Lincolnshire MP leads pylons debate in Westminster Hall
MP for Boston and Skegness Matt Warman told Westminster Hall today that he had never seen constituents so angry as they are about National Grid pylons proposals through Lincolnshire. He called for a more coherent approach to rewire the future of electricity that did not include making Lincolnshire a dumping ground for infastructure that could harm landscapes, tourism and food security.
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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.