Revised Draft National Policy Statement for Nuclear Power Generation, volumes I and II (EN-6)

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Thursday 13th January 2011 Grand Committee

[Lord Teverson]

My Lords, I do not intend to take up a lot of the Grand Committee’s time. I know that my noble friend Lady Parminter will be speaking about flooding, in particular. When I participated in a debate on this subject prior to the change of government, I remember saying that as a Liberal Democrat, first, I did not believe in the IPC and, secondly, I did not believe in nuclear power, at which point everyone immediately went to sleep and quite rightly wrote off all my subsequent comments. Circumstances change to a certain degree and so I shall try to address this issue constructively. From a personal point of view I have always believed—certainly in terms of the challenge from climate change—that in the medium term there is an important role for nuclear power, and I have always fully accepted that.

One of the strange things about this policy statement is that, unlike the others, it delineates and specifies sites, whereas the others do not. If I looked upon that with my local councillor hat on, I would say that this document proffers a benefit to landowners for particular sites that effectively, by being approved, receive outline planning permission. Once agreed, that becomes policy and those are the chosen sites. I was very grateful to the Minister for quoting what I said on the previous occasion. Given that there is effectively outline planning permission, I still find it difficult to understand how a refusal could ever occur. I understand from the long list that it might happen because of the habitats directive, although I would expect that to be looked at in terms of the original site assessment programme. It could also occur because of the bad taste in the design of the building. However, on the whole this document is particularly important in comparison with the others because it effectively says where new nuclear will develop, and those communities can expect that to happen. That is reinforced by the fact that if you ask, “What if other sites are put forward?”—there is a route for doing that under section 2.3 on page 8—the report makes it clear that the Secretary of State and the process will inevitably frown on any person trying to change those allocations before 2025. Something in me feels that that is not necessarily and completely a good principle of government and a way in which the permissions should be granted. However, I certainly accept that those sites listed are the obvious ones, subject to climate change and rising sea levels; that whole area is at question.

There are two areas that I want to talk briefly about. One is nuclear waste. I understand why the documents effectively say, “By the way, you can’t take this into consideration because it is sorted and the Government’s told us that they’ve sorted it”. I accept that there is to be nuclear power; that is because of the lack of work undertaken—the lack of commitment to solve the problem—decades ago. However, I am not comfortable with the policy statement just writing the whole area off. That is not taking the responsibility fully. The Government are undertaking various roles; we have discussed that with the Minister informally. The timescales—they may be good in terms of technical feasibility and consultation—involved in making the decisions and finding solutions are still wildly long, and we should be concerned about that in the context of planning.

The last thing that I want to say is something that I referred to earlier in the week on EN-1, around socioeconomic impacts. The noble Lord, Lord Berkeley, mentioned this in relation to Hinkley Point. I again draw the Minister’s attention to the fact that major constructions—they clearly have to happen—have major effects, particularly in more rural and coastal areas, because of not just carbon footprint but the huge numbers of workers who come into the area, even if a large number of local people are employed as well. That can have huge effects on social housing, because private landlords understandably get the highest bidding for their properties from such workers. In terms of accommodation, the whole tourist sector can close down for three years, which can mean that other tourist businesses in the region close down in the mean time. To a degree, that may be the consequence of moving forward on development and filling the huge energy gap that we have before 2025, but the subject should not just be the fifth chapter in EN-1 or mentioned in this planning document. Those mitigations need to be absolutely central to the assessment process. Tying up with local government is extremely important in this area, and I hope that it will be made clear to the decision-makers by the Secretary of State as the policies are brought forward.