Nuclear Sector Deal

Chris Green Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Westminster Hall

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Owen, and to follow the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), who highlighted many important areas. He focused especially on jobs. We ought to have a good distribution of quality, secure jobs right across the country, and the energy sector in the north-west of England is vital for providing such jobs. I appreciated that on my numerous visits to the Copeland constituency during the by-election campaign—a fourth reason to visit Cumbria. The importance to the local economy of the nuclear sector jobs at Sellafield and elsewhere ought to be recognised. The high-skilled, stable, long-term jobs that the nuclear industry provides are vital not just to people in Cumbria but to many of my constituents, because Cheshire and Warrington are another centre—albeit a very different one—for the nuclear industry.

The focus on nuclear is increasing because demand for electricity will increase in the years ahead, for a variety of reasons. There is also a focus on carbon-free energy production, for a range of good reasons, including the need to control carbon emissions due to concerns about climate change, and concerns about where our oil and gas come from. There are certain parts of the world that we would rather not be dependent on for our energy—we have only to look at the problems Russia caused a few years ago by shutting down gas supplies to eastern Europe. To have security and independence of supply would hugely benefit the country. That is a reason for going nuclear.

We also need to look at our base-load supply. At certain times, such as the middle of winter and at night, solar panels and wind turbines do not provide much energy. There is a significant focus on those technologies, but we do not have the ability to store energy if we over-produce at certain times of the year, week or day. We must therefore ensure that we have a base-load supply. If that is not going to be carbon, we must look to nuclear.

On increased demand for electricity, the Secretary of State for Transport recently made a positive announcement about the next development in our focus on electric vehicles. If we are going to have more electric vehicles—whether they are charged at home, at businesses or in other places around the country—we need to look at power sources to ensure that they can be charged rapidly. We need to look not just at the production of energy, but at its distribution. I would welcome the Minister’s comments about the distribution of energy as we move into an era of more electric vehicles and other demands on the energy sector. Jobs are a key part of that, and whether we go for small modular reactors or full-scale nuclear power stations, we ultimately need cheap, affordable energy for our consumers and businesses.