George Freeman
Main Page: George Freeman (Conservative - Mid Norfolk)(13 years, 7 months ago)
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Chris Heaton-Harris
I am sure that Ministers will have heard my hon. Friend’s very sensible plea for areas of scientific interest to be looked after.
I was talking about noise. Some of us just do not believe that the Department of Energy and Climate Change is promoting wind farms, and not inhibiting them, by trying to force new noise criteria on the whole country. It is slightly worrying that the Hayes McKenzie Partnership has been commissioned by DECC to carry out the new noise review that the Minister recently announced. The science around noise seems to be a very moveable feast.
It is my contention that onshore wind diverts valuable resources from other renewables that do work and that people like. In my constituency alone, if we diverted the money that might well be spent on wind power towards other things, such as air source or ground source heat pumps and home insulation, we might well be able to insulate just about every house in the constituency and get people to buy in to this.
George Freeman (Mid Norfolk) (Con)
I congratulate my hon. Friend on raising this important subject. It is important, not least in my constituency, where we are struggling with a tidal wave of applications for both onshore turbines and the infrastructure to support offshore turbines, which are often put forward by speculative developers. There is an issue in that respect about the planning guidance. I agree entirely with him about the importance of securing our short-term energy requirements, but also of setting out a proper scientific framework for measuring the different renewable sources that this country could thrive on. Does he agree with me about the importance of identifying those that this country could lead on in a global context? That may not include wind.
Does my hon. Friend also agree that the Leader of the Opposition’s statement of 2009 in a documentary when he was Climate Change Secretary, in which he said that it should be “socially unacceptable” for people to be against wind turbines in their area, like not wearing their seat belt or driving past a zebra crossing, is an unhelpful position and one that, now that he is Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition, he might like to review?