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915 National Policy Statements 1 DECEMBER 2010 National Policy Statements 916
[Damian Collins]
My constituents have particular concerns. They are
typical of many communities living alongside nuclear
power stations who have grown used to them, and are
gratefully respectful not only of the energy that they
contribute but of the large amount of employment that
they bring to the communities that they serve. The
existing Dungeness B station brings about £20 million a
year into the local economy in Romney Marsh and in
my constituency. That is not to be sniffed at: it would be
difficult for a community to obtain the same amount of
investment from any other source.
My constituents’ concerns lie with Natural England’s
objections, with which the draft statement deals in some
detail. The statement gives an answer, but it does not
provide much further consideration that could help us
to address some of those concerns. One objection is
that building on the vegetated shingle at Dungeness
would damage the site, and that that damage could not
be mitigated. The counter-argument is that there would
be a relatively small amount of development, and that a
new nuclear power station would take up less than
1% of the entire protected area and thus could not be
said to damage the integrity of the whole site. Natural
England, however, believes that the damage will be
greater, and that it will be impossible to mitigate.
We would like to know what further study could be
conducted. Some of the land that would be lost has
been developed before: it is not virgin territory that has
never been disturbed. Much of the area that would be
disturbed by the building of a new power station was
disturbed when the existing power station was built. We
would like any further study to consider the areas
containing flora and fauna, and the vegetation on the
shingle, which is the reason for the designation. Natural
England says that if that vegetation is lost, it would not
come back, but in parts of the peninsula it can be seen
that where vegetation has been disturbed and lost, it has
grown back.
Is a further study possible? Could it be said that
Natural England’s concerns are not as great as it would
have us believe, and that there is room for mitigation?
We would welcome some guidance, either from the
Government or through the process that is taking place.
At present, the response seems to be an absolute “no”,
although there have been a series of detailed considerations.
EDF Energy, the owner of the current site, has made
three presentations to the Government during the
consultation, and Shepway district council has presented
the Department with its own report, written by Ian
Jackson. I know that those views have been considered,
but we have been given no further detailed information
about why they have been rejected, and we would like to
know how we can make progress.
The behaviour of Natural England raises a different
concern. A view is developing among local people that
Natural England is not particularly interested in the
opinions of others, but is interested only in its own
opinion, and that that colours its desire to extend the
protected areas beyond the current Dungeness site. At
the end of last month, Shepway district council passed
a motion which includes the following paragraph:
“This Council therefore rejects any need for the extension of
the Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay area nature conservation
designations. It further looks to Natural England to work with
the local population and businesses to find a more collaborative
and integrated approach in preference to the prescriptive approach
it is currently favouring.”
We would certainly welcome that.
Turning to the nature of the national policy statements,
the site report on Dungeness states:
“Given the nature of the issues at Dungeness, it may be easier
to ascertain that there will not be adverse effects on the integrity
of the SAC at the detailed project level of an application for
development consent.”
My concern in that respect is that no energy company
would take forward such a proposal for Dungeness if it
were not included in the list of preferred sites. The
Minister said to the Energy and Climate Change Committee
yesterday that national policy statements
“set the framework for major planning decisions. I think that the
thoroughness with which they address those issues gives investors
a significant amount of security.”
I agree; that is what the national policy statements are
for. However, if a site is not included in a list, even
though it can in theory be taken forward, no one will do
so without a degree of certainty. I therefore wonder
whether Dungeness could be included within the draft
NPS, but with caveats listing the concerns of Natural
England, which could then be addressed at a later stage.
I would like us to be able to get to that stage first,
however.
6.10 pm
Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): We
have a scandalously short time in which to address these
issues this evening. I have calculated that if we were to
stack vertically the documents we are talking about this
evening—important documents fundamental to the future
of our energy planning—the pile would be 7 inches
high. We have therefore been allocated 21 minutes per
inch of document. As I have seven minutes, I will
address just one third of the documents by focusing on
EN-1 and EN-5. However, I hope the powers that be
will press through the usual channels for a lot more
time in the Chamber to discuss these documents as
they go through the consultative phase, because it is just
not right that we have such a short time to get to grips
with them.
EN-1 is an overarching policy document setting out
our energy planning framework for the future. It deals
with our climate change commitments, and our
commitments to reduce our greenhouse gas emissions
by 80% by 2050. That, in turn, means the documents
have to address the decarbonisation of the UK’s energy
supply. The Committee on Climate Change wrote to the
Secretary of State for Energy on 17 June, stating baldly:
“The path to meeting the UK’s 2050 target to reduce emissions
by 80% requires that the power sector is largely decarbonised in
the period to 2030 (e.g. average emissions should be about 100 g/kWh
in 2030 compared to around 500 g/kWh currently).”
I assume that the Government largely agree with the
Committee on Climate Change that to meet the
requirements of our climate change budgets this, or
something like it, should be the scenario and that that
will be reflected in the planning documents that are
published. After all, if we are to achieve these goals we
cannot just hope they will happen; we need to plan for
them, and to achieve them through a combination of
planning signals, market incentives and supply and
trading arrangements.