8th September 2007

Stroud District Green party has joined environmental groups by withdrawing from a consultation today on whether to build new nuclear power stations, accusing the government of a "public relations stitch-up".

The consultation process was forced upon the government by the high court, which ruled in February that a previous consultation was "seriously flawed" and "manifestly inadequate and unfair".

Cllr Martin Whiteside, the Green party's Parliamentary candidate for Stroud said: "Stroud Greens have in the past made considerable effort to attend Government consultations on nuclear power and submit detailed reports. However it is clear this consultation is about promoting the arguments for nuclear power. As a matter of law, the government should not change its policy on nuclear power until it has carried out a public consultation yet Brown is publicly supporting more nuclear reactors."

Martin Whiteside, who is a Stroud District councillor said: "The consultation documents are also misleading saying for example, that the nuclear waste problem is solved. It clearly is not. They also say nuclear power is cheaper than wind even though the government's own published documents show the exact opposite is true."

Meetings will be held across the UK today in which members of the public will look at the case for and against nuclear power. But Stroud District Green party has joined environmental groups who have pulled out because they are unhappy at the way the arguments will be set out. Other groups who have pulled out include Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth, WWF and Green Alliance.

Stroud Green Party is organising a public meeting on October 9th at 7pm in the Old Town Hall entitled "Living In The Shadow" which will bring national experts on nuclear power to Stroud to discuss whether Oldbury is safe and whether nuclear power can help stop climate change.

Greenpeace news release below:

GREEN GROUPS PULL OUT OF BROWN'S NUCLEAR CONSULTATION

It's a sham, they say, in blow to ministers' nuclear ambitionsBritain ís biggest environment groups this morning pulled out of Gordon Brownís public consultation on nuclear power, calling it a sham.

The move by Greenpeace, the Green Alliance, WWF and Friends of the Earth ñ groups with a combined membership of hundreds of thousands ñ is born of frustration after it became apparent the consultation was a rubber stamping exercise designed to push through the Prime Ministerís pre-ordained policy on nuclear energy. It does not provide fair or balanced information and fails to fully consider the alternatives to nuclear power.

The Green Alliance is the leading green lobbying coalition, comprising all the major UK environment groups. CND has also pulled out of the consultation.

Earlier this year Greenpeace won a High Court ruling overturning an earlier consultation. In his February ruling Mr. Justice Sullivan called the first consultation ìmanifestly unfairî and ìunlawful,î adding that it was îseriously flawedî and ìmanifestly inadequateî  because insufficient information had been made available by the Government for consultees to make an ìintelligent responseî. Greenpeace lawyers are now examining the possibility of going back to court to overturn the second consultation.

A number of meetings are being held across the country tomorrow at which just over 1,000 selected members of the public are being asked their views on nuclear power. The four green groups are now advising their members that the meetings are no more than a government public relations device.

In a keynote speech on Monday the Prime Minister declared:"I believe that Britain needs a new type of politics which embraces everyone in this nation, not just a few.î But adossier compiled by Greenpeace and released today reveals how the replacement consultation has been designed to deliver one policy ñ nuclear new-build ñ regardless of what the public says.

Politicians appear to have pre-empted the new consultation. In February, after losing in the High Court, Tony Blair said "This won't affect the policy at all." In May on BBCís Politics Show Alistair Darling said, "I believe that nuclear ought to be part of the mix." InJuly GordonBrown told MPs, ìwe have made the decision to continue with nuclear powerî before the new consultation had finished. The following week, after Greenpeace lawyers reminded the government of its legal obligation to consult,Labour MP Jamie Reed (a former Sellafield press officer) asked a planted question to which Brown gave a prepared answer, saying heíd only decide policy after the consultation. The episode laid bare the reality ñ that policy was fixed and the consultation a sham.

The nuclear dossier reveals that:

•     Despite clear advice from its own environmental watchdog, the Sustainable Development Commission, who suggested that at least nine months should be set aside to properly consult, the Government has pressed on with a rushed consultation that is shoe-horned into half this time. Government officials conceded that this rush is linked to the nuclear industryís concerns about getting new reactors built to their own timelines.

