Lord Deben
Main Page: Lord Deben (Conservative - Life peer)
Lord Deben
As the climate change committee is mentioned in this amendment, perhaps I could refer to some of the things that have just been said. I declare an interest as chairman of that committee. This is obviously a probing amendment and I am sure that the Minister will want to look carefully at how it falls. However, it seems to have two elements that the Minister might wish to look at rather carefully. My noble friend Lady Verma is right to be very careful about additional burdens and I am one of those who believe in that, because there is no doubt that any kind of burden will be magnified. There is today’s announcement from the Taxpayers’ Alliance, for example, which has produced a figure for the cost of energy to a normal taxpayer. Instead of the £100 in 2020 that it will be, it is suggesting six times that by using figures which just do not stand up. Whatever we do, we will have that kind of attack.
The first thing that the Minister may find to be of value in these suggestions is that this information is already required. There is no additional information that needs to be acquired. Secondly, we also have a mechanism in place—the climate change committee—to provide the additional information that the Minister might want. Thirdly, it is a way in which one could signify the great importance that we attend and attach to electricity decarbonisation. It cannot be said too often that this is the key to the future. If we cannot decarbonise electricity, we have no hope at all of meeting the obligations that are statutorily before us. It is important to say this again and again because people seem very reluctant to understand why that is. But it is obviously true that if you have decarbonised electricity, you can in fact provide many of the things that people have grown used to having without destroying the climate. If you look at the issue, it means that we can have electric vehicles, particularly with smart metering and smart grids. However, we can also have all the other electrical machines, like the ones we all use today, without feeling that we are contributing to climate change. Therefore, it is absolutely essential to what we need to do, which is why the climate change committee has recommended that we should be very tough in showing that we have to meet decarbonisation and carbon intensity targets by 2030, congruent with where we have to be in 2050.
I hope that my noble friend will look at these amendments, not in the normal way of being contrary but as a contribution to strengthening the Bill without adding extra burdens on anybody’s shoulders. They have to do this anyway—and we would not be able to do anything if they were not doing it. The Minister may find it a useful contribution.
Baroness Worthington
My Lords, I wanted to make a few comments about how such an obligation might work. Of course, I completely concur with noble Lords who have spoken already; this is clearly a probing amendment, and a lot of work will need to be done to think through how it might work in practice.
The one thing that I would like to illustrate is that, on the fuel disclosure requirements that we currently have, 12 suppliers are required to report and many of those report very low carbon intensities because they are specifically green suppliers. Of those that are mixed suppliers, there is a very great difference between them; at the top end of the scale, we have Scottish Power in 2011, whose CO2 intensity was 580 grams per kilowatt hour. At the bottom end of the scale you have EDF Energy, with 253 grams per kilowatt hour. Obviously, that is because the plant self-serves to those supply companies; they are both energy generators and energy suppliers, so they choose to use their own power. It would be hard to imagine giving one figure that they should all meet, but an obligation might be that they should demonstrate an improvement over time by percentage per annum on their current levels, as recorded over the past six years.
There are a couple of reasons why that idea might be a good one to explore. We know that there is an issue among independent generators, which fear that they will not be able to gain access to the market because of self-serving—the tendency to use your own plant and be vertically integrated. If they were required to shift to a low-carbon footprint and intensity, they would have an incentive to find those independent generators that can generate low-carbon electricity and reduce their footprint. That could knock off quite a few issues in one, if we looked at it in detail.
Another thing to commend that idea is that the measures in the Bill are designed to bring forward investment, but nothing is there to compel anybody to come forward. You can set up a CFD strike price and offer these contracts, but if no one wants to bother getting them they can simply carry on with business as usual. If they had this obligation, it would create a great incentive to find those CFDs, apply for them and come forward. The alternative is simply to keep offering higher and higher strike prices until the carrot becomes so attractive that they have to come forward. So it is a good insurance policy for the Bill, providing a way for the Government to link those targets that they propose to set in 2016 with an actual mechanism for delivery. Let us be honest: a target set by the Government to deliver carbon intensity of any value will be delivered only if you find a way for the commercial operators in the market to deliver it. This is one way, and it has potential supplementary benefits in giving independents confidence that their products will have a market.
