Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle Excerpts

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Grand Committee

In the same connection, I ask the Minister whether obtaining nuclear fuel and enriched uranium in particular will be treated in the same way as obtaining other forms of energy from Russia and/or China in future. Is the Minister confident that the business model of Urenco, the uranium enrichment company one-third owned by Her Majesty’s Government, continues to be viable? From where is the raw material sourced at present and where does the Minister think it will be sourced from in the future?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I offer support to Amendments 11, 22 and 24 in the name of noble Lord, Lord Vaux of Harrowden, although I start from a very different position from him on nuclear power and perhaps where my areas of concern lie. It is important that we are talking here about ultimate ownership and control identified and verified. We are looking at ensuring that any change of ownership is clear. When I looked at the amendments, I inevitably thought about what has happened with our water companies and indeed with some privatised elements of our NHS, where we have seen GP surgeries sold off through a chain and sometimes the ownership and the sale have become clear only several times down the track. When we are talking about something as crucial, strategic and potentially dangerous as nuclear power generation, we need to ensure that there is clarity about where control lies—obviously, I am looking at that not just from a national perspective but much more broadly.

I shall comment particularly on Amendment 19 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, and the important elements in that about transparency of costs and ensuring that those costs and the spending are fully declared. I talked last night in relation to the Health and Care Bill about instances where public money that is paid in supposedly for care—in this case, it might be paid in for power—is pumped out into dividends through complex financial instruments.

Since this is the first time that I have risen to speak in this Committee, I want briefly to pick up one point raised by the noble Baroness, Lady Wilcox: we are now in unprecedented times in European history. Since Second Reading, the events in Ukraine have taken place. At Zaporizhzhia, the largest nuclear power plant in Europe, a building—not the reactor—was set on fire during a bombardment from all sides, on the Ukrainian account, by Russian forces. The International Atomic Energy Agency has expressed grave concerns about its safety. It is worth noting that, even after those reactors are switched off, they will need weeks of cooling down. There are pools of spent fuel rods which require safe storage for several years. As the noble Baroness said, this has put us in a different situation from that of even weeks ago.

I will point to something else, for reasons which will take a second to become clear. There is an Australian town called Lismore that I know very well. It is a town that floods; it has always flooded. A hundred years ago, they built a church high on the hill to make sure that it would not flood—a couple of decades ago, they built a shopping centre that was flood-proof. Lismore has just flooded, with significant loss of life; both the shopping centre and the church have flooded. We are in unprecedented times.

I ask the Committee to think about how, when we put public money into a nuclear power plant, we have to guarantee political, military and climate stability—the last of which we know we will not have—for six or seven decades at a minimum. Does anyone in the Committee truly believe we can guarantee that we can continue to safely operate a nuclear power plant in six or seven decades in the world we live in? That has to underlie all of our debates today.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

My Lords, as well as of course supporting the amendments spoken to by my noble friend Lady Wilcox, I support the amendments spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux. In fact, he is in danger of changing my views about hereditary Peers—these debates are difficult things.

I support him on two counts. The first is in relation to beneficial ownership. Could the Minister say if this would cover ensuring that we could check whether countries we do not want to own these power stations are setting up companies in tax havens—particularly the Crown dependencies and overseas territories we have responsibility for? That has been happening far too often and we need to clamp down on that.

Secondly, I support him because I too was concerned about the scope of the Bill. I support what he said, and I am sorry that he was not allowed to table the amendment he suggested; I hope it will be picked up. I had a little problem in tabling my amendment; I had to change it and the one I have got down is not exactly what I wanted. I will come back to that later. The scope of the Bill has unfortunately been drawn far too narrowly. It deals with the purposes the Government want and are concerned about, but it does not allow us to deal with some of the wider aspects. So there we are—I support a hereditary Peer on two counts. It is a red letter day.

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[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, I shall speak to Amendments 44 and 45 in my name. They have essentially the same aim as Amendment 3, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Oates, but would intervene in the Bill in a different place and at a different point in the process. The noble Lord was intervening at the designation stage; my amendments would intervene in Clause 44, at the stage of handing over the money.

We have had a very illuminating debate. I make the point that no one can accuse the Green Party of not having been being consistent through the decades about nuclear power.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

It was just that you were wrong.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Well, on many issues, such as the climate emergency, the nature crisis, concern about air pollution and whether we should have a living wage, we have won all those arguments over time, and I fully expect that we will make the same progress here.

The noble Viscount said, “Don’t worry, the costs won’t be borne immediately.” I point to your Lordships’ House having recently passed the Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill—an acknowledgment that we have already laid huge costs on future generations in terms of the destruction of the earth. What we are talking about here is like buying a property and then saying that the ground rent in future will be decided by a random number generator. We do not know what the costs will be, but those costs of trying to dispose of this material exist.

