Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between Lord Foulkes of Cumnock and Baroness Bennett of Manor Castle

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Grand Committee

[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.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.