I hope that we can look at this issue. As my noble friend has mentioned, this is a probing amendment and lots of the details have to be worked out, but it would be encouraging to hear some positive signals from the Government that we might be able to continue the discussion.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am extremely grateful to the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, and of course I look very carefully at all amendments and consider their impact. I am extremely grateful to my noble friend Lord Deben for rightly raising the important points about the information that is already available and the cost burden that it may impose further down the line on consumers. We must be very careful that we do not add to what is already a large pool of requirements put on suppliers and generators.
We are concerned about accountability. The Bill places sole responsibility on the Secretary of State to meet any target range. Once that is set, recognising that it is the Secretary of State who is responsible for setting energy policy in the UK, it is he who will be ultimately accountable to Parliament. My concern about the amendment is that it would be unfair for us to ask suppliers to manage their portfolios in order to meet national carbon intensity limits because, as has been said, it would be incredibly complicated to oversee and would confuse the responsibilities of the state in setting the target range with those of suppliers by specifying the annual level of carbon intensity that they must meet.
The question of the merit order, the order in which generation is dispatched, which is currently in response to price signals, is a commercial decision for industry and I would certainly have reservations about government interfering directly with it. There is, however, a role for government in seeking to achieve decarbonisation by supporting a market framework that will make it more attractive. I think that is what the noble Baroness alluded to by prioritising low-carbon electricity. That is exactly what we are doing through contracts for difference and the carbon price floor to improve the relative economics of low-carbon generation.
Those measures provide a much better means of addressing the gap raised by the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, under his amendment. To quote my noble friend Lord Deben in the fifth report of his Committee on Climate Change:
“The gap between actual and achievable carbon intensity will be closed as coal plant is retired as the relative cost of coal increases under the rising carbon price floor and given tightening EU legislation on air quality”.
We are reaching that point but we do not need to add extra pressures to provide further information when there is more than adequate information around.
I will finish, and ask the noble Lord to withdraw his amendment, by saying that the Electricity and Gas (Energy Company Obligation) Order 2012 and its predecessors, the CERTs and CESPs, have always required energy companies to save carbon dioxide by promoting energy efficiency measures in households. There is enough going on in the system.
Lord Deben
Before my noble friend sits down, I did not suggest that there should be further weight further down the system, I was suggesting that we are already asking all that needs to be asked for this to work.
In what has been an increasingly long life, I have discovered that in most cases it is better to have “both/and” than “either/or”. I hope that she will at least leave a chink open to consider whether there might be some advantage in something after this sort of mechanism, even if it were permissive, so that it was clear that it was something that the Secretary of State could be asked about if he had not done it. Even if she went only as far as that, it would be of considerable help. Would she be willing at least to say that before we get to Report, she will have another look at this, because it seems to me that “both/and” might be better than “either/or” in this case?
Baroness Verma
First, I stand corrected by my noble friend. Secondly, I think that the measures we are taking address the noble Lord’s amendment. If I were to take it away, my response would probably be the same coming back. For clarity’s sake, I hope that the noble Lord will feel that I have addressed his concerns and withdraw his amendment.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
If only an “s” were the only thing that I had to worry about. When you have a name such as O'Neill, it can be spelt about five different ways. In some instances, it is an ‘l’ of a difference at the end—but we will pass over that.
The point that I wanted to get at here is that we know that there are problems with the successor agency. There is a proliferation of agencies with which the nuclear agency will have to be associated and will be linked to. It is very useful that we have this opportunity for the Minister, probably somewhat tortuously, to make the matter quite clear. In this day of judicial review and the like, what we say in these Committees, when we are being sensible and relevant, is of some significance outwith this place. Therefore, it will be guidance for people. I still have some sympathy for constituency MPs confronted with the prospect of a nuclear dump in their back yard. In my constituency, it was almost in the field where we believe the Battle of Bannockburn was fought, but it was not quite. They did not need to use nuclear weapons in 1314, although we might have to use something akin to them in 2014—but that is for another day and another debate. I welcome the amendments and wish them well until they are withdrawn.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I do not think that one can add much to what my noble friend Lord Jenkin said, except to underline one thing, which is the question of the sites and their management. I declare an interest as the chairman of Valpak. We are responsible for a good deal of recycling.
First, there is a real issue about sites and the checking of sites. Wherever the check can come on the product, one is in a much stronger position. My noble friend’s point is that, in many cases, the site is actually not a nuclear site at all but the product is provided for a nuclear installation. In those circumstances, it is very important that any consideration of the checking of sites should be limited to those which one has to check and not include those which one does not. That is more important than one might think, given how difficult such checking is.
