Infrastructure Planning (Radioactive Waste Geological Disposal Facilities) Order 2015

Lord Judd Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2015 Grand Committee

[Baroness Miller of Chilthorne Domer (LD)]

My Lords, as the Minister said, this order is simply to bring GDFs within the nationally significant infrastructure project regime of the Planning Act 2008. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, has had to find out the hard way that that Act, brought in by Labour in 2008, has such an anti-democratic flavour, which at the time we feared it would. As he said, the order will remove from local planning authorities and their respective communities the final say in the planning process. I find that extraordinary when we are looking at something that we have never had before. It is not like a road, which can be a nationally significant infrastructure project if the Government choose to designate it as such; we have lots of roads. A railway, such as HS2, might be one. We have not had GDFs before; this is new. That is another reason why it should be subject to the proper rigours of a democratic planning process.

Perhaps one of the best things that the Labour Party did in the previous Government, during the time when it brought in the Planning Act, was in February 2005 when the UK ratified the UNECE Convention on Access to Information, Public Participation in Decision-making and Access to Justice in Environmental Matters, which became known as the Aarhus convention. That is the main thing I want to ask the Minister about today.

I am very pleased to see the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, in his place. Back in 2006, I asked him whether any of the provisions in the Aarhus convention had yet to be implemented in the United Kingdom. He confirmed that we had ratified it and that the full lists of what that meant were now available. Those set out the UK’s range of obligations on access to information and public participation. I think that this GDF proposal would fall within Annex I to the Aarhus convention. It would be most helpful if the Minister could make some reference to that in her reply.

Having looked at the Government’s response, which was handed out with these papers today, it is very hard to balance the Government’s statement that they will not proceed without a positive test of public support without thinking that the ultimate test of public support for a planning issue is exactly that the local authorities involved make planning decisions. That is why the system was invented in the way that it was: so that there could be democratic representation and people could have a say. Something as important as this is not only about burying waste in the ground. Bear in mind that it is also about the transport of waste to that facility, which will have an enormous impact.

For all those reasons, I should like the Minister to assure us, for a start, that it complies with the Aarhus convention and, secondly, to consider whether the exceptional nature of GDFs should make them inapplicable to the process envisaged by the 2008 Act.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, as a humble citizen of Cumbria, I was very reassured to hear my noble friend Lord Liddle speaking as powerfully as he did. He certainly reflects widespread feeling within the county. It is sometimes easy to exaggerate but I think that there is almost a breakdown in trust. There is a feeling that the Government have for a long time been absolutely determined to drive through this project in west Cumbria, and that everything will therefore be done to ensure that it happens. Scepticism, to use a milder word, is inevitable if you have a situation in which, under the established rules, the permissions of the local authorities—and very much the county council—were essential if the project were to go ahead. When it turned out that the county council, with its greater strategic responsibilities, was not in favour of the recent attempt to develop further research into the possibilities, the rules of the game were revised so that in further consultations it would not be necessary to involve the county council but other local authorities could be involved. This inevitably leads to doubt.

It is also important to realise that while my noble friend Lord Liddle was absolutely right to emphasise the strategic issues of transport and all the rest—just think of the A66, the Penrith junction with the M6 and the consequences right across to Scotch Corner—this has immense implications for the wider region. That is why the local authority most responsible for the wider region, since this goes well beyond the county, should be closely involved.

I want to raise one other issue that we do not like talking about. The difficulty is that if you raise it, you will be accused of scaremongering. However, there are risks in a development of any kind to do with nuclear energy and nuclear power. We are living in an absolute world of absurdity if we believe that the consequences of anything going seriously wrong would be limited to Cumbria. It would be the whole north-west, to say the very least, and would probably be wider than that. These are issues on which we need a great deal of reassurance. I have not yet heard anything that reassures at the level necessary.

We must also recognise that there is a fundamental contradiction in the approach to governance because, as I understand it, the Government have been insistent that they favour localism—and very much on any project of this kind, because the involvement and approval of the local community has repeatedly been stated as essential. Yet the whole idea of strategic projects of this kind is to cut back and streamline what has been there traditionally and was very hard won: the possibility for local communities to pursue the things that disturb them and their consequences.

I must emphasise an interest here. Apart from being a citizen of Cumbria, I am also a patron of the Friends of the Lake District and a vice-president of the Campaign for National Parks. It seems to me that these issues about which we started talking in relation to Cumbria apply to the country as a whole. I like the idea of localism but I am not the slightest bit persuaded—and I do not believe that I could be persuaded—that issues of strategic significance such as this can be shuffled on to local authorities, with their limited resources, for them ultimately to decide whether or not to go ahead with them.

