Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 20th November 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

I can indeed give that assurance to my hon. Friend, who is a great champion of one of the bastions of skills and innovation in the nuclear sector in this country. The circumstances behind Toshiba’s wind-down of NuGen are well known—it was because of the move to chapter 11 bankruptcy of its subsidiary—but that site is now available for other investors.

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

The future of nuclear power is not just about building reactors; it is about having people with the skills to work in those reactors as well. As we have a skills gap in defence nuclear, can the Secretary of State set out what actions the Government are taking to support the growth of nuclear skills in both defence nuclear and civil nuclear?

[Greg Clark]

I am delighted that the hon. Gentleman takes such an interest in this. He will know that the nuclear sector deal provides for training, new institutions and new apprenticeship and scholarship opportunities for nuclear engineers in both the civil and defence sectors. This is all part of an agreement across the industry with Government to ensure that the next generation of nuclear power is supported by new-generation nuclear engineers and technicians.

Climate Change: Extreme Weather Events

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 13th November 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West (Darren Jones) for introducing the debate so well. He is a University of Plymouth graduate, and I know that there are a lot of people back in Plymouth Labour who would want to wish him a happy birthday for today.

Climate change is real. Some 97% of scientists believe that it is happening, and it will continue to happen whether the remaining 3% agree with it or not. The extreme weather produced by climate change is becoming more and more commonplace and its impact on our lives is becoming more profound, obvious and inescapable. A report by Oxfam has shown that, between 2008 and 2016, 23.5 million people were displaced by extreme weather. If we do not wake up, that will get worse and worse. The report by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol North West mentioned, predicted that if we do not act to stop a temperature increase of more than 2° above pre-industrial levels, on the current trajectory we will see a sea level rise from melting ice of up to 1 metre by 2100—only 80 years away. That would cause severe coastal flooding and super storms that would easily flood most major Western cities and submerge many low-lying islands, and would mean homes, roads and train lines under water.

Rising sea levels and elevated acidity mean that coastal communities such as mine in Plymouth are on the frontline of climate change and extreme weather. Far too often, more intense and more frequent storms are battering the south-west, and a lack of investment to create proper resilience—especially in our transport links—is cutting people in Plymouth off from the rest of the country. That is what I would like to speak about, because it is a good example of the challenges that we must face if we are to truly mitigate the impacts of climate change and extreme weather on our economy.

Members will know that in 2014, the Great Western rail line between Exeter and Newton Abbot was badly damaged by storms. The train line was washed away, leaving the rails hanging like a Peruvian rope bridge above the waves, and as a result, the far south-west and the rest of the country were cut off from each other. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) mentioned coastal erosion, which is most apparent from the coastline at Dawlish. I went to university in Exeter, and the place where I studied in the summer months, on the cliffs overlooking the sea, has now been washed away. Those cliffs are no longer there, and when I go past on the train every day, going back and forth to Westminster, I look at that little bit of air and remember that I used to study on it. Coastal erosion is real, and the threat it poses to our train line is apparent.

The Great Western train line was closed for two months in 2014, which affected our entire region, costing us around £1 billion in lost economic activity. It was our one and only train line—our spinal connection, our lifeline for business and leisure travel, daily journeys, holidays and investment—and its closure exposed a gaping hole in Government policy towards the far south-west. Ministers did not care enough to find the funding that we needed to make our train line resilient to the increasing extreme weather that this country faces. The former Prime Minister, David Cameron, came down to Dawlish in the wake of the storms and said, “Money is no object” in making sure that such a closure would not happen again. However, last week, the train line closed. A month before, it closed again. It has closed dozens of times since that incident in 2014.

Strong winds, heavy rain, and large waves crashing over the sea wall affect the resilience of the Great Western train line and cut us off. Thanks to the good work of Great Western Railway and Network Rail staff, our train line is now operational again, but more extreme weather is going to have more impacts on that precarious and fragile train line. The Minister will know that in bad weather, when the waves crash over our train line, CrossCountry trains cannot get through. The design of those precious and precarious Voyager trains means that they short-circuit when they come into contact with salt water, meaning that if waves hit those trains at Dawlish, they short-circuit and block the track. That is not good enough. Now that Ministers recognise the chaos in our rail franchising system, they have pulled the franchise competition, but that has removed the opportunity to create trains that can get through that particular bit of track.

Network Rail has carried out studies of extreme weather conditions. Those studies show that by 2065, anticipated environmental changes could result in an increase of 4° in extreme summer temperatures, potentially buckling tracks; a 36% reduction in summer rainfall, but a 15% increase in winter rainfall; a 30 cm increase in sea level; and a 23% increase in river flows. When we look at the precarious nature of much of our transport infrastructure, especially along our coasts, rivers and estuaries, we can see what an impact that change in water level could have on the resilience of that infrastructure. The low sea wall at Dawlish will not be enough: the line will flood, and we will be cut off again. That is why we need resilience upgrades to preserve the line, steady the cliffs, and ensure that trains can get through Dawlish while a Dawlish-avoiding line is built. Nothing else is acceptable.

