Nuclear Safeguards Bill (Third sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee Debate: 3rd sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 2nd November 2017 Public Bill Committees

It seems pretty elementary to include in the Bill a provision that Parliament should look at that process and assure itself that it properly matches up with what we thought we were doing. We find ourselves in unique circumstances when discussing how we will bring about the regime change from Euratom to the UK. The amendment simply states that the Bill should guarantee a proper procedure for parliamentary scrutiny and discussion about what we are doing with the IAEA because of those circumstances.

[Alex Norris (Nottingham North) (Lab/Co-op)]

This is the first time I have served under your chairmanship in Committee, Mr McCabe. This is an important Bill and an important amendment. One of the joys of being a new Member is that friends and family members get in touch on an almost daily basis to ask what I am doing, perhaps imagining that it is all glamour and television. When I tell them that I will be attending the Nuclear Safeguards Bill Committee, they say, “Oh, that doesn’t sound like much fun—it sounds quite dry. Do you know anything about nuclear safeguards?” I have therefore been spending my evenings explaining why the Bill is so important.

During the oral evidence sessions, the hon. Member for Copeland spoke eloquently about the impact of the civil nuclear industry on her community, and that supply chain runs up and down the country. Similarly, we should all be concerned, as legislators and as citizens, about energy security. There is also the issue of public safety. Those are incredibly important matters. We hope that they will never make a visible difference to people’s lives, but were they to, we would know about it.

I support the amendment because we cannot wholly subcontract those matters to Ministers. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test has promoted the Minister once already in this sitting, and that may happen again. Although we can be sure of an individual’s knowledge and commitment, we cannot commit in a vacuum to an agreement that we know nothing about and that Ministers would be able to enact without recourse to our parliamentary democracy. We are a parliamentary democracy and Parliament is sovereign.

The amendment is inexorably linked to last June’s vote. I represent a leave constituency and I have spent a lot of time talking to people about their reasons for voting leave when I was voting to remain. Those conversations were illustrative. It will not surprise any Members, or indeed anyone watching, to hear that not once did someone say, “I am really concerned that our safeguarding procedures in the nuclear industry are too closely entwined with those of our European neighbours. We really ought to take back control and stand alone on that issue.” Of course that never came into it, and I do not believe that is what people voted for. If we stood in the middle of the market square in Bulwell, as I often do, and tried to explain to people that, as an inevitable part of the referendum decision, we will now have to do this—despite the at least mixed legal argument publicly in favour of whether we have to—that would be quite a difficult conversation.

[Richard Harrington]

I thank hon. Members for their positive contributions, and for their speculation about my possible promotion—I hope that the Prime Minister manages to take some time today to read the Hansard report of our proceedings.

I thought that the contributions were very positive. Although the hon. Member for Southampton, Test was gracious in saying that his concerns related not to me but to what happens in future, he is absolutely right, and that is a reflection of Government policy. I hope I will be here to see this through, but none of us ever knows. I am honoured to have two shadow Ministers in this Committee. It is not often that one is graced with two—or even three, if I may include the Opposition Whip, the hon. Member for Bristol West. I have read all the amendments carefully. I do not want this to be one of those Bill Committees in which nobody takes any notice and everyone votes as their Whip tells them; I hope that we can find a much more positive way of dealing with this.

To the best of my knowledge, all of us want the same thing. I do not know to what extent the Opposition have volunteers to be on Bill Committees. I am told that some Bill Committees involve press-ganging hon. Members, as the Royal Navy used to do. However, I think that the members of this Committee are interested in the subject, and not just because of direct constituency interests, such as those of my hon. Friend the Member for Copeland. That is the right thing, because our constituents do not typically think about this subject, but it is our job. If there are issues, we can discuss them at length here and also afterwards. I hope that both shadow Ministers know that we would all much rather there was consensus, because we are trying to reach the same objective.

Given that this is my first contribution in our line-by-line scrutiny of the Bill, I feel it necessary to lay out the broader context for hon. Members, as the debate is on the record and will be read by the industry and anyone else who is interested. I will then turn strictly to the amendment. The Bill is required to establish a domestic nuclear safeguards regime that will enable the UK to meet international safeguards and nuclear non-proliferation standards after we withdraw from Euratom. We all know—I hope the country generally knows—that the nuclear industry is of key strategic importance to the United Kingdom. We are committed to our industry maintaining its world-leading status. We are determined that our nuclear industry should continue to flourish in trade, regulation and innovative research. We must ensure that our withdrawal from Euratom will in no way diminish our nuclear ambitions.

The Secretary of State, the Government and I share the views of many in this room about the importance of having a constructive, collaborative relationship with Euratom and all other international partners. I will set out briefly why we must act. We have emphasised our continued commitment to the IAEA and to international standards for nuclear safeguards and non-proliferation. Nuclear safeguards are reporting and verification processes by which states demonstrate to the international community that civil nuclear material is not diverted into military or weapons programmes. Under the Euratom treaty, the civil nuclear material and facilities in member states are subject to nuclear safeguards measures conducted by Euratom, which also provides reporting on member state’s safeguards to the IAEA. That three-way link allows global oversight of nuclear safeguards.

It is clear that the existence of a UK nuclear safeguards regime is a prerequisite for the movement of certain nuclear materials called special fissile materials in and out of the UK. It underpins our international commitment to the IAEA and our nuclear co-operation agreements. As we heard in evidence on Tuesday, without a regime in place, nuclear operators in the UK will be unable to import fuel or do anything necessary for their business. The Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee, which I and some of the same witnesses appeared before yesterday, heard likewise.