Secondly, I support the point made by the noble Lord, Lord O'Neill, as I was also previously a Member of Parliament—for a constituency with two nuclear power stations. It is interesting how quickly people become happy to have those nuclear power stations once they understand the situation but how easy it is to stir something up when you have them. The only way to overcome those things, as I know the Minister will understand, is to have absolute clarity and to state matters in a form and in language that people can understand.
When we sought planning permission for Sizewell B, I held nearly 50 parish meetings. The trick was that the only people who could come to those meetings were people who lived in the parish, so the peripatetic protesters could not arrive and we could have a proper conversation. The protesters had to go to their own parish meetings. At most of them, they were well known and not altogether liked. Therefore, the discussions, considered and reasonable as they were, ended up with all those parishes supporting the opening of the new nuclear power station. My noble friend should be reminded that what made it work was the simplicity and clarity with which we discussed the issue. I hope that in answering what I think has been an interesting debate, particularly the discussion between the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, and my noble friend Lord Jenkin, she will give us an assurance that we will continue to be as clear as possible. This is a very dangerous area in which to be unclear and it helps a great deal if there is clarity from the beginning.
Lord Deben
My Lords, on the controversial comment that was just made, I find it very difficult because I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has quite got it right. The sort of error that would cause there to be a special need to be able to sue would be suable under the law without the breach of statutory duty, which is a very narrow statement that you can sue for the statutory duty being breached irrespective, in a sense, of the effect. The kind of concern that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has raised, which he does not mention but is pressing towards, is something that I cannot conceive could possibly not be available in a law case for someone who was damaged by it.
I have a particular reason why I hope that the Government will not give way to this proposal. One problem of nuclear sites—I have dealt with them for much of my adult life, with Sizewell A and Sizewell B—is that for the most part they are like any other site. One difficulty of treating them as if they are always nuclear rather than like any other site is that often quite unnecessary concerns are raised. I always remember a very small fire in a small shed a long way from the actual nuclear site, but on the nuclear periphery, and the sort of headlines that it got, whereas if it had been on an allotment there would have been no news about it at all. It became a nuclear accident.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will understand that the sort of issues that might properly excite him, the Daily Mail and the Morning Star—although whether anybody would notice that the Morning Star had been excited by it would be a real question—are covered by the law in any case. To make a special exemption here would cause a problem to those of us who have to deal with those sites, because it suggests that they are so different from other sites that they should have special protection, of the sort that we talked about in the previous debate. I hope that noble Lords opposite will remember that I was not entirely a supporter of the Government on many aspects of that Bill, so it is not because I am trying to defend it. However, this amendment would be a mistake, is unnecessary and would not be worth having, because it has a disadvantage in how it treats nuclear sites that would be damaging.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, in creating the ONR as a statutory body, it is important to ensure that the tenets of health and safety will continue to apply to the regulated community. Before I go on to respond to Amendment 38E, I should like to respond to Amendment 38U first, because it is important that I allay the noble Lord’s fears early on.
We considered in detail during the drafting of this clause that the amendment ensured that existing rights of compensation continued to remain available if people developed cancers or were subject to accidents. It is clear that it is still covered under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, which puts in place a regime for compensating those who suffer injury or damage as a result of a nuclear incident. The regime covers nuclear incidents at nuclear-licensed sites or Crown sites, and claims are permitted to be made up to 30 years after the incident. I hope that has helped to address the noble Lord’s concerns lying behind the amendment.
In Amendment 38E, the noble Lord seeks to ensure that Section 2 of the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act continues to apply to nuclear sites in Great Britain regulated by the ONR. I can reassure him that the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act and relevant legislation made under it will continue to apply to ONR-regulated sites. This will include Section 2, and therefore I do not think that the amendment is necessary.
For clarity, amendments to the HSWA in Schedule 12 to the Bill will create the statutory ONR as an enforcing authority on nuclear sites and, as such, the statutory body will be responsible for the enforcement of all non-nuclear health and safety legislation, including operators’ compliance with the requirements for the provision of information and representation of workers. I think that that addresses the noble Lord’s fears.
Amendment 38T deals with civil liability. Clause 65 of the Bill sets out the application of civil liability for a breach of a duty contained in nuclear regulations and the safety provisions of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965.
