Debate on the Address

Nuclear did not work any less than renewables worked. Is the hon. Gentleman saying—I do not wish him to intervene again because I want to keep going, but he might think about this—that therefore this country should not have renewables either? A point that I made to the hon. Member for Banff and Buchan is important: a lot of the business plans for wind farms are not economic because of the cost of interface with the grid and the fact that we cannot have wind farms in just one place. It may be, long term, that we come up with a viable solution—say, for wave power—but that is not yet viable. My point is that we cannot wait. If it is in the interest of the Government and the nation to have diversified energy, nuclear must play a role and we must find a way to make it possible for it to do so. We could change carbon trading and make it available to the nuclear industry, we could ask the taxpayer to bear, wholly or in part, the decommissioning costs down the track—technology is improving the risk profile of that, by the way—or we could extend the renewables obligation.