Government announces new taskforce to ramp up nuclear skills
A taskforce has been launched to ensure the UK has the right skills in the nuclear industry as part of government plans to drastically scale up nuclear capacity.
The panel will work to ensure roles are filled in the rapidly expanding defence and civil nuclear sectors, the Ministry of Defence said.
It will develop a national skills strategy for jobs across the industry, from technical scientific and engineering roles to logistics, project management, commercial and finance, PA Media reports.
The taskforce will be chaired by Sir Simon Bollom, the former chief executive of Defence Equipment and Support, and include government officials, academics and industry partners.
The defence procurement minister, James Cartlidge, said:
By developing nuclear skills, we are not just investing in the UK economy but our national security.
The creation of this new taskforce will challenge the whole of the UK’s nuclear sector to be ambitious in addressing the nuclear skills gap, and we are delighted to appoint Sir Simon Bollom to drive this work forward.
Bollom said:
The nuclear sector is vital to our nation, and I am proud to have been given the opportunity to lead such an important taskforce to ensure that we have the people and skills we need to deliver our programmes.
The nuclear minister, Andrew Bowie, hailed a nuclear “revival” with the launch of Great British Nuclear, an arm’s-length body involved in the government-backed competition to develop smaller-scale nuclear technology projects.
I will be looking after the politics blog today. If you have any tips or suggestions, please get in touch: nicola.slawson@theguardian.com
Key events
Frances Ryan
Keir Starmer should hold his nerve on the Lords reform or we’ll never see the back of Boris Johnson’s cronies, writes Frances Ryan in this opinion piece.
Bad news for fans of unelected legislatures: Labour is considering abolishing hereditary peers. According to the Sunday Times, Keir Starmer is drawing up plans that could see the immediate removal of hereditary peers if the party is elected, as part of a package of “interim” reforms to modernise and reduce the size of the House of Lords.
Other moves being explored include introducing a mandatory retirement age or stopping hereditary peer byelections (so the current peers can’t be replaced after they leave).
For the section of the British press who feel terror at the prospect of a Labour government, discussions of Lords “reform” is essentially one of the four horsemen of the apocalypse. Rather than fire and brimstone, the warning signs are questioning hereditary peers, ending private school tax breaks, decent public services and tackling child poverty (well, maybe not that last one quite yet).
Despite decades of debate, the Labour party’s previous attempts to quash the Lords have never been fully successful. In 1999, Tony Blair’s government managed to end the 700-year-old right for all peers to sit and vote. This got the number of hereditary peers down from 750 but political pressure meant 92 remained, like a particularly stubborn mildew.
And yet it feels like the tide may be turning. Last week, Boris Johnson’s former aides, Charlotte Owen and Ross Kempsell, were sworn in as life peers to widespread criticism, even among their own party. Few moments highlight the need for Lords reform better than the sight of people with barely a decade of work experience making laws for the next 60 years, and for no other reason than it was the whim of a man who nicknamed himself “Big Dog”.
Read the full piece here:
The Liberal Democrats are calling for the government to keep the windfall tax on oil and gas companies despite the recent fall in energy prices after BP reported £2bn in net profit for the second quarter of the year.
BP has reported net profits of $2.6bn (£2bn) for the three months to the end of June as the climate crisis triggers extreme heatwaves, angering climate campaigners.
The company blamed falling oil and gas markets for the drop in profits from $8.5bn in the same period last year when Russia’s invasion of Ukraine ignited a rise in global energy markets.
BP will increase its shareholder dividends by 10% to $2.3bn, despite the fall in profits. It will also return a further $1.5bn to investors through a share buyback over the next three months.
The Lib Dems say the “monster profits” will be a “nasty shock to families who couldn’t afford to heat their homes this year”.
In a statement, Sarah Olney, the party’s Treasury spokesperson, said:
The government shouldn’t be hoodwinked to remove the windfall tax by this profit drop. Let’s be frank, these are still huge.
No family should go cold next winter because the government backed down on taxing the likes of BP.
It is time to put the needs of struggling families and pensioners over the wallets of global oil firms.