As noble Lords may recall—I think that the noble Lord referred to it earlier—in the last parliamentary Session the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Act amended the civil liability provisions contained within the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. The amendment would remove the provision setting out that breaches of a duty imposed by health and safety regulations would always be actionable where they gave rise to damage. Such regulations would include any made for the ONR’s nuclear safety, security, safeguards and radioactive materials transport purposes.
The amendment seeks to undermine the decision made in this House and the other place that civil liability should apply to health and safety legislation only where specific provision is made. Therefore, rather than making clear provision reversing the situation, the amendment would remove the clear wording of the existing clause, making it unclear whether a claim for breach of a statutory duty could be brought. The amendment does not seek to amend parallel provision in the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974. By not doing so, it would create an unequal regime between the two major pieces of health and safety legislation in the field—this Bill and the Health and Safety at Work etc. Act. It would be inappropriate and untenable for us to create a statutory regime between the civil nuclear industry and others.
I hope that the noble Lord has found that explanation reassuring. However, if he would like further clarification and would like to meet with officials, I shall be more than happy to extend that invitation to him and to other noble Lords.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that. I am very satisfied with at least one and a half and possibly two out of three. I certainly accept her assurance that the provisions in Amendment 38U are not necessary. I was concerned that the Bill should not affect a scheme which provides a set level of damages for minor radiation activities and which has run for 30 or 40 years. I was party to the negotiations that set it up. Although there will now be very few people claiming under that scheme, there are some, and I hope that it will not be affected by the change of jurisdiction. Therefore, I am grateful for the Minister’s reassurance, which I hope is sufficient.
I do not expect the Government to change their mind about civil liability but I think that it was right for me to table this amendment because it draws attention to the consequences. The noble Lord, Lord Deben, says that we should not treat such sites any differently from any other sites. However, for all sorts of reasons, nuclear sites are dealt with differently, and the whole of this legislation deals with them differently. There is a highly subjective dimension to it and, in effect, he referred to that. If there is an incident on a nuclear site, it gets blown out of all proportion. I think that all sides of this Committee are in favour of an extension of the provision of our nuclear energy sources in this country.
We also know that it would not take a lot to turn public opinion in the wrong direction—we need only look at Germany—and for the whole strategy to fall flat on its face. It would be quite wrong if that arose because of a health and safety issue that was not provided for in the nuclear regulations, whether it concerned an omission regarding nuclear waste or nuclear material, or some other breach by the management at a nuclear plant. The reality is that the level of safety on nuclear sites, not only in respect of nuclear issues but on all others, has to be—the industry recognises this—of the highest order, and any breach must lead to a sanction.
Lord Deben
I would not want the noble Lord to mistake what I said. Of course a nuclear site, by its very nature, has to be treated seriously and differently. The Bill has a great deal of that difference in it. The issue I raised was this. The noble Lord referred to something that was not about nuclear sites but was a general statement of workers’ rights, and in particular of their ability to sue. The ability to sue here is based on a failure to meet responsibilities in a way that all of us would deplore. However, it has nothing to do with nuclear matters. Any failure in the nuclear area is already covered.
I know that the noble Lord wanted another go at what we discussed before. That is all well and good, and I would not for one moment stop him. I have done it myself and no doubt I will do it again. It takes one to see another; let us be perfectly clear about that. However, I say to the noble Lord that it is not sensible, even in his delicate way, to give people fears that are not reasonable. This question is dealt with fully in the Bill, and in other Acts. What the noble Lord is asking for has nothing to do with nuclear sites. If we were to agree to it, it would suggest that somehow or another it did. As it does not, it would be a faulty suggestion.
Lord Whitty
My Lords, I did not expect to convince the Minister, but before he stood up I had a slight hope of convincing the noble Lord, Lord Deben. Clearly, I have none whatever now. However, on a site such as Sellafield there are things that can go wrong that are not related to the handling of nuclear material but that could be fairly disastrous not only for objective reasons in terms of the damage they might do to workers and others on the site, but for the general reputation of the site. The fact that that would then lead to an inability to sue for a breach of statutory duty seems wrong. As the noble Lord, Lord Deben, indicated, I think that it is wrong in other sectors as well. However, we have special responsibility in going through the Bill to make sure that the nuclear sector is not vulnerable to things that government lawyers have changed in other respects that will have a disproportionately negative effect on the image of the nuclear industry. For that reason, I am not happy with the Minister’s reply, but I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I must start with an apology. I dealt in my earlier speech with arguments which are much more relevant to the group of amendments to which the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has just spoken. I sometimes wish that there were a cut and paste facility for Hansard so that the relevant paragraphs could be taken out and inserted at the appropriate place. I will not repeat those arguments as they are on the record, even if they are in the wrong place. I apologise for that and hope that colleagues will forgive me.
