Energy Security

I shall come to explain how we would do that in the course of my remarks. The hon. Gentleman should just be patient. The motion is also right to highlight the UK's renewable energy potential, which was estimated by the Renewable Energy Association at some 14 to 18 times the current level of electricity sales in the UK. The hon. Member for Rutland and Melton said that 1997, when Labour took over from his Government, was such a long time ago that renewables hardly existed then. Nevertheless, for a full six years the Liberal Democrat policy had been to increase the renewables proportion of energy generated to 20 per cent. I think our original target was to do that by 2005. The fact that we spotted the potential so much earlier than other parties is regrettable. It is nice to say, ““I told you so,”” but our job would be much easier now if anyone had listened to the Liberal Democrats and the green movement in those days. The Secretary of State was rather dismissive of Liberal Democrat policies, but the Government do come around to them, albeit 20 years later. The motion rightly mentions the potential of wind and tidal energy, and highlights the issue of the marine renewables deployment fund. It is quite wrong that such a high proportion of the money—£42 million of the £50 million in the fund—will go to technologies that are already commercial. We are thereby missing the opportunity to develop and support pre-commercial technologies. In contrast, the Scottish Ministers' wave and tidal energy support scheme specifically includes pre-commercial technologies, and so it has supported important developments such as the European Marine Energy Centre in Orkney, which already funds nine projects. That is in stark contrast to the performance of the MRDF, which, as the motion points out, has yet to fund a single project. Supporting pre-commercial technologies would enable us to make progress on issues such as the Severn barrage. I support the exploration of the technology that the Government are undertaking, but things are made more difficult by the fact that there are no demonstration projects up and running, or even planned, for alternative scenarios that might have a lesser environmental impact, such as the creation of tidal lagoons. An MRDF that considered pre-commercial technologies might be able to fund a lagoon demonstration project, and therefore make an important contribution to exploiting the enormously important Severn estuary, and other renewable resources, with minimal environmental damage.