The prime minister’s press secretary was asked if there would be a review of the windfall tax yesterday but she wouldn’t comment “specifically on tax, particularly ahead of a fiscal event”.
More broadly, she told reporters:
What the windfall tax has done has raised over £6bn since it was introduced, which has helped to fund consumer help with their energy bills of on average about £3,300 per household.
That remains the policy and I don’t have anything more to add on the future of that.
Global oil and gas market prices have tumbled since reaching a peak last year. The global oil price averaged $76.60 a barrel in the last quarter, down sharply from an average of about $112 a barrel in the second quarter of last year after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Kalyeena Makortoff
Nigel Farage has said that the newly installed boss of Coutts has offered to keep his accounts there open, reversing a decision that triggered a scandal and the resignation of the private bank’s previous chief executive.
The former Ukip leader said he welcomed the offer but was still taking legal action against NatWest, which owns Coutts, demanding compensation, a full apology and a face-to-face meeting with the banking group’s bosses.
Peter Flavel resigned as Coutts chief executive last Thursday, less than two days after the NatWest boss, Alison Rose, also stepped down over her role in the row. Flavel has been replaced by Mohammed Syed.
“The new CEO of Coutts … has written to me to say I can keep both my personal and my business accounts, and that’s good, and I thank him for it,” Farage said on GB News on Monday night.
But enormous harm has been done to me over the course of the last few months … It has taken up a huge amount of my time and it has cost me, so far, quite a lot of money in legal fees. So I have today sent a legal litigation letter to Coutts, where I want some full apologies, I want some compensation for my cost.
“But more important than all of that, I want a face-to-face meeting with the bank’s bosses. I want to find out how many other people in Coutts or NatWest have had accounts closed because of their political opinions. And I want to make sure this never happens to anybody else ever again.
Farage obtained documents from Coutts showing that while he had been below the bank’s “commercial criteria” for some time – referring to its requirement to hold £1m in investments or loans, or £3m in savings – the decision to shut his accounts was also based on concerns that his “xenophobic, chauvinistic and racist views” posed a risk to its reputation.
Banks are not allowed to shut accounts or deny services because of customers’ political views or beliefs.
Farage did not clarify whether he had accepted Coutts’s offer to keep his account open. NatWest Group said it could not comment on individual customers.
Ben Quinn
A UK government minister has said he “cannot put a timeframe” on when the Home Office will open a controversial giant barge meant to house asylum seekers, which has been further delayed for checks.
The initial plan had been to move people on to the Bibby Stockholm in Portland, Dorset, from this week, with numbers due to rise over the coming months until the vessel held about 500 men.
Asked on Sky News when the barge would be available, the transport minister Richard Holden said:
It’s going through its final checks at the moment. It’s right that … whatever accommodation we provide is safe and secure as well. I can’t put a timeframe on it.
Asked if safety concerns were delaying the opening, he said:
It’s going through final checks at the moment. With anything you would want them to be properly checked out.
The Guardian reported on Monday that the first asylum seekers were due to be moved onboard the vessel on Wednesday but that seems to have been delayed further with the minister now unwilling to put a timeframe on the move.
Asked if it would be delayed as long as the Rwanda policy had taken to implement, Holden added:
I can’t comment on the ongoing process of checks and things that have to take place but it is my understanding (it is) in its final checks.
Fears had been expressed that the barge could become a “floating Grenfell” and endanger the lives of vulnerable people who have fled hardship and war as it has not received the relevant safety signoff.
About 40 claimants staying in other Home Office accommodation had received transfer letters saying they would be moved to the 222-cabin vessel in Dorset, Whitehall sources said.
More than 50 national organisations and campaigners, including the Refugee Council, Asylum Matters and Refugee Action, have called the government’s plan “cruel and inhumane”. They said the vessel was “entirely inappropriate” and would house traumatised migrants in “detention-like conditions”.
Read more here:
Dismay as Rishi Sunak vows to ‘max out’ UK fossil fuel reserves
Rishi Sunak has pledged to “max out” the UK’s oil and gas reserves as he revealed a new round of intensive North Sea drilling, which experts said could be catastrophic for the climate.
