European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Hunt of Kings Heath and Lord Broers

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Hunt of Kings Heath (Lab)]

Follow that, my Lords. If the theme of my noble friend’s previous debate was frustration, the word on my mind is bewilderment. On the first group of amendments, which we spent many happy hours discussing, there was considerable debate about whether the public, in voting to leave the EU, were aware that the Government would interpret that as a decision also to leave the single market and customs union.

Whatever noble Lords’ view on that is, I doubt very much that anyone who voted in that referendum understood that one of the most perverse outcomes of the Government’s approach to negotiation would be summarily to announce that the UK was leaving Euratom. This body has enjoyed an excellent track record over many decades. It was established by the European Coal and Steel Community as far back as 1957, around the time of the first civilian nuclear reactors. It has provided secure access to nuclear materials and technology for peaceful purposes. It has provided research, including co-ordinating funding for world-leading nuclear fusion research, much of which takes place in the UK at Culham. It safeguards nuclear material to ensure that it is being used for civil purposes, in line with our non-proliferation responsibilities. It facilitates free and frictionless trade in nuclear goods, services and people, including regulating the supply of isotopes used in nuclear medicine.

Why is the UK leaving Euratom? This was formally outlined in the Explanatory Notes to the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act 2017, but the reasons for leaving have not been specified. The most likely speculation is because it sits under the jurisdiction of the ECJ, although the ECJ has never, as far as I know, been called on to make any pronouncements in relation to Euratom.

What are the consequences of leaving? I would identify four, and refer noble Lords to the work of the Institute for Government. First, we will have more difficulty ensuring a long-term supply of nuclear fuel to the UK. Secondly, we risk an immediate shortage of medical isotopes. Thirdly, we may no longer enjoy access to research facilities and funding. Finally, the UK will have to establish its own regulator with regard to nuclear proliferation, which will be both costly and challenging.

Let me pick up just two points there: first, interruptions to the supply of medical isotopes. Leaving Euratom risks breaking a series of time-sensitive supply chains which supply isotopes used in nuclear medicine. This is causing a lot of concern to people in the health service. Currently, Euratom facilitates free trade of nuclear material across the EU. This gives a secure and consistent supply. It is used extensively in diagnosing particular diseases and in the relief of pain, particularly in palliative care, and biopic analysis in clinical pathology.

The UK does not have any reactors capable of producing these isotopes, and they decay rapidly, often within a matter of hours or days, so we rely on a continuous supply from reactors in France, Germany and the Netherlands. History suggests that crises in supply can occur. It happened last in 2008-10. That meant that hospitals across Europe had to delay or cancel hundreds of thousands of medical tests. In response, Euratom’s supply agency was given a more prominent role in overseeing the supply chains and ensuring that the crisis did not occur again. Without the support of Euratom, the UK may find it harder to guarantee a supply of these materials to hospitals.

Pressed on this in the Second Reading of the Nuclear Safeguards Bill, which is a parallel piece of legislation that your Lordships are debating at the moment, and which will have its first day in Committee—oh, joy—tomorrow morning, the noble Lord, Lord Henley, who it is good to see in his place, said that,

“changes to our customs arrangements after our withdrawal from the European Union could ... affect the timely supply of medical radioisotopes”,

that the Government were working to minimise that risk and that he was confident that,

“a future customs arrangement with the European Union that ensures cross-border trade in this area is as frictionless as possible”.—[Official Report, 7/2/2018; cols. 2026-27.]

I think anyone who has heard this afternoon’s debate would question the noble Lord’s optimism. He is an eternal optimist, I know, but the reality is that, given the current state of negotiations, and the failure of the Government even to reach an agreement among themselves on what negotiation outcomes should be, this is a very risky prospect indeed.

The final point I want to make is that the Nuclear Safeguards Bill essentially enables the Office for Nuclear Regulation, one of our very own regulators, to take over Euratom’s vital non-proliferation nuclear safeguarding responsibilities. However, because Euratom is doing such a good job, the Government want us to leave Euratom but to remain in total alignment with the standards set by Euratom, even though we are no longer a member. You could not make it up if you tried. But more than that, having said that they want to stick to Euratom standards, they cannot do it because of the precipitate date of March 2019, by which time the ONR has no chance whatever of recruiting enough inspectors to meet those Euratom standards. So what they have decided is that we will not be able to accord to Euratom standards; we are going to accord to the standards set by the International Atomic Energy Agency. According to evidence given by the ONR to the Public Bill Committee on the Nuclear Safeguards Bill a few weeks ago, that means that there is a lower standard and less frequency of inspections.

Everyone agrees that Euratom is a good agency and that its standards are high—higher than overall international standards. The Government themselves say that they want to stick to Euratom standards, although we cannot have any influence over them in future, but we cannot do that in 2019 so we will have to live with lower standards until we can actually recruit the number of inspectors that we need. That is plain daft. It is quite clear that we should stay in Euratom. If we cannot do it, we should make sure statutorily that we are as aligned as we possibly can be.

All of us noted Mrs May’s comments on the European arrest warrant recently, where she accepted that there was a role for the ECJ. What I say to the Government is that Euratom works really well and that, for the sake of a theoretical involvement of ECJ, surely even at this late moment, it is time to accept that the wrong decision has been made and that it would be much better if we stayed within Euratom. I beg to move.

[Lord Broers (CB)]

My Lords, I will be very brief. I did not speak at Second Reading because I thought that the decision to leave Euratom was tied irrevocably by law to our withdrawal from the European Union. I discovered, while participating at Second Reading of the Nuclear Safeguards Bill—as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has mentioned—that it was in fact a political decision. I still do not know who made the decision but I regard it as a very serious and damaging mistake, and that is why I wish to support this group of amendments. We should do everything we can to avoid the disastrous consequences of leaving Euratom.