---

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

My Lords, I am very glad to continue responding to the points raised. I shall come on deal with specific sites—particularly Cumbria, Dungeness and Oldbury—but I want, first, to respond to my noble friend Lord O’Neill about the situation in Scotland and to the noble Lord, Lord Maclennan, who is not alone in the Liberal Democrat Party in supporting nuclear power. In the happy event that the SNP loses control, decision-making for nuclear power stations in Scotland will remain devolved. The IPC’s remit is limited to England and Wales. However, I agree with my noble friend: when one looks at the history of fantastic skills, it just seems a tragedy that we are in this position in Scotland at the moment, and we must surely hope that good sense will prevail in the not-too-distant future. I turn to the comments made by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, in relation to Cumbria. Essentially, he raised a number of concerns about the greenfield site and about the cumulative impact of three sites in Cumbria. The noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, reported that he thought that the county council was being recommended not to support that. I make it clear that the question here is: how is the cumulative impact of three sites in one county taken into account? I should point out that the draft NPS has identified potential cumulative impacts—for example, on biodiversity and visual and landscape impacts—as well as, on the plus side, opportunities for employment and supporting industries. The assessment found that there was scope for mitigation of some of these adverse impacts but that in some cases full mitigation was unlikely. However, at this early stage in the planning process, it is very difficult to pre-empt which of the sites might come through, when that might happen and, indeed, whether all of them will achieve planning consent. Therefore, in the NPS we have not ruled out sites on the basis of cumulative effects. We have highlighted the effects for the careful consideration of the IPC.