In his bid to boost nuclear power, the prime minister Keir Starmer ignored warnings from his nuclear safety watchdog that it was inaccurate to blame regulation for delays, The Ferret can reveal.

A document released under freedom of information law discloses that the UK's Office for Nuclear Regulation told the government that claims about delays to nuclear power, made in an initial draft of an announcement by Starmer, were "not true".

However, the claims were repeated in the prime minister's final announcement in February, which said the Labour government would "rip up rules to fire up nuclear power".

Campaigners said they were appalled by Starmer's "cynical and unprofessional" approach, accusing him of "ignorant prejudice" and of borrowing language from a right wing pressure group. They warned that weakening the regulation of nuclear plants would put public safety at risk.

The draft release also quoted the energy secretary, Ed Miliband, promising that nuclear power would be "built by unionised British workers". But that was changed in the published version to say that nuclear power would create "thousands of skilled jobs".

The Labour government in London under Starmer and Miliband has become an enthusiastic cheerleader for nuclear power. Ministers are keen to kickstart a new nuclear building programme "to grow the economy and deliver cleaner, more affordable energy".

Scottish Labour under Anas Sarwar MSP has also become a strong supporter of nuclear power. Labour and the Conservatives have been piling pressure on the SNP's Scottish Government to abandon its long-held opposition to the building of any new nuclear stations.

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The Office for Nuclear Regulation (ONR) is an independent body set up by the government to ensure nuclear safety. It was asked to comment on a draft government press release announcing a new taskforce to speed up the regulation of nuclear power.

In response to a freedom of information request, ONR released a copy of the draft with its annotations making four suggested corrections. The draft was passed to The Ferret.

But none of the corrections were implemented when Starmer made the announcement on 6 February, promising to "put Britain back in the global race for nuclear energy".

The draft release stated that three European regulatory regimes had reached "different assessments" of the design of the two reactors being built at Hinkley Point C in Somerset, "leading to delays and increased costs".

ONR pointed out that this was "not accurate", and that it had refuted such claims before. "Our feeling is that linking regulatory factors into the increasing Hinkley Point C costs and timeframes isn't true and the sentence doesn't stand up," it said.

ONR also suggested that the new taskforce should not look at the "approval" of new reactor designs, as suggested in the draft, but their "deployment". Delays had been caused by construction problems, not safety regulation, it argued.

"The approval of reactor designs is a small aspect of ONR's regulatory regime and not a rate-determining factor," ONR said. "The reactor approval process has no bearing on the overall speed of delivery, but rather construction."

Neither amendment was made in Starmer's announcement, which reiterated the disputed wording from the draft. It also included a slew of much stronger language about "slashing red tape to get Britain building".

Two other amendments suggested by ONR - pointing out that Hinkley Point C had been "built over many years" and that the "international alignment" of regulators was already happening - were also rejected.

Nuclear power delays

The energy company EDF predicted in 2007 that electricity from Hinkley Point C would be cooking Christmas turkeys in 2017. It has since been repeatedly delayed, with EDF saying in January 2024 that the station might not be finished until 2031.

The estimated total cost of building the plant has risen from £18bn in 2016 to £35bn in 2024. ...