INQUIRY INTO NEW NUCLEAR POWER STATIONS

That this House notes that if new nuclear power stations are built they will not come into operation before 2019 and so cannot in any way assist with the energy gap that Ofgem has said may arise in 2015; notes too that as regards to long-term electricity needs the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) wrote to the Sustainable Energy Partnership on 10 December 2009 that `DECC has not made any long-term projections of electricity demand/supply' and that `our latest projections were published up to 2022...and DECC is developing scenarios of potential electricity demand/supply to 2050 but don't have any definite figures for this yet'; further notes from statements made by the Government that it has already decided that new nuclear power stations are needed to satisfy future demand for electricity; believes that this is a wholly perverse way of making policy, whereby large infrastructure is built before an assessment of the long-term need for it has been made; and therefore calls on the Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change to suspend any decision to build new nuclear power stations and to commence immediately a parliamentary and public investigation into the need for new nuclear power stations and related matters including their cost, their effect on electricity prices and on fuel bills, and on whether they, or the alternatives to nuclear, are the best ways to reduce emissions of carbon dioxide and to create jobs in the energy sector.