Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Lord Fox Excerpts

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard]

My Lords, I welcome Amendment 6, proposed by the Minister. It makes a lot of sense but I do not think the House would be wise to support Amendments 7 or 9. Amendment 7 is about collaboration with Euratom in future in research and development and the import and export of qualifying nuclear material. I think we will benefit from greater flexibility by making our own decisions about research and development and committing our own funds. Of course Euratom will be an important and continuing partner for us in nuclear but we will be freed of the obligation and in the position where we will own our own research material, which of course in the JET and ITER programmes we do not. We should caution against overoptimism on what ITER is likely to bring; I understand that there is considerable scepticism in the industry about whether it is really worth the massive amount of money that it costs, and that there is some chance of a demonstration operation by 2045 if all goes well. If we were to commit funds to SMR research, by contrast, in which we in this country have several notable qualified players, we would own the outcome and could get ourselves back into the lead in nuclear by selling our new technology to others. We would have greater flexibility and the freedom not to be committed—

[Lord Fox (LD)]

I remind the noble Viscount that the two are not mutually exclusive.

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[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support Amendments 7 and 9, and I compliment the Government on Amendment 6. I remind the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, that scientific research, in this area or anywhere else, is now overwhelmingly collaborative. If you do not get in the game collaboratively, you find that some of your best researchers and ideas are rapidly transferred abroad to someone else who is much more interested in collaborative research. We have moved on from being a Great Britain that does all this stuff ourselves to being a collaborative, global, international participant in research, including in this area. That is one of the reasons why I support Amendment 7; I think it takes us in the right direction. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Broers, whose amendment last night I sadly missed, will want to say a bit about that.

I am really pleased that we have come back to talking about medical isotopes and having a report that keeps Parliament up to date in that area. There is huge concern outside this House about whether the supply chains around medical isotopes will be sufficient to cope with the needs and demands of NHS research and NHS patients.

On Amendment 9, after the last debate that we had before the vote, you would have to be one of life’s perennial optimists—I am not a Liberal Democrat so I do not join that particular club—to believe that everything is going to be okay by March 2019. I suggest to the Minister that he might find it useful to have an independent reviewer who can make independent reports to Parliament to convince sceptical parliamentarians such as me and, I suspect, a few others in this House that good progress is being made on some of the critical issues. That is why I support Amendments 7 and 9.

[Lord Fox]

My Lords, I support Amendment 9, to which my name is appended, and I commend the Government on Amendment 6 and support Amendment 7. I echo the words of the noble Lord, Lord Warner: not even the Liberal Democrats are optimistic enough to imagine that everything is going to be in place in time. That is why we believe this is a helpful amendment to the Government and to the Minister. We heard in the debate on Amendment 3 that the stakes are high in achieving what needs to be achieved in time. I believe, en passant, that for the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, to use the cost as a reason for not having something like this in place is a little like trying to save the money that is down the side of the sofa when the whole house is potentially at stake. I suggest that cost is not a reason for not doing this.

The stakes are high. I will not rehearse them again but the Committee has heard scepticism, concern and worry from a vast array of people about whether the finish line can be crossed in time. The Minister—this is in no way reflects scepticism of the Minister himself—has stood up on a number of occasions and said everything is in order and we need not worry. Almost every statement he makes begins with, “I believe”. That is the problem; at this point, to some extent it is difficult to go beyond a belief system. Amendment 9 would put in place an independent voice, someone who was marking the Government’s homework but was not the Government. This is not a question of doing the work of the IAEA; it is a question of following and tracking the Government’s progress in getting to the finish line.

I echo the noble Lord, Lord Warner: this could be very useful for the Government in helping to give reassurance. It would be another voice to prove that the Minister was correct—if he was. When the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, says that this is not an aggressive amendment and not intended to be unhelpful, I know, because I participated in the discussion around this amendment, that it is genuinely not intended to wreck or harm the Bill in any way. It is intended to give support and some further credibility to the argument that things are moving in the right direction.

