Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

My Lords—

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

Oh, no.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

Yes, I know—it’s boring hearing the facts, isn’t it? I apologise for not catching the noble Baroness’s eye earlier but I want to contribute briefly to this debate with just a couple of historical facts that might help.

I thank the noble Lord, Lord Howell, for his words about the Liberal Democrats in the coalition. As one of the four people from the Liberal Democrat side who contributed to the agreement with the Conservatives, my recollection on that is that, as I am sure he will remember, nuclear power was to be at no cost to the public purse. That was very much the coalition’s starting and finishing point; I hope that it will continue to be so.

I have done most of the things that the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, invited us to do to apprise ourselves of the facts. Indeed, back in 2001, with the active co-operation of BNFL—British Nuclear Fuels Ltd—I produced a short report, Cleaning Up the Mess, which looked specifically at what would be the best way to deal with nuclear waste; at that time, it was much more prominent in the headlines than it is now and just as intractable. We looked at some of the conditions needed. One is stable geology but the other, which the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, mentioned, is stable politics. If you look at Europe, only two countries —England and Sweden—have had even 350 years of political stability. Of course, the events in eastern Europe at the moment are a reminder of that.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

It seems to have been relatively stable in Scotland.

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

I am sure that the noble Lord’s colleagues from the Scottish National Party will remind him of the Act of Union, which was subsequent to that date. Yes, England was a deliberate choice, but I will accept other places; it is hard, however, to find another place other than Sweden that has had even 300 years, let alone however many thousands of years we are talking about, of stability.

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock (Lab Co-op)]

What about Portugal?

[Lord Stunell (LD)]

Let us try Portugal. The Duke of Wellington was required to liberate Portugal from Spanish and Napoleonic domination. It is easy to forget Napoleon and Hitler and all sorts of things but—not that it is particularly relevant to this debate—political stability is important and rare. This country is one of the places that has been able to exhibit that despite our sometimes fractious debates on nuclear storage.

The conclusion of my report was that you need deep geological storage. It would be sensible for it to be in England. This is not, and never has been, Liberal Democrat policy, but my report pointed out that there was a big business opportunity because nobody else in the world—neither then nor, for that matter, now—had a good place to put their nuclear waste. I am certainly not opposed to having a deep geological disposal point.

The purpose of this is to establish the risk and the cost to the public purse. I go back to where I was in 2010—that there should be no cost to the public purse. We have gone backwards since 1999. Then we at least had a site and a plan—or BNFL did, which was strongly advocating it—but at the moment we have neither. We had a timescale; it would have been operational in 2024, which would have been very convenient for the passage of this Bill. Now it will probably not be for another 25 years, even if it gets a fair wind.

Parliamentary Buildings (Restoration and Renewal) Bill

Debate between Lord Stunell and Lord Foulkes of Cumnock

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Monday 8th July 2019 Lords Chamber

[Lord Foulkes of Cumnock]

Why does the noble Lord think that the Treasury will agree to Parliament making this decision without its approval—I see the Leader of the House is not listening—given that I keep getting told that a much more modest proposal that I have been suggesting for a number of years is subject to approval by the Treasury and must be within a particular envelope? Either this Parliament makes decisions about expenditure or it does not. The noble Lord is saying that it will make decisions about billions of pounds, when it cannot make decisions about millions.

[Lord Stunell]

The noble Lord exactly anticipates the point I am coming to. If this goes ahead unamended, it is a recipe for the hidden hand to cause delay and wasted effort. Those were the points I was about to make.

The Joint Committee recommended that a Treasury Minister sit on the sponsor body, which will sign off the brief for the delivery authority. That is when the Treasury input is needed, not after a year’s work of design and procurement has been done, and perhaps wasted, when the estimates commission consults the Treasury, in accordance with paragraphs 3, 5 and 8, and is obliged to reject what comes to it. I say “obliged”, because if you must “have regard” to something, that leaves very little room to ignore the advice you receive.

There is a weakness in accountability here, but not a weakness of the designers, contractors, delivery authority or sponsor board. Those accountabilities are in the main clear and transparent, and very welcome for that. The weakness is in the accountability of the Government and the lack of any transparency in their input. I describe it as their “input” into the process but it is much more likely to be their extraction from it, because I do not believe that the Treasury would urge anyone to spend the money faster. However, their participation in the process is not transparent, and that weakness will lead to delay, waste and extra costs. How much better and simpler would it be to have the Treasury at the front end rather than the back end of the process?

It may be said that there is no problem because the Government will accept the point that the noble Lord, Lord Foulkes, is so dubious about them accepting. However, we know that transparency influences the progress of the project, and that endless delays and costs involve money. When there was no transparency, we did not know, for instance, why it was taking so long for previous stages of this process to reach the House and for decisions to be taken. When those delays cannot be attributed and chased, they accumulate. I can well understand that the Government have no wish at all to be fingered by this problem; equally, we have to understand its cost. With costs running at over £500 million a year, I can well see that Ministers will be hesitant. That is five schools-worth a year, and the temptation will be to stop, pull back and slow down. That is bad and expensive news at any stage of a big project, but it is absolutely destructive when it is in full flow. Let us get that interference at the front level, and minimise the delay, the wasted design time, the costs and the aborted procurement. I hope we can come back to that key issue in Committee.

I concur with practically every speaker in this debate in saying that this is a good, sound Bill. It needs to go ahead, and quickly, and we need to make sure that any flaws regarding accountability that may be built into it are dealt with before it leaves your Lordships’ House.