Poor Malcolm Wicks. The UK energy minister ventured north this week to engage his Scottish counterparts in a mature debate on Britain’s looming energy crisis, the consequences of climate change, and the future of the nuclear industry. But as soon as he mentioned the n-word, there was meltdown. He had hardly embarked on his mission to propound the benefits of the clean, renewable and safe power supply that nuclear now is before the missiles were hurled in his direction.
The Scottish National party accused Wicks of wanting to “foist a new generation of dangerous, dirty and unwanted” nuclear power stations on Scotland. The Greens, radioactive with rage, charged him with spinning a line from London. Only the Liberal Democrats, whom he had earlier described as environmental fundamentalists, were uncharacteristically quiet, but they are also firmly in the no nukes camp, along with the Scottish Socialists, of course, and many in the Labour party.
While Tony Blair grapples with the rising cost of gas and steers his government pragmatically towards an efficient alternative, Scotland is stuck in a kind of dark ages where the nuclear option is still considered akin to witchcraft.
Blair and Wicks are conducting an energy review, due to be completed in the summer. Its objectives include reducing Britain’s overdependence on imported energy sources, particularly Russian gas, and cutting fossil fuel emissions. The prime minister has already signalled his support for the building of new nuclear power plants when the current lot are decommissioned within the next 20 years.
Energy is a reserved matter, but implementing government policy north of the border is not a straightforward exercise because Holyrood can, in theory, veto planning permission for any new reactors in Scotland if it wants to. And there is every indication at the moment that it wants to.
Jack McConnell’s position on the subject shifts with the wind. He says he is against the building of reactors until the issue of waste disposal is resolved. But recently he has appeared less hostile, prompting furious allegations of a U-turn. Even to consider the possibility of a nuclear future is regarded by his coalition partners (and the Greens, Trots and Nats, who would abolish all nuclear power post-independence) as treachery.
Never mind that about 40% of Scotland’s energy is supplied by existing nuclear power stations, that it is non-polluting, secure (uranium prices have remained steady for years), economic, and relatively risk-free. Never mind that North Sea oil stocks won’t last for ever and that Scottish Gas has just hiked up its prices by 22%, or that France relies on nuclear for more than 70% of its power supplies. There remains here an irrational suspicion of nuclear power, a view, expressed by the Nationalist MP Mike Weir, that “we don’t need any more nuclear madness”.
The anti-nuclear lobby claims to have public opinion on their side. Most Scots, they say, are distrustful of the nuclear industry and would prefer to tackle climate change through windmills, tidal and solar power, and recycling. But the most recent British poll on public attitudes to new nuclear stations revealed that 54% were in favour. This surely is enough public acceptability for politicians in Scotland to move the agenda forward from where it was post-Chernobyl.
It would be foolish of a nation not to have a mature debate about it at least, said Wicks; a grown-up debate. He obviously hasn’t been a regular in the debating chamber at Holyrood, where members are greatly enthused by something called joined-up government but have no grasp whatsoever of grown-up government.
In hoping to win, by reasoned argument, the Scottish political classes over to his side, the energy minister has himself been foolish. Maturity comes with age, but devolution is in its infancy. In years to come there will perhaps be debates at Holyrood in which the good of the country takes precedence over the career plans of individual politicians. But at the moment it is vested interests and obeisance to outdated orthodoxies that dominate debates.
If mature debates had taken place on health or education, Scotland would by now have adopted a reform programme similar to England’s, our hospitals would be demonstrating real cuts in waiting times instead of manufactured ones, and our schools would be raising academic standards across the board instead of perpetuating the miserable equation: poor background, poor education.
If maturity crept into ministers’ negotiations with their local authority colleagues there would be less squabbling over funds, less wastage, and lower council taxes. In fact, if politicians started behaving maturely, Scotland could have a proper debate about the size of the public sector, which is so gargantuan it is stifling growth, squeezing out business and creating a permanent culture of welfare dependency.
Nobody expected a devolved parliament to suddenly appear, perfectly formed, overnight. It would take a while for the new systems and structures to bed in and years maybe for inexperienced parliamentarians to reach their full potential. But as we approach the eighth year of devolved government, it is disappointing to see MSPs still struggling to express themselves, reading even the briefest of questions or statements from scraps of paper. It’s as if they have abandoned any attempt to improve their delivery, so slack is the general calibre of performance.
Yet in a parliament so devoid of talent, some of the most able political combatants languish on the backbenches of their parties because they have made the wrong friends. How mature is that? When Blair likened the proposed parliament to a parish council, supporters of devolution were indignant. That was back in 1997, but the parochial attitude, and Blair’s impatience with it, persists to this day. Appealing through his energy minister to Scottish politicians to have open minds on the nuclear issue was therefore wildly optimistic.
To ditch ideas shaped by CND in the 1970s and entrenched by years of left-wing propaganda will take more than a persuasive prime minister, global warming and the prospect of a fuel crisis around the corner. Scotland will have its mature debate one day, but not until the last light has gone out.
