Mr Hugh Ellis, Chief Planner, Town and Country Planning Association, Mr Graham Bocking, Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, and Mr Richard Coakley, Vice-President, Institution of Civil Engineers gave evidence.

Q12 Mr. Dave Anderson: Colin [Challen] has asked most of the questions that I wanted to ask. On the specifics around Hartlepool, I have lived within 20 miles of Hartlepool Power Station since it was built. You mentioned about turnout and numbers and I accept what you are saying, I do not think three days is anywhere near sufficient notice, but the history of Hartlepool has been relatively positive and the only concerns that I have had expressed to me from people that live in that area was that it was not going to get redeveloped and the thought that there was not going to be a new station. If there is not a groundswell of opposition against the site then you probably are not going to get many people turning up, using in the word you said, protesting, so in a sense does having a longer lead-in time or more publicity actually create a bigger turnout? You say you should judge it on the turnout but what if there is not anything to which people are opposed?

Mr Ellis: My point would be that turnout is one test. As I said, there is the issue of a qualitative test about whether you are reaching people not normally involved, but in relation to Hartlepool it would not be a point about whether or not there is opposition or whether there is a pro-lobby about the case. I am not making a point either way on whether Hartlepool gets a new station. My point about it is if you are going to take a decision of that significance with a lifetime of 160 years, politically and morally, it seems to me, you are obliged to make every attempt to allow people to be involved. If you give people three days' notice then that starts to look farcical. You cannot make people participate but you can fulfil for example the ambitions of things like the Aarhus Convention by saying to people let us have a dialogue rather than us rushing up with a fixed proposal and shoving it on a community and saying, "There you are; what do you think?" What would have been so wrong in saying to Hartlepool and other communities directly affected let us have a year long dialogue running up to this. That could have begun two years ago when we all knew this framework was being produced. It could have been dovetailed more with things like the site assessment. There was one consultation over nine months ago about site assessment. That could have been joined up perhaps into a longer process because if you are going to try and reach hard-to-reach groups you are talking about community development, you are talking about somebody working in a community and being around to have a dialogue and not simply arriving, dumping a proposal and saying, "Here you go," and away. I am sure there will be widespread support in Hartlepool for the reason of economic development and jobs but there will also be some opposition. All we are talking about is making sure that is fully reflected and fully considered.

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Q25 Mr. Dave Anderson: The TCPA was concerned that the NPSs do not allow the IPC to consider need. Why would they need to consider the need?

Mr Ellis: This relates back to the worries that we have about reaching the right energy mix and the Low Carbon Transition Plan lead scenario. It is simply an issue that the argument presented to us is that market mechanisms will influence what applications come forward and therefore, as we have already debated, the IPC need not think about it, but the IPC needs to be able to understand need to ensure that we do not end up with a very highly carbon intensive energy mix.

Q26 Mr. Dave Anderson: Are you saying then that the IPC should dictate what the mix should be?

Mr Ellis: No, I think that the right framework would be that the National Policy Statements should provide more prescription on the delivery of the lead scenario in the Low Carbon Transition Plan. Having created that prescription it is for the IPC to deliver it. To give a practical example, if that amounted, crudely, to four gas stations and not five, when the fifth application came forward it would be for the IPC to say, "Actually we cannot see that there is the need for this application." That seems to us to be really powerfully logical and perfectly reasonable. Again it is something that happens in the rest of the planning framework.

Q27 Mr. Dave Anderson: You talk a lot about gas and the Government's policy of course is to try and steer away from gas. You never talk about security of supply and yet that surely is part of why we are going towards a mix? There is an obvious anti-nuclear slant either coming from yourself or your group. Why would it be that you do not consider the mix as a general whole and that you just want to talk about certain bits that your body does not like?

