Energy and Climate Change

Chris Heaton-Harris Excerpts

Tuesday 20th December 2011 Commons Chamber

[Chris Heaton-Harris (Daventry) (Con)]

It is such a pleasure to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South (David Mowat), who is a great mind in all areas of energy and one of the more assiduous Members of the House when it comes to constituency work, I am told.

I welcome the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who is standing in on behalf of Department of Energy and Climate Change Ministers. So far in this debate, the Government business managers have replied, probably better than most of the Ministers would have been able to do on their own, so I welcome the hon. Gentleman. He should be aware that the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change has a history of getting people to stand in for him in various matters, but I trust that his Christmas present from the Secretary of State will be slightly nicer than others that he might have given in the past.

Like my hon. Friend the Member for Montgomeryshire (Glyn Davies), I am suffering from a spate of wind farm applications in my constituency. For years I have been campaigning against them. We should have gone nuclear a lot earlier, as my hon. Friend the Member for Warrington South said. There is a fantastic quote in a very good book, “Let Them Eat Carbon” by Matthew Sinclair of the Taxpayers Alliance: “Renewable energy is plagued by old problems. Whilst the wind and the sun are free, using them to supply energy when and where we need it to power a modern economy is extremely expensive.”

We all know that, and even the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) would have to recognise it, so why do we keep trying to foist onshore wind farms on to areas of low wind speed, where they devastate areas of natural beauty? I guess it is because wind was the only game in town for a long time and its lobbyists are among the best.

I thought that in the spirit of localism, it would be a good idea to give power to local authorities, so I introduced a ten-minute rule Bill, the Onshore Wind Turbines (Proximity of Habitation) Bill a number of months ago. It languishes, I think, at No. 13 for the next Friday sitting that we might have, so is unlikely to see the light of day in this Session. However, I would like to think that, like the gubernator of California, it will be back in some form in the future. I offer it to Ministers as a way forward in trying to solve some of the problems by letting local councils decide the correct proximity of wind turbines to habitation.

Why am I so interested in this? In Daventry district, 19 sites are being looked at, are in the planning stage or are on appeal for wind turbines, most of which would be about 126.5 m high, roughly the size of the London Eye, and in a beautiful, green part of rolling English countryside. I am against the turbines because they simply do not work. Last December was one of the coldest periods on record, but it was also remarkably still. The turbines barely produced any energy and we needed to use all the other carbon-eating technologies.

[Glyn Davies]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the sheer antipathy to wind farm development right across Britain is turning people against the development of renewable energy? It is transforming antipathy to onshore wind into antipathy to renewable energy.

--- Later in debate ---

[Chris Heaton-Harris]

I absolutely concur. I know from my mailbag and from the number of e-mails I receive every day on the matter that people are turning against renewables of just about every type because wind turbines are, among other things, so badly sold. Onshore wind generation requires a 100% back-up of carbon-burning technology or nuclear energy, should the wind not blow, and in addition to the devastation of the visual environment there are the problems of noise and flicker. They are the wrong renewables choice.

That brings me to some unbelievably bad news I received yesterday about my constituency. There was—how can I put it?—a disgraceful, vulgar, disrespectful, terrible, shameful, contemptible, detestable, dishonourable, disreputable, ignoble, mean, offensive, scandalous, shabby, shady, shocking, shoddy, unworthy, deplorable, awful, calamitous, dire, disastrous, distressing, dreadful, faulty, grim, horrifying, lamentable, lousy, mournful, pitiable, regrettable, reprehensible, rotten, sad, sickening, tragic, woeful, wretched, abhorrent, abominable, crass, despicable, inferior, odious, unworthy, atrocious, heinous, loathsome, revolting, scandalous, squalid, tawdry, cowardly, opprobrious, insulting, malevolent, scurrilous and basically stinkingly poor decision of the Planning Inspectorate to approve the Kelmarsh wind farm, which will devastate huge swathes of beautiful rural Northamptonshire. It used an old-fashioned east midlands regional plan, which I thought we had abolished in the Localism Act 2011, did not take into account any emerging policy in this area, not least the national planning policy framework, and used the targets, which the hon. Member for Brighton, Pavilion is so passionately attached to, of getting 20% of our energy from renewables by 2020.

It is unbelievable that one planning inspector can overrule all elements of democracy, local and national, including parish and district council opinion, MPs, Lords and Members of the European Parliament, and say, “Well, actually, because of these particularly poor policies we have, forget democracy. This is what you are having.” That is what upsets people about the onshore wind industry. The sooner that can change, the better.

Significant damage will be done to the local environment, and even more will be done to what my constituents might think comes with the Localism Act. If I were a Secretary of State in the Department for Energy and Climate Change and was driving down the A14, I really would put my foot down. A three-point penalty easily outweighs what I and my constituents think of him, this decision and the policy it is based on. That said, even I wish the Secretary of State and everyone else in the House a very merry Christmas.