New Nuclear Power

Debate between Margaret Hodge and Martin Horwood

Thursday 7th February 2013 Commons Chamber

[Martin Horwood]

I am sorry but I cannot give way because of the time limit.

Given wider security and international relations concerns, it would seem to be worth thinking twice, just as the Americans have recently done, about allowing Chinese companies to take a major stake in any strategically important British energy supply projects.

Hitachi stepped in to replace E.ON and RWE on the other projected new nuclear plants, but Hitachi has only taken an option on UK new build. Its proposed advanced boiling water reactor design is still perhaps some four years from regulatory approval and Hitachi, too, is waiting on the strike price negotiations.

More and more research is questioning the cost-effectiveness of nuclear. The Energy Fair group of energy consultants and academics has stripped out all subsidies and says that the real cost of nuclear power is at least £200 per MWh, which is much more than the cost of offshore wind power at £140 per MWh or that of onshore wind power at less than £90 MWh. If EDF has done similar sums—there have been rumours in the industry of asks as high as £165 per MWh for the strike price—that raises the extraordinary possibility that nuclear power, a mature and not very competitive industry started in 1956, might be asking for a strike price comparable with or even higher than that of the newly emerging wind industry. Frustratingly, even Parliament does not know whether that is the case.

Finally, I come to the rather obvious point that nuclear is a fossil-fuel technology. If the worldwide investment in nuclear continues in China and elsewhere, despite all these risks, the price of uranium also will inevitably rise, making nuclear here even more uneconomic. Nuclear sceptics may have a very unlikely ally in this debate. The Treasury’s levy control framework, which caps the costs that can be added to consumers’ bills, currently specifies a figure of £2.6 billion a year. Tom Burke, writing in The Guardian, cites estimates that the cap would have to rise to £12.5 billion or more to provide 16 GW of nuclear power by 2025. As he says:

“Anyone who thinks that the Treasury will agree to a levy cap this large is dreaming.”

The risk, of course, is that support for nuclear will therefore squeeze out possible support for renewables.

Let me remind hon. Members on both sides of the House that the coalition agreement in May 2010 promised

“the replacement of existing nuclear power stations provided... that they receive no public subsidy.”

Agreed coalition policy was restated by the former Secretary of State in the annual energy statement a few months later:

“new nuclear can go ahead so long as there is no public subsidy.”—[Official Report, 27 July 2010; Vol. 514, c. 868.]

He did not say, “no unfair subsidy” or, “no unjustified subsidy”; he said, “no subsidy whatsoever”.

Liberal Democrats and Greens have long opposed nuclear power. But Conservative Members, with their strong commitment to sound finance and their horror of unjustified subsidies, should be alarmed too, even if they reject Électricité de France’s accusation of jingoism against the hon. Member for Bracknell (Dr Lee), who dared to question the cost-efficiency of adding our own subsidy to that of the French taxpayer. And Labour MPs should remember the mantra that their Government maintained throughout many long hours of debate on their last Energy Bill, which I remember because I was a shadow environment spokesperson; again, the line was, “No public subsidy”.

The request in this motion is modest. It seeks not the instant abandonment—

[Margaret Hodge (Barking) (Lab)]

I am sorry to intervene on the hon. Gentleman, and I congratulate him on raising very important issues. For the Public Accounts Committee, issues of transparency and subsidy are hugely important. However, the PAC’s remit is to look at contracts after they have been signed; we cannot take away the job of the Government, which is to decide. We will hold contracts rigorously to account, and we are already ready to examine this contract once it has been signed. Will he accept that our role is in ensuring value for money after the Government have decided? We would hope that our inquiry would also inform future Government contracts in relation to nuclear power.

[Martin Horwood]

The difficulty is that this one may be the main contract for nuclear power, so the suggestion from many non-governmental organisations—not only what we might call the usual suspects, but organisations such as the Consumers Association—is that an independent panel of experts should be convened. That might be an alternative, as the Chair of the PAC has made some reasonable points.

As I said, the request in the motion is modest. It seeks not the instant abandonment of nuclear power, nor the overturning of Government energy policy—far from it. It merely seeks a pause and a referral of the strike price negotiation to the Public Accounts Committee, other Select Committees or an independent panel of experts—such approaches would be equally acceptable. The body can sit in private if issues of commercial sensitivity are involved.

On the face of it, Électricité de France is trying to pull a fast one on British energy bill payers, taking a subsidy designed for clean, green, new, emerging, competitive technologies with falling prices, and claiming it for a 56-year-old industry with precious little competition and a continuing history of spectacular cost overruns, for which we stand to pick up the bill. I ask hon. Members to support the motion.