­­­­_­Having seen his party rocket to the top of some opinion polls on the back of his strong performance in the inaugural leaders’ debate, Nick Clegg went into the Sky studio for round two feeling the full force of the media’s scrutiny.

With Full Fact finding the Liberal Democrat leader wanting in his use of crime statistics last week, Clegg could ill afford to make any further mistakes in this new-found limelight. Full Fact kept a watchful eye on proceedings as the leaders locked horns over foreign affairs.

Defence

Having discussed European policy, the debate quickly moved on to military spending, where Mr Clegg mounted a defence of his much-maligned policy not to renew the Trident missile defence system.

Citing a letter in this week’s Times, the Lib Dem leader said “If you don’t agree with me then read the several generals who wrote to the [Times] newspaper who said precisely what I’ve said all along… [who] say that there are cheap and better alternatives.” 

In the letter, Field Marshal Lord Bramall, General Lord Ramsbotham, General Sir Hugh Beach and Major-General Patrick Cordingley mention a “growing consensus that rapid cuts in nuclear forces ... is the way to achieve international security”. But is this ‘consensus’ as strong as Nick Clegg would like?

A wider survey of 2,024 defence personnel conducted this month by the leading defence think tank the Royal United Services Institute suggests otherwise. When asked whether ‘the security and political benefits to the UK of the Trident system clearly outweigh its diplomatic and economic costs’ 53 per cent (1072) agreed, with only 34 per cent (689) backing Mr Clegg’s position.

Further divisions between Mr Clegg and Field Marshal Lord Bramall emerged over the costing of the proposed programme, with the military hierarchy suggesting that renewal had an “estimated lifetime cost of more than £80 billion”, with Clegg placing the figure closer to £100bn.

Whilst the exact price is a matter of speculation, Mr Clegg seems to favour the £97bn estimate proposed by Greenpeace to the £15-20bn price tag put forward by the government’s own White Paper, although the latter does exclude maintenance costs over the lifetime of the system.

Energy

The environment also featured heavily in tonight’s debate, with Mr Clegg attempting to put clear blue water between his party’s energy policy and that of his opponents.

He claimed that “nuclear power is incredibly expensive, it would lead to average energy bills increasing rather than decreasing… all experts agree that it would take well into the next decade to get online when we need it now…27 per cent of all emissions go straight out of your windows and your roof”. 

How fully are these claims borne out by the facts?

According to the Government’s estimates  energy prices are due to rise by 6 per cent in real terms by 2020 due to the impact of the UK’s low carbon transition plan.

These costs are due to be borne by the private sector suppliers, which would suggest that these increases are likely to be passed on to the consumer. Superficially, therefore, Nick Clegg’s comment about increasing energy bills would seem to check out.

On closer inspection however, Mr Clegg’s assertion becomes more complicated. The increased cost of energy production cited by the Government is occasioned by its commitment to source 40 per cent from renewable sources by 2020, a pledge supported by the Lib Dems in their manifesto. The more pertinent question, therefore, is whether or not these rises are exclusively due to the impact of nuclear power.

Here opinion is much more divided. The Government’s 2008 White Paper on Nuclear Energy states that the cost per unit for nuclear power is roughly £1,250/kW, making it, the paper claims, a cost-effective solution. 

A report from Claverton Energy found that nuclear did indeed have the potential to offer cheaper energy than other renewable options, stating that “if nuclear can be built for £1554/kW, it delivers the cheapest electricity, at around £46/MWh. If coal prices do not rise above $100/tonne, it comes next, at about £52/MWh -- excluding the cost of carbon. At £950/kW, wind comes next -- at about £58/MWh -- followed by gas (£63/MWh).”

The report does note, however, that these forecasts do not include the costs of decommissioning, which has been estimated at £0.5 billion per power station by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. According to the British Wind Energy Association, once these are factored in, the costs for nuclear energy rise above the alternatives.

So the jury remains very much out on whether Nick Clegg has a cheaper, credible alternative to the new nuclear power he opposes.

Mr Clegg does seem to be on a firmer footing when addressing the proposed timescale of the nuclear power programme. Government policy confirms his claim that the first of the new generation of power plants would not go online until 2018, and even that is subject to some debate. One expert, Kevin Allars, told the BBC’s Newsnight that no nuclear power station had ever been delivered on time in the UK.

The claim that 27 per cent of carbon emissions are accounted for through residential energy wastage is one that dates from a 2002 Treasury report into household energy usage, still widely quoted in the media. More recent statistics have been released by DECC which places the figure closer to 15 per cent.

The divergence may be accounted for by distinctions in the definitions of ‘residential’: whilst the Treasury report includes all activities in the housing sector, including building and maintenance usage, the DECC report focuses purely on emissions from houses.

Pensioner Poverty

Nick Clegg’s final claim of the evening centred on living standards for the elderly. He claimed that “2.5 million pensioners are living in poverty”. This quotes the figures collected in the Department for Work and Pension’s Households Below Average Income survey. Whilst this statistic is accurate and up-to-date, it is worth noting that going by these estimates, the number drops to two million when housing credits are factored in.

Conclusion

With Nick Clegg protecting more political capital in the second debate than the first, it was perhaps inevitable that he would be more conservative with his claims. Certainly the evidence he cited in support of his arguments left plenty of vagaries and ambiguities unanswered.

His attempt to show a military consensus behind his policy on Trident seems to rest solely on this week’s letter in The Times, and isn’t necessarily supported by a wider analysis. Similarly the debate on the relative costs of nuclear and renewable energy has more facets than was acknowledged by the Lib Dem leader.

Whilst not necessarily inaccurate, the lack of context in which his evidence was placed meant Mr Clegg was not on as firm a footing as he often seemed to imply.

By Owen Spottiswoode