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The negotiations between the UK government and EDF over the contract terms for new nuclear development continue. As well as a sizeable gap on the strike price there is also disagreement on the distribution of risks. In some ways this is just a normal negotiating process but behind the meetings and the attempts at news management are two questions.
The first is whether the UK really needs new nuclear. Read more
EDF faces probe into its relations with China. Getty Images
A new inquiry instigated by the French government into the international activities of the French nuclear industry poses a new challenge to the UK’s plans for a new generation of nuclear power stations. Further delay in reaching a final decision seems certain.
The formal inquiry, established just before the New Year, will be undertaken by the powerful Inspection Generale des Finances. The inquiry is sector wide and focused on potentially inappropriate transfers of protected technologies through the international partnerships developed by the nuclear companies. But according to the French press the inquiry is directed specifically at EDF and its relationships in China. Read more
Government plays at panto with energy policy. Getty Images
And so the UK energy policy saga continues. Recently it was all wind and decarbonisation. Now it is about gas and shale.
Each step is presented as the answer – definitive and final – but behind that rhetoric is the slippery suggestion of another review of the policy in 2016, which makes everything decidedly temporary.
In the Department of Energy and Climate Change itself, pantomime season has come early this year. Jack and the Wind Turbines will be performed by an all-star cast. Young Greg, played by Kenneth Williams, and followed everywhere by a small dog, goes around planting windmills – “look behind you, there’s another”. He is followed around by the Rev. John, played by Ronnie Barker, proclaiming wind to be wicked, contrary to the word of the Lord and trying to pull them down. Led, if that is the word, by Mr Davey, an eternally optimistic but increasingly emotional character, caught beautifully by Tony Hancock, our heroes wander around looking for an energy policy on which they can agree. Read more
Anglo-French relations could hamper negotiations over UK nuclear power stations. Image by Getty
Another European summit, and another step in the progressive disengagement of the UK from the core of Europe. I wonder if the UK government appreciates the impact of what is happening on the real world of business? Let’s take just one example. Relations between Britain and France are at a very low ebb. No one is throwing plates but there is now a mood of mutual indifference, which, as anyone who has lived through a bad marriage will tell you, is worse.
I was in Paris this week visiting the Banque de France. The Banque’s senior management were as ever exquisitely polite, but the sense of distance from the UK was unmistakeable.
Anglo-French relations are always complicated but the current round of problems really began with Franςois Hollande’s visit to London at the end of February. Mr Hollande was at that time a candidate rather than Le President de la Republique. He was clearly ahead in the polls and judged likely to win by the most experienced observers of the French scene. But Mr Cameron, usually a model of politeness when it comes to personal relations, refused to see him. Read more
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