Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, what plans his Department has to provide incentives to suppliers to use small and medium-sized enterprises directly involved in the supply chain for the nuclear industry.

For future New Nuclear projects, developers will be required to produce Supply Chain Plans. This means developers will need to show evidence that their projects will support growth in the UK supply chain, support the development of competition, and boost innovation and skills. This will provide greater opportunity for SME’s to access contracts for new build projects.

In regards to Nuclear Decommissioning, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority already uses a range of initiatives to improve the transparency of contract opportunities including:

• simplifying and standardising procurement requirements;

• holding regional and national supplier events to help providers link up; and

• running an SME mentoring scheme.