Melanie Ward

Thank you, Mr Stuart. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship. Let me begin by congratulating the hon. Member for Mid Dunbartonshire (Susan Murray) on securing this important debate on the future of nuclear energy in Scotland, and thanking her for her kind words. I agree with many of the points that she made. This debate comes at an opportune time. I am pleased to be responding to it, and to have heard from so many who share this Government’s desire to see Scotland harness the opportunities that civil nuclear power offers to Scotland: the opportunity to create high-quality jobs in communities across our country, and the opportunity to deliver clean, secure and more affordable energy for our people as part of the energy mix of the future, but also the opportunity to deliver on our Prime Minister’s mission to reindustrialise our country and to ensure that conversations about Scotland’s industrial prowess are not just about looking backwards at our heritage, but about building our future, with prosperous, secure and proud communities sustained by skilled jobs. Scotland is indeed an energy powerhouse. Since taking up my position at the Scotland Office, I have had the privilege of witnessing at first hand a vast array of Scottish energy generation—wind, wave, tidal and nuclear—and, above all, of meeting the skilled and dedicated workforces that keep our nation powered. Just last month, the Secretary of State was in Aberdeen meeting representatives from the oil and gas sector and visiting Great British Energy’s newly opened headquarters. This week, I went to the power station at Torness, which is one of the great Scottish nuclear power success stories. It provides hundreds of quality jobs in East Lothian and beyond, and it will generate enough electricity over its lifetime to power every home in Scotland for 36 years. Torness is due to stop generating power by 2030. The reason that the site’s days are numbered is the SNP’s outdated ideological planning ban on civil nuclear energy. As we have heard, it is time that that changed.