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National Policy Statements (Energy)

I hope I can reassure the hon. Gentleman that that will not be necessary. When the decision is finally made, it will be legitimate to take account of the fact that if the disbenefits were considered to outweigh the benefits, consent would not need to be given. If it were felt that consent was being given to too much higher-carbon generation capacity and therefore that environmental issues—low-carbon issues—were seen to be more important, that would be a material factor to be taken into account. That can already be done through the system. The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right to point out that we have a significant amount of consented gas for which there is not currently construction. That also brings us to part of the problem: at the moment, we are not seeing anything like enough investment and construction work in our energy infrastructure.