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

My Lords, this has been our second debate in Grand Committee on the national policy statements. Like the first, it has been extremely interesting and we have covered a lot of ground. It is a great pleasure for me to respond to the many points that have been made. My noble friend Lord O’Neill has taken me to task both here and in meetings that I have attended in the NIA, to which I pay tribute, on the speed with which we produce the national policy statements. My noble friend is right. I would have liked to have produced them earlier and for us to have got through the process of parliamentary scrutiny, consultation and designation before the election, which would have provided greater certainty. But we have not done that. As my noble friend also suggested, that is because this work has required very careful analysis and production. It has been more important to get the thing as right as we can, rather than be overhasty and then run into severe problems. The noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, mentioned judicial review issues. I am sure it is entirely possible that some aspect of the new planning system might be taken for judicial review, which confirms the point that we really have to get this right. The scrutiny that the national policy statements undergo is an important part of ensuring that we consider all the issues and get this as right as we can. It is inevitable that we come back to the principles of this new planning system and it is entirely right that we should continue to debate it. But the fact is that Parliament has now decided very clearly that the role of Ministers should be to set policy. That policy should be subject to parliamentary scrutiny. It would be then for the IPC, as an independent body, to make independent consent decisions. If one were to depart from that, the waters would be muddied in quite a difficult way. That is why we have never thought that it would be appropriate for Parliament to approve the national policy statements, because in the end that should be a ministerial decision. Nor do we think that it should be for Ministers to make the individual planning consent. Over the years, we have seen—this is not a political point, but just the subject of experience—that Ministers have sometimes found it very difficult to make those kinds of decisions. That is why I believe we have got this structure right. I really must respond to the criticism made by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox, and the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, regarding the Government’s progress in coming forward with policy in relation to nuclear energy. I have always been a strong supporter of nuclear energy and, like my noble friend Lord O’Neill, I wish that we could have made more progress. However, very careful attention has been needed to build the consensus required to enable us to have confidence in new nuclear. My noble friend thought that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, was suffering from some form of amnesia. In view of the lively contributions that the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, has made to our debates over the years, I do not think that, but I have endless quotations here from statements made by the Official Opposition over the years expressing doubts about nuclear power and describing it as a last option. I do not think that it will do now to portray the party opposite as having a consistent policy of supporting nuclear over the years. That simply is not the case.