Unlocking our nuclear future is critical for West Cumbria because it will generate clean power to power new industries that will create jobs and diversify our economy so we’re not so reliant on decommissioning.
Nine months into the job I want to update you on my progress and outline my plans for the next few months to smash through the roadblocks left by the Tories.
My first act was meeting all of the key stakeholders locally and nationally. I sent off a flurry of letters and Parliamentary questions to reveal what exactly happened under the previous government. I secured the first debate of the new Parliament on nuclear. I’ve held more than a dozen meetings with the Energy Secretary, the Nuclear Minister and other ministers in the Energy department to discuss new nuclear and West Cumbria.
All of this culminated in the establishment of the Cumberland Nuclear Future Board.
Led by me and Cllr Mark Fryer, the board includes fellow Cumberland MPs, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and Sellafield, Energy Secretary Ed Miliband and other ministers we’ll pull in to help us tackle specific challenges.
This is a major development.
For the first time, we have all partners, local and national, pulling in the same direction and working positively together to achieve the same goal.
That goal is to identify a chunk of NDA-owned land at Moorside that can be offered up for a nuclear-led clean energy development which also attracts users of the power it would generate. Access to that land has been a major stumbling block before now. Unblocking that land is key.
Alongside releasing this land we’re pushing the Government to press on with Plutonium disposition. We want significant funding announced in the Spending Review to be invested in nuclear research and development in West Cumbria.
The third key element is a programme of major investment in the towns nearest the Sellafield site, funded by local and national contributions, so that we can attract and retain the skilled workforce we need for decommissioning and for future new nuclear.
We want to pull this together into a Team West Cumbria, with local and national government and partners working together to build liveable places, address skills challenges and improve our transport infrastructure.
There are no guarantees, but I am genuinely hopeful and energised by the enthusiasm with which local and national government and the NDA have embraced this.
Just to get this far after the mess inherited from the Tories is further than I feared we would get. But my whole career has been spent working with energy and drive to solve tough problems and I am approaching this with the same drive and energy.
I won’t rest until I’ve done everything in my power to see West Cumbria leading on nuclear again.
Josh MacAlister MP 