Bernard Ingham

History

Sir Bernard Ingham is a journalist who worked as press secretary for Margaret Thatcher. He joined the Civil Service in 1967, working for the Department of Energy from 1974. He went on to spend eleven years as Thatcher's Chief Press Secretary. From 1989-90 Ingham was also Head of the Government Information Service.

Links to the nuclear industry

On his retirement in 1991, BNFL “asked him to make his advice available as a consultant� (The Independent, December 30, 1991). The company did not disclose how much it paid him.

Ingham was also a director of Hill and Knowlton, one of the largest public relations companies in Britain, from September 1991 to June 2002. The firm has very close links with the Government and worked for Nuclear Electric during the 1990s. In PR Week in the early nineties, Ingham was quoted as saying “for 25 years I have earned a crust trying to preserve nuclear power" (PR Week, September 16, 1993).

No longer working for BNFL, Ingham is now both a Director and the Secretary of the pro-nuclear lobbying group Supporters of Nuclear Energy (SONE). Its business address is the Westminster headquarters of the British Nuclear Energy Society, a body set up to promote nuclear power and linked to all the main figures in the nuclear industry, from BNFL to British Energy, the company which runs most of the country's nuclear power stations. [1] and [2]

Line many pro-nuclear campaigners, Ingham is virulently anti-wind power. He has been vice-president of the anti-wind farm campaign Country Guardian since summer 1993. His stance on nuclear versus wind power is clear: in 1993 he wrote a column in the Hebden Bridge Times entitled ‘Nuclear power is greener than windfarms’.

He is also a global warming skeptic. At a major meeting of anti-windfarm campaigners, on June 19, 2004 at Saddleworth Moor in Lancashire, he declared: “I am a skeptic about global warming�, “wind will never compete with nuclear� and “windpower is for the brainwashed or the braindead". He added that wind “is not an answer to global warming� and “nuclear is benign on two counts: pollution and land-use�.

He also argues that energy conservation is no solution, because people are only motivated to save money on bills, rather than saving energy itself. He argues that all people do when they save money is simply buy more electrical goods which use more energy. “Having been responsible for the [Save It] policy, I wouldn’t rely on energy conservation to get me through�. “My solution to this problem… is a mix of energy supply: coal, nuclear, oil and gas� – he also says that most oil comes from unstable regimes and nuclear is the safest form of energy production.

Ingham also repeats the often anti-environmental argument that puts forward the theory that groups “want to return to a pre-industrial society�.

On the Today programme on November 29, 2005, Ingham claimed that nuclear power is "the cheapest option" and "the cleanest of all methods of electricity generation", and dismissed windpower as "unreliable, intermittent, and therefore basically mucky". He also claimed that "nuclear doesn't want subsidies". [3] [4]

He is also an avowed anti-European.

External links

• Biography on website of Celebrity Speakers Associates (CSA), October 28, 2003.
• List of committee members, SONE website, October 7, 2005.
• Audio archive of the Today programme, BBC Radio 4, November 29, 2005. Audio clip featuring Ingham speaking on behalf of nuclear power at 2m45s, and transcript.

Articles

• Peter Preston, "Who to press-gang in Wakeham's wake?", The Observer, February 3, 2002.
• Chris Grimshaw, "It's official: no dark Machiavellian conspiracy for new nuclear power", Corporate Watch newsletter, issue 21, December 2004.