European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Lord Rees of Ludlow and Lord Warner

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

[Lord Rees of Ludlow (CB)]

My Lords, I support this amendment. As a former member of the Science and Technology Select Committee, I particularly endorse the remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, about the current—and rather weak—state of many of the nuclear activities in this country. It is clear that the Euratom issue has been, as it were, caught in the slipstream of the EU legislation, to the surprise of some people, and is an extra complication that needs to be sorted out in the most frictionless way. It is crucial that if we did not have our EU membership, we would have to reconstitute something very similar in relationships with the EU countries and also, as has been said, with the United States, Japan and Australia in order to continue our collaborations. We need these collaborations in so far as we are involved in not just the building of nuclear power stations but the medical use of radioactive materials, radioactive waste disposal and other safety issues, where Euratom has been very effective.

It is also important to bear in mind that, as has been said, even though we are rather weak—depressingly so—in many areas of nuclear technology, we are not so weak in fusion. The JET project, based in the UK, is one of the major projects in the fusion arena. We have other private projects in this country and we have a major involvement in ITER, so the involvement in fusion is very important.

It is important to ensure that there is going to be no hiatus in the ability to forge ahead with these collaborations if we were to have to leave Euratom. As a final comment, I point out that, although the Euratom issue has come up because of the special link, legally, with the EU, we are going to have similar problems in connection with other international projects. I will mention just two: one is Galileo, the European counterpart of the GPS satellite system, which involves us and is not solely an ISA project—it involves the EU; the other one is Copernicus, which is a set of spacecraft to do environmental monitoring. These are two things where our continued major participation will depend on some legal adjustments when we are no longer in the EU.

I hope the Minister is aware that it is not just in the context of nuclear energy but in other contexts of big international high-tech projects that we need to worry about what will need to be changed if we leave the EU.

[Lord Warner (CB)]

My Lords, I, too, support these amendments and associate myself with the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, and the noble Earl, Lord Selborne. I, too, was on the inquiry of the Science and Technology Select Committee that the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, so ably chaired. I just want to put a question to the Minister about the implications for the NHS of a messy withdrawal from Euratom. The NHS radiological services in particular are heavily dependent on the safeguarding arrangements for the transportation of radioactive material of one kind or another and also some of the waste disposal issues that are involved. What efforts have the Government made to discuss with the NHS, the Department of Health and the technologists in that sector about ensuring and guaranteeing the safe supplies of materials that the NHS depends on on a day-to-day basis?