[Mr Charles Walker in the Chair] — backbench business — Onshore Wind Energy

Part of the debate – in Westminster Hall at 3:43 pm on 10 February 2011.

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Photo of Graham Stuart Graham Stuart Chair, Education Committee, Chair, Education Committee 3:43, 10 February 2011

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship for the first time, Mr Walker. I represent Beverley and Holderness. The Holderness plain is a flat area with a large skyline on the east Yorkshire coast. Unfortunately, it does not lack wind, so I cannot use that in defence of my constituents. What it does have is a tremendous flat landscape with some of the most productive farmland in the country, the towns of Withernsea and Hornsea and a collection of villages and hamlets. Funnily enough, the people who live there love the landscape in which they live. They appreciate it. It might not be an officially designated area of outstanding natural beauty, but the people who have chosen to live there adore it, and they wish to feel that they have control over it.

We have heard different arguments from different Members about onshore wind. To sum up the central point made by Conservative Members and Tony Cunningham, local people should decide on local wind turbines. There is a qualitative difference, not to mention a quantitative one, between a nuclear power station, which makes a huge contribution to national energy needs, and individual wind turbines. All the components of the coalition Government promised local people that they would have a greater say. We can tell the worm has turned when a Labour Whip starts to say so, as the hon. Gentleman did passionately and vehemently today, although, to chide him, I wonder whether he made the case so forcefully to Labour Ministers, who introduced the appallingly centralised, arrogant and overweening system in which local people's opinions are routinely overturned. He is nodding to say that he did. I congratulate him on that, and naturally I believe him.

The situation that the Government have inherited in terms of local democracy is unacceptable. It cannot be right, when local councillors, residents, MPs and everybody else in an area agree that a potential wind farm is not correctly sited, that they should be overturned by Obergruppenführers from some inspection regime in Bristol. It is not acceptable. The central thread of the manifesto on which Liberal Democrat and Conservative Members were elected last year was a promise that there would be a change. I believe that we can deliver more onshore wind turbines if we respect local people's views and do not set up the expectation that their views are meaningless and that they are wasting their time trying to make their voices heard at meeting after meeting. If we tell them that they will benefit and if they can make that assessment without being overturned, we have more chance of developing a greater constituency of people who recognise the need to green our energy supply and are happy to have onshore wind as an appropriate part of an energy mix and not inappropriately sited.