Mr Ellis: I think in relation to nuclear the reason that we are focused and upset about it is not because we have taken a strong position in TCPA to be anti-nuclear (although we remain sceptical) it is because of the issues around public consultation specifically, and nuclear happens to be the only site-specific energy NPS there is to debate. I am absolutely convinced that if we are going to have any chance of dealing with climate change we need a very strong strategic policy on an energy mix, absolutely maximising to the greatest possible degree our renewable resources. In that sense, if the framework delivered on than ambition - and that requires a mix and it requires consideration of energy security; I absolutely accept that - then there would be a strong case for the NPSs as written. I think our issue is what is buried in the NPSs clearly is a strong market-led idea about the energy mix and we are not satisfied that we can have confidence that the private sector will bring forward the technology that we need. It is not that they necessarily will not; it is just that the private sector has to operate in a powerful strategic framework set by government. The powerful strategic framework is there in principle in the NPSs but it is not there in practice, in the sense that they do not contain strong guidance about what the energy mix should be. Ultimately, I am sure the Government will be committed to wanting nuclear to be part of the energy mix. It has said that and that is policy and therefore that is where we are and there is no point arguing about that. What I am suggesting is that if we for example go on not having a consideration of need, we may end up with an awful lot more gas in our energy mix than renewables, and that really worries me, partly because of the potential economic development prospects around renewables and obviously more crucially because of the carbon intensity of that profile.

Q28 Mr. Dave Anderson: Would you not accept then that is precisely the problem we have had in years gone by in getting planning permission for renewables in particular, and it has been not very helpful, to say the very least, and that the hold-ups in the planning process have in effect caused the problems that you are talking about?

Mr Ellis: The problems about onshore renewables worry me deeply. It has to be said that we still await - and it is about to be published - the new PPS on climate change which we hope will provide even stronger policy. Most of the programmes of course are under 50 MW in the local planning framework and it is absolutely clear that we have need to have a much stronger sense that the planning programme is committed to delivering on climate change. The CLG's own research on that over the summer suggested that climate change only featured in about ten per cent of planning applications as an issue. There is a massive problem with the profession, frankly, and with the culture of planning. I put my hands up to the immense progress that we need to make inside planning on climate change, but that does not change the fact that we need to have an effective delivery mechanism and effective policy, and at 50 MW and above that requires biting the bullet about how much ambition we want for renewables. I would never set a limit on the amount of renewables, you cannot really have enough, but I would want to understand in detail before the NPS is published whether the heavy commitment to approving gas under the current system may or may not compromise our ability to build the amount of renewables that we need. That is my worry.

Q29 Mr. Dave Anderson: Let us talk specifically about the needs of the nation and what we need in relation to a baseload electricity power supply. You have put a lot of emphasis on renewables and how much you would like to see it, and we all would love to see a lot more renewables, but at the end of the day we do have to have that baseload that keeps the country ticking over. Due to our commitment to the EU that will necessitate either carbon capture and storage being developed or the building of new nuclear plants or the reliance on gas coming from international markets. Do you accept then that there is a need for these new plants to be built to maintain the baseload for the nation and that the planning process cannot be used as a stopgap to stop these plants being built?

Mr Ellis: I certainly accept that there is clearly a role for fossil fuels in the mix in the immediate future and going forward. There is certainly huge potential for renewables and the idea of a smart European grid for renewables was talked about yesterday in the media. I am also quite clear though looking at the issue of security of supply that we have approved under the old system either under construction or consented to construct somewhere in the region of 20 MW which replaces what is being decommissioned. This is in this useful diagram in the overarching Energy NPS and repeated in the Low Carbon Transition Plan. That is all under the old system, a system that was not meant to work and that does not include a figure for those applications for gas currently under consideration in the old framework. I am not making in any sense a ridiculous point that there should be no fossil fuels in the mix. My point is that if we establish a mix we should then try and deliver it coherently. If we are going to say, as the NPS does, that it is for the private sector to determine the mix, that is what the overarching Energy NPS says, and then we say to the IPC that means you do not need to think about need because there is need for all energy projects, need is just established ---

Q30 Mr. Dave Anderson: Would not the planning process guarantee what your graphs are showing that that would have been committed and successfully achieved under the present planning processes?

Mr Ellis: Not necessarily because the current planning process needed reform. I am not trying to suggest that there is not a need for a new framework. What I am suggesting is very simple: once we have established what the mix should be - and that is not for TCPA to determine - then the NPS in policy and the IPC in its decisions should deliver that mix. That is essentially what the ambition for private sector-led energy development inside a strategic policy framework amounts to. That is not what the overarching Energy NPS delivers for the nation. The overarching Energy NPS delivers a market-led view with an organisation making a decision unable to think about need, and that is not sensible.

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Q51 Mr. Dave Anderson: This is hypothetical to an extent. If the UK Government decided, despite opposition in Scotland, that we had to have a nuclear power plant in Scotland, a new one, we could go ahead with that and then the local authorities or Scottish Government would say, "Fine, we will have to live with that but we are not going to pass the planning permission for the new railway or road infrastructure", so the company that was building it would say, "There's no future in it so we'll walk away". Are we in that scenario potentially or not?

