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British Nuclear Group

I am delighted to have secured this debate today on a subject of pivotal importance to my constituency. In fact, although it is of real importance to a number of constituencies throughout the country, nowhere will the effect of the sale of British Nuclear Group be more acutely felt than in Copeland and in West Cumbria generally. I want to begin my establishing the unique importance of British Nuclear Group to the Sellafield site, Copeland and West Cumbria. I know that the Minister is well aware of these issues, but they bear repeating. British Nuclear Group is by far the largest company operating on the Sellafield site. It employs more than 7,000 people directly, and the site itself employs over 11,500 people. Employment at Sellafield sustains another 5,000 jobs in the wider local community, so in real terms, the site is responsible for approximately 17,000 jobs. Such employment accounts for the majority of the West Cumbria economy and well over 60 per cent. of the economy of Copeland. Take-home wages from the Sellafield site are in excess of £210 million per year. The site provides, as the Minister knows, high-quality, highly skilled, highly valued jobs. Expenditure from the Sellafield sitegoing into the regional supply chain is in excess of£600 million a year. It provides the lifeblood of the local service industry companies, the hospitality and retail industries, and the bespoke, high-value engineering industries to be found not only in Copeland, but in Allerdale, in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Workington (Tony Cunningham). Local supply chain procurement by BNG is essential in West Cumbria, an issue to which I shall return. In addition to that contribution to the local economy, in the past 15 years BNG has committed£20 million to the West Cumbria Development Fund—a local economic regeneration body—which, in turn, has helped to lever in a further £10 million worth of European Union funding. BNG has also demonstrated a concerted willingness to work in partnership with the local communities within which it operates, and, crucially, with the trade unions. In my view, it is the trade union members on any nuclear site who are the ultimate arbiters of safety. That is certainly the case at Sellafield, and I am grateful and pleased that the relationship between them and BNG is as strong as it clearly is. It is against that background that my interest in BNG must be understood. I must also state for the record that I am a former employee of the company at the Sellafield site—a fact of which I am extremely proud. On 30 March, the then Secretary of State for Trade and Industry announced the Government’s endorsement of the proposal of the board of British Nuclear Fuels Ltd. to sell BNG. This was expected, and given the remit of the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority under the terms of the Energy Act 2004, completely understandable. The NDA and the UK as a whole require the development of competition within the nuclear decommissioning industry in the UK, in order to achieve the best value for money for the taxpayer. Although I completely accept the logic of that and the need for competition, I hope that the Minister can explain what, if any, consideration was given to the formation of a public-private partnership for UK decommissioning before the owner-contractor model was chosen. Accompanying the Secretary of State’s announcement, the NDA made the wise announcement that it would grant BNG a new five-year contract to operate the Sellafield site. That contract will keep the company, or its new owner, at the site until at least 2012. The Secretary of State said that he expects the sale of BNG to be completed by the autumn of 2007. For my constituents, that means that from next autumn, there will be a new, dominant company operating the Sellafield site. It is essential that that new company understand my community and become an active partner within it. I have to say at this juncture that neither the Leader of the Opposition nor the shadow Secretary of State for Trade and Industry have shown the faintest glimmer of an understanding of what any of this means. Following the Secretary of State’s announcement in March, the shadow Secretary of State issued a press release claiming that that announcement meant that the nation’s nuclear liabilities were being put into the private sector. I can only assume that he has not read, let alone understood, the 2004 Act. Those liabilities have remained, and will remain, within the public sector under the ownership of the NDA. That embarrassing lack of understanding does not bode well for the shadow Secretary of State’s time on the Conservative Front Bench, or, indeed, for the Conservatives’ approach to the nuclear industry in general. The Leader of the Opposition recently hand-picked one of the country’s most vocal and misleading opponents of the nuclear industry to be his energy and environment adviser. That adviser has repeatedly misled the nation about the health and well-being of my constituents, among whom he has spread fear, anxiety and anger. His claims have no scientific or factual basis and constitute little more than malicious scaremongering. So today, I call upon the Leader of the Opposition—sadly, he is not here—to ensure that his high-profile advisers publicly withdraw their comments, or to otherwise sack them.