Energy Bill

My hon. Friend makes an important point, but it comes down to whether any new generation or fleet of power stations will be built simultaneously or consecutively. Given that everyone agrees that it will take about 10 years for the first station to be built, and then after that perhaps five years, at least, for each successive power station—[Interruption.] Is that an official intervention from the Minister? I think that experience elsewhere in the world would suggest that that would be the sort of time scale. There is also the question of the resources, skills and people available to design and build future stations. Even if they can be built without taxpayer subsidy, we are not going to have a new fleet of them much before 2050, by which time the emissions problem will long since have needed to be solved. If we do not make the deep cuts by 2020, the escalation of emissions will mean that we are not on the trajectory to meet the 60 per cent. or higher cuts by 2050. The time scale is a real issue, and there is also the question of whether we need to take the decision now, and whether we should focus on other aspects. Should we let other countries take the decision first? I am actually in favour of importing our electricity from French nuclear power stations. I can see that in some countries nuclear must be an option. I can see the logic of the Finns building a new nuclear station. I do not think that they have fully understood what it will cost them, but I can see the logic, given that they were so hugely dependent on Russian nuclear power anyway. I can see the logic of the French making the decision some years ago, given that they had no oil reserves and declining quantities of poor-quality coal. For some countries, at certain points in time, nuclear may well be the only option.