Roger Gale
Main Page: Roger Gale (Conservative - North Thanet)(9 years, 3 months ago)
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Albert Owen (Ynys Môn) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point about National Grid and its status. I am a member of the Select Committee on Energy and Climate Change, and we have raised that very issue. National Grid has a monopoly, and legislation has given it extra powers to be the systems operator. It decides which generation goes ahead, as well as having the grid connections. Does he agree—I hope that the Minister will take this on board, and I hope to make an intervention during her response—that we need to have proper consultation? The regulator, Ofgem, needs the responsibility and the remit to be the champion for communities, to ensure that this—
Glyn Davies
I thank the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) for raising that point, which I intend to raise, because it is hugely important.
Over the past year or so, I have had countless frightened constituents ring me, terrified by the bailiffs employed to enforce the National Grid’s will by the agents, Bruton Knowles, who are based in Birmingham. One constituent rang me recently to say that bailiffs had entered his property without permission, using profane language and frightening his wife and children, who fled to a back room. The police were involved. Another constituent, who lives in an isolated property, rang me to say that eight men from National Grid suddenly appeared on her drive. She sent her children upstairs, locked all the doors and rang her husband, who was at work, and my office. She was terrified. An 85-year-old constituent was advised by her friends to co-operate, because of concerns about her personal welfare.
At one meeting I attended, National Grid had brought along a Gene Hunt lookalike as an enforcer to stand in the background. Police officers were also there, as they have been throughout the supposed consultation exercise. I received an e-mail two days ago from the son of an 83-year-old constituent. He had had to come home to protect his frightened father, who had encountered two strange men emerging from behind his garage, uninvited and unknown. I could go on, but I have made the point.
I am also told that National Grid has failed to share information with the local highways department. There has been non-stop lack of openness and transparency. It is all laughably described as consultation, but it is nothing more than outright bullying, using size and money to crush a local population.