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National Policy Statements

I very much agree. Far too many people in constituencies such as my hon. Friend's and mine, especially in rural areas, are living in real fuel poverty and enduring the hardship associated with high energy bills. In establishing the right balance between environmental protection and the need to build new infrastructure, my hon. Friend the Minister must take very seriously the points my hon. Friend the Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Damian Collins) made about Natural England. Many of us up and down the country face the problems he described. I welcome in the draft statement the recognition of the important role that local authorities will play in the development and consideration of proposed major energy projects. The extent to which local authorities wish to be involved in the planning process has always been, and will continue to be, up to them, but the new regime is a significant improvement, giving local government statutory rights in the process and ensuring that its views are adequately taken into consideration. In addition, rather than imposing additional costs, there are potential savings for local government from the new regime, as shorter hearings and quicker decisions should ensure that in future local authorities do not incur the costs incurred now. As hon. Members will be aware, I represent a constituency in Cornwall, where we aspire to be world leaders in the new low carbon industrial revolution. As a result I have a particular interest in how the relevant parts of the NPS support the development of renewable energy. We are blessed with an abundance of natural resources that make us ideally situated to develop significant quantities of low carbon electricity to feed into the national grid. In the universities of Exeter and Plymouth and the Camborne school of mines, we have a world-leading knowledge base in renewable and sustainable energy. In local companies such as GeoScience and Kensa Engineering, we have pioneering and highly skilled engineering companies. The wave hub off Cornwall's north coast is the first of its kind in Europe and it enables the testing of prototype wave and tide devices. We have great light for photovoltaics, an abundance of onshore wind and the hottest rocks in the UK. What we do not have is a national grid infrastructure able to take the anticipated volumes of electricity that can be generated locally to be fed into the grid. I believe that the NPS will help to tackle that wholly unsatisfactory situation. Although I understand the Government's reasons for feeling that there is no urgency about including technologies such as wave and tide in the NPS until large-scale commercially viable schemes have been developed, I urge the Minister to keep them in mind for the next round and subsequent revisions and, in the meantime, to do all he can to support that sector of renewable energy generation and to keep a watching brief on how the Marine Management Organisation handles its responsibilities. He will not be surprised to hear a similar plea from me for deep geothermal energy generation, which has the potential to contribute 5% of the UK's electricity. That technology, which is tried and tested in other countries—often developed by UK engineers—is yet to receive the support it deserves from Government in this country. With my hon. Friend's assistance, I hope to reverse that. Given the scale of the challenge ahead, it is vital that NPS is capable of being revised and updated, so that, as we learn more about new and emerging technologies and develop an evidence base for their capacity to deliver energy into the grid and to contribute to the Government's aim of decarbonising electricity production, they are supported and given the chance that inclusion in the NPS will provide.