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1.33 pm
Peter Bottomley (Worthing, West) (Con): I support the motion. My wife Virginia is either a member or a potential member of the association. I have enjoyed reading the newsletter, and think that the editor deserves praise.
I do not agree with some of what has been said, but the debate is relatively limited. I think that we should all be prepared to clear our offices when an election comes, and I do not think that we need too much time in which to do it. I do not like the idea that Members of Parliament are doing a job better than any other that they could do. I am glad that we are past the times when only the poor and the rich could become Members of Parliament, and that now middle-income groups can do so.
I agree with the general points made about the importance of the solidarity and support that people receive, but I think we should bear in mind the position of spouses or partners of former Members of Parliament, especially former Members who have died. I remember a case about 20 years ago, when someone who had been the daughter-in-law and wife of distinguished Members was not be recognised when she came back here several weeks after her husband’s funeral and memorial service. Although they are not members of the association, I hope that some attention will be paid to those who have been married to politics for many years.
Mr. Martlew: I should make it clear that spouses can join the association.
Peter Bottomley: I am glad to hear that. I think it very appropriate.
I believe that the motion should be passed, and that we should have further discussions on what else can be done to ensure that people can be together and feel that they are contributing—if only to the fun of being in an association of former Members, but I think that they can contribute more.
1.35 pm
Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) (Lab): I am sorry that I was missing for a few minutes. I was in touch with—not Joe Ashton, although he has been in touch with me a great deal lately, which is why I have risen to speak—but the cardiologist. Just at the moment, that is a bit more important.
Joe Ashton was a Whip between 1976 and 1979, when we had no majority. Well, we did have a majority,
but then Stonehouse went missing. He was on a Florida beach, then he turned up in Australia. Then he crossed the Floor, and Joe Ashton was given the job of being one of the Whips keeping our majority intact. They were heady days and all the rest of it, but we formed a relationship. Joe’s job was to try to get me into the Lobbies. It did not always work, but I told him all those years ago that I would do him a favour some time. I got on the phone to him when he retired. It has not been mentioned yet, but Joe had a very serious illness. We had many long discussions about how he was getting on. At the time I could see that despite the grim fight that he was undertaking, there was no doubt that the proposal that he had helped to put to the House way back in 2001—I think that my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Mr. Martlew) said that it was on 2 May—was still very much in his mind. I promised him on numerous occasions that I would raise it if necessary, in accordance with what he wanted. What I did not know was that Joe had also been briefing my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle, who has presented most of his propositions today.
Reference has been made to the composition of this place in the old days. Many Members then had formerly worked in factories or the pits. I can speak with some knowledge about pension entitlements in those days. The pension from the pits was only voluntary even in my day, and there was no pension at all when I started working as a miner. Many people who became Members of Parliament received no pension. It is true that they could have money shifted from one place to another, but people who had given20 years’ service were receiving about £100 a month—people who had worked in factories, pits and all the rest. The hon. Member for Somerton and Frome(Mr. Heath) was right to say that many Members did not leave with a great deal of money. It is true that the composition of this place has changed dramatically. There are no longer 700,000 miners; you would have a job to find more than 5,000. That is why it is important to remember what the position used to be.
My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle mentioned nominees for the parliamentary contributory pension fund and the Members’ fund. That is what Members are striving for, as of right. If the Commission would
consider it, I am sure that my old pal Joe Ashton, Bill Michie and all the rest who helped to form the association will be very pleased. Help with the cost of the magazine would also be appreciated, and Joe also told me that he would like to have the names and addresses of all the Members who had left, so that they could keep in contact.
So those are the proposals. My hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle dealt with them previously and explained precisely what was needed, and I hope that the Commission can deal with the matter. I have done my job. I made a promise to Joe donkeys’ years ago that there would come an occasion when he would be glad of my presence. I may not be in the Lobby, but I am speaking up for his association.
1.40 pm
Mr. Straw: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I should like to reply briefly to this debate. I am very grateful to all those who have expressed their support for the motion and this proposal; that will certainly help members of the House of Commons Commission to ensure better support for the association.
On the issue of pensioner trustees, raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner), there is provision for one member of the trustees to be a “pensioner member”, and they do not have to be a Member of this House. The current member, who was chosen last year, is Lord Naseby. He is better known to Members of this House as Michael Morris, and was MP for one of the Northampton seats for many years. I undertake to discuss with the association and the trustees whether there should be a nominee from the association, as of right, on the Board of Trustees.
With that, I urge support for the motion.
That this House welcomes the formation of the Association of Former Members of Parliament in response to the Resolution of the House of 2nd May 2001; notes that it now has a membership of over 330 former Members; acknowledges the work done by the Association and its Executive Committee; and welcomes the financial and other assistance accorded to the Association by the House of Commons Commission.
British Nuclear Group
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. —[Tony Cunningham.]
1.41 pm
Mr. Jamie Reed (Copeland) (Lab): 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 by 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.
