Member

The Minister, the noble Baroness, Lady Taylor of Stevenage, spoke quite rightly at the beginning of the debate about new technology. There is new technology in how we can deal with burying power lines: ploughing, trenching, horizontal boring—which I suspect I am in danger of being—directional drilling and duct banks. Now that we can do all that and see that the technology is increasing, have the Government spoken to farmers to see whether they would be prepared to take on some of those jobs? I should think they would. Equally, have we spent enough time examining where the load could be increased on the existing grid, which would therefore not necessitate an increase in the footprint?