I was so hopeful that I was getting an answer there on the hundreds of billions of pounds that are being committed.
Returning to Hinkley Point C, we hear how advanced the project is and how well it is going, but the reality in terms of cost is that it is £4.5 billion over the initial estimates, which is 25% over budget. On progress, the commissioning date for unit one has now been put back to June 2026, instead of the anticipated 2025, but they also admit there is a programme risk of up to 15 months on top of that. That means that it could be September 2027 before unit 1 of Hinkley is operational and unit 2 will then follow a further year behind. So it is realistic to say that Hinkley Point C will not be fully operational until 2027-28, which is 10 years after we were initially told that Hinkley Point C was required to stop the lights going out. Given that the lights have not gone out, that undermines the original case for Hinkley.
We have to bear in mind that the EPR system has still not been shown to be successful. Flamanville in France is expected to start generating to the grid in 2024, 12 years late. Finland’s project has been delayed yet again, until next year, and it is 13 years late. Both have been crippled with spiralling cost increases.