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

My Lords, I begin by welcoming back the prodigal daughter—the noble Baroness, Lady Young—to the nuclear fold. I have had long battles with her in the past. Noble Lords will remember something called Lappel Bank, about which she raised exactly the issue as to whether one very small part of a designated area could be transferred to productive economic use. I think that we need a sense of proportion in these things. I also do not quite understand the logic regarding Dungeness. If that power station is closed in due course and there is no replacement, who will then be there to shift the shingle around? So this site may be lost anyway. I have three issues to raise in this debate. The first is process. Government documents project that by 2025, we will need 60 gigawatts of new generating capacity to cope with retirements and growth. This is a huge challenge when one remembers that the total generating capacity is about 120 gigawatts. According to the documents, only about 8 gigawatts of that additional capacity is under construction at present, so we have a large and urgent problem. The planning system must take some of the blame, though the lack of vision and courage shown, particularly in the energy White Paper of 2003, has also contributed. I have always strongly supported the procedures in the recent Planning Act, of which this debate is a part. It is essential for projects such as those which we are considering to have a stage in which the Government express a view, after proper consultation, on whether a particular development is in the national interest and whether the sites envisaged for it are considered suitable. One cannot treat a nuclear reactor as though it was just the latest addition to Tesco’s estate of superstores. The Government’s proposals envisage that, if approved, the development will go on to be considered by the IPC. I am unclear about what precisely the Opposition have envisaged, if they were elected, to deal with this problem. My concern is that if the intention is to throw the proposals back into a local planning debate, that would be a recipe for giving local people a veto on issues that have national implications. In practice, what will happen is that if a local inquiry opposed a development, the matter would be referred on appeal to the Secretary of State. The latter cannot simply overrule but has, in effect, to rerun the whole process to justify his decisions. So the years tick by, uncertainty grows, and costs mount. One of the benefits of our being interrupted by a Division is that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has been able to draw my attention to something that I had not noticed before in the guidance note on their new policies. The aim is to retain the fast-track content of the Planning Bill procedures and to refer matters to a major infrastructure unit. The documents then states: ""The Secretary of State will then be required to make a final decision on the application within a specified time limit on the basis of the material presented"." What assurance do we have that that discipline will be sustained? If it is not, we will not be much better off than we are now.