However, I must take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on Amendments 38G and 38H. I understand his argument that because the ONR will not be, as it were, under DECC but under the DWP, there therefore needs to be a reference to DECC. I ask him to think what the public perception would be of a clause which said that the operations of the ONR had to be “conducted in conjunction” with DECC. One can only imagine the situation that might arise. Supposing there was an argument whereby the ONR was unhappy about certain aspects of a licence for a nuclear installation but DECC was seriously worried about the implications for the country’s security of supply.
To my mind, any suggestion that DECC could lean on the ONR to modify its advice in order to satisfy the DECC requirement would be hugely damaging. For that reason, the noble Lord’s amendment needs to be looked at with great care. As I said earlier, the essence of this part of the Bill is to give the ONR a much greater degree of independence than it has had so far. That is done for a variety of reasons, not least of which is that people should have confidence in its expertise to do what is right to secure the safety of nuclear installations and all who work there and of the public who live near them, without showing fear or favour to any government department. Of course, in the end, somebody has to bid for the money to provide that. That is the role of the DWP and in that sense it is separate from DECC. However, that should not give rise to any possible suspicion that the ONR could come under the influence of DECC. That is my view. I shall be very interested to hear what my noble friend has to say about that.
I have already dealt with the question of collaboration. I am worried that if there is too much, one will get a clouding of who is responsible for what. I would not complain in the least if my noble friend were to agree to the request of the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for a diagram to be produced before Report showing where the lines of responsibility fall. It seems to me that that would be helpful to the debate. Perhaps eventually it could be made available for public consumption, if that appeared to be appropriate. However, one has to be jolly careful in this area. Some of the issues are dealt with already in other parts of the Bill—I have no doubt that my noble friend will refer to that—or in legislative powers that exist elsewhere. I have again looked through the 1965 Act and some of them are there, surviving as current legislation. As I said, the memorandums of understanding are hugely important. Although they may have to be modified in the light of the passing of the Bill, they should certainly continue to exist.
The question of whether regulators other than the ONR should have powers and responsibilities for the enforcement of regulations is difficult. Already, nuclear operators can be prosecuted by two regulators if they are guilty of offences that offend the legislation of both of them. Again, we have to be very careful not to muddle the lines in any way. I ask my noble friend to look at that matter with some circumspection. The noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has posed a series of important questions, and I, for one, look forward to my noble friend’s reply in due course.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I want to refer particularly to the suggestion that DECC and the DWP should in some sense be brought together in this. I speak as a former Minister for health and safety. I also speak from a family background with a great interest in what happened in the coal industry in South Wales. There is no doubt that one of the problems of the nationalisation of the coal industry was that it was always thought that, because it was a nationalised industry, there was no need to make a real distinction between the industry and the way in which it was policed. In the early days, that was not thought to be important because people had a very high-minded view about what nationalisation meant. I am not going to enter into that discussion but that was what people thought. They felt that if it were nationalised there was no need to have too strong a distinction between the way the whole thing was run because everyone was working particularly for the benefit of the miners as well as for the customers outside. One can perfectly understand the history of what led to that.
However, there is no doubt that as time went on it became more and more clear that you had to be very different. You had to think about the fact that, whatever else was true, management—even management with the highest ideals and attitudes—could not really be responsible for policing itself. You had to be very careful about that. Therefore, increasingly we divided it and made sure that the policing of the system—looking at the mines and making sure that they were safe—was very separate.
As a Minister for health and safety, it always seemed that the most important thing about our regulation was that it showed that the ministry responsible for a particular industry had to be second-guessed right the way up to the Minister. The Minister responsible for health and safety was not the same Minister as the one who was responsible for many of the industries which the Health and Safety Executive policed. I always thought that that was terribly important. Inside the then department of whatever it was, now the Department for Work and Pensions, there was a culture of seeing that as a most important independent difference.