The noble Lord, Lord Howell, said, “Oh, we have the technological solutions”, and the noble Lord, Lord Deben, hinted at the issue when he asked, “Why would future generations dig this up?” We should think about what we have done to the pyramids and a great many ancient sites: here is this mysterious thing from the past and there might be treasures in there. One of the great challenges of trying to decide about deep geological disposal is the question of whether you should mark it or hide it. If you mark it then how do you convey, many centuries into the future, that this is a dangerous place? That is not a question that anyone has ever found an answer to because there is no answer to it.

I would be interested in the Minister’s answer to this. At Second Reading the noble Lord, Lord Oates, said there had not been much discussion of this issue, but when I raised the question of a geological disposal facility the Minister told me there were four places where this was being consulted on. I asked him to identify those places and he said he could not, so I would be interested to hear any updates on that. It rather contradicts the comments from the noble Lord in front of me, who said that three places had already decided. I spoke at Second Reading about my experience of being in Cumbria and seeing what resistance there was, even in a place that is broadly pro-nuclear power, to deep geological disposal.

You do not make a purchase, particularly with public money, without knowing what the costs will be. I have some sympathy with the amendments in the names of the noble Lords, Lord Wigley and Lord Vaux, about trying to make sure that the cost does not land on the public purse—except that the practical reality is that we have seen a great deal of socialisation of costs and privatisation of profits. The state will always be the organisation that has to pick up the costs because the clean-up and the storage have to happen and the state has to ensure the security of its people.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

My Lords, I apologise for not being present at Second Reading, and this is the first time I have spoken in Committee. I am speaking to Amendments 3, 44 and 45. Normally, when I speak on matters of climate change, there is not much distance between my position and those of the noble Lords, Lord Oates and Lord Teverson. However, on this issue, I totally oppose Amendment 3, which can be interpreted really only as a wrecking amendment designed to derail the Bill and the financing of this essential infrastructure, which we need to see built for the clean, affordable and secure sources of electricity that we will need in the future. Amendments 44 and 45 similarly seek to derail this effort and therefore should be opposed by the Government.

To pick up on some of the details, at heart, the difference between us is a sense of radiophobia. Noble Lords on the other side believe radiation to be a deadly, uncontrollable source of pollution that cannot be managed, which is just not true. We know how to manage this waste today and will know how to manage it tomorrow. If you know the source of radiation, and whether it is alpha, beta or gamma, and how it can be stopped by simple everyday materials—paper, metal and concrete—you can contain this waste. You can stand today in a disposal facility of high-level waste, in existing reactors above ground, and touch the sides of the casks containing that waste. It is that safe. In fact, the background radiation would be less than you would get if you were exposed to background radiation from visiting parts of Cornwall.

So please can noble Lords engage in this debate on the basis of science? Can you visit these facilities and engage in an understanding of how this currently operates and will operate in the future? If you drop this radiophobia, you will understand that this is essential in the fight against climate change—not only the existing reactors, but the new reactors and existing-design reactors. We need them all. We need to throw everything we can at this. We need to do it safely and securely, and that is what we have been and will be doing.

Please can we not accept this amendment, but have a dialogue and get to the root of noble Lords’ concerns? I am sure, as was pointed out by the noble Viscount, Lord Hanworth, that once you understand the nature of radiation and that the higher the radiation, the quicker it decays, you will understand that this is a manageable problem, unlike the completely unmanaged problem of CO₂ emissions. CO₂ is emitted every second of every day in every country, and is accumulating in the atmosphere with no one taking responsibility. No one is paying for its collection and storage. You have to put this in context, understand the science and visit the current management practices in this country and others. Then you will understand that these amendments are not in good faith; they are designed simply to slow this down, and I therefore cannot support them.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Before the noble Baroness sits down, perhaps she would acknowledge that the circumstances in which waste is currently being managed are stable—I do not think she was here when I was speaking to the earlier group of amendments, about Ukraine—and we have orderly government and an orderly economic system. We have controls. The world cannot be guaranteed to stay in that place. In another case, waste could look very different.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

Perhaps the noble Baroness would like to comment on the completely and utterly irresponsible spreading of misinformation around the Ukraine reactor. People are claiming that it would be 10 times worse than Chernobyl, which is utterly untrue. This is the largest reactor in Europe, yet it is so secure that it cannot be compared to Chernobyl in any way, shape or form, but all this misinformation is circling around it. We have seen that reactor being rendered to a safe point even under the conditions of war. What more proof do you need that this can be safely managed?

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

The noble Baroness directed that to me, so I will point out that, yes, the artillery shells did not hit the reactors, but they are designed to deal with aircraft strikes and earthquakes. They are not designed to deal with artillery shells.