Although I am by no means an enthusiast for nuclear energy, I accept that a new generation of nuclear energy will be necessary. It seems to me that, by definition, nuclear energy and its development is a national responsibility, and that the consequences of that must be seen as a national responsibility. Therefore, I would like specific assurance from the Minister that at the outset of any such project it will be considered essential to undertake a transparent and convincing national survey to establish the best, most favourable and least dangerous place in which to develop it. When that has been established, then, of course, local involvement becomes crucial.

I make my position clear: I have said all along that I have very strong views on this project. However, I have also said all along that if, at the end of such a national convincing exercise, it became clear to me that the least dangerous place for such a project was west Cumbria, I would put myself 200% behind it and consider how we could make it the safest and least environmentally and scenically damaging project possible. That would be the responsible thing to do. However, we are nowhere near that point. We are being asked to approve the means before we have had the wider strategic assurances—of course, that will add to doubt. My noble friend was right to say that we are not in a position to approve this measure at all.

I hope that the Minister, with whom I have had many consultations on this issue in the past, can now reassure us. I believe that there is widespread anxiety, not only in the county, but certainly in the county as a whole and beyond it. This is my last point, although I could make many more. If I may use the terms in this place, there is, in an authoritative sense, an intellectual dimension to this issue. Many geologists of great distinction are already saying, and have done for some time, that Cumbria is not the place to have a project of this kind because of the situation with subterranean water. There is a feeling that these scientists of distinction have never been given the hearing on the project that they should have had. Some have made their work available at their own expense as they feel so concerned about it and have put it on public record.

We have to face the fact that nuclear waste exists and there is a whole realm of anxieties about its security and the integrity of the facilities that contain it. We are going ahead to the next generation of nuclear power, which will generate more waste, so we have to find a solution—that is the bottom line—for both existing and future waste. When we have found the right place and mobilised public confidence that everything possible has been done to make the project as safe and secure as possible—I do not believe that it will ever be made completely safe for future generations—we can get into that debate. However, we must be reassured that a national survey has been done and that there is a list—preferably prioritised—of the sites that are right and those that are not, and of those that are better and those that are less well suited. That has not happened. The Minister must put us in the picture about this and give us specific reassurances.

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[Lord Avebury (LD)]

My Lords, we seem to have overlooked that regular high-level nuclear waste is being generated at Sellafield already and plans have to be made for its safe storage and ultimate disposal. If plans go ahead to use the 140 tonnes of plutonium that have been stored up from previous nuclear programmes at Sellafield to generate electricity, as in the two proposals that have been put forward by CANDU and GE Hitachi respectively, there will be nuclear reactors on the Sellafield site using that plutonium and generating further waste. I suppose part of the Government’s thinking in having their eye on Cumbria is that this large quantity of nuclear waste has to be moved from the Sellafield site to the ultimate place of disposal. That concentrates their attention on Cumbria. However, when the noble Lord, Lord Liddle, said that he would like to see a survey of all the sites that might be suitable for this purpose, I was under the impression that a lot of work had already been done on the subject and that nobody had any thoughts of alternative sites that would be superior to Cumbria. I may be wrong and would be very interested to hear from the Minister whether that work has already been in train and, if so, what the results were.

[Lord Judd]

The noble Lord is right to say that work has previously been done and, having fairly carefully scrutinised it, it was far from clear to me that there was an absolutely decisive case in favour of Cumbria.

[Lord Avebury]

This is what I am hoping we will hear more about from the Minister when she sums up: whether that work has been done or whether she agrees with the case that has been made for a national survey, which would obviously cause considerable delay.

That brings me to question of why this matter is urgent. Is it really necessary for a decision to be made now, for reasons that may be connected with the development of Sellafield, when we already have these additional reactors on the site, coupled with the existence of large quantities of high-level waste? Is it a matter of immediate necessity that we should have this GDF in the timescale that would be possible with the order and not without it? Suppose we were forced to wait for five years or so: would that have a catastrophic effect on how we dispose of the nuclear waste at Sellafield? Would lacking the GDF impose impossible or very difficult restrictions on the work that can be done at Sellafield because of the quantity of high-level waste that has to be stored there?

Other things being equal, obviously it is better for the GDF to be in the neighbourhood of Sellafield because the high-level waste has only to move a short distance and it avoids the necessity for rail facilities to move all this waste from Sellafield, where it is at the moment, to whatever alternative site is chosen. That would add enormously to the cost, I suppose, and is something we would like to avoid if possible.

