I rise stimulated by the right reverend Prelate’s remarks, partly because when hydropower developments took place in Scotland, the nature of the opposition to them was very similar to the nature of the opposition to wind turbines today. Indeed, if you read any of the histories of hydropower in Scotland, you find the same arguments and the same kind of protagonists. Indeed, as I recall, one of the supporters of hydropower in the 1930s was expelled from the Perthshire hunt on the grounds that they were going to deface Pitlochry. Anybody who knows Scotland will know that Pitlochry is a great tourist attraction on the way up to Inverness and that the jewel in the crown of Pitlochry is the hydroelectric dam and the salmon leap there. If anyone were now to try to say that they wanted to close it down because it is spoiling the countryside, they would get rather a lot of fleas in their ears from the kind of people who say that they want to have hydropower but not wind power. That has to be taken into account.
Hydropower is one of the most attractive forms of generation. It is also interesting that subsidies for refurbishment have been made available to small-scale hydro, which may well be the case in Chester as well as in Deeside in Scotland. I had the opportunity of visiting one site some years ago because the kit had been refurbished in my constituency by the Weir Group of Alloa. The output had been increased from 70 megawatts of power to 81 megawatts, which was a considerable achievement. This is far smaller, but we can bring into play hydro opportunities that have perhaps fallen into disuse. It would be better if they can get the best possible deal because river flow—drought notwithstanding—tends to be pretty reliable. One would imagine that this, out of all the renewables, would be less prone to interruptibility and that therefore an amendment of this nature seeking to give a bit of extra assistance would be extremely helpful at this time. I support the amendment.