A letter to the Editor of the Sunday Times which was published on 24th March 2013

The news reported in your business section (Sunday 17th March) that the government is preparing to sell the UK’s stake in URENCO, the nuclear fuels manufacturing business, while foreshadowed by many hints, is still shocking.

For all its talk of rebalancing the British economy towards manufacturing and exports, here is another British hi-tech manufacturing asset, with an order book in billions of pounds, about to join that other former British nuclear asset, Westinghouse, in foreign hands. Those who claim that ownership of productive assets doesn’t matter, only their location, couldn’t be more wrong. Where forward planning and investment is concerned, foreign owners always give priority to the interests of their home countries, even if many British corporate bosses do not.

Your article predicts that there will be no British bidder. The Canada Pension Plan, Canada’s largest private pensions manager, is weighing a bid for an energy asset which will yield a steady long-term income in a rising market – perfect one would have thought for a City-based pension fund. All the signs are though that the City will not rise to the occasion, prompting the question, “what is it for?”

A letter to the Editor of the Sunday Telegraph which was published on 7th January 2007.

Your correspondent (Letters, 31 December) asks pertinently why Gordon Brown sold the British-owned Westinghouse electric company to Toshiba (for a paltry £2.9 billion) just as Westinghouse was on the brink of obtaining a £60 billion contract with the Chinese to build 32 nuclear power stations.

The Chancellor sold this irreplaceable asset to help plug the gap in Britain’s finances opened up by the reckless hiring of well over half a million additional public employees to promote Labour’s equality and diversity hobbyhorses.

To compound this folly, Mr Brown has let markets know that he would like to dispose of Britain’s one third share in Urenco, the British-Dutch-German consortium that operates the gas centrifuge process for making enriched uranium fuel for nuclear power stations.

The French would dearly love to acquire Britain’s share to replace their own outdated thermal diffusion process, leaving us of course eventually to pay foreigners for what we currently own.

As with Westinghouse, Urenco is an absolutely vital part of our future energy supplies.  Are there enough Labour MPs willing to prevent the Chancellor visiting another disaster on the British people?