On Tuesday I secured a debate at the House of Commons on the future of
nuclear power at Dungeness, so that we could discuss the important
issue of whether the Government will support a new station there.
The fight for Dungeness is a fight for jobs, businesses and the
communities of Romney Marsh. I believe that is a fight worth winning.
The current power station generates £20 million a year for the local
economy, and it is estimated that one in ten jobs in Romney Marsh is
linked to the power station. We have a national interest too in
securing new sources of clean and reliable forms of energy if we are
not going to be reliant on importing gas from Russia, or indeed
nuclear power from the other side of the Channel.
The Department for Energy confirmed in its recent report that it
remains, ‘satisfied that Dungeness is credible for deployment by 2025
assuming that issues [regarding proximity to sites of ecological
importance] could be resolved.’ The Government restated this in the
debate and I wil be meeting soon with the Minister Charles Hendry, to
discuss how we could try to demonstrate this.
The main issue that is preventing the building of the power station is
the protection given to the plants growing on the shingle at
Dungeness. We should have a proper study of the areas where this plant
life has grown back on the ground that was disturbed when the existing
power stations where built. Maybe the plant life is more robust than
the objectors, Natural England, think.
Secondly, the Government can consider grounds of overriding national
interest to allow the environmental regulations to be set aside. Other
European countries have done this in sites where the same level of
environmental protection exists as at Dungeness. The Government has
also invoked these powers with other nuclear sites in the UK.
To help with this I recently requested some information from the
National Grid as to whether Dungeness could be considered to be a
strategically important site for the country. It would certainly seem
to be in a good location being situated south east of London and in an
area of high energy demand. They have confirmed that the charges for
connecting to the grid from Dungeness could be over 12 times lower
than from say the North of Scotland. For this reason they have
confirmed that it would be ‘more favourable’ to have new connections
to the grid in the South East of England.
Finally, there is an important question about the way in which the law
works. It can’t be right that it is so easy to set aside the views of
the local people, Shepway and Kent councils and supporters in
parliament, because of an European regulation which when it was
passed, no consideration was given to the impact it could have for
site like Dungeness. There was no consultation with local people that
expressed to them as clearly as bodies like Natural England do today,
that if the special environmental protections are introduced at
Dungeness, you can forget about having a new power station. But that
is the argument we are up against, and why we are fighting for common
sense to prevail.