Britain will face severe power outages by 2013 and run out of energy altogether two years later if plans to build nuclear and wind energy facilites are delayed, according to business leaders.

The Confederation of British Industries (CBI) has warned MPs that any watering down of a new fast-track planning system will have disastrous consequences for the country by slowing down the construction of new power plants and renewable energy sources.

John Cridland, the CBI’s deputy director-general said: “If we don’t have a planning system which enables us to do any of those things then we’re stuffed”.

Mr Brown faces his first Commons defeat on Wednesday when MPs debate the Planning Bill, which critics say will lead to key decisions taken by an unnaccountable quango.

Ministers say that the intention of the Bill is to cut the time that it takes to push through large transport and energy projects. They want a new independent planning commission that would take all the key decisions about where power plants and other big infrastructure projects would be sited.

More than 60 Labour backbenchers have signed a Commons motion expressing fears over the new Bill and about 30 are thought to be ready to support a joint amendment with the Conservatives to scupper the main element of the reforms, which would also speed up the planning rules for motorways and airport terminals.

Local councils are angry that they would be excluded from the planning process, which means that local residents would not be able to formally oppose the construction of nuclear plants or motorways.

Hazel Blears, the Communities Secretary and John Healey, the Planning Minister, were yesterday meeting Labour MPs as the Government turns up the pressure on the rebels to avoid a humiliating defeat.

“We’re in discussions with MPs about their concerns,” a spokesman for Mr Healey said last night.

The CBI outlined its case to MPs today in a joint letter with the Royal Town Planning Institute. In it, Mr Cridland says that the independent commission will only be allowed to operate within the confines of a series of new national policy statements — one for nuclear, one for wind farms, another for airports and so on — which will be agreed first in Parliament and which the commission must adhere to when considering applications at the local level.

Currently, there is no such policy and each project is considered on a case by case basis which means reinventing the wheel each time, Mr Cridland said.

The rebel MPs say that the independent commission should have an advisory role only and that the ultimate decision must then be passed back to ministers for the final say — a plan which some say will effectively mean maintaining the status quo.

Mr Cridland said: “It’s a mission impossible that will be delivered to the country on Wednesday if this Bill is gutted”.

Pushing the law through Parliament is the only way that Britain can meet the European Union-agreed target of generating 15 per cent of Britain’s energy from renewable sources by 2020, Mr Cridland says.

For that to happen, the CBI says that £50 billion worth of nuclear plants, coal and gas fired power stations and wind farms need to be built. Planning is also at the heart of Britain’s acute gas storage problem. Without the storage, Britain has to keep importing gas from Europe which has sent prices soaring.

“So the planning decisions have to be made in the next few years and they won’t be made if this bill doesn’t go through.” Mr Cridland said

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