[Baroness Worthington (CB)]

Which do you think is more impactful—an artillery shell, or an airliner or F14 fighter flying into the side of the reactor? They are designed for this. They have regular safety protocols and procedure which they go through in considering what should happen in a conflict situation like this. You are really not speaking from a position of information to understand this, I am afraid. I should not use pronouns; I should have said that the noble Baroness should really study this more before making proclamations such as this. It derails this essential effort.

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[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

Let me answer that. Looking at the alternatives proposed by the Liberal Democrats, I could go into a long discourse to outline what will happen to our industries if we forgo an ample supply of electricity to power them and maintain our economy. This is what the Liberal Democrats are inviting. They simply have not faced up to the realities of their proposals. The noble Lord says the Bill already asks for an assessment; I think that is a trivial point, because I am trying to tell him that such an assessment is probably not the appropriate way of proceeding—as we have heard very eloquently from the noble Lord, Lord Howell. I am not defending the proposal that a value for money assessment should be made. I am suggesting that such an assessment should be put aside because it is irrelevant and inappropriate.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I am sorry to intervene on the noble Viscount’s private discussion with the Liberal Democrats, but he referred to opportunity costs and may not be aware of the study from the University of Sussex Business School and the International School of Management—ISM—of 123 countries over 25 years, which was published in Nature Energy. It showed that nuclear and renewable energy programmes do not operate very well together and that nuclear crowds out renewable. That is the opportunity cost when going for nuclear; you lose the renewables.

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My discourse on renewables would have been on the extraordinary cost of having to accommodate intermittence. I am afraid there are other things to discuss. I have already discussed this in another forum, so I think we can leave that point.

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[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, before the Minister concludes this debate—oh, I beg your pardon.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

Sorry, I have been trying to find a space to get into a number of amendments here. On the debate we have just been having, I shall quote Steve Holliday, the CEO of National Grid, who said in 2015 that the idea of nuclear for baseload was “outdated” and that:

“From a consumer’s point of view, the solar on the rooftop is going to be the baseload. Centralized power stations will be increasingly used to provide”


variable power.

In the interests of taking us forward, I will speak fairly briefly to my Amendments 7, 8 and 23 in this group. I apologise if Amendments 7 and 8 might have been better grouped with Amendment 2, which I did not spot at the time.

Amendment 7 seeks to ensure that nuclear companies be either a not-for-profit entity, a co-operative, a community-interest company or wholly owned by UK public authorities. This comes back to the point about the ownership of the designated nuclear company and a point I made earlier. I will not replay it at length, but we have very often seen through our whole system of privatised public services—railways, power companies, et cetera—the socialisation of costs and the privatisation of profits. This is an attempt to say that this is a core public service: this is not a competition, and it should be provided through that means of ownership.

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[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot be quite as brief as the noble Lord because I have a number of amendments in my name. I am also conscious of the pressure on the Committee’s time, so I will do my very best to be as quick as I possibly can. I will concentrate rather more on Amendment 12 than on any other of the amendments in my name, that of my noble friend Lord Teverson and those of other noble Lords.

Basically, Amendment 12 would require the department to define “sufficiently advanced” in its guidance. What we know is that designation will come at a certain point. We have already debated the fact that we have no idea what the criteria will be and that we may or may not see them before we finish our deliberations on this Bill. However, we are at least grateful that the Minister is apparently listening to what we have to say. I hope that he will listen to this particular bit because the designation can come only when the Secretary of State is satisfied that the project is sufficiently advanced; this amendment merely requires the Secretary of State to be clear about what that means.

Earlier, I referred to the fact that I live near Sizewell so it is a particularly good example to use, not least because it is the only project in the offing that might use this methodology. In the case of Sizewell, it is worth being aware that the planning application has been submitted and is awaiting the decision of the Secretary of State. Yet, at the conclusion of the planning examination, numerous issues were outstanding. They still have not been sorted out.

They include the crucial issue of the design of the hard coastal defences. If you live near Sizewell, as I do, you know that the coast there is eroding incredibly rapidly. Three weeks ago, I went for a walk on the clifftop and saw, in a field where the crops were planted this year, that some of the initial plants have already fallen over the edge of the cliff. The erosion is very rapid; appropriate measures must therefore be put in place, yet this has not been done.

Moreover, nothing has been done to ensure that there will definitely be potable water. Frankly, if you have a nuclear power station with no guarantee of potable water, it is a completely pointless exercise; that work has not been done. Also, there has been no work to look at soil mixing and ground anchor trials, which are vital because a huge hole will be dug in the ground and we have to be sure that the whole thing is not going to collapse. There are numerous issues that have not yet been sorted at this stage.

Using those three examples, my question for the Minister is this: does he see that a designation could take place without those three things having been addressed, or not? Will there be sufficient progress? I seek a definition and an understanding. I have given some specific examples for the Minister to consider; I hope that he can tell me whether they have gone on.

