Energy Security

I have not seen that comment, and I do not believe that the ambition we have set out for nuclear is unachievable. Of course we must address the issue of nuclear safety, but nuclear power in the UK is a safe and secure form of technology. There is very substantial security designed specifically to deal with terrorism, as I am sure the hon. Lady will know if she has ever visited a UK nuclear power plant. So I do not think that terrorism is the issue here. Security certainly is, but our nuclear industry is a secure industry. Nuclear is not a last resort, as some have said, but a vital resource for our country and I hope that there is emerging common ground between us on that. As we bring on these low-carbon technologies, we are not naive enough to dismiss the importance of fossil fuels for UK energy security. Generators will want to continue to have the flexibility that fossil fuels provide to cope with peaking demands, and they can have that flexibility while meeting our international climate change obligations. As we all know, emissions are capped by the EU emissions trading scheme—not an emissions cap on individual technologies, because that is not necessary, but a cap for power and energy-intensive sectors as a whole. That is why I believe that the Opposition's new policy on the future of coal is another potential threat to UK energy security. In practice, it would place an effective moratorium on new cleaner coal facilities in the UK. It would place a double dose of regulation on energy investors for no beneficial effect. It would lock in older, higher- emitting coal generators and would not make a jot of difference to whether we were more or less likely to meet our climate change targets. Instead, it would necessarily make us more reliant on gas imports—at a time when gas supplies around the world, as we all know, are increasingly politicised. Policies that might get three cheers from some lobby groups usually turn out not to be worth the paper they are written on. If one prods this latest one from the Opposition for 30 seconds or so, it becomes clear that it is ridiculous—short-term, populist, headline-seeking and naive. In fact, it looks at first like a Lib Dem policy, not a policy from a party that aspires to be in government. It is not just my views on these matters that, I am sure, the hon. Member for Rutland and Melton would take seriously; it is the views of Richard Lambert, from the CBI, who has condemned this policy in very trenchant terms, and David Porter, from the Association of Electricity Producers. Effectively, the Opposition policy is to make carbon capture and storage mandatory before it has been demonstrated successfully as a technology. That is the wrong approach.