Planning Bill

I wish to draw a short point to the attention of the Minister and ask a question. It follows on well from what was said by the noble Lord, Lord Chorley, and my noble friend Lord Caithness. The amendment uses the word ““landscapes”” and much heritage takes the form of landscape. In recent years, I have become more familiar with the landscape on the coast of east Essex and Suffolk. It contains some beautiful coastline, some National Trust properties and the Minsmere bird reserve, which is outstandingly beautiful. One can understand that that windy coastline may, at some stage, tempt wind farm developers. I support this amendment to the extent that there must be a complete appraisal of the value of that landscape before any such proposal is put forward. My question comes from paragraph 3.9 of the White Paper, which contains a number of bullet points about things that national policy statements would need to reflect. One is that national policy statements would: "““Indicate how the Government’s objectives for development in a particular infrastructure sector had been integrated with other specific government policies, including other national policy statements””." On the east coast of Essex and Suffolk, there are two very large nuclear power stations. I mentioned Bradwell the other day, which may well be redeveloped and there is, of course, Sizewell, which is a prime candidate for a further nuclear policy statement. If there is to be a national planning statement about nuclear power, how will that relate to the alternative, which some people in the area are pushing, that it should all be provided by wind farms instead? I found myself with a friend the other day standing on the coastline. Right down to the south I could see Bradwell; further north, one could see Sizewell. I said to her: ““Which would you rather have? A nuclear power station at Bradwell and another reactor power station at Sizewell; or would you rather see the entire coast, onshore and offshore, populated by wind farms?””. She said, ““There is only one answer to that question. Yes, those two buildings are large, but they are quite specific, clearly located and, in a sense, one has got used to them””. She would be absolutely horrified if she thought that, in place of that, there would be a complete forest of wind turbines on and offshore, which, even if they are all working, would not produce as much electricity as would the two nuclear power stations. As I understand it, there will be two separate national policy statements. The question is: how will they be related to each other? Will that be done by the Secretary of State putting that forward to Parliament for consideration, or will it be for Parliament to say, ““We have two statements; Parliament must decide what is to be done””. I would be most grateful if the noble Baroness could explain how that is to operate.