My Lords, I will concentrate in particular on Amendment 6, addressing nuclear outages, and Amendment 37, which would protect recipients of universal credit from being liable to the levies under this Bill. I support the amendments in the name of my noble friend Lord Foster of Bath, and I am slightly bemused about why it is not recognised that we should understand the basis of the value for money test, given that it is in the Bill.
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Let me start with Amendment 37, which deals with universal credit. As we know, the hike in energy bills that has already happened is causing severe distress across the country, and that distress is particularly acute for those on low incomes who are often forced to choose between heating their home or feeding their family. It just does not seem right to impose further disproportionate costs on them from such hugely expensive
and uncertain projects. If this money must be found, it should be found in a more proportionate way so the burdens fall less heavily on the least well off. It is our hope that the Minister will give us some indication that the Government recognise this problem and will at least make some attempt to address it.
Amendment 6 addresses nuclear power outages and would require the Secretary of State to be of the opinion that sufficient back-up power sources exist should the nuclear energy project suffer significant outages or be unable to generate power at all due to delays et cetera. We all know of the huge delays. My noble friend and others talked about Olkiluoto, EPR and Flamanville, and I shall not repeat that, but we know that they are many times over budget and were over time. Flamanville recently announced another delay. If our reactors end up with that level of delay, what are the plans to cover the missing capacity?
This is not about just construction delays. When plants are up and running, they can be subject to frequent outages. Since 2010, Sizewell B, which is the youngest reactor in our fleet, has on average been offline for 64 days a year. Ten French reactors, about 20% of the French fleet, are currently offline. On average, UK reactors have been offline for nearly 25% of the time since 2010.
While it may be true that the sun does not always shine and the wind does not always blow, it is equally true that nuclear power plants do not always generate. If a plant such as Hinkley—I am told it is estimated that, when it finally comes online, it will form something like 6% to 8% of total generating capacity—goes offline, we had better have some back-up for it. I hope that in his reply the Minister addresses some of these points and tells us what plans the Government have to ensure that that back-up exists to cover nuclear stations when they are non-operational.