Andrew Griffith has joined his Conservative colleagues in welcoming the government's announcement that it is putting more than 拢14bn into building the Sizewell C nuclear power station in Suffolk.
But the shadow business and trade secretary says "the key thing is not to lose any more time".
He tells Sky News: "We've lost almost a year on things like Sizewell C. The government has got to get on and do it.
"We all know this is going to take between nine and 12 years. That itself is too long. If there are reforms to regulations and planning processes that would speed that up, that would be helpful."
Griffith says the UK has almost the most expensive industrial energy costs of any developed nation, which "is making our businesses uncompetitive".
He is then challenged on why the Conservative government did not reform regulation at the time and why the construction of the Hinkley Point C nuclear plant in Somerset has taken so long.
Griffith responds that it took "a long time to restart a programme", citing how all forward-looking nuclear programmes were cancelled in the late 1990s.
He says that the "energy crisis caused by Russia's invasion of Ukraine" has "produced a new consensus", which he hopes will speed up the embrace of nuclear power.