government take action. I thought that my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) was rather too kind about the Government's record. We will all remember—or should do—the energy White Paper of 2003. In my view, it was one of the most irresponsible documents ever issued by a modern Government. It effectively shut off nuclear power development completely. Sadly, the right hon. Member for Leicester, West (Ms Hewitt) is not attending this debate. She might be an extremely incompetent plotter against the Prime Minister, but she was a great deal worse as Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Not only did she issue that dreadful White Paper, but she sold Westinghouse, the last of the British hopes for nuclear power generation. The consequences of that White Paper have been to reduce us from being a possible world leader to the status of sub-contractor. That is extremely serious at a time when even the Government are trying to restart our nuclear programme. All that was known at the time about our decommissioning of nuclear reactors and the decline in gas and oil reserves, but instead of a concerted programme, there has been an absurd over-reliance on renewables. I am not "anti" all renewables, and I have an interest to declare in a possible hydro scheme, but as for wind power, I noticed that the big windmill on the M4 near Reading that sometimes goes round was stationary during the recent cold snap. It is not only unwise but dangerous to suppose that renewables can make up the gap. That can be done only by nuclear power, which is virtually carbon-free in operation and is a mature technology that has been with us for more than 50 years. We could have been a world beater. There is a missed opportunity there, which we must hasten to correct. The problem of storage must be addressed, but this solution could overcome the problem of security. Uranium supplies are virtually inexhaustible, and we have large storage facilities for plutonium and enriched uranium in this country. My last request is for the Government to participate in the next generation—the generation 4—nuclear power station programme worldwide, so that once more we can export not just energy but nuclear technology.