I feel very strongly that there is always a suspicion among the public that the nuclear industry is so powerful and strong that it can lean on Ministers. I remember that the industry used to act like that. When I was Secretary of State for the Environment, I got some pretty offensive interventions by senior people in the nuclear industry because I waited until I had the full reports as to whether I should give planning permission for the test drilling of a deep site for nuclear waste. When I turned that down because the nuclear industry had failed to meet the requirements of the Planning Acts, I cannot tell the Committee how rude, offensive and utterly self-opinionated the industry was because I said, “You haven’t obeyed the law. As the planning Minister”—not the nuclear Minister—“I will not give you planning permission because you have not looked at alternative sites and all kinds of other things”, and I turned it down. That was done by someone who was known to be in favour of nuclear power. However, I felt uncomfortable about the two connections because, as the environment Minister, I had responsibilities which ran across the two.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
Does my noble friend recollect, as I do, the ghastly events of the landslide at Aberfan? With three other Members of Parliament, I was due to go on a visit to the mining industry just after it happened. I remember that we were briefed by Lord Robens, who was then the chairman of the National Coal Board. He was completely shattered by what had happened in Aberfan and he made it a matter of personal responsibility. He went down there, he attended a number of the meetings that were held and he followed it up.
My noble friend has given an example of the kind of thing that can go wrong if you muddle the responsibilities. My noble and learned friend Lord Howe of Aberavon was one of the counsel who took part in the Aberfan case and for him, too, it was one of the most shattering events that he had ever taken part in. Aberfan is a very good example of why one has got to make absolutely certain that these responsibilities are separated.
Lord Deben
I agree with my noble friend about that example. The reason I drew from familial experience was that I was brought up by a father who had pastoral responsibility for one of the mining villages in south Wales. For him, that event was most devastating. Although as a family we were not affected by it, my father was affected by his memories of what he had to do in those kinds of circumstances. I remember vividly his comment that you can never trust to police an industry those for whom the main interest is the industry as a whole. That is not because they are bad men and women, but simply because they would have to wear two different hats, and you should not ask people to wear two different hats. That is why we keep on talking about declarations of interest and so on. We know that however good and sensible you are, it is sometimes quite difficult to remember which hat you are wearing.
Again, I agree with my noble friend—Aberfan remains in one’s heart in a very special way and will be there until the day one dies, even though one was removed from it. That is simply because of the effect it had on people one knew and upon the memories of my father. I feel strongly that we should not allow the lesson that we should have learnt from the coal industry to be forgotten in this industry.
Lord O'Neill of Clackmannan
I have some sympathy with the remarks that have been made, which sets me at variance with my noble friend. When I was chairing the Trade and Industry Select Committee in the late 1990s, we went to Dounreay, which has been the subject of many investigations and problems. Had other colleagues been here, I am sure they would have be able to embellish this far more than I can. At Dounreay, there had quite clearly been a failure to scrutinise the safety arrangements on the part of what was then the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate. It is fair to say that that part of the inspectorate had pretty well gone native. Dounreay is in a very isolated part of the UK. You cannot go very much further north without getting wet. It is natural that everybody was living and working together, playing golf on the same golf courses, probably drinking in the same pubs and what have you. They came together.
An independent report had to be carried out. It was carried out and, as the Select Committee, we wanted to see it. We were told by the DTI Minister at the time, who I think was John Battle, that it would not be appropriate for a Select Committee to see it. The DTI was the sponsoring ministry. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate was in those days, as it is now, sponsored by the equivalent of the DWP. It took the Secretary of State for Scotland, who had environmental responsibility for the area, to step in and say, “Publish and be damned”, so we got access to the report. In fact, it was not anything like as damning as people had anticipated, but it was essential that it was produced.
There is a danger in establishing this umbilical link between the sponsoring department and the functions. We have seen it in agriculture and food safety in the past. And we have taken strenuous steps to correct it, but there are still problems. In my experience, the nature of the nuclear industry is such that it is a secretive industry. It grew out of the production of weapons-grade material for nuclear weapons. While it is now under commercial control in a number of respects, it nevertheless still has a culture of understandable secrecy, partly because of what would be regarded as security but also because it is so damn dangerous. The truth is that because of the way in which in the industry is handled, the dangers are minimal.
The culture of the industry is determined not only by security but by safety. At times, there is a sense in which the industry is covering its own back as well as trying to protect people. That is natural. Even today nuclear installations are for the most part in relatively isolated, secluded areas. It is common knowledge that Sellafield was chosen during the war because it was most unlikely that German bombers would ever be able to find the place because it is shrouded in mist and it is likely to be raining all the time, hence the Lake District. In those days, it was just a weapons store.
