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Energy: Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation (EN-6)

The noble Lord has a distinguished record of service, but—let us not get above ourselves—the Tories are not in government yet. This business of issuing election manifestos wrapped in a piece of green paper does not give them any status. I am aware that quite a polite but, at the end of day, rather rude letter was sent by a junior opposition spokesperson in another place to the appointees on the day on which they took on their jobs, telling them, "Be ready for your P45, lads, because this job isn’t going to last". The noble Lord may with his characteristic courtesy be trying to build some bridges to the IPC. But there is a feeling abroad that there could be delay, new legislation and worrying circumstances for potential investors. One difficulty that we must recognise is that, at the moment, there is not just political uncertainty but uncertainty whether this planning process will be quicker. If it is, we will see an acceleration in the programme. Noble Lords have talked this afternoon—and the noble Lord, Lord Broers, was very gloomy—about the nuclear supply chain. In my capacity as the chair of the Nuclear Industry Association, I can tell them that we have held seminars across the country for interested firms that want to be part of the nuclear supply chain. We are finding that people with skill and engineering capability, who have been engaged in other areas of activity such as the defence industries and hi-tech engineering for the construction of hydrocarbon plants and the like, are saying, "There is not that much difference in what we do from what the nuclear industry requires". There is a fantastic degree of optimism within British engineering at the moment, which I am sorry that the noble Lord has not been exposed to. Equally, I simply make the point that, with regard to British engineering capability, there have been British companies in China, Korea and Japan, such as AMEC, Balfour Beatty, Rolls-Royce, Doosan Babcock and Westinghouse, which, although it is now foreign-owned, it still has 3,000 employees in Britain—it is not as if the whole thing was sold lock, stock and barrel and everybody went away. There are centres of excellence in the United Kingdom which foreign companies could not move and will not move, especially now that we have the prospect of what could be called the nuclear renaissance. But if we are to get that, we must ensure that one of the first obstacles, the planning process, is dealt with openly, transparently and fairly. This document lends itself to that and will assist in it, and it will enable us to move towards 25 megawatts by 2025. I agree that it is very optimistic, but it can be achieved—if only because we are talking about at least 3 gigawatts on most of the major sites over the period. I disagree with the point made about the length of time that some of the reactors are taking to be built in China. The number of months is going down; there are some instances of 38 months. I am not saying that that is what we would want, but 44 to 48 months would seem at this stage, for the starting-off, a reasonable assumption to make. The more we build, the better we get at it and the shorter the times we will be able to move towards. I am not as pessimistic as some of my colleagues, but equally I am not adopting some kind of Voltairean view that all is for the best in all possible worlds. A lot is still to be done, but we have made a good first start with this document, and I commend it.