Subscribe to this blog's feedTen days ago it was the end of the 2006/07 parliamentary session, an event graced with an avalanche of written Commons questions and answers desperate to make the deadline.
Among the last-minute
crop were a number of queries from Tory shadow business secretary Alan Duncan about the authorisation process for new nuclear power stations, the resources available to the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate and the Environment Agency and the expected date for the first pre-authorised consent for a new reactor type.
Sadly – and you may read into this what you will – business secretary John Hutton answered most of these in the following vein: “It has not proved possible to respond to the Honourable Member before prorogation.”
That’s a polite way of saying bog off!
Mind you, energy minister Malcolm Wicks did reveal the cost of the deliberative research carried out as part of the government’s consultation on the future of nuclear power. A website was involved, as were ten Saturday meetings in UK cities with a representative sample of the nation.
Consultancy Opinion Leader Research trousered £777,626 for the exercise.
Public money well spent.
