Nuclear Industry: Cumbria

Julie Minns Excerpts

Monday 14th October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Josh MacAlister]

I agree with the hon. Member; I share many of the concerns of remoter parts of Wales and England and I think we both represent seats that have those issues. A plan in my constituency, which is not dissimilar to that of Wylfa, for a new 3.4 GW nuclear power plant to be built at Moorside, adjacent to Sellafield, collapsed in 2018. We now know that the previous Government did nothing to intervene or to assess the impact of that collapse on my community. Instead, they promised a new process that would deliver small modular reactors and set up Great British Nuclear to oversee it. That decision and others have allowed Conservative politicians to hide behind process for year after year, promising jam tomorrow. For my community and many others, it has been election after election of broken promises.

I first raised the alarm about potential roadblocks to new nuclear in Cumbria before the election, which is why I launched the New Nuclear Now campaign. However, it is only through questions asked since then that I have been able to uncover the roadblocks to siting new SMRs in Cumbria. Those roadblocks are specific to west Cumbria but are also a reflection of Britain’s problem with building.

I will briefly explain the exact nature of the problem. The crux of the issue lies in competing demands on the land designated for new nuclear at Moorside. In short, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority wants to use a large area of the land for the laydown of construction materials for future buildings that it hopes to construct on the Sellafield site as part of its decommissioning activity. Great British Nuclear needs to make a decision imminently about the site selection and, if Moorside is a contender, it needs to be confident that the land will be available for new nuclear plants. To put it simply, zero-sum thinking and the lack of a serious plan B from the NDA is putting the economic future of my community at risk.

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that bringing new nuclear to our wonderful county is not just important for economic growth but absolutely essential if we are to attract new people to come and live in Cumbria, so we can grow our population and begin to overcome some of the demographic challenges we currently face?

[Josh MacAlister]

My hon. Friend and I frequently talk about the demographic challenges facing Cumbria, like many other post-industrial parts of our country. New nuclear can put those communities on the map and act as a magnet for inward investment and migration from elsewhere in the UK. Hypothetical future decommissioning work, not yet approved or funded by Government and that could use different available land, is putting a very real and current proposal to build new nuclear power at Moorside in jeopardy. That is simply unacceptable to me and to my community.

I am incredibly proud of the world-leading decommissioning work taking place at Sellafield. It is our biggest local employer, with 12,000 people directly employed and thousands more in the supply chain. The work being done there under the leadership of CEO Euan Hutton is truly groundbreaking, and it has ensured that west Cumbria will continue to play a crucial role in the nuclear industry well into the future. I will back any viable new projects that speed up decommissioning and create more opportunities for my community. What must change is that that work must become a springboard for Cumbria’s future opportunities and not simply an anchor providing security.

In truth, I have met too many people in Whitehall who think that we in west Cumbria should consider ourselves lucky to have what we have. I have absolutely no time for that sentiment. It shows a complete lack of regard for the members of a community who have been custodians of one of Europe’s most hazardous sites and who want and deserve a diverse economic future that is not simply dependent on one employer.

New nuclear is the key to creating that springboard to a diversified, vibrant and entrepreneurial economy. New nuclear would create a Cumbrian magnet for the energy-intensive industries hungry for the clean, reliable baseload power that only nuclear can provide. It would build on our existing world-leading workforce and strengthen it too. It would capitalise on the good will of a community whose members understand nuclear and are eager to get building. In short, new nuclear power generation is in no way incompatible with my community’s role in decommissioning. In fact, it is a mutually beneficial endeavour.

I understand the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority’s position—the clue is in the name. It is there to deliver safe, efficient and effective decommissioning programmes for our nuclear waste across the UK. However, under the Energy Act 2023 it also has a responsibility to work in the interests of the local community. Our community needs and deserves more than simply decommissioning work into the future.

I am confident that the NDA can come up with a plan B for its future that will preserve Moorside for its original purpose of new nuclear. I say that with confidence because until 2018 the NDA was planning on the basis of gigawatt-scale reactors at Moorside. My community, which overwhelmingly supports the building of new nuclear, and has the skills and expertise to deliver it, has a site designated for new nuclear, so my ask of the Minister is simple: I would like his Department to make clear the primacy of new nuclear use on sites currently designated for new nuclear over any other potential future uses of those bits of land—not just those in my constituency. I would like the land needed for new nuclear at Moorside transferred from the NDA to Great British Nuclear to make that intent clear.

GBN has taken ownership of other land for nuclear developments, and it is now time that the same should happen at Moorside. The clock is ticking on the need for that transfer of land, as GBN will make siting decisions in the coming months. I also ask that the Government support the NDA to come up with plans for laydown using other land available, and that they provide long-term confidence to the NDA on some of the major decommissioning choices that lie ahead, not least on plutonium. Finally, I would like the Department to instruct GBN to assess the Moorside site as it stands, and not on the basis of any other future land use, hypothetical or real. It is my firm belief that the Moorside site will score very highly without those roadblocks in its way.

