The signatories to the motion have included the Public Accounts Committee in it, but the hon. Lady makes a good case for perhaps extending that level of scrutiny to her own Committee. Of course because there is commercial sensitivity about some of these negotiations, it would be possible for those Committees to meet in private, as other Committees of this House do when dealing with sensitive subjects.
As I was saying, like RWE and E.ON before it, Centrica has decided that it is not going to touch these new nuclear plans with a bargepole—and it is not hard to see why. I do not know of a nuclear power station anywhere in the world that has been completed on time, on budget and without public subsidy. The new third-generation pressurised water reactors planned for the UK—sometimes called European pressurised reactors or EPRs—are already in deep trouble elsewhere. The Olkiluoto plant in Finland was begun in 2005 and should have gone on line in 2009. The latest estimate is that it will not be generating power before 2015, at least six years late. The first cost estimate was €3.7 billion,
but now that has risen to €8 billion. Construction in Flamanville in France began in 2007. The Flamanville facility is now four years late and counting, while the costs have escalated even further and faster than those in Finland, from an original guess of €3.3 billion, according to Le Monde, to the €8.5 billion announced just in December. One French commentator said that this latest announcement undermined the credibility of EPRs as a technology export, and Centrica was obviously listening.
Will anyone take Centrica’s place? EDF is apparently talking to partners it has worked with in China, but I would just warn the Secretary of State that, according to the recent Nuclear Materials Security Index report, China ranks 29th among the group of 32 nuclear nations on nuclear security and materials transparency. Given wider security—