§ Mr. Llew SmithTo ask the Chancellor of the Exchequer what contribution has been made to date to the national fund by the former Central Electricity Generating Board, Nuclear Electric and Scottish Nuclear from their decommissioning levy; and what benefits accrue from this investment to the public sector borrowing requirement.
§ Mr. NelsonIn England and Wales, under orders made by the President of the Board of Trade, the regional electricity companies—RECs—are obliged to contract for a certain amount of non-fossil fuel generating capacity. Most of this is nuclear capacity owned and operated by Nuclear Electric. The additional costs to the regional152W electricity companies of meeting this obligation are met by a fossil fuel levy on consumers, set in 1993–94 at 10 per cent.
Revenue to Nuclear Electric from selling electricity in the market and from the premium paid by the RECs and financed by the levy reduces the company's net external financing requirement. The impact of the arrangements to support non-fossil fuel generation is therefore to reduce the overall public sector borrowing requirement, although the precise impact cannot sensibly be calculated as it depends on the assumptions made about how the additional costs of non-fossil fuel generation would have otherwise been met.