Unveiling a plan to authorise more than 100 new North Sea licences on a visit to north-east Scotland, the prime minister also indicated he would approve drilling at the UK’s largest untapped reserves in the Rosebank field, which hold 500m barrels of oil.
Speaking to reporters on a visit to a Shell gas terminal north of Aberdeen, Sunak insisted the plan was compatible with net zero commitments given the anticipated part-reliance on fossil fuels for years to come, saying it was more carbon-intensive to ship oil and gas from other countries.
But experts said this ignored the fact that much of the UK’s imported gas comes by pipeline and tends to be produced more cleanly than its British equivalent. Environmental groups said Sunak’s plan would “send a wrecking ball” through climate commitments.
Tory and Labour MPs said Sunak’s “economically illiterate” announcement was “driving a coach and horses” through previous promises, and warned the prime minister he was “on the wrong side of history” and that modern voters wanted leaders who “protect, and not threaten, our environment”.
While the new round of licences has been in progress for many weeks, Sunak’s visit highlights the shift towards greater scepticism over green policies since the Conservatives narrowly won the Uxbridge byelection, thanks in part to concern about London’s soon-to-be-expanded ultra-low emission zone.
The new round of licences will permit drilling closer to existing projects than previously allowed, something Sunak’s press secretary said was intended to maximise the amount that could be extracted.
While Sunak has insisted he remains committed to the UK’s target to reach net zero by 2050 and other green targets, his new approach has prompted concern among some Tory MPs, who worry the party could suffer among young voters and those tempted by the Liberal Democrats.
Read the full story from my colleagues Severin Carrell, Peter Walker and Helena Horton here:
The government’s plan to triple Britain’s nuclear power generation capacity by 2050 badly lacks the strategy to actually achieve it, according to a report published on Monday.
In the report, the science, innovation and technology committee backed the decision to look to nuclear power as a way to meet the UK’s electricity needs amid the race to net zero but ministers need to be clear on how they propose to get there in order to encourage investment, the committee said.
It warned that the government’s own most recent energy security plan, published in March, offers little clue about how measures will be implemented.
The committee chair, Greg Clark, noted that the “stretching” ambitions to achieve 24GW of nuclear power by 2050 would be almost double the highest level of nuclear generation the UK has ever attained.
He said:
The only way to achieve this is to translate these very high-level aspirations into a comprehensive, concrete and detailed nuclear strategic plan which is developed jointly with the nuclear industry, which enjoys long-term cross-party political commitment and which therefore offers dependability for private and public investment decisions.
Government announces new taskforce to ramp up nuclear skills
A taskforce has been launched to ensure the UK has the right skills in the nuclear industry as part of government plans to drastically scale up nuclear capacity.
The panel will work to ensure roles are filled in the rapidly expanding defence and civil nuclear sectors, the Ministry of Defence said.
It will develop a national skills strategy for jobs across the industry, from technical scientific and engineering roles to logistics, project management, commercial and finance, PA Media reports.
The taskforce will be chaired by Sir Simon Bollom, the former chief executive of Defence Equipment and Support, and include government officials, academics and industry partners.
The defence procurement minister, James Cartlidge, said:
By developing nuclear skills, we are not just investing in the UK economy but our national security.
The creation of this new taskforce will challenge the whole of the UK’s nuclear sector to be ambitious in addressing the nuclear skills gap, and we are delighted to appoint Sir Simon Bollom to drive this work forward.
Bollom said:
The nuclear sector is vital to our nation, and I am proud to have been given the opportunity to lead such an important taskforce to ensure that we have the people and skills we need to deliver our programmes.
The nuclear minister, Andrew Bowie, hailed a nuclear “revival” with the launch of Great British Nuclear, an arm’s-length body involved in the government-backed competition to develop smaller-scale nuclear technology projects.
I will be looking after the politics blog today. If you have any tips or suggestions, please get in touch: nicola.slawson@theguardian.com
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