Navitus Wind Farm, Swanage

Conor Burns Excerpts

Wednesday 4th July 2012 Commons Chamber

[Conor Burns (Bournemouth West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to make a brief contribution to this debate.

I shall not dwell on the points that my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset (Richard Drax) has made so eloquently about the philosophy behind offshore or, indeed, onshore wind, about which my hon. Friend the Member for Daventry (Chris Heaton-Harris) has also spoken at length in the past, except to say, as my right hon. and noble Friend the Baroness Thatcher once did:

“Nothing is more obstinate than a fashionable consensus.”

This is a profoundly serious issue for my constituents and, indeed, for the entirety of the conurbation, and that is demonstrated by the fact that my hon. Friends the Members for Poole (Mr Syms) and for Christchurch (Mr Chope) and my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour the Member for Bournemouth East (Mr Ellwood)—the entire conurbation—are in the Chamber this evening to highlight our profound and real concerns and reservations.

Bournemouth is well known to Members, who go there for the party conferences and will have all stood in the Highcliff hotel and enjoyed the incredible views across the bay. The bay and the view are the hook on which our local tourism economy hangs. The vital prosperity of our area is dependent on that, and we have profound reservations about this scheme and what it may do to the tourism economy.

I have extreme concerns about the process of consultation in which Eneco is involved. The initial consultation did not fill us with confidence; it included questions such as:

“How far do you agree with the following statement?” ‘People have a ‘not in my back yard’ attitude to wind parks’…. How far do you agree with the following statement? ‘I am happy to live close to an offshore wind park if it helps to combat climate change’…How many average households’ energy consumption do you think an offshore wind park can produce in one year?”

Those are not open-minded consultation questions, but dogma-driven ones.

We also have real concerns about the inability so far of the company to provide us with real graphics about what the park will look like. The company keeps telling us that it cannot yet do that because it does not know where in the development area the farm will be, how many turbines there will be or what height they will be. If the company does not know all those things, I find it strange that it can tell us exactly the quantity of energy the wind farm is intended to produce. When the company does give us illustrative graphics, they are of a dusky winter scene. We want them to show the wind farm at the height of the season on a clear, blue-sky day or on a clear night, so that we can see what it would mean for the area.

We are concerned about the economic impact assessment. In fairness, the company is seeking to talk to more than 400 businesses, but some are up to 10 miles away from the coastal area. That will not give us meaningful data about the potential impact on our area.

I close with a simple point, one of the most important that my hon. Friend the Member for South Dorset made. I would love the Minister to give us a firm and detailed reply. It is about proximity to the shore. Eneco’s preferred site is 7 nautical miles from the coast, but the Department of Energy and Climate Change offshore energy assessment 2 says that new offshore wind farm generation capacity

“should be sited away from the coast, generally outside 12 nautical miles”.

The same report goes on to acknowledge that

“The environmental sensitivity of coastal areas is not uniform, and in certain cases new offshore wind farm projects may be acceptable”.

“In certain cases”—I find it inconceivable that anyone could judge that an exception could be made for the case under discussion. My hon. Friend talked about the beauty of the Jurassic coastline and I have dwelt on the beauty of our area, which attracts so much tourism.

The project may be some way off, but our constituents—mine and others across the conurbation—will not forgive us if we do not highlight today the impact that it could have. If it damages our area, our constituents would rightly not forgive those of us sent to this place to stand up for the interests of the areas that we serve.