Nuclear Power: Investment

Josh MacAlister Excerpts

Tuesday 10th June 2025 Commons Chamber

[Ed Miliband]

I thank the hon. Lady for her contribution. I feel bad about mentioning this, but she has slightly airbrushed out the role of the current leader of the Liberal Democrats, who was Energy Secretary for a period, but we will “Trotsky”—to use a familial term of origin—that out of the record.

I sincerely welcome her support for this programme, and she puts the case very well: it is a lesson to some of the Opposition Members sitting behind her that we need all the clean energy technologies; we should not choose between them. Being in favour of nuclear does not mean that we are against wind. I am the biggest enthusiast for offshore wind, onshore wind, solar and all these technologies. Let us have all of them, to get off fossil fuels and meet our electricity and energy demand.

[Josh MacAlister (Whitehaven and Workington) (Lab)]

Thank you, Mr Speaker, and happy birthday; you were born only a few months after the opening of Calder Hall, the world’s first civil nuclear power plant, so you share that.

The Secretary of State has made the major decision, which is incredibly welcome in west Cumbria, to unlock up to 200 acres of land at Moorside for clean energy projects, including new nuclear. This issue has been stuck for many years, and I welcome the Secretary of State’s efforts on it, the decision he made and the work he has done with the Cumberland Nuclear Future Board to make it happen. Will the Secretary of State continue to work with me and local partners to drive the project through so that we get something delivered at the site? Secondly, can he say more about the regulatory taskforce that is being undertaken at the moment so that we can cut through the bureaucracy and build reactors more quickly?