Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)

I will speak to government Amendment 8 about community energy supplies. The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, said that, when she was at Eton, there was nobody there who wanted to have a small modular nuclear reactor near to their home. This is something that I think may be more widespread than just Eton. I suspect that many people will be looking at the value of their houses and thinking that if they have a small modular reactor power station nearby, the value of their house may drop. Therefore, I ask the Minister whether his idea of community energy supplies includes offering either cheap or free energy to people who live in the locality. That would make an awful lot of difference to the acceptability of SMRs—I once again declare my modest shareholding in Rolls-Royce—because then you might well have a situation where a buyer of a house that is slightly close to a small modular reactor gets a deal for either cheap or free energy. It is very important to make these things acceptable to people in the locality. I suspect that, if it is possible for the people who are putting in the small modular reactor to say to people locally that they can have cheap or free energy, that may well go an awful long way to making these things acceptable in a way which they otherwise would not be.