Energy Bill

I will certainly obey that instruction, Mr. Deputy Speaker. I disagree with what the hon. Gentleman says: the Opposition Members are just as divided as us. The fact that we are more interested and more persistent is what drives our numbers up. As I have said, the Bill we have been presented with today is a brilliant masterstroke. It covers all the points and presses all the buttons. I am of course referring to my Climate Change (Sectoral Targets) Bill, which I presented earlier this afternoon. If anyone would like to know more about it, then please get in touch. I would like to tell the son of the hon. Member for Wellingborough (Mr. Bone) a story, although perhaps later in his life. It is the rather more frightening tale about Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, which somewhat personifies the debate this afternoon. On the one hand there is a Dr. Jekyll, a kindly doctor who brings his renewable balm to his patients and cures them of their diseases. I was about to say that he did not need to use bandages as he could just use banding, but if I were to try to crack such a joke obviously it would fall a bit flat. On the other hand, there is Mr. Hyde, who is a boastful, swaggering person, and who personifies the nuclear lobby. He makes a great number of accusations against his detractors. In this Chamber, he has, so to speak, described them as sneerers and liars, and as unbalanced—we have heard it said this afternoon that to criticise nuclear power is to be unbalanced. It is unfortunate that that bad spirit has entered into the debate, as we should be looking at the facts of the matter. We should be considering it from all points from view, especially the climate change point of view, which I think I can speak for and on which we need urgent remedies. Would nuclear crowd out renewables? To answer that, we must look at the record. It is difficult to get precise figures, but the estimable German analyst and leading MP in the Bundestag, Hermann Scheer, has recently written a book on energy autonomy and he goes into this in great detail. He has shown that the OECD countries' spend on research and development on nuclear between 1974 and 1992 was $168 billion. In the same period, the spend on research and development on renewables was £22 billion. He reckons that the total spend on nuclear research and development globally to the present day is about $1 trillion, and that over the last 30 years—which I know is not quite the same time scale—the total spend on renewables is $40 billion. It seems evident from that that the nuclear industry has claimed a great deal of expenditure, and yet it has not delivered its promise. Mr. Scheer also goes on to quote International Atomic Energy Agency figures. In 1974, the IAEA predicted that by 2000 4.45 million MW of nuclear would have been installed worldwide. By 1976, the same agency, which exists to promote nuclear energy, dropped that prediction to 2.3 million MW. By 1978, the figure was down to 800,000 MW. Today, it reports that total nuclear capacity is a meagre 300,000 MW. For all the expenditure, which has increased and increased and increased, we have seen less and less and less for our money. Indeed, one is reminded of the increasing costs and the unpredictability of the whole situation. I will, perhaps, give way for one intervention, to any Member who wishes to object to what I am saying or question my figures. Two years ago, we were told that the cost of dealing with waste would be £56 billion. Now the figure given is £72 billion. I bet anybody who is pro-nuclear one day's pay that they cannot tell me what the figure will be in two years' time. Will it still be £72 billion? I suspect not.