Subscribe to this blog's feedSo, it seems another Labour Party notable is poised to take the nuclear shilling...
Disconnector refers to former sports minister Richard Caborn, who has been tipped for a job with the group formed by Amec, Washington Group of the US and France’s Areva. Said group is bidding for one of the clean-up contracts at Sellafield on offer from the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority.
During his ministerial career, the Sheffield MP was a trade minister, but more famously he was a sometimes gaffe-prone sports minister.
No doubt his prospective new employers hope he will perform better in the nuke job than he managed as a newly minted sports minister when he turned up for an interview on Radio Five Live.
He was famously stumped by a series of questions that showed his lack of knowledge on a host of sporting posers about horse racing, the Stella Artois tennis tournament, golf and rugby.
If he takes the job, Caborn should at least feel like one of the boys. A number of other Labour “names” are trousering nuclear sector cash these days.
Lord O’Neill, once the chairman of the influential Commons Trade and Industry Select Committee, is now both chair of the Nuclear Industry Association and a lobbyist with the Washington Group.
Former energy minister Brian Wilson is a non-executive director of Amec’s nuclear division. And another former trade minister, Ian McCartney, is now working for US company Fluor, which is also interested in a slice of the UK’s nuclear action.
Evidently, there’s safety in numbers.
