Nuclear Fuel Manufacturing

Paul Maynard Excerpts

Tuesday 7th September 2021 Westminster Hall

[Paul Maynard (Blackpool North and Cleveleys) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Betts. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mark Menzies) on securing a vital and timely debate. I pay tribute to the unions who welcomed me and my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton West (Chris Green) to the Springfields plant a few weeks ago, so that we could see for ourselves the role it plays in that community. I also pay tribute to the workers down the years—60 or 70 years—at Springfields, many of them my constituents. Along with Capenhurst and Calder Hall, the site has been one of the key drivers of our nuclear industry in the post-war era, underpinning so much of our economic development.

The domes of Dounreay might be more worthy of heritage protection but they relied on Springfields. The current fleet of nuclear reactors also relies on Springfields in the here and now, but the footprint and the numbers employed at the site have declined over time. Employment is now in the hundreds, not the thousands, and cannot afford to be lowered further.

We need to look at Springfields’ future. We know that the ultimate parent owners have uncertain intentions, at best, about the future of the site, so policy needs to move at pace. We have heard that advanced gas-cooled reactor closures are likely to be brought forward, creating a gap around 2024 before demand for nuclear fuel increases once more, as new reactors come on stream.

I know that the Government have a nuclear fuel working group. I welcome that, but working groups come in many forms and shapes. Every Department has a multiplicity of them. Some of them operate without a Minister even being aware. I know from my own time as a Minister that, if it was moderately important, I might try to attend the initial meeting to set the agenda and make it clear that it mattered to me. If it was really important, I attended every single meeting. I urge the Minister to send a signal to and sit on the shoulders of her no doubt fantastic officials to attend every single meeting. This is really important, not just for Springfields but for our future national security.

We rightly hear a lot about net-zero, green recovery and the levelling-up agenda—sometimes too much for my personal taste—but here in the Lancashire countryside is the living embodiment of those three agendas. I have always argued as an MP for more high-quality, high-skilled jobs on the Fylde coast, near my relatively deprived coastal town of Blackpool and Cleveleys. Here they are, just a few miles away, in the Lancashire countryside. There can be found the National Nuclear Laboratory and a clean fuels technology pod. The site trains many apprentices, as we have heard, including for firms in my constituency, such as Victrex.

We are in a state of concern because we do not know what the future holds. We risk losing it, like the British empire, in a fit of absence of mind. But it is a vital national capability. It cannot be recreated from scratch. If we lose the golden thread, the continuity of the skills base, we will end up dependent either on the French Framatome or—in my view, unlike that of the hon. Member for Preston (Sir Mark Hendrick), even worse—on the Chinese.

Framatome already supply Sizewell B. They already have the contract for Hinkley Point C. In my view, there should be a guarantee of UK fuels for UK reactors written into all future contracts. Framatome already get through processed uranium from Russia. Springfields could do that. The site cannot just be mothballed in the hope that a future Government might wake up. If Springfields really is seen by the Government as a piece of critical national infrastructure, as I firmly believe that it should—and I would welcome a commitment to that effect from the Minister—that has to mean something in practical policy terms. Warm words today will not be enough for my constituents, who want an action plan to bridge the nuclear gap, secure their own jobs and secure the nuclear future of this country.