Greenpeace has accused the government of wilfully misleading the public in its consultation on the future of nuclear power. It has made a formal complaint to the Market Research Standards Council about 'numerous breaches' of the body's code of conduct by Opinion Leader Research, the organisation contracted by the government to conduct the consultation.

The consultation was ‘open, fair and full’, says Malcolm Wicks

The twin challenges of where we get our energy from and how we tackle climate change in the future mean that we need to make tough decisions now.

Time is pressing on these issues, none more so than nuclear energy with most of the UK’s existing nuclear power stations set to close over the next couple of decades. This is why in May this year the government set out a comprehensive consultation document explaining why it had come to a preliminary view that it is in the public interest to give energy companies the option of investing in new nuclear power stations.

We reached this view because we believe nuclear has the potential to make an important contribution to the security of our energy supplies and to help us reduce the amount of carbon we emit.

The consultation, which ran for five months, sought views on the information and arguments contained in the document.

It is disappointing that Greenpeace has taken the stance they have in relation to the consultation. We made every effort to ensure they had the opportunity to put their point of view before the public in their own words.

Wide range of people
We were determined that the consultation should be open, fair and full. We sought advice from respected bodies who specialise in public engagement.

As a result, the consultation process was designed to enable a wide range of people to give their views. Alongside energy companies, business and environmental NGOs, we also wanted to hear from trade unions, civic groups, faith organisations and local authorities. In addition, we wanted to understand what members of the public thought of the government’s preliminary view.

To achieve this we launched a website which made it easy for people to respond online, which at the time of writing had received 3,500 registrations and nearly 2,000 responses to the consultation. On the back of this we sent out direct mail to more than five thousand grassroots and community organisations.

Meetings were held throughout the UK with organisations interested in the future of nuclear power. These were attended by over 400 representatives from academia, business, unions, civic groups, faith groups and environmental NGOs. In addition, we met people who live in communities with existing nuclear facilities, and a further 200 attended these meetings.

To ensure we received a cross section of views we held nine day-long events with members of the public across the country. People were recruited to enable us to hear from a demographically representative sample of the UK population and participants spent the day debating the issues.

We made every effort to ensure Greenpeace had the opportunity to put their point of view before the public in their own words

Different perspectives
We didn’t just present the government’s preliminary view at these events. We ensured that people were aware that there are a range of different perspectives and we worked with organisations, such as Greenpeace, to ensure views presented were fair and accurate. Indeed significant changes were made to the materials we used as a result of their input.

Now the consultation has closed, we will carefully consider all the information and views that we have gathered during this comprehensive consultation, before reaching our decision.

Throughout this process we have been clear that it is not a case of one option or the other in terms of our future energy security. We need a whole range of low carbon energy sources if we are to meet these goals. Indeed we cannot become over-reliant on any one form of electricity generation.

We have taken this process of consultation very seriously. We need to move quickly but more importantly we need to make the right decisions. Our livelihood and the future health of the planet depend on us getting it right.
 
Malcolm Wicks MP is Minister of State for Energy