The other amendment in this group, Amendment 18, aims to provide further transparency about how taxpayers’ money is going to be allocated and what taxpayers’ money is being used. The recent announcement of £100 million of taxpayers’ money being given to the project at this stage, before any decision has been made, does not look good locally. It almost appears as if the green light has been given to Sizewell before any of the issues that I have been raising have been taken into account. We need to have more transparency about the taxpayer contribution to projects.

Amendment 27 picks up an issue that was raised on an earlier amendment by my noble friend Lord Oates, so I will not go through it in any detail. It requires the Secretary of State to provide a report about the up-front and overall expected cost of the project, the likely cost of electricity going on to the national grid and decommissioning costs, which have already been the subject of much debate, so I shall not repeat that.

The subject of Amendment 28 was also raised in an earlier amendment by my noble friend Lord Oates. It is something that various consumer organisations have been calling for, which is that before final agreements are made, there should be an independent assessment of the information that is being provided to the Government. It would require an independent impact assessment to be conducted and to be approved by the House of Commons before licence modifications could be permitted.

The amendments in my name are all about transparency. If I go away at the end of the proceedings with one message, it is that at the moment the Government seem unable or unwilling to provide a great deal of information about the Bill. This is not about being pro or anti nuclear but about transparency, and at the moment I do not think we are getting anything like enough of it from the Government.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

I rise to speak briefly to Amendments 5 and 12 in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath, to which I have added my name. On defining “sufficiently advanced” in guidance, two projects come to mind: Crossrail and HS2. We were told everything was fine and that there was a fixed budget. One of the most interesting discussions in the other place was when the Minister argued that the possibility of costs exceeding the cap as predicted was remote, which was a triumph of hope over experience. It is important that we have that amendment.

Coming back to some of our earlier debates, because this is news just in literally in the past hour, I have to note that the director-general of the International Atomic Energy Agency has expressed grave concerns about the safety of the Chernobyl nuclear plant where staff have not been able to move since the Russian takeover.

“I’m deeply concerned about the difficult and stressful situation facing staff at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant and the potential risks this entails for nuclear safety. I call on the forces in effective control of the site to urgently facilitate the safe rotation of personnel”.


I hope some people who contributed earlier in the debate will not be in a much worse situation when we come to Report.

[Baroness Wilcox of Newport (Lab)]

My Lords, this group relates to a broad range of transparency measures relating to project cost, the use of taxpayers’ money and the use of delegated powers. I refer to the Minister’s previous reply: if he wants to find out how to get a building delivered on time, within cost and with less cost to the taxpayer, he should speak to Edwina Hart, the former Minister in the Welsh Government who got the Senedd building built on time and within cost.

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I beg to move.

[Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to follow that powerful and clear exposition by the noble Lord, Lord Foster of Bath. I declare my position as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

Consulting the upper-tier local authority is certainly an important factor. It is one way of addressing local consultation; the noble Lord has set out all the reasons why that is needed. However, we are talking here not just about Sizewell C but about a potential model for the future. It is possible that a site might be located right on a boundary where it is within one local authority but covers a substantial number of people in the adjoining one. That is the reason why I went for a radius of 50 miles in my amendment.

If the Committee is wondering why I chose 50 miles, I would be happy to debate what it should be. There are of course significant construction impacts, as the noble Lord outlined, but also, after the Fukushima disaster, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission recommended that the evacuation area around a nuclear power plant, should there be a serious issue, should be 50 miles. Obviously that has an impact on people’s lives, on their feelings about their locality and even, dare I say it, on property prices. That is why I picked 50 miles. The people in the immediate vicinity are affected and they should be consulted as a simple matter of democracy.

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I support the amendments and the principle of consultation, particularly with local authorities. I, too, declare my interest as a vice-president of the Local Government Association.

The point made a moment ago by the noble Lord, Lord Foster, with regard to the impact of the workforce is of significance; the proposed 50-mile radius is relevant to that. I draw the Minister’s attention to the construction scheme of the Dinorwig pumped storage scheme in Snowdonia. It started in 1973 and was built, remarkably, with hardly any industrial disputes at all. More than 2,000 people were in that workforce; it was believed that they could not be recruited locally but, in actual fact, some 86% of the hourly paid were recruited locally while more than 70% of the office staff were recruited from within a radius of about 50 miles, which is the definition used for that purpose.

The outcome—it is relevant for the Minister to consider this when any new nuclear programme goes forward—was that there were remarkably good labour relations on that site, with close co-operation between the then CEGB and the trade unions. At a time when the Ince B project, for example, which will be known to the Minister, was suffering from tremendous labour problems, with strikes all the time, these were overwhelmingly avoided on the Dinorwig scheme. In other words, consultation with the trade unions, local authorities and representatives in the area enabled those dangers to be avoided. I believe that it is in the interests of everybody—the local community and the Government themselves, as well as the company—that the maximum degree of consultation is built in.