European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Whitty (Lab)]

My Lords, I have two amendments which are grouped with Amendment 8. I am afraid that they probably should not have been included, but like the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord Liddle, I was in Brussels today and did not have a chance to argue the groupings, so I am afraid that noble Lords are going to have to hear me speak on this issue tonight. My Amendment 114 makes a rather important cross-reference to Euratom.

The amendment seeks essentially to add a clause to the Bill after Clause 7, with an accompanying schedule. Before we understand what is happening to our whole regulatory system and therefore pass this Bill, and certainly before we leave the European Union, we need to know from the Government what their view is on future relationships with the EU executive agencies. The schedule lists those agencies which include two Euratom agencies. It lists the supply agency to which the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, referred. Its observatory plays a key role in dealing with supply chains of extraordinarily sensitive and potentially dangerous material. It lists also the Fusion for Energy agency which deals with some of the aspects to which the noble Lord, Lord Broers, referred in terms of the development of fusion as a new source of energy and the high-level, European-wide research programme at Culham and elsewhere. They are very important agencies. At this point we do not know what future UK participation, arrangements, observer status or links with those agencies are going to be.

In addition to those two Euratom agencies, there are 34 executive agencies of the European Union. I have noticed the time and I will therefore not go through the role and remit of them all, as well as the importance of knowing where we are, but they include a number of agencies of great importance to the lives of our citizens, to our industry and to our environment. There are agencies which deal with safety at work, food safety, environmental safety generally, and of course there is the EU Medicines Agency, which regrettably is moving away from Britain, dealing with medical safety. There is a whole range dealing with police and judicial procedures.

These agencies are not law-making bodies, but they are operationally very important to the sectors to which they apply. The UK has engaged very effectively with most of those agencies, to the benefit of our citizens, industries, sciences and judicial system. I have asked a number of Written Questions as to what the future arrangements are, with the standard reply being: “This will all be sorted out in the negotiations”. However, the negotiations are going on at the same time as we are dealing with the Bill. We need to know, in relation to the Bill, how those agencies will interact with the regulations newly transposed into UK law and the way in which we operate in those industries and systems.

My visit to Brussels in the last couple of days has underlined the urgency of the situation of knowing where we are with such agencies. For the first time, I carefully read the EU’s proposition on how we deal with transition periods. That document says that the UK will not only no longer participate in the institutions of the European Union but also,

“no longer participate in … the decision-making or the governance of the Union bodies, offices and agencies”.

In other words, in approximately one year and 34 days, we will no longer participate in any of these vital agencies. It is possible, if the Government put their mind to it, to establish in that period new relationships. In some of these agencies, non-EU bodies are either observers or participants. At the moment, we have not a clue how the Government are approaching the future in all of these important areas. It is an urgent decision that we cannot delay until the end of the transition period, because unless the Government persuade the EU otherwise in the next few weeks and months, from the date of exit we will no longer participate. This will change the way in which we operate in a range of safety, environmental, scientific, judicial and police areas—including security and defence.

That issue arises for a whole number of areas well beyond Euratom. On Euratom, I agree very much with what virtually everybody else has said: it is unnecessary to come out of Euratom. It is still possible to distinguish our approach to Euratom and effectively rescind our resignation from it without changing our position on the EU. Indeed, all the arguments—from industry, science and environmentalists—indicate that we should do that. At the same time, I urge your Lordships, and the Government in particular, that before we get very far in the process on the Bill, we should get a clear indication, not only on the Euratom agencies, but on the rest of the agencies set out in Amendment 263 proposing a new schedule, so that we will know, well in advance of leaving the European Union and its agencies and well in advance of the beginning of the transition period, quite how we will operate with them in future. I ask the Minister to take seriously the list I have given him and, perhaps in writing or on Report, to indicate to us how the Government intend to deal with this very important tissue.

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

My Lords, I think it is important on these Benches to put in a word of support for the amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. We all recognise that Euratom is a good brand; no one, on any side, is disputing that Euratom has achieved what a good brand should do. It has given confidence to the British and European public on a matter of critical importance, not least in handling medical isotopes with a very short half-life.