Mr Coakley: I would not express it in the same way as you have just expressed it with regard to nuclear and over the border, there are much more practical aspects on a station in England.

Q52 Mr. Dave Anderson: I am only giving that as an example.

Mr Coakley: I do believe that could be the case. Although it may be that does not happen, I think there is a potential for that to happen and more should be done about that. As I say, it is fundamental to get energy sources into this country and we cannot stand any delay of this sort of puerile nature of one having a priority and that priority being usurped by a minor technical challenge.

Q53 Mr. Dave Anderson: Is Infrastructure UK the body that can identify those problems?

Mr Coakley: We would be delighted to work with this panel on this area on whatever we can do to smooth these processes.

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Q62 Mr. Dave Anderson: In terms of carbon capture and storage, do you think that the Government has got it right in the fossil fuel NPS?

Mr Coakley: I believe that we should be saying more in the NPSs with regard to carbon capture and storage. I think it should be a document that looks more like the nuclear document. This is an opportunity to put more in here. There is an uncertainty about CCS and there is a lot of research and development still to be done. It has been done in bits in different parts of the world. We consider that it is there as an operable system but it is not, there is a lot to learn. I think that the NPSs could be used as a more fundamental guidance note for people to learn from and for the IPC to use and hit the developments with on submission. I think we are missing a point there.

Q63 Mr. Dave Anderson: Do you think there is more that could be done now because the whole point is this is a demonstration process?

Mr Coakley: Yes.

Q64 Mr. Dave Anderson: Obviously we will learn from the demonstrations, but are you saying there is enough information now to strengthen them already?

Mr Coakley: I do believe there is more that we can do with that part of the NPS, yes, and this is an opportunity to do it as long as we do not delay the process of getting these NPSs into position because, I say again, the challenge we have got as a country is to start delivering some of these projects before we see the lights going off.

Mr Bocking: However, the priority is not only in terms of the NPSs but also other mechanisms to get the CCS proposals built. We need the prototypes and we need to test the technology, particularly if the UK wishes to have a role in supplying this technology. We had better all hope it gets built in some other places because if the Chinese, the Indians and others do not install CCS on their coal-fired plant, which makes anything we are likely to build look very small in comparison, we are going to have very little hope of achieving any global climate targets. There is clearly a significant need there and there is even significant market potential outside the UK. If we can get prototypes built here in the foreseeable future, preferably even alternative prototypes to assist in making sure that capacity is available, to assist in pricing and so on, that is likely to be very positive for us and the environment. If we do not then we lose out but others are going to be carrying on with it anyway.

Q65 Mr. Dave Anderson: Can you be more specific on what could be done now in terms of the NPS, or could you give us a note on that?

Mr Coakley: I would like to suggest that we work with you and give you a note on that outside of this particular meeting, if that is okay.

Q66 Paddy Tipping: That would be helpful.

Mr Coakley: If I can say one last thing with regard to the NPSs and CCS. For me, the NPSs are there to allow us to put these pilots in place. In China, for example, they have just gone ahead and started to build a CCS unit rather than going through all of the processes, so they are way ahead of us in the practical understanding and appreciation of this because their system allows them to do that. We need a system that allows these sorts of processes, but be supportive of developers.

Mr. Dave Anderson: Nationalisation!

Q67 Mr Weir: On the question of biofuel, you made the point that there does not seem to be any role in IPC in considering where the biofuel comes from. Do you think they should consider this in looking at the development of biofuel stations?

Mr Coakley: I do believe it is important that we do know where the biofuel comes from. It is all part of the cradle to grave process that we have put in place in our thinking processes. We must know where our original energy source is emanating and what implications that has. We can talk about a number of faux pas that people have made in the past with not understanding that. Somebody recently told me that, for example, a 50 MW biomass unit running on timber, for it to be a sustainable forest needs to be the size of the Forest of Kielder and we do not have many Forests of Kielder in the UK and, therefore, we need to know where all of this material is coming from and the carbon implications of that process. Again, it is a holistic process. I would put it to you as an example in that way.

This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee. Neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.

The full transcript may be read here.

Promoted by Paul Foy on behalf of Dave Anderson, both of St Cuthbert's Church Hall, Shibdon Road, Blaydon, NE21 5PT