My first weekly column

From this week I’ll be writing a new weekly column in the Whitehaven News and the Times & Star. Here’s my first one:

I’m delighted to be starting this new weekly column to keep you up to date with my work with you and on your behalf as your new Labour MP for Whitehaven and Workington. I hope you find it useful. Please feel free to contact me with any follow up questions you might have about what I’ve said – my contact details are at the bottom.

I’m writing this at the end of my first week back in Parliament after the summer recess. And it was a very busy week!

I’ve focused a lot this week on my promise to fight to deliver new nuclear in West Cumbria because there are major decisions due to be made imminently which will determine our nuclear future. I have to be frank with you – we’re currently sleepwalking towards another devastating blow to our nuclear ambitions.

For those who haven’t followed this closely, a process was started under the previous government, led by a new government body called Great British Nuclear, to select technologies and sites for the development of new small modular reactors (SMRs) to generate new nuclear power.

We were told by the Tories locally and nationally to trust this process. That the Moorside side adjacent to Sellafield would come out of it with new nuclear. 

I’m afraid this was a lie.

As soon as I was elected as your MP I set about meeting with government officials and ministers and key figures from across the nuclear sector – Great British Nuclear, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority (NDA), Sellafield and businesses from across the nuclear supply chain.

What became clear to me very quickly was that there were major roadblocks getting in the way of Moorside’s viability to be selected as a new nuclear site in the Great British Nuclear (GBN) process. Roadblocks I heard a little bit about before the election – which is why I started my New Nuclear Now campaign – but which had been kept hidden from the public.

These roadblocks are centred around competing uses of the land at Moorside and other projects linked to the NDA’s decommissioning mission. Other sites being considered for new nuclear do not have these roadblocks, making them more likely to be picked by GBN.

It is my absolute and firm belief that we can and must overcome these roadblocks. The NDA need to come up with alternative land for their other projects and we need to sequence new nuclear and decommissioning projects in a way that ensures we can do both.

I fully support the important work that is ongoing at Sellafield – I saw it firsthand on a recent visit – and will fight for future decommissioning projects that will continue that work and create more jobs. But we simply cannot have a situation where West Cumbria’s entire economy is reliant on the NDA and decommissioning work.

New nuclear is so important not because of the direct jobs it creates but because of the potential green industrial and advanced manufacturing jobs which could be created by the power it generates. For example at the Port of Workington, where I’m working with Cumberland Council and the new government on a major expansion which could transform the economic geography of West Cumbria.

I want us to have a vibrant, diverse economy where local young people have more than one option for a career and where we’re attracting the best talent from elsewhere to come here.

So, this week I brought together GBN, the NDA, Sellafield, the Office for Nuclear Regulation, the Nuclear Industry Association, leading officials from the Prospect, GMB and Unite trade unions, the leader of Cumberland Council, Cllr Mark Fryer, and fellow Cumbrian MPs Markus Campbell-Savours and Julie Minns in a new Nuclear Delivery Group for Cumbria. It was the first time all key stakeholders were in the same room discussing these thorny issues. The meeting was productive but inconclusive. 

I also spent an hour with the new Minister for Nuclear this week. This was my third meeting with him and I pressed on him in the strongest possible terms the need for new nuclear in West Cumbria.

My hope and my goal is that the NDA will release the land and work constructively to find solutions to make both new nuclear and the decommissioning mission work together. After all, the NDA were able to plan on this basis up until 2018 when a large new nuclear plant was planned. I know we can do it if we get everyone pulling in the same direction. And the opportunities for West Cumbria if we do are limitless.

Finally, I was honoured this week to be elected to Chair the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Nuclear Energy. It brings together MPs and members of the House of Lords from all parties to advocate for nuclear power. Under my chairmanship I want to make it the strongest voice for new nuclear that Parliament has ever seen. The last government spent too long dithering and delaying. The new government needs to grasp the opportunities of new nuclear with both hands.

What do you think? Get in touch with me by e-mail: hello@joshmacalister.uk. I’m holding a series of advice surgeries and public meetings across West Cumbria in this coming months. Visit my website to find out more: joshmacalister.uk/meetjosh