Energy Bill

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner). We have become accustomed to relying on an uninterrupted supply of electricity in this country although, as the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) mentioned and as I also read in a report from the Environmental Audit Committee—in fact, only the Minister has not recognised it—we are heading for a situation in which the lights could well go out in 2017. Every aspect of our modern life is plugged into the grid. There are usually no back-up arrangements, except perhaps for hospitals or dairy farmers who need to keep their milking machines going. For many vulnerable people and families, the prospect of losing power supplies is a real concern. Even our gas central heating systems and cookers rely on electricity to function, so there will be no Christmas dinner without electricity. In fact, a couple of years ago in my part of North Yorkshire there were power cuts on Christmas day, which created particular problems. We have identified that there are two serious challenges. The first, as I have mentioned, is security of supply of electricity and gas. The experience in Ukraine a couple of years ago, when Gazprom decided to turn off the supplies, showed that this is all too great a threat for many parts of the world. Of course, the United Kingdom is at the end of the pipe, and we have heard it asked whether Germany could pull back supplies that are already in the UK should there be a strategic problem. The second challenge—and this is the really big one—is CO2. When the North sea oil and gas run out, our major indigenous supply of energy will be the coal that stretches from under the South Yorkshire area to under my constituency in North Yorkshire to where the Barnsley seam extends. One decision that the Government have made, which I think was right, is to embark on a new generation of nuclear power stations in this country. I am disappointed that the Liberal Democrats have still got a head-in-the-sand attitude, whether it is out of political opportunism or whether they just sing too much to the tune played by Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. They need to wake up and realise that the nuclear industry has a vital part to play in delivering our CO2 targets.