Luke Pollard MP for Plymouth, Sutton and Devonport. Deal with our nuclear legacy to create jobs, win votes and stop the smears. At the weekend, together with the Conservative MP for Copeland, Trudy Harrison, and the SNP MP for Rosyth, Douglas Chapman, I launched a campaign for our nation’s military nuclear legacy to be dealt with. In a joint letter to Theresa May, Jeremy and other party leaders we asked them to commit to recycle the UK’s legacy and retired Royal Navy submarines. For decades these submarines have defended our nation, carrying torpedoes and missiles. Whatever our view of their role or purpose, it is now time to firmly decide their future. The oldest submarine in Devonport, in the constituency I represent, is 54 years old launched at the height of the Cold War. She now rests patiently waiting for a decision to be made. Successive governments have refused to act. Recycling old submarines is costly and expensive and with the MoD there was always more pressing priorities. But room for new submarines to be stored has now run out and a clear timetable and funding for a full dismantling and recycling programme is needed. That’s why we have called for a political consensus to recycle these old submarines and to use the principles of the civil nuclear decommissioning agency – allocating additional funding to its work to cover nuclear submarines. The taxpayer is paying to clean up the old nuclear power stations around the nation and rightly so. But to date, that same funding stream, an unlimited liability set out in law, has not extended to old nuclear submarines and it needs to.
Labour List 16th June 2018 read more »