LABOUR’S new flagship energy company will be an important test of the relationship between the new regime in Westminster and the devolved governments, according to Scottish Greens co-leader Patrick Harvie.
He told the Sunday National there was “huge potential” for the governments to work together but warned the state-owned GB Energy must not be used to further undermine devolution.
Harvie said that if the new Labour government took the same approach as the Tories by simply imposing change on devolved areas, then “we would have a serious problem”.
He is now calling for more detail of the remit of GB Energy after it was revealed that the organisation could get involved in planning disputes.
Planning is a devolved area and the suggestion that GB Energy might overrule planning decisions has raised concerns over whether devolution will be respected.
Harvie said that while there were aspects of GB Energy that appeared positive, clarity was needed that it would not be used to overrule the Scottish Government – particularly in regard to nuclear power stations.
“The UK Government is talking about GB Energy in some ways I find really positive – publicly led investment in renewables and publicly owned energy infrastructure which is great – but it is also talking about using it for nuclear,” he said.
“The real worry I have is that it ends up simply as a way of channelling public money into subsidising otherwise non-viable nuclear developments like small modular reactors which is a technology that the industry was pushing very aggressively a few years ago but is failing at a commercial level in a number of other countries.
“We should not be going down that route and the principal means Scotland has been saying no to new nuclear has been through the planning system, so we need clarity early doors that that is not their agenda.”
Harvie pointed out that both the devolved governments and the new Labour UK Government had been talking about resetting their relationship after years of “an explicitly hostile” UK Tory government.
“This is going to be an important test of what that means but no-one is quite defining it yet,” he said.
“If, for example, it means that where there is a shared desire to do something on reserved and devolved issues, they sit down together, find out how much common ground they have and figure out how they are going to do it, then great.
“There is huge potential actually on energy in particular because so much of it straddles the devolved/reserved split. There is huge potential for better co-operation but if it results in the same kind of approach that the last UK Government took of simply imposing change on devolved areas without consent, or even seeing explicit refusal of consent by the Scottish Parliament and going ahead anyway, then we have a really serious problem.
“It doesn’t have to come to that, it shouldn’t come to that and in particular some of the planning issues the UK Government wants to resolve are the legacy of the Tory government in England. There are huge barriers in the planning system down south over things like solar and onshore wind that don’t exist in Scotland.”
He said there were definite improvements the UK Government could make to the planning system south of the Border and it was possible the Scottish Government could make improvements to the system here too.
“We should always be willing to look at that constructively but the responsibility for the Scottish planning system obviously has to remain with the devolved planning system and the Scottish Parliament,” he said.
Another aspect that is not clear yet, said Harvie, is what role GB Energy is going to have in the shift away from fossil fuel demand.
“They are talking about more renewable energy generation, which is great, but that is actually not the area where Scotland needs the real injection of momentum because we have been doing really well with renewable electricity generation, and generate more renewable electricity than the total electricity we consume in Scotland,” he pointed out.
“However, reducing our gas consumption in particular and shifting away from fossil fuels for heating and transport also takes public-led investment, and I would like the UK Government to give us some detail on what GB Energy’s role is going to be in driving that investment.”
Harvie added: “There is huge potential for us to achieve more if we can find a way of working together but that working together has to be on the basis of mutual consent and the UK Government – unlike its predecessor – respecting the devolved responsibilities of the Scottish Parliament and its counterparts in Wales and Northern Ireland.”
