Clause 7
Energy Bill
1:45 pm
Charles Hendry (Shadow Minister, Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform; Wealden, Conservative)
I beg to move amendment No. 7, in clause 7, page 4, line 29, at end insert—
‘(c) has a decommissioning programme for the facility, which has been approved by the Secretary of State.’.
Clause 7 relates to the offence of carrying on unlicensed activities. As it stands, it looks at the how a facility should be operated during its lifetime, but it does not look at how that facility should be decommissioned once it has stopped being used. My contention is that decommissioning needs to be included from the outset, so that we can put it on a level playing field with other activities in the energy sector—for example with wind farms, which have to have a decommissioning programme in place when they are established. Indeed, the hon. Member for Copeland has spoken about the need for a level playing field in relation to the requirements that the Government are proposing for nuclear facilities.
A failure to decommission a site effectively would lead to significant hazards, especially to shipping, if part of the rig or the injection system is left in position. Such facilities will inevitably decay over time if they are not being used or well maintained, especially in the rough seas that they are being proposed for. Amendment No. 7 would simply require that before a facility could start to be used for the importation or storage of combustible gas, there would need to be an approved decommissioning programme in place, which has been signed off by the Secretary of State. This could include, for example, a decommissioning programme to state what needs to be removed at the end of the period of use; the establishment of a decommissioning fund, and perhaps in that fund, a charge on the parent or associated company—as is being proposed with the nuclear decommissioning programmes.
It would seem that this is a modest change, but it would avoid the need to address this issue at a later stage when a facility has perhaps stopped being used, and the original users have ceased to exist in their current form.