[Lord Broers]

My Lords, I will make some brief remarks in answer to the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard. The research we are talking about here is not necessarily just in fusion—it includes fusion, but that is a great big project—but in areas that are ancillary to a certain extent but terribly important. Research is going on everywhere into radioactive waste disposal, but we happen to lead that. I do not think that this defeats the noble Viscount’s ambition—which is my ambition—that our own industry does a lot and gains a lot from that. It also gains a lot from being accepted by the community, so that when our advances come up, others will use what we did. The same is true of radiological protection, which is always a problem with workers around nuclear plants. So it is not just the new reactors, although the one gap in our knowledge is what is happening to the new generation fission reactors beyond the EPRs that people are working on. We really need international collaboration.

With respect to our own ambitions, I entirely support the noble Viscount in terms of SMRs. We are dying to get going—to be specific Rolls-Royce is dying to get going—on SMRs. In fact, Rolls-Royce tells us they are spending £1 million a month keeping that programme alive and waiting for the Government to make a decision on the competition which I hope will come.

Also, in fusion, there is Tokamak Energy. This is a very ambitious small company which feels it can contain fusion in a spherical tokamak, which is a fascinating thing. I should love to spend a lot of time talking about it. It is a very clever and effective way to up the efficiency of the use of the magnetic field to confine the plasma. So there is more to this research than just a few of the most obvious things. I think that is greatly in support of Amendment 7. I also support Amendment 6. I agree with the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Hunt, who mentioned this. I think the independent review is designed to help the Government and not be a hindrance.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I want to begin by adding to something that the noble Lord, Lord Fox, said. He said that I repeatedly say, “I believe, I believe”, and that the House has to take it on trust. I hope this goes beyond me and officials within the department. We have seen what is happening when it comes to nuclear safeguards—

[Lord Fox]

I should say that was not intended in any way to impugn the noble Lord’s integrity in his answers.

[Lord Henley]

I was not suggesting that the noble Lord was doing that in any way whatsoever.

Since Second Reading, I have visited Sellafield—well, obviously I have visited it on occasions in the past because it is in my home county, but I visited it again—just to see what nuclear safeguarding amounts to. After all, Sellafield contains two of the three sites that will be relevant in terms of nuclear safeguarding. I cannot say that a one-day visit has turned me into an expert in any way. I would not want to claim that, but I can say that I can go beyond, “I believe”, and say “I have seen”.

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[Lord Henley]

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for moving his amendment, and for the contributions of other noble Lords. I accept that it will continue to be important to attract—as the noble Lords, Lord Hunt and Lord Warner, and my noble friend Lord Selborne put it—the brightest and the best, to ensure that we maintain our excellence in the nuclear field. This amendment, however, is somewhat more limited in scope than that. Our future immigration system will be set out shortly and it would not be right for me to go into it. As my right honourable friend made clear in his Statement on 11 January, we will ensure that businesses and communities, as well as Parliament, have the opportunity to contribute their views before any decisions are made about the future system that the Home Office will be developing.

[Lord Fox]

Can the Minister confirm that the issues rehearsed in this debate have been presented by DBEIS to the Home Office and the people drawing up these Immigration Rules?

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[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support the amendment, but I do not expect us to go for our hat trick of votes on it. I speak as someone who had the misfortune to inherit the NHS IT system as a responsibility. I also had some experience in the Home Office of IT systems. Things never work out the way that noble Lords think they will. They are usually delayed and they usually malfunction a bit when they are first introduced and used. My question for the Minister is: has he got a plan B and what is it, if this IT system does not come online to time? At the end of the day, the ONR will still have some responsibilities to discharge. If it does not have the IT system, how will it go about discharging its responsibilities?

[Lord Fox]

Following my noble friend Lord Teverson’s excellent explanation for the reason for this amendment, on the long-named programmes and systems in proposed new subsection (2), can the Minister tell the House whether these are built on existing systems that are being adapted or will they be built from scratch? The Minister may have to write to me in answer. Also, on the nature of the IT companies delivering these, is there competition in delivering systems such as this or is this a very specialist area with a small pool to fish from and not much choice, which of course leads to price escalation?

[Lord Grantchester]

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, for raising the important issue of the information technology systems necessary for nuclear safeguards. I also saw the written Q&A from the noble Lord and I thank the Minister for replying so swiftly. In Committee, the importance of understanding the full inventory costs in IT management systems was debated. The Government clarified that the full implications of the mechanisms that the ONR will need to set up are matters that could be included in each report that the Government will undertake. It can only build confidence that Parliament will be reassured through any audit process that the UK’s regime will be costed, reported and certified to be robust.