The lack of investment in much of our transport infrastructure, coupled with the more commonplace extreme weather that is being caused by climate change, means that we need greater focus on, and investment in, resilience in our transport system. The Secretary of State for Transport told me in the Chamber that the work on Dawlish was his No. 1 priority, but yet again, no money for Dawlish was announced in the Budget, and it is still the case that no money has been announced by Ministers. I say to the Minister—who I appreciate is not a transport Minister—that the patience of the south-west is wearing thin. We know that we are getting more extreme weather: we can see it year in, year out, and we can see the impact that it is having on our resilience. The betrayal, the breaking of promises, the frequency of closures, the disruption, and the damage to our reputation and attractiveness as a destination are all due to the failure to invest in and secure that train line. That cannot go on. We risk more and more disruption from climate change unless Ministers stop sitting on their hands and blaming others. They must put their money where their mouth is and fund proper, long-term resilience, particularly in Dawlish and Teignmouth.

Warnings about extreme weather can seem far distant from our shores. We sometimes look at extreme weather in far-away countries—hurricanes, tropical storms and mudslides—and think of it as happening to other people, not to us. However, the reality is that climate change and increasing extreme weather are occurring in countries far away, but also here at home. If we do not adjust the way we run our economy, invest in low-carbon technologies, and fundamentally change the way our country operates, we will see more extreme weather—not just far away but in the UK. That is something that we desperately need to avoid.

Nuclear Sector Deal

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Wednesday 11th July 2018 Westminster Hall

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

I thank the hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) for securing this important debate. Nuclear jobs are good jobs, and are often located in cities and towns where good jobs in other sectors are rare. I welcome the nuclear sector deal. I believe in a mixed energy policy with a greater focus on renewables and carbon-minimising generation from nuclear.

I am a fan of new nuclear, but my constituency is home not to civil nuclear jobs but to defence jobs. Our dockyard is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the Royal Navy. Nuclear jobs are in demand, and recruiters for civil nuclear regularly try to poach the highly skilled people from our dockyard and the Royal Navy. It is right that they do so, as Devonport’s nuclear workers are among the best in the business. I pay tribute to their work, which is often overlooked but is appreciated by all those who value the contribution of our submarine service—the bombers and the hunter-killers—to our nation’s security.

Nuclear jobs are not in the heart of the capital like financial services jobs. They are in the regions—the north-west and the south-west—and rightly so. Although I do not always agree with the high strike price for new civil nuclear, there is no doubt in my mind that civil nuclear has a bright future. However, I will confine my remarks to defence nuclear, about which there is a bit more uncertainty in my part of the world.

Military nuclear matters. I welcome the, albeit brief, mention in the nuclear sector deal of greater co-operation between civil and defence nuclear. I believe we need to do much more to enhance collaboration and co-operation between those two sectors—not just in research, but in jobs, skills, training and, importantly, decommissioning. The civil nuclear decommissioning programme rightly enjoys cross-party support. The taxpayer has unlimited liability to clean up the nation’s civil nuclear legacy and the sites contaminated by our country’s exploration of civil nuclear and its mastery of nuclear energy. It is right that new nuclear has decommissioning costs built into it.

Although there has been progress on the civil side of nuclear decommissioning, that has not been the case with defence nuclear. Hon. Members may not know that the UK still has every single nuclear submarine we have ever had. It is time that the legacy of old submarines was dealt with. Devonport dockyard in my constituency has 13 laid-up nuclear submarines awaiting recycling. Rosyth in Scotland has seven, and there are more to come. In Devonport, the oldest sub in storage is HMS Valiant. She is 54 years old, and was launched in 1963 at the height of the cold war. Many have been stored for decades, including HMS Conqueror, which famously sank the Belgrano in the Falklands war.

As a proud janner and a Plymouth lad, I have grown up knowing about those subs, but far too many people do not know about them. “Don’t they just go away?” was how one person responded when I told them about the old subs. Well, no, they do not. Those nuclear submarines get stored because the UK has no funded programme to recycle them. Eight in Devonport still have nuclear fuel rods and have not been defueled yet.

Those old nuclear submarines pose no risk to local communities. It is worth stating that because, all too frequently in nuclear debates, there is a question about safety. There is no risk to our local communities, but we cannot ask Plymouth and Rosyth to look after those submarines indefinitely without a plan.

To make matters worse, time is running out. In the next five years, three more Trafalgar-class submarines will need to be stored somewhere, as they are being replaced by the Astute class, which is being built in Barrow. A decade later, the four Vanguard-class nuclear submarines—the Trident subs—will need to be stored when they are taken out of service and replaced by the new Dreadnought-class submarines. There is a pilot project under way to dismantle HMS Swiftsure—the submarine my old man served on—but after much delay the programme has been paused. Progress is not being made at the pace we need if we are to deal with the rest of the submarines.

The reason why I am taking us on this detour into military nuclear, rather than civil nuclear, which is the focus of the nuclear deal, is to make the case for greater collaboration between the defence and civil nuclear sectors. The workforce moves between the two sectors, as does the science of decommissioning, but at the moment the Government still deal with them in two distinct silos. There is efficiency in collaborating, but Ministers from all Governments—including my own in the past—have kept the two sectors apart. I say to the Minister that it is time for this generation of politicians and Ministers to grasp this issue and change it.

