Climate Change

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for being true to the Maoist or Stalinist past that he doubtless has—the attraction to the left in this country of the command economy of communism in full flight is enormous. I do not know the numbers on local authorities turning down such things. The Chinese have introduced incentives for those who run provincial areas not only on economic growth, but on decarbonising their GDP growth. The hon. Gentleman, like so many people from his political tradition, regards any resistance from people as best overcome by further diktat from the centre, further driving things down. As ever, they want to characterise anyone who does not like the impact of their centralising measures on their local area as necessarily dinosaur opponents who must be ridden roughshod over. That is why he doubtless supports setting up the new quango to dismiss local people's views. That is typical of the left. I fundamentally believe that he and the Government are wrong to believe that central diktat will lead to more wind farms. As one Labour Member rightly said, we need greater community control and ownership of assets. We need to let communities feel that they are empowered to decide where wind farms are built. We need to consider the incentives that local communities have to allow wind farms to be built. If we use incentives, listen to people and treat them with humility and respect, instead of having arrogant centralising power, we will find that we have more wind turbines, both on and offshore, than under the current procedure, which leads to the increasing alienation certainly of my constituents, who feel that their words are not listened to because people above them think that they know so much better. That is not the way to get more wind turbines, and the people will eventually slow things down. My point is that we achieve more with honey than with a stick, if I may mix my metaphors.