Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 27th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[The Prime Minister]

First, I congratulate my hon. Friend for completing the London marathon earlier this year and, I know, raising money for a very worthy local cause. I am happy to join him in wishing Alan Bowler, the Halesowen and Rowley Regis rotary club, and all those taking part in Sunday’s fun run the very best of luck. They are doing it for good causes and we congratulate them and wish them well.

[Luke Pollard (Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport) (Lab/Co-op)]

Q2. The Prime Minister will know that we still have every nuclear submarine that the Royal Navy has ever had. There are 13 old nuclear submarines tied up in Devonport, seven in Rosyth, and little room for the ones that will come out of service soon. Further to our letter to her a fortnight ago, will the Prime Minister agree to meet me, the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) and the hon. Member for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman), who represents Rosyth, to discuss how we can extend civil nuclear decommissioning to those nuclear submarines, to ensure that we recycle them and create jobs in Plymouth, Scotland and west Cumbria?

[The Prime Minister]

We take the issue of the safe storage and disposal of nuclear submarines very seriously indeed. There is capacity for safely storing all remaining operational Trafalgar-class submarines at Devonport following their decommissioning, and work has started on the dismantling of the first submarine, Swiftsure, with more than 50 tonnes of radioactive waste having been removed by the end of May. I believe that the hon. Gentleman and other Members have written to me about this issue; I will respond to him in further detail in due course and ask the relevant Minister to meet him to discuss the issue further.