This has been a tremendous debate and we have aired some important issues about the phenomenal subsidy that might be on the point of being given to Électricité de France. The hon. Member for Hartlepool (Mr Wright) made some important points. We do not agree on much on nuclear policy, but at least he was honest in making a straightforward request for public subsidy. The hon. Member for Newport West (Paul Flynn) and my right hon. Friend the Member for Bermondsey and Old Southwark (Simon Hughes) made a powerful case about the sheer scale of the subsidy. We could be talking about £30 billion being transferred over 30 years to Électricité de France, not from the Department, as the hon. Member for Suffolk Coastal (Dr Coffey) seemed to think, but from British householders and businesses. That is an extraordinary level of transfer to be committing to without any real scrutiny.
The Chair of the Public Accounts Committee, the right hon. Member for Barking (Margaret Hodge) and the Chair of the Environmental Audit Committee, the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North (Joan Walley), also made a powerful case for greater scrutiny of that process. I think that those on the Labour Front Bench were going in that direction, although the request that
details of the deal should be laid within three days of the event is not much of an improvement on their being laid months later. A miss is as good as a mile, I am afraid.
The hon. Member for Hove (Mike Weatherley) talked about the other hidden subsidies as well as the contracts for difference. They include the unknown liabilities relating to geological storage and disposal, and the £1.2 billion cap on the liability for nuclear accidents when the actual cost of the Fukushima nuclear accident was $250 billion or more. We can say that we have a very good safety record and that we have never had a nuclear accident, but that is what Japan could have said, the day before Fukushima, and it is one of the most technologically advanced countries on the planet.
In the light of some of the technical issues raised by the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee relating to the motion, and of the interest in the next debate on emergency medicine—which I share, as my own emergency department is at some risk—I am content to ask leave to withdraw the motion. I would like to put on record my gratitude for the support of the hon. Members for Hove, for Brighton, Pavilion (Caroline Lucas) and for Newport West, my hon. Friend the Member for Wells (Tessa Munt), my right hon. Friends the Members for Bermondsey and Old Southwark and for Hazel Grove (Andrew Stunell), my hon. Friend the Member for St Ives (Andrew George) and other hon. Members who could not be here today. There will be opportunities as the Energy Bill progresses to revisit these important issues relating to the public subsidy of nuclear power, which have not received sufficient scrutiny and attention, but we have made enormous progress on that front today. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.
Motion, by leave, withdrawn.