Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Layla Moran and Kwasi Kwarteng

Ping Pong: House of Commons
Tuesday 8th May 2018 Commons Chamber

[Kwasi Kwarteng (Spelthorne) (Con)]

I am grateful for the opportunity to speak tonight as I spoke in this important debate at an earlier stage—on Second Reading. I was pleased to hear the speech from my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), who gave a good, comprehensive analysis of why civil nuclear power and the nuclear industry are so important, not only to her constituency but to the country as a whole. In this debate, we tend to get forgetful about the immense contribution Britain has made to the nuclear industry and nuclear science. At the beginning of the 20th century, we had people such as Thomson and Rutherford, and others in the Cavendish laboratory at Cambridge and at other universities. They pioneered nuclear technology and advances in the nuclear industry. It is sad to hear speeches in this House that yet again undermine, frustrate or seek to question our capacity to get this right and to institute safeguards.

In that regard, the Bill is an excellent piece of legislation. It is sensible and it tries to construct a framework that will allow us to leave Euratom and go our own way. After all, we are members of the International Atomic Energy Agency—it has a structure and about 169 countries as members—and we should celebrate that. To hear people in this Chamber, one would think that without Euratom we were absolutely nothing and there would be no safeguards and no industry. We have heard the doom-mongering prophecy of thousands of job losses, to which the hon. Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock) alluded in his mildly entertaining speech. We have had all these bugbears and goblins, and all this terror, held before us, but we are taking a simple step: we are going to leave Euratom and institute our own Bill, as we are doing, that will provide for safeguards in the industry. We also have the IAEA as a backstop. All this fear-mongering and these doom-laden prophecies of job losses are grossly exaggerated.

The other thing to say on the amendments is that in eight years in this House I cannot remember a Government who have been so accommodating and open to amendments as we have been on this Bill. In general, we see Governments, including the one of which I am a member, rejecting amendments; sometimes the amendments make sense and often they do not. In this instance, I have been surprised and impressed by the fact that our Front Benchers and the Government as a whole have adopted many of the amendments proposed in the Lords.

I want to talk a little about the House of Lords amendments and the processes they are going through. The job of scrutiny that the Lords are doing is good, but in the context of Euratom and debates about the EU there is a suspicion—I am not saying that all the people in the other place are influenced in this way—that a lot of these debates and institutions are being set up as straw men with which to block Brexit. When people say we should stay in this or that institution, there is always the suspicion of it being a rearguard fight to reverse the decision of the referendum of June 2016 and somehow to stay in the EU by other means. I am not suggesting the majority of their lordships are influenced by that, but in these debates there is always the suspicion that people are trying to use proxies and excuses to prolong our membership, unnecessarily, of these European institutions.

Euratom is a creature not of the EU but very much of the philosophy that was underpinning countries of western Europe coming together. I believe Euratom was established in 1957, roughly at the same time as the treaty of Rome, but we did not actually join it until 1973. To hear some of these speeches, one would think that we had no nuclear industry and no nuclear expertise before we joined Euratom. As I was trying to suggest, that is, of course, completely false.

[Layla Moran]

Would the hon. Gentleman perhaps concede that he has misunderstood the amendment? It says that its provisions would be invoked only if everything had not been agreed. It does not say that we would stay in Euratom in perpetuity; it simply says that we would stay in until the point at which every single i had been dotted and every single t had been crossed.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

I accept that it is a clever amendment. I accept that on the face of it, it says that it is just a backstop, there purely to ensure that if we do not have the right treaties in place we get to stay in Euratom forever and ever, but the hon. Lady and I know that the people who composed the amendment do not expect all the relevant treaties to have been signed in the short timeframe available. I suggest, perhaps cynically—perhaps the hon. Lady will challenge me on this—that the clever amendment is simply a ruse to prolong our membership of Euratom. Call me an over-cynical man of superstition, but a lot of my constituents, if they pay any attention to this issue, would come to the same conclusion.