West Cumbrians are ready to play our part in Britain’s new nuclear future. We are globally recognised in the nuclear sector as an area with a match-fit supply chain, decades of knowledge, and the experience needed to build complex nuclear technology. We have a strong skills base that wants to deliver the net zero infrastructure of the future, backed up by the excellent educational institutions needed. My hon. Friend the Minister and the Government have been handed a mess by their predecessors, which they are now being asked to fix at the eleventh hour. It is my hope that the new Government will support Cumbria in our ambitions, and remove the roadblocks that stand in our way.

Great British Energy Bill

Julie Minns Excerpts

2nd reading
Thursday 5th September 2024 Commons Chamber

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

Thank you for calling me, Madam Deputy Speaker. I also thank the hon. Member for Frome and East Somerset (Anna Sabine) for her maiden speech, made on what I understand is a very difficult afternoon for her. I am sure that everyone in the House would join me in sending condolences to her and to the family of her friend.

This has been a most entertaining and enjoyable debate. Any debate that marries ABBA, Stan Laurel and Shane Warne is one that I want very much to be part of, so I am delighted to have the opportunity to make my maiden speech in this context. It is also apt that I make it during a debate on Great British Energy. It is apt not just because the transition to clean energy and tackling climate change are critical to Carlisle—flooding has already decimated our city twice during this century, and local villages are too often cut off by localised flooding—and not just because we need to remove the obstacles that prevent Cumbria’s farmers from connecting their solar and wind farms, but because people right across Carlisle and north Cumbria tell me that they are desperate to see that cut in their energy bills.

It is also personally apt that I speak on this topic. My great-grandfather, a Conservative alderman and councillor for Carlisle, was a man of unusually progressive thinking. In 1909, he urged our city’s industries to set aside coal and instead harness the hydroelectric power of the three rivers on which our great border city stands. I like to think that, whatever our political differences, my great-grandfather and I would have agreed that Great British Energy is not just right, but essential for Carlisle, for Cumbria, and for our country.

I am the first Carlisle-born Member of Parliament since 1918, and the very first woman to represent England’s most northerly city. It is a city of many little-known facts. For example, in the 1830s, it was home to Britain’s first black police officer. In 1916, David Lloyd George nationalised all our city’s pubs and breweries, declaring that their intoxicating effect on munitions workers was doing more damage to the British war effort than the entirety of the German submarine fleet. In 1963, the Beatles were thrown out of Carlisle’s Crown & Mitre Hotel after a complaint from the local golf club that the young Liverpudlians were too casually dressed. My predecessor John Stevenson is himself a keen golfer, and I like to think that while he might be a stickler for the rules, he would have recognised the fledgling talent of the Fab Four, and would not have been so hasty in demanding their removal. I say this because John was a strong advocate for the potential of our young people, and played an important role in securing the new Pears medical school at the University of Cumbria, which will open its doors next year.

In over 2,000 years of city history, the University of Cumbria is a relative newcomer, and its creation is testimony to the work of the last Labour MP for Carlisle, Eric Martlew, who did so much to secure a university for our city. I look forward very much to the opening of the new medical school, and the contribution that it will make to our Government’s mission to rebuild our NHS and train the next generation—like my own daughter—of home-grown doctors, nurses and paramedics.

My constituency lies between the Lake district and Hadrian’s Wall. It is plentiful in sheep and cattle, and is populated by folk known for good craic and a love of XL crisps. For the uninitiated, let me explain that the XL crisp is a savoury, cheesy—no onion—delight, whose availability in the catering outlets of this House I shall passionately campaign for. I shall also campaign for more critical matters, such as the completion of our flood defences—defences that were promised but not delivered by the last Government—the rebuilding of NHS dentistry across north Cumbria, and the growth of Carlisle’s night-time and visitor economies.

Carlisle and north Cumbria already have much to offer visitors. I challenge Members to name another UK city than can boast not only citadels, city walls and a Norman castle, but a Victorian railway station, a cathedral, and original Turkish Baths. At this point I must declare an interest, as chair of the charity working towards the refurbishment and reopening of Carlisle’s historic Turkish baths. It is one of only 12 original baths still in working order in the UK, the only one left in the north-west of England and the only one with a tiled interior made by the company responsible for the exquisite tiles here at the Palace of Westminster.

We are also blessed with a rich industrial heritage. Over the years, Carlisle has been a hub of food manufacturing, with the sweet manufacturer Teasdale, famous for its liquorice Nipits; Cavaghan & Gray, which produces not just any ready meals, but M&S ready meals; and Carr’s biscuits, home of the Table Water and employer of generations of cracker packers.

I could not be prouder to represent the city where I was born and raised. I owe a debt to Robert Ferguson school and Trinity school for helping a working-class child from Denton Holme to become the first in her family to go to university. Without university, I would not have become involved in politics and would not have had the privilege of campaigning for John Smith, a great parliamentarian, to become leader of our party. Nor would I have realised the ambition of my distant cousin Ernest Lowthian, who was Labour’s first parliamentary candidate for Carlisle back in 1918.

In conclusion, I return to my great-grandfather. At the opening of one of the bridges that cross the rivers whose energy he sought to harness, he said:

“Our job as servants of our great border city is to leave it a little better than we found it.”

That, Madam Deputy Speaker, is the task that I have set myself.

[Several hon. Members rose—]