Mr. Charles Walker (Broxbourne) (Con): Does the hon. Gentleman agree with me that, where nuclear power stations do exist, local communities have come to accept them and value the contribution that they make to such communities, and to the wider generation of electricity throughout the country?
Mr. Reed: I thank the hon. Gentleman for that contribution. He is absolutely correct; indeed, I could not have put it better myself. Speaking as a member of a local community surrounding a nuclear facility, I can say that that is precisely what such communities believe.
I return to the litany of errors committed by Opposition Front Benchers. Only this week, the new
Leader of the Opposition notably failed to back calls for a new programme of nuclear power generation in Britain. I deeply regret his turning his back on the industry at its time not only of greatest need, but of greatest opportunity. More importantly, at a time when climate change has emerged as perhaps the definitive political challenge of our time, it is a tragedy that Conservative Front Benchers should fail to back the single largest carbon dioxide-free producer of energy—energy that is available not only to Britain, but the world. I implore the Leader of the Opposition to reconsider, and I will happily sit down with him and his shadow Secretary of State—and, indeed, the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker)—and convince them of the nuclear case. This issue is above and beyond party politics. I hope that all parties in the House will be able and mature enough to devise a national consensus on energy policy, and I urge the Conservatives to join me in calling for new nuclear power generation in the UK.
Last week, during a trip to the USA, I visited the Hanford nuclear facility in Washington state before meeting representatives of the Hanford area on Capitol Hill. I learned a lot from that visit, and it is appropriate to compare and contrast the British and American approaches to the nuclear industry. It is important to do so because there are significant differences between the two. Let me make it clear at the outset that I am a passionate pro-American, but that cannot and will not influence my views on what I believe to be right for the Sellafield site and my community.
It is important to understand and be aware of the US nuclear regulatory framework and working practices, because a US-based company is almost certainly going to buy BNG. There may or may not be some involvement from French interests, and a number of consortiums might attempt a purchase. Should a consortium bid for, and succeed in buying, BNG, I could not support the break-up or carve-up of the Sellafield site. That has been done before—notably by BNFL during the 1990s—and it resulted in a deterioration in working practices and managerial accountability structures. Such an approach also compromised safety, so I would need to be convinced that it is now workable. At this stage, I have seen nothing to convince me that it is, and I firmly believe that the Sellafield site is best served by one operator.
In the event of the successful purchase of BNG by a US-based company, I would expect that company immediately and wholeheartedly to embrace the British nuclear industry’s working and regulatory practices, and to adopt the British corporate social responsibility culture. That means the adoption of a local supply chain purchasing policy, a close and productive relationship with the trade unions, the establishment and implementation of significant socio-economic development plans for the areas in which it operates, and an effective and satisfactory approach to working terms and conditions—including already amassed pension entitlements—that is acceptable to the existing work force. Fundamentally, it means doing things our way. Above all, it means working safely. The safety of the Sellafield work force and the safety of my community is non-negotiable, whatever other inducements might be proposed.
The British nuclear work force is the best nuclear work force in the world. I can say that with confidence
as I have up close and personal experience of it. Standards of safety in the UK industry are better than elsewhere in the world, technological development and applied scientific and research application is among the best in the world, and productivity standards are now approaching the best there are as well. It is those attributes that make our nuclear workers, our nuclear scientists, our nuclear engineers and our nuclear working practices among the most sought after in the world.
Speak to any US multinational with a developing interest in buying BNG—and I have spoken to some—and they will explain that an association with the British nuclear industry is the key to opening up the vast nuclear clean-up and decommissioning markets in Russia, former Soviet Union states and eastern Europe. BNG’s recent record illustrates that, as the company has successfully decommissioned and cleaned up more than 50 redundant nuclear facilities world wide. The company is also on a sound financial footing, with signs of real further improvements in financial performance this year and in years to come.
The company’s profitability has not been achieved at the expense of either productivity or safety, a feat attributable not only to management, but the knowledge and experience of the shop floor. Last year, Sellafield’s vitrification plant delivered a record-breaking 503 canisters against a predicted target of 450. By contrast, the US vitrification programme is billions of dollars over budget and in complete disarray. The Sellafield MOX plant recently delivered a second batch of four MOX fuel assemblies to NOK—Nordostschweizerische Kraftwerke AG—in time for its summer reactor reload, and last week signed a new £200 million-plus contract with another continental utility. Those are causes for celebration.
In January 2006, the company completed the clean-up of historic liquid waste from one of the oldest plants at Sellafield, preventing more than 44 yearsof liquid emissions and saving the taxpayer up to£300 million in potential new building costs. Only last week, I was discussing problematic clean-up issues with the US Department of Energy. It highlighted a particular problem in the US with technetium. That is an issue solved by BNG some time ago—I am delighted to say that I was involved in the project—which piqued a great deal of interest among the US Department of Energy officials. If anyone from BNG is listening to this debate or reads the report, I advise them to get down to the patent office as soon as possible, because a significant sum could be made from their unique technological skills and expertise. The market applications are huge.
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