European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Stern of Brentford Excerpts

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

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, by now the Minister will probably have got the message that this House thinks Euratom is pretty important for the reasons given. I shall not repeat them, but they are very sound. Indeed, sitting yesterday as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, we received evidence on nuclear matters. We raised Euratom. There certainly was dismay among our witnesses at the prospect of the UK leaving it.

Nuclear energy will play an important part in the energy plans of the present Government and, I suspect, any Government we are likely to have in the near future. That said, as my noble friend Lord Krebs pointed out, our expenditure on nuclear R&D is simply derisory by international standards. For that reason, we get enormous benefit from our membership of Euratom—proportionately more than almost any other member.

Probably the most important point to recognise is that Euratom governs not just non-proliferation, but the movement of nuclear materials and, above all, nuclear IP. If Brexit goes ahead on the timetable we have at the moment and nothing is put in place effectively to give us continuing membership of Euratom by some means or other, that occurrence would come right in the middle of the build at Hinkley. It is not impossible that Hinkley would come to a serious and grinding halt unless the Government somehow manage a better arrangement for the future.

[Lord Stern of Brentford (CB)]

My Lords, we have heard very clear and convincing arguments about the future of Euratom. They are clear and strong. But it is more than that. Science depends on collaboration, mechanisms of collaboration, funding and movement of people. Many of us would see the attitude to Euratom as symbolic of this bigger issue. The noble Lord, Lord Winston, made the point that our academics worry about the mechanisms of collaboration, the funding and the movement of people.

I am a fellow of the Royal Society but I am an economist, so I will give an example from my department. We could replicate them in physics departments and all the others. Half of our professors at the LSE, which has one of the best economics departments in the world and is where I am a professor, are EU non-UK. They come to us because we are outstanding and we are outstanding because they come to us. This could be said about every physics department of the highest quality in this country. Scientists—and I, as president of the British Academy for the humanities and social sciences—will be looking at this kind of example to see whether our collaborations, our funding and the movement of people are secure—or at least as secure as they could possibly be. Through the response on Euratom and more broadly, we would welcome clear statements about the priority of collaboration, the mechanisms of collaboration and the funding.

In putting the question in this way, I salute the Government for the support they have given to research. We are on the way up in terms of funding for research. We have a long way to go, but still, the first derivative is positive. May it keep moving in that direction. But it is not just the funding but the people, the collaborations and the mechanisms. This is why, as well as the arguments in their own right, which are very powerful as we have heard, Euratom is so important.

[Baroness Hayter of Kentish Town]

My Lords, I do not think I need to declare a particular interest. I happen to be married to a physicist, but he is a low-temperature physicist, whatever that is—he knows. Although his colleagues are at Culham, he is not involved there himself.

A new word entered our lexicon after June, which is Brexatom—the exit from Euratom. I am sure that those of us who campaigned in the referendum had no idea that this would be a result, or of the implication for the nuclear industry and research and technology. However, as we have heard from the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, in that lovely understatement, Euratom is “pretty important” for our nuclear industry. Part of its job is ensuring our compliance with the non-proliferation treaty, including inspection, reporting and accounting. As we have just heard, some 20% of our electricity depends on it, as well as 78,000 jobs, a number that is expected to grow.

We have heard some—I hope too alarmist—warnings that power stations could be forced to close if new measures are not in place by the time Britain has to leave Euratom, if we do. In fact, a senior nuclear energy lawyer told MPs yesterday that leaving could see trade in nuclear fuel grind to a halt, as my noble friend Lord Hutton and others said. It is not so much about our standards, but we have to demonstrate that our standards comply with international nuclear standards. That is part of the work that happens through Euratom.

Euratom manages and develops the nuclear co-operation agreements, which we have also heard about, with non-EU countries on behalf of its members. The expectation is we would need our own bilateral agreements with those countries, as my noble friend Lord Hutton and the noble Lords, Lord Fox and Lord Rees, mentioned. To go back to the negotiations, I understand that these would take rather longer than two years.

One of the benefits of Euratom has been to establish the UK’s credibility and, indeed, acceptability within the nuclear community. That enables us to have a number of co-operations that we otherwise would not have because they are predicated on us abiding by these standards.

The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority and the Office for Nuclear Regulation also rely on Euratom as it has responsibility for the overarching framework for standards. Unsurprisingly, the Nuclear Industry Association is keen that we remain in Euratom or, if it really proves impossible legally, that there should be some transitional arrangement; otherwise, as we heard from my noble friend Lord O’Neill, it is possible that trading not only in nuclear goods but in material and people, and, as we just heard, the new build at Hinkley, could if not grind to a halt be held up. I assume we would also need a whole lot of new staff to do the monitoring, or an intervention from the UN’s IAEA.

On JET, I understand that the funding that comes via Euratom is guaranteed only until 2018. The new work programme has not yet been agreed, but without that funding the whole future of JET is at risk. As we have just heard, that is a great threat to a great swathe of scientists, engineers and experts, not only those who are based here but those come through during the year to work there. I understand that there is also a risk also to our ongoing participation in ITER, which may be one of the places that our scientists move to if there is any question over the future of JET.