Clause 9 - Designations relating to scotland
Energy Bill [Lords]
4:30 pm
Mr Richard Page (South West Hertfordshire, Conservative)
I have to say to the hon. Gentleman—he was my hon. Friend, but he has gone down a grade—that I was in Scotland last year. I took my dearly beloved, who is my wife as well, on an away day to celebrate one of our many wedding anniversaries. We had a lovely time going through what I have to say is the granite of Scotland. I am unaware of the sandstone of Angus, but if he would like a nuclear dump in Angus, that will be fine.
I shall return to the issue of Finland, because I could see in your eyes, Mr. O'Brien, that you were going to call me to order, and rightly so. I hope that no other hon. Member will try to distract me with irrelevances. However, Finland is working away to build its nuclear power station on granite. It is digging a spiral road to a depository at the bottom, so that all the nuclear waste goes down, underneath the power station. When the power station comes to be decommissioned, it will all be dismantled and put down into the centre of the granite. That will be environmentally safe and environmentally friendly.
As I said earlier, Nirex was about to announce a high-level waste depository in Cumbria, but the geological surveys indicated that the rocks there were not secure. There were fissures and faults in them, so the proposal was rejected in 1997. I am disappointed that the Liberal Democrats produce the fact that Scotland, with all the right geological aspects attributes to have a depository, would want, on the face of it, to opt out of that opportunity. As the hon. Member for Lewes said, this is a probing amendment, and it will be a challenge to the Under-Secretary to pull together his brief and answer the question.
Now that the Under-Secretary has stopped writing, he is obviously up to speed and is able to answer the question. I say that so that I can get back in his favour; he rejected the last set of amendments and gave me the brush-off, whereas I was his dear friend with the previous set of amendments. I hope that I am back in favour again, and should be interested to know how this probing amendment will demonstrate the relationship between the NDA and Nirex, which is an important one if we are going to move our nuclear installations forward to the future and, in particular, can make provision for their disposal.