I have been to Finland, though not to look at the waste issue. When I was party spokesperson, I went to Sellafield and had tours of the site. I am very happy to go to Finland again.
I was making the point that there are three strong arguments. I have made the argument that on cost and on safety in the long term, nuclear does not work. Thirdly, it is the most depersonalised form of power in the world—there is no community control. It becomes the plaything and business of the few, rather than the energy of the many. It is not something that a community, village, town, city, region or country can control, but something that is developed and run internationally. We need to have control of our power sources, and the best way to achieve that is through renewables and energy that we produce and control ourselves.
The debate is about what we do now and what we ask the Government to do. The Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change, who has been a friend of mine for many years, has an important responsibility. Our party kept its anti-nuclear position right up to the general election, and it was in our manifesto. When we negotiated the coalition agreement with the Tory party, which is pro-nuclear, with a few dissenters, obviously we had to come to a deal. We would have had to have the same conversation in negotiations with the Labour party, because it is overwhelmingly pro-nuclear too. It would not have been any different; it would have been the same. I guess that we would have had the same outcome and retained our anti-nuclear position as a party. The deal we were willing to do in Government was that we would let it go ahead if it was needed, provided there was no subsidy. When we voted on the plan there
was, as my hon. Friend the Member for Cheltenham (Martin Horwood) said, an opt-out clause for Liberal Democrats and we did not vote in favour of the plan that included nuclear. The big question therefore remains: what is a subsidy?