•     The consultation materials provided for the public are misleading, inaccurate and biased towards nuclear power. A document claims that oneof the ìadvantagesî of nuclear power is that ìit is substantially cheaper than wind generation.î (Stakeholder materials ñ Reference Sheet 3: The main benefits and disadvantages of the different electricity sources). Yet the Governmentís own figures show that the cost of wind energy is cheaper than nuclear (See http://www.bwea.com/energy/myths.html), but this fact was kept from the public.

•     The Government has refused to delay this nuclear consultation until the findings of a further consultation on how to deal with nuclear waste has finished. No explanation for this baffling decision has ever been given. It meanspeople are being asked to make a decision about allowing more nuclear plants, and more radioactive waste, before the consultation on how we deal with nuclear waste has finished.

•     Repeated requests from NGOs for updates from Government as to how the development of public materials for the consultation was proceeding were ignored.

•     Though they claim to only have a preliminary view that new nuclear power should be supported, the questions the Government has chosen to ask at public events are skewed towards painting nuclear in a good light. For instance they ask ìIn the context of tackling climate change and ensuring energy security do you agree or disagree that it would be in the public interest to give energy companies the option of investing in new nuclear power stations?î (Stakeholder materials ñ Participant Handouts 1).

•     In the consultation the Government refuses to say exactly how the taxpayer will be protected from handing out massive subsidies to the nuclear industry to help it pay to decommission nuclear power stations and deal with the highly radioactive waste they produce. It merely claims industry will have to pay its ìfull shareî of these costs.

These are just a few examples from a catalogue of problems NGOs today revealed with the Governmentís nuclear consultation. For more read the dossier Talking Nonsense ñ the 2007 Nuclear Consultation.

Greenpeace Executive Director John Sauven said: "This new consultation is a sham and a fraud. It manages somehow to be just as skewed as the last, and seems to have been designed to ignore the views of the public while simultaneously telling people what they should think. This government canít get nuclear power past a fair consultation because the policy is environmentally, financially and scientifically flawed. That's why ministers have gone for a stitch-up."

He continued: "A glance at the consultation document and Gordon Brownís promise of a new kind of politics looks like a joke. Compared to Blair itís the same style, different sofa. Itís not too late for ministers to salvage this process and avoid another legal showdown. But if they wonít listen to the public they might once again be forced to listen to a legal mauling from the High Court."

Kate Hudson of CND said: "Given the dangers presented to the public by nuclear power, it is vital that we have a full and rigorous inquiry. In reality it appears that, second time around, we are merely presented with yet another charade. The British people deserve better."

The construction of new nuclear power stations would be disastrous for Britainís efforts to tackle climate change because:

•     Replacing all our existing nuclear power stations will cost billions and leave a legacy of radioactive waste for thousands of years, while cutting our carbon emissions by a mere 4% sometime after 2020. This is too little, too late and itís hard to think of a worse way to spend the nationís finite climate budget. That 4% reduction will be more than wiped out by the governmentís plans for aviation expansion alone.

•     Nuclear power stations only produce electricity. The bulk of our energy needs are for heat and transport ñ nuclear only marginally addresses our need for hot water and central heating and doesnít meet our needs for transport at all.

•     Climate change is a global problem requiring a global solution. According to new research, for nuclear power to play any sort of role in tackling climate change you would need to build one new reactor somewhere in the world every week until 2075.

•     The Finnish Government recently gave the go-ahead for the construction of Western Europeís first nuclear power station built since the early 1990s as a means of ëcombating climate changeí. The project is already years behind schedule and hundreds of millions of pounds over budget. Worse, by taking the nuclear option investment in clean renewable technology has begun to fall away.

For more information and to see the dossier Talking Nonsense ñ the 2007 Nuclear Consultation. call the Greenpeace press office ñ 0207 865 8255 or visit www.greenpeace.org.uk