Wind Farms (Mid-Wales)

Mark Williams Excerpts

Tuesday 10th May 2011 Westminster Hall

[Glyn Davies]

I want to come later in my speech to what we will be left with afterwards, but the sheer scale of what is proposed means that the development will cause huge damage. Already people are not prepared to commit themselves to holidays in the long term. Already the prices of houses are falling. The impact is already seriously damaging. There are beautiful parts of Britain; the economy of mid-Wales depends on tourism, which depends on its beauty. What some people want is to act freely to destroy the one thing that makes the place special. That is what the authorities in their various forms are contemplating doing.

When the policy statement or technical advice note popularly known as TAN 8 was issued by the Welsh Assembly Government in 2005, I and a few others understood immediately that this monstrous proposal would be the consequence. However, the local population did not truly grasp the scale of what that policy statement meant. I suppose that it seemed almost too incredible to believe—if only it were. Now that the population of mid-Wales have grasped the degree of desecration planned for their area, there has been an uprising of anger and protest the like of which I have never seen before.

Huge numbers of people, usually approaching 500, have turned up at several public meetings. At one meeting that I called in Welshpool, at short notice and with minimal advertisement, more than 2,000 people turned up. These people are from every sector of the population, and include many who would benefit financially from the proposals. If the National Assembly for Wales had been sitting at the time and not involved in an election, all of them would have descended on Cardiff bay there and then to ensure that the politicians behind this outrage were made fully aware of the scale of the anger.

[Mr Mark Williams (Ceredigion) (LD)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing the debate. He has cited meetings in his constituency. Does he agree that this is very much a mid-Wales issue? In the north of Cardiganshire, the prospect of the huge wind farm development at Nant y Moch has also caused huge concern locally. That concern has been articulated very effectively by the Cambrian Mountains Society, which is campaigning for the Cambrian mountains to become an area of outstanding natural beauty. That needs to be respected. The public anxiety to which the hon. Gentleman refers is very real and extends across the whole of mid-Wales.

[Glyn Davies]

There is truly a mid-Wales impact. The proposals affect part of Radnorshire hugely and all of Shropshire, depending on where the lines to the national grid go, and of course there is the proposal for Nant y Moch in Ceredigion, but the biggest effect by quite a distance will probably be on my constituency of Montgomeryshire. In relation to the impact locally, I pay tribute to the local newspaper, the County Times. It has understood what the people of its catchment area feel and has organised petitions. It realises that virtually everyone in the county opposes what is proposed. It is a proposition that everyone locally is deeply and fundamentally opposed to and always will be.

The protest that I spoke of will still take place, as soon as the recently elected Assembly Members have taken their seats. I will do all I can to ensure that that happens. We must ensure that in years to come, they cannot disclaim responsibility for the environmental vandalism and shocking waste of public money for which they will have been responsible. We do not want the people responsible for the decision saying, “We didn’t understand that it was going to cause that much damage.” It is important that they know now exactly what they are going to do. In decades to come, they will be remembered, in the way that those who were responsible for drowning the Tryweryn valley in the last century are remembered in Wales today, half a century later. We must ensure that, in mid-Wales, their names will be remembered in future decades as having been on the roll call of those responsible for splitting the Welsh nation asunder.

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Mark Williams]

I know that my hon. Friend is a regular tourist to my constituency. He speaks about the general environmental damage done by turbines, but will he reflect also on the damage done in the immediate area of wind farms? Next time he visits Ceredigion, I shall take him to the summit of Cefn Croes, which at one point contained the largest wind farm in the country. There he will see the damage done to the peat bogs—there has been no attempt to restore the landscape—and the spectacle of vast concrete roads going to the summit of a beautiful landscape.

[Daniel Kawczynski]

I holiday in my hon. Friend’s constituency, which is beautiful, and I can recommend Mwnt bay as a lovely holiday destination. I shall take up his offer.

Tourism is the No. 1 income generator in Shropshire, and we depend upon our beautiful landscape to attract tourists, who come not only from the United Kingdom but from around the world. I pay tribute to two local Conservative councillors, Tudor Bebb and David Roberts. They are working hard with various local bodies, including the local tourism association, to analyse the impact that the proposals would have on the local economy.

If the electricity produced were brought across Shropshire to the national grid, the cables could be put underground. However, we are told by those who propose these measures that that would cost 15 times as much as pylons, the monstrosities that would have to be built on the Shropshire countryside. I ask the Minister, is it true? What analysis has been undertaken by the Government on that point? Is it the reality that putting cables underground would cost 15 times as much? I ask because we hear from colleagues in the Danish Parliament that the costs are nothing like that. If so, my constituents are being deliberately misled by these companies at public meetings about the cost of putting the cables underground rather than on pylons.