Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker. I am pleased to have the chance to speak in this debate, and I congratulate the hon. Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) on securing it.
Before I begin my remarks, I want to address two of the points that the hon. Gentleman made. First, on the subsidy issue, of course it is true that we are paying more for nuclear than we would pay if we let the market ride, because the market would take us to coal, and if not coal, to gas. Whether we call that a subsidy or a price for carbon, I do not know. I personally believe that we must address the decarbonisation issue, that nuclear power is part of the solution, as is wind, and that the contract for difference mechanism is a way of acknowledging a price for carbon. If we want to call that a subsidy, I accept that.
Secondly, the hon. Gentleman said, as I have heard others say, that it is reasonable to subsidise new technologies such as wind, solar and all the rest, but not nuclear, which is an old technology dating back to 1956. That is a false argument. It is a little like saying that physics is an old technology because it started in about 1900 and we have had it for all that time. Nuclear is changing and evolving, just as wind power did. There are different types of nuclear power. Is thorium technology new, or are the different types of reactors new? It is a very difficult argument to maintain. If we are serious about decarbonisation, it is hard not to see nuclear as part of the solution.