The need to deal with the nuclear legacy of our nation’s old nuclear submarines unites all parties. That is why I have launched a cross-party campaign with the hon. Members for Copeland and for Dunfermline and West Fife (Douglas Chapman) to deal with our nation’s military nuclear legacy. We sent a joint letter to the Prime Minister and other party leaders asking them to commit to fund a proper programme of recycling the UK’s legacy and retired Royal Navy submarines. Successive Governments have refused to act, but that is not an option anymore.

Recycling old submarines is not cost-free, and given the Ministry of Defence’s current battle with the Treasury, there seem to be more pressing priorities for the limited funding. We cannot wait any longer, so I am looking to Ministers in the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, in particular, and the civil side to help us solve this urgent problem. We need a clear timetable for funding and dismantling, and a recycling programme. We believe that, to achieve that, we can beg, steal and borrow the principles from the civil nuclear decommissioning and waste management programme. We have called for a political consensus to recycle those old submarines and use the principles of civil nuclear decommissioning—especially the principles used by the civil Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, which should be allocated additional funding so that its work includes nuclear submarines.

The taxpayer is rightly paying to clean up old nuclear power stations around the nation, but at the moment the same funding streams and principles—the unlimited liability, set out in law—have not been extended to old nuclear submarines, and they need to be. Civil nuclear power is built in metres of foundations, and defence nuclear power is built in floating hulls, but fundamentally the principles are the same. As well as being the right thing to do, expanding the civil nuclear clean-up budget to include nuclear submarines can turn an economic problem into an economic asset. The programme of work would create new jobs in Plymouth, Rosyth, Capenhurst and west Cumbria.

Above all, this is in the national interest. Plymouth and Rosyth cannot be asked to store old nuclear submarines indefinitely. That is why we need a properly funded plan, using the same principles as civil nuclear clean-up. The submarines must be recycled safely, sustainably and securely. I think the public are genuinely surprised and concerned to hear about the existence of these submarines. I invite hon. Members to look on Google Maps at the west side of Plymouth. They will see the submarines lined up alongside each other. When they see them there, they will realise that we have to do something about them. Not knowing about them has meant that we have been able to ignore them, but we cannot ignore them any longer.

There is only one mention of submarines in the nuclear sector deal, which I appreciate was written to look in particular at the civil nuclear side. That mention was of the equipment qualification, and while I agree with the thrust of it that greater expertise and applicability, as well as agile companies in our nuclear sector, will enhance British competitiveness, there is a market at home for nuclear decommissioning work, even before we look for new markets abroad.

The Minister has agreed to meet me and the hon. Members for Copeland and for Dunfermline and West Fife to discuss this topic, and I think that there is a positive way forward. We need to acknowledge that nuclear submarines exist and need to be dealt with; there is an existing structure of principles and of funding; and, importantly, there is a cross-party basis for any future agreement about the recycling of the submarines. I ask the Minister and his officials to look carefully at how the work can be extended so that that legacy can be dealt with once and for all.

Oral Answers to Questions

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 12th June 2018 Commons Chamber

[Greg Clark]

We know that there is huge demand for these products. For example, one reason behind the expansion of the creamery is the increasing appetite in China for cheese produced in Cornwall. My hon. Friend mentioned Sharp’s brewery, and the investment in the facility at Rock now means that 340,000 pints of Doom Bar a day can be produced there. I hope some of those will leave these shores and be enjoyed around the world.

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

Controversially, Britain’s earliest pasty recipe comes from Plymouth rather than Cornwall. It dates from 1510 and was found in Plymouth borough’s accounts. Pasties are a key part of both Plymouth and Cornwall’s identity. What discussions has the Minister had to ensure that the name “Cornish pasties” is protected after we leave the EU, preventing anyone else around the world from forging pasties, whether Cornish or from Plymouth?

[Greg Clark]

Anyone who has enjoyed pasties in Cornwall or—dare I say?—Plymouth will attest to their unique qualities. We have products across the United Kingdom that are associated with the places where they are manufactured. It is an association of quality, and we will ensure that they continue to be protected as part of our negotiations.

BAE Systems Military Air & Information Sites: Job Losses

Luke Pollard Excerpts

Tuesday 10th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Claire Perry]

I lead for the Government on the steel industry. Indeed, I am working with the steel sector on its sector deal right now. The steel sector is dependent on the opportunities that come from companies such as BAE Systems being able to invest and thrive in the UK economy. The hon. Gentleman should commit to work with the steel companies’ customers, as we want to do, to ensure that they can offer the maximum market for the products of the vital and critical steel industry.

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

It has been a bad week for the defence industry. These job losses come on top of rumours that the Government are scrapping the Royal Navy’s amphibious ship capability, and the threat to the Royal Marines. Does the Minister agree that the Government are presiding over emerging sovereign defence capability gaps, and do something about it?