The industry has a security culture and a culture that is understandably and correctly preoccupied with safety, but it is also at times unduly linked to matters of secrecy where safety can be jeopardised. In my limited experience, I confronted a situation where there had been regrettable failures at Dounreay, which have now been corrected. The report on that was nothing like as condemnatory as people thought it would be but there was reluctance to have it published. It took an independent agency, the Scottish Office, and the late Donald Dewar as Secretary of State—who made it quite clear that he saw no reason why we should not have access to it—for us to get the report. I remember that we got a faxed copy of it as we got off the plane in Caithness. The clerk had summarised it by the time we got to Dounreay and we were able to make use of it when we were questioning officials.
There is a danger in creating too close a link between the ministry and this function. It is important that we discuss it and have it aired but I would like to think that we do not go any further with it because there are too many examples of departments looking after their own too carefully. The ONR took a long time to come about. It should really have been in the previous Energy Bill but in those days the DWP and DECC were arm wrestling over it. It was a turf war. The compromise was that they would let it go as long as they had a control over it. The DWP conceded a bit and held a bit and we just have to accept that that is the way in which the matter was agreed. For the reasons I have given, it would be desirable for us to leave it to the DWP rather than having a sponsoring department that might take an overprotective view of what could be at stake here, which could be very serious.
Lord Jenkin of Roding
My Lords, I have doubts about two amendments in this group. On Amendment 40G, I am told that full cost recovery always takes place. However, you have a potential position whereby a licensee who needs to be properly regulated may be in financial difficulties and unable to pay the charges that he would otherwise have to. It may be a rare occurrence but, given that they attempt a full cost recovery at the moment, there needs to be a possibility that some essential services may not be paid for on the spot by the licensee because they do not have the money. I would be very interested to hear any other arguments.
I am unhappier about Amendment 40K. This point has been raised with me by the Nuclear Industry Association, which feels that it would be greatly to the advantage of the UK generally and the ONR in particular to be able to develop and make the best use of its expertise in markets not just in this country. The effect of eliminating subsections (4) to (9) of Clause 79 would be to reduce the ONR to its absolutely core activities. There is quite a strong feeling that that would not be to everybody’s advantage.
My noble friend referred to the effect of the Fukushima disaster and the great tsunami there, and I said earlier that it greatly enhanced the reputation of regulation in this country because of the work of Dr Weightman—but it goes wider than that. The supply chain for the nuclear industry is very much concerned with spreading its activities abroad to increase overseas earnings, and here, too, the ONR could provide valuable services and should not be prevented by the Bill from doing so. Of course, it will always be concerned primarily with its regulatory duties in this country, but it has the expertise, and will develop increasing expertise, to provide wider services and perhaps earn some money for itself and for this country. So I would be unhappy to see the elimination of those four subsections.
On the question of the account of what the total money might be, I await with interest the answer from my noble friend.
Lord Deben
My Lords, I wanted to build for one moment on what my noble friend Lord Jenkin has said and take it to a further degree. This House should be very careful about restricting a body that we have been careful to construct. There is a terrible habit in your Lordships’ House, of which there was a good example today when somebody got up and said to the Minister, “What are you doing about Egypt?”—as if we were doing anything about Egypt, or as if we should always do something about everything. It is about time that we realised that there are a lot of things in this world that we are not likely to do anything about at all. One thing that we should not do is to do things about things about which we cannot at this moment know anything whatever.
We have no idea how this organisation will develop. We have some suggestions, which my noble friend Lord Jenkin has put forward, which may represent some of the routes. But here is the idea that we should be so frightened that we should write down now what this organisation may or may not do, when it has been carefully built, with a whole lot of non-executive directors and all sorts of restrictions as to the nature of the people who run it. I find that one of the problems of government. I would prefer the organisation to be in the position of doing rather too much or doing something wrong than not being able to do what it needed to do, or what came to it, or to take up opportunities that might arise. We have to be a bit freer on this. There is a kind of determination to control that we should resist. I would much prefer this organisation to be sensibly built and then left to get on with it. So I hope that we resist any suggestion that, at this moment, we should decide what this organisation should do in two or three years’ time, or indeed in five or six or 10 or 11 years. It is much better to leave it as it is, and I hope that my noble friend will resist any such proposal.