Paul Flynn (obituary, 21 February) had a huge range of causes, often championing minority issues where others feared to tread, such as legalising cannabis and supporting the troops returning from overseas wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, and the families of the fallen in these wars, which he opposed.
The issue on which I worked most with Paul was nuclear power and weapons dangers, costs and secrecy. According to the Parliamentary Archives database, Paul asked 1,410 parliamentary questions on nuclear issues during his time as an MP. Indeed his first three questions as an MP (in July 1987) were posed on nuclear safety. He opposed the Hinkley C plant in Somerset, opposite his constituency across the Bristol Channel, to the end, and insisted the plans for new nuclear plants in Wales at Wylfa and a small modular reactor at Trawsfynydd were expensive white elephants, while backing “clean, green eternal” tidal power to the last.
