Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing the debate today. I also wish his predecessor well, who I understand chose to retire. He will be greatly missed. We enjoyed debating with him, as we enjoy debating with the noble Lord, Lord Wilson. I will focus particularly on the impact on the countryside, rural communities and coastal communities, building on the arguments put by the right reverend Prelate and my noble friend Lady Coffey. I will also focus on the cost and whether it will be put entirely on the standing charge, how it will be paid for and future energy needs. The Minister, in introducing the debate, referred to the Select Committee report, published on 7 July. It must have made quite uncomfortable reading for the department because it was entirely at one with the Government’s approach. There is one thing that I welcome with this approach, if I understand it correctly, and I hope the Minister will confirm this. A number of noble Lords have touched on the fact there have been very disjointed planning applications. You might have an application made for, normally, an offshore wind farm—I regret, in passing, the moratorium on onshore wind farms being lifted; that is deeply regrettable—then there is a separate application for the coastal station where the electricity generated comes onshore, and then there is a separate, third, application for the overhead pylons. My understanding is that this will treat all such applications as one planning permission application, so at least the public then know what they are in for. What I think the department must regret is what the Energy Security and Net Zero Committee says, “We have been immensely frustrated and disappointed by the disjointed engagement which the Government afforded us, severely limiting our ability to create added value, by test and challenge, which is the purpose of involving Select Committees in the scrutiny of National Policy Statements. The Government has failed to respect the value of Parliamentary scrutiny in this process”. Having served on Select Committees in both this place and the other place, I greatly value the contribution that they make. They have the time and the expertise. The committee went on to say that, , “we feel that the National Policy Statements should plainly acknowledge that this framework represents a significant departure from a market-based energy system. The relationship between National Policy Statements, the Land Use Framework and strategic plans needs more precise clarification, particularly regarding how the availability and prospects of a grid connection should be considered within the development consent process”. I place on record my regret that we have not seen the land use framework, which the Minister’s colleague, the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, has asked for on several occasions. It would have been very helpful to have seen that before this debate. Whether as an MEP in East Anglia or an MP in North Yorkshire, I have always represented deeply rural constituencies. What I regret about the statements before us this afternoon is that they will, in effect, trash the countryside. I am honorary president of the UK Warehousing Association, which had a campaign to have solar panels on roofs. This has been immensely successful. I ask the Minister why it is that the excess energy they are creating—more than they need for their own use—is not able to be fed into the national grid? This afternoon we are talking about infrastructure projects which are going to criss-cross the countryside, effectively trampling over rural and coastal communities, with no benefit to them, all to feed into the national grid. If we have a green policy that is proven to work by putting solar panels where I think they are more appropriate, on roofs, why can the excess energy generated not be fed into the grid? I cut my political teeth very early on when a second line of pylons were being applied for under a Labour Government in 1997-98. They were met with horror from the local residents, who set up, under the brilliant chairmanship of the late Professor O’Carroll, an organisation known as REVOLT. I would like to see that organisation commence again—it stood for Rural England Versus Overhead Line Transmission—for precisely the arguments my noble friend Lady Coffey has rehearsed, and I will not repeat them. Why are we transmitting energy for hundreds of kilometres? In the old days it used to be that 10% or 15% of the energy created was wasted. I am told that has been reduced to 5%, but it is nonsensical to waste energy. We then had a situation in the north of England. I know it is a very long way away, and many of you probably do not know where Newcastle and North Yorkshire are—I am speaking to the wrong person with the Minister present in the Room. During Storm Arwen, we lost electricity in North Yorkshire and the north-east for nine days. There was no hot water and no heating, and it was in the winter. So it would be nonsensical to plan even more overhead lines, which are also subject to adverse weather conditions. We also find ourselves in a situation in North Yorkshire and the north of England where, even if we wanted to drive an electric vehicle, there is no way we can charge them. Why can we not have some of the electricity that is going to be transported great distances? Why can we not keep it more locally, if we have to drive these wretched vehicles that will only do 100 miles? Apparently, they will do 300 miles if you do not have the air conditioning, heating, or radio on; if you are going to drive at 20 miles per hour they will do 300 miles. If you want to drive at 50 or 70 miles per hour for a longer distance with air conditioning or heating in the winter and the radio on, you are looking at 100 miles. That is just not sustainable. I hope the Minister will take the opportunity to look at this. On EN-5, the other issue with overhead pylons is very difficult. I had a constituent who came to see me when I was an MP, whom I found very disturbing. She came into my surgery in the middle of winter. She turned all the lights off in the room and said she was being electrocuted by the electromagnetic field that is all around us and, because we then had two lines of pylons in North Yorkshire, she was more subjected to it. Page 31 of EN-5 talks about electromagnetic fields. Paragraph 2.10.13 states: “Where EMF exposure is within the relevant public exposure guidelines, re-routeing a proposed overhead line purely on the basis of EMF exposure or undergrounding a line solely to further reduce the level of EMF exposure are unlikely to be proportionate mitigation measures”. I beg to disagree. If you are driving under this pylon and your radio goes berserk, that indicates there is a very magnetic force coming from those overhead pylons. I urge them to put them underground wherever they can. I would like to challenge the Minister. Why do these companies say they cannot afford to place these overhead lines underground? They are making—dare I say—obscene amounts of money. I think they have to justify why they cannot underground them. I seem to be honorary president of most organisations so, for good measure, I declare my honorary presidency of National Energy Action. It is very concerned about the impact of cold weather and how the warm homes discount is going to be distributed. That is a separate debate for another day. What concerns me is that the standing charge seems to cover most of these connections and all the infrastructure that we are talking about this afternoon. I would like the Minister to reassure me that the standing charge is not going to be increased as a result of the infrastructure before us this afternoon. I will just complete my sentence and say that I hope that the warm homes discount could be increased for those who are already in receipt of it, who we know are living in energy poverty, rather than spreading it more thinly to those who have recently been identified. I turn to the impact on the countryside of solar farms, battery storage plants and the interconnectors to which my noble friend Lady Coffey referred, and the damage to the countryside that the right reverend Prelate referred to. I hope that this is something that the Minister will consider. There is an application for a battery storage plant to be built very close to a school in my former constituency, near to my cottage. I understand that these battery storage plants are highly flammable, so that begs the question of why it is being built within half a mile of a school and the town of South Kilvington. After they have stored the energy, how are they going to transport it? Is that here today? Will there be yet more pylons there? That would be very helpful to know. In the recent past, we have been exporting household waste from North Yorkshire to Holland, where it is burned. I am fully signed up to energy from waste, as I am to the heat networks that the right reverend Prelate referred to. I understand that we have an energy-from-waste plant in North Yorkshire, and again we are not allowed to use the electricity and heat generated by that plant. I think that is something that communities would accept as a positive. I end by asking the Minister whether he will look at the environmental damage that all three statements before us this afternoon refer to. It can be mitigated by looking at the electromagnetic fields and reducing the environmental damage and could be totally mitigated by putting overhead lines underground. If we are going to have clean energy, there is going to be a hit for farmers. We have it on the record that 10% of farmland and 10% of fisheries are being taken out of production by the clean energy proposals. There has to be something in it for people in the countryside if they are going to have all this infrastructure placed on them just for the benefit of people living in London and the south-east of England. I hope that that might be explored within the statements before us to ensure that energy can be provided as close to the point of production as possible. I await with great interest to hear noble Lords’ responses.