It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I am not surprised in the least to see the level of attention this order has drawn from across the House—a full house to debate an incredibly important issue.
As the Minister set out in his speech, the nub of this particular draft order is a plan to enable the exercise of concurrent powers in relation to assessing the environmental impact of and granting consent, or otherwise, for generating stations and overhead lines in Scotland, essentially devolving powers to make environmental outcomes report regulations in these areas to the Scottish Government.
We will not oppose this measure on the basis that it is our longstanding position to support the giving of powers that existed prior to our departure from the EU, and we recognise that Scottish Ministers are not currently able to amend or replace the processes in the Electricity Works (Environmental Impact Assessment) (Scotland) Regulations 2017, which underpin the regime for environmental assessments for electricity works, and which are devolved to the Scottish Government.
The Minister rightly points out that this work was begun under the previous Government, but times change and it is with regret that we cannot actively support this draft order because we have real concerns about the direction of travel of the key underlying policy areas under the new Labour Government. First, on pylons and overhead lines, we are very concerned by the Energy Secretary’s approach to building pylons across the United Kingdom. I can certainly say that in my constituency and across rural Scotland there is anxiety that pylons will spoil the countryside, restrict agricultural land use and leave homeowners unable to move or secure a mortgage for houses beside planned infrastructure build. As we set out in our manifesto, our clear preference is for undergrounding, where it is cost competitive. We worry that this Government—and the Scottish Government—have an ingrained disposition against undergrounding.
Secondly, under the plan set out in the order, Scottish Ministers would have to consult the Secretary of State before exercising the powers. But there is no proper detail about what would happen in the case of a divergence of views, or if the Scottish Government pursue an approach that is out of step with that preferred by the Secretary of State. Thirdly, following on from that point, we are yet to see a convincing plan that demonstrates how this extra layer will avoid added complexity in an area of planning and consenting that is already incredibly complicated and diverges hugely across the nations of the United Kingdom.
For those reasons—and those reasons alone—and despite the overriding principle of devolving powers from the EU to the Scottish Government, we will abstain on this order.