[Layla Moran]

I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for allowing me a second go. In a sense, we are all rooting for the Minister, in the hope that he will come to a complete set of agreements in time. We all want that, and as soon as he does that, the amendment’s provisions will no longer apply. There is no issue, because if it all happens, it is fine, and even if it does not happen, the amendment will no longer apply as soon as it does happen. I do not understand the hon. Gentleman’s argument; it does not make logical sense.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Layla Moran and Kwasi Kwarteng

2nd reading: House of Commons
Monday 16th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Layla Moran (Oxford West and Abingdon) (LD)]

As many Members have already pointed out, the Bill should not be needed at all. The most sensible approach to nuclear safeguarding would be for the United Kingdom to remain a member of Euratom, rather than wasting vast amounts of time and money in setting up an alternative regime that the Government admit will be as much a replica of the original as possible. The Government have created a rod for their own back by insisting that the European Court of Justice and freedom of movement are red lines. I wish they would just admit that that is the problem, rather than hiding behind legalese and unpublished, disputed advice.

As was pointed out by the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), when most people voted on 23 June 2016, the vast majority did not even know what Euratom was, let alone how to pronounce it. It remains possible that Britain could have taken the option of remaining a member, and it is a political choice to withdraw from it before that has been absolutely set as the legal position. What I am sure of is that the fallout—pun absolutely intended—of this decision leaves a huge gap not only in the country’s ability to safeguard nuclear material, but in many other areas not covered by the Bill.

We are told that the Government will seek a new treaty to replace Euratom, so the Bill is applicable only in the event of Britain’s crashing out of the EU and Euratom with no deal. No deal would be deeply disastrous for Britain, and the Government should not even be considering that option; yet here we are, about to pass a Bill to authorise spending on just that eventuality. Let us give credit where it is due. Given the importance of this issue and the Government’s own lack of confidence in themselves, the Department is doing absolutely the right thing in preparing for the worst—and yes, the Liberal Democrats would vote for the Bill on Second Reading. However, the fact that the Government have produced the Bill so early in the Brexit process shows that they must be genuinely concerned by the complexity of the task ahead and the possibility that the negotiations will fail.

By the way, as we all know, we have not even started those negotiations, and industry experts tell us that it could take up to seven years to negotiate a treaty as wide-ranging as Euratom. Although I have enjoyed listening to the jolly assurances of some Conservative Members—I, too, am an optimist by nature—I fail to see how we are going to do this in time.

Like many other Members who have spoken today, I am gravely concerned about the limited scope of the Bill and the fact that it does not cover the full range of Euratom functions. In particular, I am worried for my constituents. At one time, Abingdon had the highest number of PhDs per square kilometre in Europe, and many of the scientists still work on the Joint European Torus—JET—in Culham. The United Kingdom is world-leading in that area. Fusion technology, if achieved at scale, would be tantamount in technological terms to putting a man on a the moon—it is that revolutionary—and it would be a criminal act to put that position in jeopardy, but that is exactly what we are doing. To ensure its future, we need guarantees about the next phase of the work programme by the middle of next year, months before the Brexit negotiations are completed. This is very urgent.

This is not just about money, as we will, I am sure, be told: to fully participate, we must ensure that these scientists can move freely and collaborate fully and, furthermore, that those already here are enticed to stay. These are the best minds in the world, and I need not remind the Government how rare they are. It is all very well saying that we want them to stay, but we need to give them more certainty than that; they are already leaving.

My constituents, alongside others in the industry, are extremely concerned about the implications of Government decisions on their futures. What kind of associate membership do we want? Will the Minister publish, and consult on, proposals for dispute resolution? Will he guarantee freedom of movement of specialist and technical staff in the nuclear industry? There is far more information that we need from the Minister about these and other areas, and it is worrying that this Bill is so limited in scope.

[Kwasi Kwarteng]

Is the hon. Lady seriously suggesting that there would be any circumstances in which well-qualified nuclear professionals would be prevented from coming into this country? Does she think, plausibly, that that is an outcome we might get to?

[Layla Moran]

I absolutely do, because we have not had that absolute cast-iron guarantee. I should add that this is not just about the nuclear scientists; it is also about all the support staff who are needed.