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[Lord Empey (UUP)]

I appreciate the noble Baroness’s point about getting a debate going on radiation, but we should put this in context. I, like many others, am not from Cumbria, but historically those of us in my part of the United Kingdom saw, over several decades, the flushing of material into the Irish Sea that today would be a criminal offence. We were assured in those days that the levels were perfectly okay and that neither fish nor other wildlife would be affected. However, by today’s standards, such activity would be regarded as outrageous. This is all a continuum. I support what the noble Baroness says, but we have to see where we came from. What I am saying is that, within living memory, vast amounts of toxic material were flushed into the sea, so let us at least take comfort from the fact that that has stopped.

[Lord Judd]

Would the noble Lord agree, on reconsidering what he has said, that this is a matter not of decades but of centuries?

[Baroness Worthington]

It is actually a matter of millennia, if you want to put nuclear into its proper context. I do not dispute that the pendulum of regulatory approaches to nuclear swings. I have visited Oak Ridge, the home of nuclear fission research, where nuclear gases used to be vented into the woods because people did not perceive it to be a risk—indeed, there is something to be said for the view that that was not a very risky activity. We have swung back towards very tight regulation for good reason, but that is not to say that that has to be set in stone and that our approach today is right—there is a constantly shifting understanding. I said that background radiation is natural to make the basic point that we as human beings have evolved in a radioactive environment. People are not always aware of that.

This is about getting back to the basics and having another look at the physics of nuclear, so that we can perhaps defuse some of the fears. There is probably no riskier way of storing nuclear waste—if there is indeed a large risk—than the way we use today. I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, for pointing out that we seem to be speaking as if there is no waste and that we are suddenly creating waste to put into a depository. The waste exists and it sits around the country, although it is correct to say that a large proportion sits in Sellafield. We need to find a solution, but that is not to say that this is the greatest risk that man has ever faced. The risk is manageable and engineered and we should see it in that context.

I will not detain the Committee any longer. I am grateful for the debate. I reiterate my request from our last debate that we should begin to have a national public conversation about nuclear and the risks involved. As other noble Lords have said, the issue has to be seen in the context of the much broader environmental risks that we face. There is an inherent logic behind the regulations. This is a nationally significant project and, although we do not wish local involvement to be excluded, we need to get the balance right, so we support the regulations.

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[Baroness Verma]

I re-emphasise that planning remains a devolved issue for those devolved areas.

My noble friend Lady Miller asked whether the local planning system was not the means for testing public support. The process of identifying a site and demonstrating public support is separate from, and additional to, the process of obtaining development consent. The planning consent process will not replace the siting process. A GDF is clearly a nationally significant piece of infrastructure, and it is appropriate that an application for development consent should be made under the system which was designed to examine such projects.

The noble Lord, Lord Judd, asked whether the screening exercise ruled out Cumbria, which has already been shown several times to be unsuitable for a GDF. The national geological screening exercise will treat all parts of the country equally, as I have already said, and the first step will be the development of guidance based on safety requirements for a GDF. The guidance will be developed openly and—a point made by the noble Lord—transparently through engagement with interested parties and the public. It will then be applied to produce maps and accompanying information about the potential for the development of a robust GDF safety case in different settings across the country. I hope that the noble Lord is reassured that we do not focus, as he and others have done, just on Cumbria.

[Lord Judd]

If I may say so, the Minister knows very well that this is not the first time she has given me such reassurances. All I can say is, “We hear the words”, but it will be the transparency, to which she refers, and the convincing nature of this operation of national research for all to see that will be crucial.

While I am on this point, we have referred to Northern Ireland and Scotland in this context. However, in terms of the hazards, presumably at some point the Irish Government have to be taken on board.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, as the noble Lord is aware, discussions on these issues are always ongoing. We are always talking to our colleagues in the devolved authorities. Coming back to the transparency argument—

[Lord Judd]

I am talking not about devolved authorities but about the Government of Ireland.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, as I said, those discussions are always ongoing and I will broaden them out to all devolved Assemblies and Governments.

Coming back to the question on transparency, I hope that the noble Lord will think that the process we are taking forward this time is far more transparent than the previous process. It takes into account far more exploration and discussion with a greater number of stakeholders to get a positive view of where communities lie. I urge the noble Lord to be reassured by the work that has been undertaken on the process since 30 January 2013, when the process came to a stop.