It is quite clear to my mind that if we leave for reasons that are obscure to me but probably are concerned only with the notional theory that the European Court of Justice might be able to exert some malign influence on Euratom—that seems to be the only reason that has ever been advanced as to why we should leave Euratom—then that plays second order to how we ensure, in the words of the amendment, which I very much support, that we “maintain equivalent participatory relations” with Euratom. It is essential that we continue to command the confidence of the users of isotopes and other nuclear material and of practitioners. It is not clear to me that the regulation we will have to put in place will be ready in time. In fact, I am absolutely certain that it cannot be. The amendment is a very sensible and modest proposal that I fully support.

[Lord Liddle (Lab)]

My Lords, I support what the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, said, and the other speakers who called for the Government to reconsider this question. I speak as a member of Cumbria County Council. Cumbria is very excited by the prospect of nuclear renaissance in this country, but how we are proposing to achieve it is interesting. First, to build a new nuclear power station we hand it over to the French. We are reliant on French leadership at Hinkley Point. Is it not paradoxical that we are not building up a native British industry, but saying to the French, “Please come and we’ll pay you lots of money to do it”, while at the same time saying that, for purely ideological reasons, we will not have anything to do with Euratom? The Government’s policy is contradictory.

Secondly, the Government put nuclear revival as one of the priorities for their industrial strategy. That is one of the things highlighted in the Industrial Strategy White Paper. That requires investment in science and the kind of European co-operation in science that we have seen so successfully with JET and nuclear fusion. Yet what do they want to do for ideological reasons on the other Benches? They want to throw spanners in the works of that co-operation by withdrawing from Euratom. What conceivable sense does this make?

Will the Minister produce a clear statement of reasons as to why this policy is being pursued? What are the reasons for it? Secondly, within what timescale are the many problems that withdrawal from Euratom will cause be addressed and by whom? Do the Government not have a duty to do that? Thirdly, what will the cost be of having our own separate national arrangements? The Government ought to know that by now. This issue was first raised in this House on the Article 50 Bill. What has happened in the succeeding months? What have the Government actually done since then to address these concerns?

Finally, I will make a point about the handling of the Bill in the House. I see this as an extremely important issue of national importance and we are debating it after 11 o’clock at night. Does that make sense? Is that not the duty that we owe people—to provide proper scrutiny? Should we not be allowing proper time for this debate? This is an example of an issue that should have been debated in prime time in this House. It should have been the subject of a vote in Committee. Because of the hour that is clearly not possible, but the fact is that we have failed in our duty to the people on this question.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Earl of Selborne Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Krebs (CB)]

My Lords, I refer to a report of the Science and Technology Select Committee from a few years ago, when I was its chair, on the subject of nuclear R&D in this country. In doing so, I support this group of amendments. In the report, we asked: given that the UK is committed to a civil nuclear programme and a refreshing of nuclear energy generation capability, do we have the skills in this country to deliver—not just in overseeing the build by foreign companies, but in the regulation? When we heard evidence from the witnesses, we realised that such capability in the United Kingdom has been seriously eroded. Here are some numbers: the workforce in nuclear energy and nuclear science decreased from 8,000 in the 1980s to under 2,000 by the early part of this century. Our investment in nuclear R&D is half that of the Netherlands and Norway, one hundredth that of France, and less than that of Australia, which does not have a nuclear energy programme at all.

Traditionally, we have not been investing enough in nuclear R&D capability. Therefore, the research capability sponsored through Euratom is, I believe, crucial to the future of our civil nuclear programme. In our report, we said:

“The nuclear industry and the regulator rely on the research base to train the next generation of experts. Once lost, these capabilities will not easily be replaced”.


It is important that the Government reassure us that, if we are to withdraw from Euratom, which I do not think we should, we have a mechanism in place to ensure that that nuclear capability is being developed. The Select Committee report made 14 recommendations, the vast majority of which the Government accepted. One was that the Government should set up a nuclear R&D strategy board. Has the nuclear R&D strategy board been consulted on this issue, and what is its view?

