Mr Malcolm Moss (North East Cambridgeshire)

I am grateful for this opportunity to make my maiden speech in this important debate. When I say that I am the new representative for Cambridgeshire, North-East, there is perplexion on people's faces, but when I remind them that it was the historic Isle of Ely constituency, there is instant recognition. I am most encouraged that my constituency has a tradition of staying loyal to its Members of Parliament. From 1929 it was represented by the Liberal Jimmy Rothschild for 16 years, from 1945 by the Conservative Sir Harry Legge-Bourke for 28 years and from 1973 by the Liberal Sir Clement Freud for 14 years. Over 58 years, the constituency has had only three Members of Parliament, two of whom became knights of the shires. One could say that my future looks propitious.

Sir Clement Freud will be greatly missed by his many supporters in the constituency. He enjoyed a widespread reputation as a diligent and dedicated constituency Member and his stewardship of first the Isle of Ely and later Cambridgeshire, North-East was both distinguished and effective. His career in Parliament was equally distinguished with a unique record as spokesman for the Liberal party on education—twice—the arts, broadcasting, social services, sport and Northern Ireland. That may be a difficult, if not impossible, act to follow. It would be an understatement to say that there was some surprise at the result in the election last June. However, the story that recently appeared in The Sunday Times that I was so dumbstruck with the victory that I had totally lost my voice in Parliament was, as the House will note, grossly exaggerated. I am glad to say that the affliction has soon passed.

I cannot allow this opportunity to pass without paying tribute to the. outstanding contribution made to politics in this House by the late Sir Harry Legge-Bourke. He was much loved in the Isle of Ely and will long remain in the highest affected of fen people of all political persuasions.

I trust that the House will forgive me if I decline to take it on a geographical tourist trip around my constituency. With the highest point only 35 m above sea level and about 85 per cent. at or around sea level, the House will appreciate my difficulties. Most of the land area is grade I or grade II agricultural land, which depends entirely for its existence on the intricate and extensive network of drainage channels developed by Vermuyden, the Dutch engineer, in the 17th century. While the fens would not claim to be first in renewable energy, for more than a century wind power was used to work the pumps to raise the water through the drainage system. Many of those windmills remained well into the 19th century, although their duties were replaced by the steam engine during the industrial revolution.

Without an efficient, well maintained and improved drainage system, my constituency would literally cease to exist. In winter we would be paddling around in about 2 ft of water, and in summer—it would have to be a better summer than we enjoyed this year—we would be squelching around in thick, glutinous mud.

The position of the internal drainage boards in the proposed national river authorities post-water privatisation is vital to the continued prosperity of my region—and I am happy to say that there is broad agreement between all parties to discussions on the best way forward.

Cambridgeshire is the county with the fastest growing population in the United Kingdom. That is putting great pressure on resources, notably for housing and social services. The county has a reputation for sound finanical management and the education department has long enjoyed a reputation for innovation, creativity and flexibility—no more so than during the past few years with the introduction of local financial management in our schools. Following the successful pilot scheme, the system has now been extended to all secondary and most primary schools. One of the most significant outcomes of local financial management has been the tighter control of heating and energy costs. Some schools have achieved remarkable savings. The lesson is well learnt—that once one is responsible for costs, one adopts an entirely different attitude to the way in which those costs are incurred.

I agree with the hon. Member for Midlothian (Mr. Eadie), who stressed the need for energy conservation measures. I applaud the developments that have been made and the money that has been spent by the Government in seeking further conservation measures for the future. Extrapolated to the national level, the energy savings that have been made in Cambridgeshire schools purely in education would save us millions of pounds. The same lessons applied to other local government departments and to commerce and industry would save us billions of pounds. Indeed, the hon. Member for Midlothian mentioned that £7 billion of energy is wasted in this country. I believe that that was the figure in 1985. I wonder what it is today, following the Energy Efficiency Year promotion of 1986.

Just as our schools have found it difficult to plan energy supplies and to budget for costs, the task is nigh impossible at national level. Centralised energy planning is, if anything, a qualified art rather than an exact science. The key is flexibility in scale, diversity, efficiency and economy of supply. I hope that privatisation will free still further the provision of energy, especially the supply of electricity. In some areas, small may yet return to being beautiful. My right hon. Friend the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Mr. Jopling) made that point when he discussed small schemes in rural areas. The smaller the scale the greater the tilt towards renewable energy sources.

We need diversity if we are to have a strong energy economy. It is folly not to have circumspect contingency sources of energy in case of activities and events outside a Government's control. We need insurance against disruption in our coal industry and against a possible flare-up in the Gulf war. Economy is best achieved by introducing the element of competition into the production and supply of energy. We look forward to the Secretary of State's proposals for privatising the electricity industry. Despite the events of the past few weeks, market forces are still the best and only sure way to deliver to customers services of the right quality, in the right quantity and at the right price.

