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Nuclear Free Local Authorities’ plea to new Energy Secretary: ‘Don’t make Sizewell C Suffolk’s nightmare.’

The UK / Ireland Nuclear Free Local Authorities have written to the new Secretary of State for Energy Claire Continho MP asking her not to make Sizewell C ‘Suffolk’s nightmare’.

Ms Continho replaced Grant Shapps after the former Energy Secretary was sent to Defence following the resignation of Ben Wallace. She was only elected to Parliament in December 2019 for the safe Conservative seat of East Surrey and is largely unknown having previously saved in only a very junior ministerial post. With a background in banking, the new Energy Secretary does however have close connections with the Prime Minister having been an advisor and then a parliamentary aide to Rishi Sunak when he was at the Treasury, and a leading figure in Mr Sunak’s leadership campaign team.

Energy represents a massive promotion for Ms Continho, but it is a complex brief. In his letter the Chair of the NFLAs Councillor Lawrence O’Neill outlines why Sizewell C, and indeed the whole new nuclear programme, should not go ahead and urges the Secretary of State to ‘take up the offer made by local campaigners to visit the site and speak to local people about their serious concerns about this costly and foolhardy project’.

The NFLAs are also backing the campaign initiated by Stop Sizewell C to deprive the nuclear monster of private sector investment by lobbying pension funds. In this vein, we have previously contacted pension funds and last month we wrote also to the Chief Executive of Centrica, a previous commercial investor in nuclear plants, asking him to refrain from backing the project.

With recent unwelcome news of a further £300 million of government funding being awarded for preparatory works at Sizewell C, the campaign feels that ‘it is time to scale up’ the pensions campaign and is asking for public support. A bespoke platform has been developed featuring almost 70 pension funds, www.stopsizewellc.org/goodpension which is now backed by a short animated video voiced by Fiona Turnbull https://drive.google.com/file/d/1LjV_WbyWkUsGf7ClwPuinU_Dq_sY7NZ9/edit .

Stop Sizewell C is asking campaign supporters who make pension contributions or receive pensions to write to their fund managers urging them NOT to invest in Sizewell C. However, the most pressing priority is to expand the reach of the campaign so Stop Sizewell C is asking supporters to raise awareness of it by sharing the links on their social media accounts.

The links to the latest pensions campaign post are:

Twitter/X – https://twitter.com/StopSizewellC/status/1699788799654637820?s=20
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/reel/Cw5KbW6s6wq/
Facebook – https://fb.watch/mVA8OdaiP7/
LinkedIn – https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7105240738447114240

Councillor O’Neill added: “Sizewell C can be seen as many-headed like the mythical hydra; many of the heads represent a possible financial investment. It we can cut off the heads we can kill the monster!”

September 12, 2023 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | UK