[The Earl of Selborne (Con)]

My Lords, I was lucky enough to serve on the Select Committee under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and I now chair the Science and Technology Committee. We are revisiting this issue at present, looking at developments since the 2011 report. One of the recommendations, which was not fully implemented by the Government, but on which, nevertheless, there was a bit of progress, was that a strategy board be set up to advise government in the long term—and nothing could be more long term than a nuclear energy strategy. An organisation was set up called the Nuclear Innovation and Research Advisory Board. NIRAB was set up on a limited term of three years and produced its final report in February—last week, in fact—which is a survey of civil nuclear research in this country. I echo the question of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs: what will follow NIRAB? While in principle it is often a good idea for advisory boards and strategy boards to have a built-in termination—otherwise, they go on for ever—in practice we do need continuity of thought. That has clearly been lacking. Indeed, there has been no thought; that has been part of the problem. Successive Governments kicked this into touch. Nuclear research was an issue that, until recently, simply was not addressed adequately.

In its February report, NIRAB pointed out something totally obvious that nevertheless needs saying: that international collaboration is the main route for developing nuclear technologies. Of course, there are a number of ways of undertaking international collaboration, but we are quite a small player, however much we manage to build up our dismally low nuclear capability compared, say, with the 1960s, when we were indeed a large world player. We have been overtaken by a number of countries. If the industrial strategy, which has nuclear as one of its 10 pillars, is to be implemented, we have clearly got an awful lot of catching up to do.

I agree with the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, slightly failed to note that, although we joined Euratom before the European Union evolved from the EEC, the European Union (Amendment) Act 2008—which I must admit had escaped my notice—joined Euratom and the European Union at the hip in some way. A lawyer can explain to me the implications of that but paragraph 18 of the Explanatory Notes explains that we have to withdraw from the European Atomic Agency Community, Euratom, because it is now part of the EU in legal terms. Be that as it may, it is absolutely clear that we have to have a relationship with Euratom and with other organisations around the world which are collaborating.

One such collaboration, again thinking long term, is the Generation IV International Forum. This is looking very long term, leapfrogging through to new technologies which have still to be developed—we are thinking about the year 2030 and beyond. At the moment, the NIRAB report describes us as only participating as an inactive member—that was the case in 2011—through the subscription to Euratom. When the Government responded to the Select Committee report, they said, “We don’t have to worry about joining the Generation IV Forum if we want to remain connected to the emerging technologies, because we are members of Euratom”. Clearly, that answer does not work anymore if Brexit is going to happen and we are going to leave Euratom. We clearly need quite quick answers.

I agree entirely that this is not controversial. The Government are the first to say that we simply have to develop a nuclear strategy and a nuclear capability, and we have to collaborate. If, for legal reasons—and I do believe they are only legal reasons—we have to withdraw from formal membership, surely when the Minister responds he can tell us, without prejudicing any negotiating position in this case, exactly what ideal situation we would like to achieve.

[Lord Hutton of Furness (Lab)]

My Lords, I shall say a few brief words in support of the amendment that the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, has moved this evening. Before I say anything further, I should bring the attention of your Lordships’ House to the interests I have declared in the register. I am the chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association here in the United Kingdom.

I do not think there is any doubt at all that membership of the Euratom treaty has brought very significant benefits to the UK nuclear industry and, in doing so, has served some vital strategic interests of our country. Unlike membership of the European Union itself, which remains a polarising and deeply divisive issue in our country, I have not heard anyone mount any argument at all—ever, at any point in this process—in favour of leaving the Euratom treaty. I get the very strong sense that the position of Her Majesty’s Government has come very late in this process. Having looked at how these two treaties have become intertwined in recent decades, the Attorney-General, giving advice to the Cabinet, has clearly favoured separation entirely, so that as we leave the European Union we face this rather grim and desperate situation where we might find ourselves without any internationally recognised nuclear safeguards operating in the UK.