No doubt hon. Members will use the debate to argue the pros and cons of nuclear power, fossil fuel power provision and every pet scheme from combined heat and power to coal gasification and liquefaction. However, we should concentrate our attention on renewable sources of energy. Putting aside the "long shots", in departmental parlance, of geothermal aquifers, solar voltaic cells, ocean thermal energy, and, despite the Norwegian project, wave energy, we are still left with an interesting list of potential winners.

I should like to comment on three of these, beginning with biofuels because it is of particular interest to an agricultural constituency such as mine. The main contributor in that sector is considered to be the direct combustion of organic wastes. Over the next 20 to 30 years it is deemed possible to extract about 20 per cent. of the total energy potential in that area alone.

In my constituency, as in others that are high producers of cereal crops, we have just gone through the annual problem of straw burning. It was especially bad this year because of the inclement weather. Most farmers follow the strict code that is laid down in the byelaws, but they, and we, cannot ignore or deny the obvious pollution aspect of that practice.

I plead for greater urgency into the research and development of an economic marketable dry biomass combustible system to help solve the pollution problem, provide much-needed income for our hard-pressed farmers, and establish a viable alternative energy source. Small-scale localised generating companies may well be in a position to take up the new technology, post-privatisation.

Although in theory a range of liquid and gaseous fuels can be produced by the thermal processing of crops and organic wastes at high temperature, we are told that methanol and pipeline methane will not make any real impact on the United Kingdom's fuel requirements until 2010. In the light of the current situation in agriculture, I urge the Minister to seek a quicker way forward on this issue by closer liaison with his colleagues in the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. The same could also be said of those systems of anaerobic digestion which produce biogas from the biological processing acting on animal slurries, sewage sludge, and industrial effluents from food processing plants—raw materials which are in great supply in communities that are dependent on agriculture and its allied industries.

I was delighted to hear disquiet expressed about wind-generated energy. I, too, have reservations about peppering our countryside with 75-ft high monster windmills. The prospect for the fens landscape is positively horrendous. I suspect that my fenland constituents would much prefer the methane route. Windmills would perhaps be more suitable for the Third world and for those areas of our globe that are sparsely populated. There are obviously possibilities for British technology, well advanced in this area, to make further advances and to add to our exports.

I should like to say a few words about tidal energy generation. One analysis has suggested that the United Kingdom's tides could yield up to 20 per cent. of the electricity requirement of England and Wales. Nine tenths of that would come from our major estuaries, the Severn, Morecambe bay, the Solway Firth, the Dee, the Humber, the Mersey, the Thames and the Wash. The Wash is about 10 miles to the north of the northern boundary of my constituency and any feasibility studies would have an impact on the constituency. I suspect that the Wash will be rejected as a possibility because the barrage would have to be enormous—20 km in length—and on present early studies, generation costs at 7p per kilowatt hour would make the project completely untenable.

However, the Severn and Mersey estuaries are different. Both have had much work done on them. The Government's recent announcement of additional money for studies into the environmental impact of the Severn barrage is welcome. One is struck by the sheer size of the Severn scheme. It would cost £5·5 billion and have a barrage about 10 miles long that would produce 6 per cent. of our electricity and take 20 years to construct. It has been said on many occasions that barrage schemes will stand or fall on their energy economics. However, in more recent promotional material one detects a move away from that to an emphasis on the peripheral and complementary advantages of amenity value, tourism, employment and possibly transport improvements. At this stage, that project looks so big that it calls into question the ability to attract the necessary finance, and if that has to come from abroad we may well have to take a foreign contractor. I question whether that would be acceptable.

The Mersey project gives us the greatest cause for optimism. However, it would be too easy to fall into the trap of promoting the scheme just to alleviate the problems of unemployment and deprivation in the Mersey region. The expected 5,000 construction jobs must seem like manna from heaven to those seriously concerned with the situation on Merseyside. Those factors aside, the scheme has much to commend it. It is on a smaller scale and will involve considerably lower costs. I am told that it could be started by 1989, and I suspect that a boost could be given to it by the proposed privatisation.

The hon. Member for Midlothian castigated the Government for lack of investment in renewable energy sources, but surely the priorities for the present are nuclear energy and the more efficient use of coal-fired production, and it is right that those areas should receive the greater proportion of research and developmeent funding. The Government are right to channel more resources to projects which have a real chance of contributing to alternative energy by the turn of the century. Tilting at windmills is just not in the Government's nature.

See this speech in context