Power Outages: North of England Debate
Full Debate: Read Full DebateLord Adonis
Main Page: Lord Adonis (Labour - Life peer)Department Debates - View all Lord Adonis's debates with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy
(2 years, 5 months ago)
Lords ChamberMy understanding is that there are currently about 20,000 people who are still without power. As I said, 950,000 have had their power restored. I understand the calls for the Army to be deployed, and its abilities are legendary, but it is important to recognise that in work such as this, safety priorities mean that only suitably qualified engineers can work on electricity network infrastructure. The military resource cannot support the restoration of electricity supplies, and network distribution operators have confirmed that military assistance is not necessary in this case.
My Lords, can the Minister give us some idea of how much it would cost to put all these power lines underground?