European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Chesterton and Lord Lea of Crondall

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

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

That was not said about the Labour Party: it was said about a certain person in the Labour Party.

[Lord Lea of Crondall]

That was a cheap point from my noble friend. The Labour Party position was criticised and it led to some switching of votes. The fact is that the Conservative Party made a great number of gains by saying that it was the friend of the nuclear industry.

The nuclear industry is a lot smaller than it was. It is, as has been said, a long-term industry. Indeed, one could say that jobs at Sellafield are guaranteed for 20,000 years—which is a pretty good length of time to guarantee a job. Seriously, the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority is one of the best if not the best in that field in the world, and that will be a very important issue. We have been a world leader in promoting nuclear safety. We persuaded the Russians to accept mandatory safety inspections. All of these matters were through the World Nuclear Association, to which the role of the noble Lord, Lord Hutton, is affiliated. We have often led the progress being made—from training, health and safety, investment and so on. So this has to be looked at as a major issue of industrial policy.

Do the Government recognise that there is a legalistic question here? If a country joins Euratom, does that mean that it has joined the European Union? No, it does not. I remember Ireland in 1961 announcing its accession to Euratom, which was a precursor to joining the European Union. But they are not umbilically connected like that. As a matter of industrial policy and of looking at the long term, does this not illustrate that the sooner we get to where we are going to engage positively with the EU in the future, being outside it, to have a real central engagement on all these issues of industrial policy is a very high priority for the country that we have not yet heard enough about.