00:00I beg to move that this House has considered pylons and the National Grid's Great Grid
00:05upgrade.
00:06I want to thank the Backbench Business Committee for awarding this debate.
00:11It is a busy day in politics, as many of you will know, so I want to begin by saying that
00:16a number of colleagues have asked me to mention the work that they are doing, sharing the
00:22concerns that many of us will have here about the approach that National Grid is taking
00:28and proposals to, in many cases, I believe unnecessarily, cover the landscape of some
00:34of the most beautiful parts of the country in pylons that will make permanent damage
00:39to the local economy and to the local landscape.
00:42Specifically, my neighbour in Louth and Horncastle, the Member for Waveney, for Cleethorpes, for
00:47Montgomeryshire, for Sleaford and North Hycombe, for Brentwood and Nongar, and also the Member
00:52for South Suffolk have all done huge amounts of work on this, and without putting words
00:57in their mouth, all share at least some of the concerns that I am going to mention today.
01:04And I also want to say that while I am grateful to my Honourable Friend for responding for
01:09the Government, I hope that he will take back our concerns to the Policy Minister for this
01:14issue.
01:15And I'm sure that the Minister will be grateful for another meeting with this group on this
01:22important matter.
01:25Mrs Latham, I want to begin by saying that my constituents are angry.
01:29They're angry with National Grid, they're angry at the proposals, as I've said, to rewire
01:36the National Grid in such a way that uses Lincolnshire as what is frankly a dumping
01:41ground for infrastructure that could be done better and could be done differently.
01:48The proposal for a line from Grimsby to Walpole is many tens of kilometres using pylons across
01:57the country in a way that could be done underground or, even better, could in many ways be done
02:04offshore.
02:05Now, this proposal is unwelcome enough in itself, but National Grid tell us that the
02:10constraints the Government put on them mean that they are required to use pylons rather
02:16than underground or offshore.
02:19National Grid also then say that the new eastern green link is only viable when it is largely
02:25offshore.
02:26So the point I want to make today is that the thing that angers my constituents about
02:32this proposal and angers many of the constituents represented by colleagues here today is not
02:39simply a desire to see the local economy and the local landscape preserved from the blight
02:44of pylons.
02:45It's an anger of what feels like an incoherent strategy from National Grid.
02:52I have never had more emails, I have never had more packed public meetings on an issue
02:59such as, on any other issue than this.
03:02They don't deny that there is a real need to upgrade the grid for the future.
03:07They want to see value for money for taxpayers, they want to see landscapes not unnecessarily
03:12blighted and they want to see an approach that acknowledges that the economic impact
03:18and the impact on food security should be the Government's coherent top priority.
Comments