---

National Policy Statements (Energy)

I am pleased we are debating the national policy statements after we discussed them in draft form in December. Our debate then was short and our debate today will be even shorter—I hope the Minister joins me in deeply regretting that fact. We cannot do justice to the number of national policy statements and to the Members present in the Chamber, who will, I suspect, have roughly an hour and a half for debate once I have concluded my remarks, and that is terrible. The final national policy statements, if they are approved by the House, will be critical in achieving a green, affordable, secure and diverse energy future. The building blocks for that future were, as the Minister suggested, shaped under Labour and we want them to be put in place without any further delay. Much has happened since our debate in December. We watched the terrible incidents in Fukushima unfold and, rightly, across the globe, across Europe and across the UK, we sought to see what lessons we needed to learn. The Minister is right to say that in the UK we did not rush to judge but carefully examined our sites, a process that is ongoing under Dr Weightman, while all countries across the EU carried out their own stress tests. Understandably, and with our support, the Minister delayed the NPSs, including the one on nuclear, to allow proper consideration to be given to those events. We agree firmly with the conclusions reached in EN-1 and EN-6: nuclear, as a low-carbon proven technology, could play a key role in diversifying and decarbonising our energy and in meeting our climate change objectives. It is a proven low-carbon technology that can be deployed on a large scale and could complement carbon capture and storage, if it is successful, renewables and fossil fuels as part of the mix. The eight identified sites in EN-6 are potentially—I stress potentially—capable of development by 2025. Many in the green movement, although not all of them, now recognise these and other benefits of nuclear generation, although those who have long been opposed to the technology should be respected for their views, too.