PM should pull the plug on Hinkley

WHEN our previous Prime Minister and his Chancellor were rolling out the red carpet to persuade China to pour investment into the UK it became very hard to find anyone of note to say publicly what many of them said privately: that we should be wary of opening the doors to an undemocratic, expansionist regime with an appalling human rights record which had been our strategic enemy for decades.

I remember a leading Tory MP telling me why too: he said Cameron and Osborne were so gung-ho for Chinese money that it had been made quite clear that anyone who rocked the boat would face a very bleak political future.

We have a new Prime Minister, of course, and one of Theresa May’s first decisions has been to delay approval until next month of the Hinkley Point nuclear power plant to be built at a cost of £24.5billion in Somerset by a Franco-Chinese consortium. Now a report from the respected Energy and Climate Intelligence Unit has said that pursuing cheaper alternatives to Hinkley could save Britain £1billion a year. Just four offshore wind farms could provide as much electricity as Hinkley Point, claims the ECIU, with gas-powered plants and interconnectors to other countries filling any shortfall.

The Prime Minister should take note. The energy market is undergoing its own revolution and many industry executives believe rapidly changing technology will spell the end for traditional, giant power stations. Renewable technologies like solar power – itself heavily subsidised – have become more efficient and new developments in battery technology will allow households and businesses to store cheaply generated power for use in peaktime. The National Grid signed a deal to use batteries for the first time this weekend.

Meanwhile, the news this week that state-controlled Chinese companies are now the biggest oil producers in the North Sea surely makes it even more vital that the UK properly considers the strategic implications of inviting China into the heart of our nuclear operations. Frankly, Theresa May now has more reasons than ever to pull the plug on Hinkley Point. THE jobs market is booming with 400,000 new posts advertised by recruitment agency Reed in the weeks following the EU referendum. Virtually all parts of the country are benefiting. Scotland, though, is lagging behind with jobs up just 2 per cent – hardly surprising given the news that its woeful economic performance means it would now have a bigger budget deficit than Greece if it had won independence.