Nuclear Safeguards Bill (Fourth sitting)

Alex Norris Excerpts

Committee Debate: 4th sitting: House of Commons
Thursday 2nd November 2017 Public Bill Committees

[Patricia Gibson (North Ayrshire and Arran) (SNP)]

I want to speak in support of amendments 1, 3 and 8 and new clause 1. The Minister knows, as certainly it is no secret, that the Scottish National party absolutely does not support the decision to leave Euratom. We have been told that it is essential and a requirement that we do so, and that we are where we are, but I urge the Minister—as I have before—to explore to the fullest possible extent the legal advice that is, at best, differing and conflicting, as that may be the best way to go.

The Prime Minister has told us, and the Minister has reiterated it, that the UK Government seek a close relationship with Euratom. I suggest that the closest relationship would be to remain a member, but if we cannot and if the Minister stretches every sinew, explores every avenue and finds that we cannot remain a member of Euratom, we want to remain an associate member, as has been pointed out. We have heard that Switzerland became an associate member of Euratom in 2014, under article 206. That arrangement could be a way in which we can continue to access funding for nuclear research.

Although safeguard regulations are certainly reserved to the UK Parliament, the Minister will know that there are areas of regulation that are devolved to the Scottish Government, for example the regulation of waste and emissions from nuclear sites. When talking about nuclear safeguards I do not feel that we can properly and safely artificially separate those areas, so I hope that the Minister will involve the Scottish Government at every stage of the Euratom negotiation process to ensure, whatever the deal, outcome or final situation, that the deal also works for Scotland.

With regard to amendment 8, we must be mindful—I am sure that the Minister is—that critical pillars of scientific research and medicine must be considered as an important part of the Bill. Following our departure from Euratom—if that happens—the UK will have to strike new regulatory agreements with the EU and other trading partners, to continue to import nuclear materials. That will only be possible with a new regulatory system. I am tempted to quote the expert advice from Tom Greatrex, the chief executive of the Nuclear Industry Association, and of course a former Member of Parliament. He points out that:

“While medical isotopes are not classed as special fissile material and so not subject to safeguarding provisions, it is not accurate to say that Euratom has no impact. They are subject”

to the treaty.

He is echoed by the president-elect of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine, who tells us:

“The transport of isotopes across borders is regulated so it is not something you can send in a package”.

There is room for question and to search for more clarity, which I hope the Minister can provide. We need to know the strategy for the trading and transportation of nuclear materials, such as fuel for reactors and isotopes. EU officials and independent experts have stated that

“these isotopes would be subject to wider Euratom rules on the trade and transportation of nuclear materials after Brexit.”

I hope that the Minister will take the concerns addressed in the amendments on board. I am very interested to hear what he has to say.

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

I said earlier that I do not think there is public energy behind us not participating in Euratom in some way. Similarly, in our discussions, neither the experts we had in front of us nor hon. Members said that leaving Euratom is desirable and that we should actively choose to do it. Rather, it is a necessity of circumstance, and this Bill is a contingency to cover such an event.

I am in favour of this cluster of amendments and the new clause, because it is important that we provide evidence that we have taken every step to try to maintain what is currently a successful relationship. In doing so, we will resolve the debilitating difference of legal opinion on this matter, as my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test characterised it.

The Minister said clearly that we are leaving Euratom, but on Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), who at that point was a member of the ministerial team for the Department for Exiting the European Union, said:

“Triggering article 50 therefore also entails giving notice to leave Euratom.”—[Official Report, 1 February 2017; Vol. 620, c. 1131.]

I believe there is a difference between saying we are leaving and saying we have to leave, as, in effect, the right hon. Gentleman said. The Minister may say that that is a distinction without a difference. However, in the first sitting of this Committee, we took evidence from two senior lawyers in this area—Jonathan Leech and Rupert Cowan from Prospect Law—and I asked them whether triggering article 50 necessitated, as the right hon. Gentleman suggested, leaving Euratom as well. Jonathan Leech said, “No”, and Rupert Cowan said, “Absolutely not.” Jonathan Leech continued to say:

“The advice would be that you do not have to accept this and it may not be in your interests to do so.”––[Official Report, Nuclear Safeguards Public Bill Committee, 31 October 2017; c. 12, Q23.]

This is clearly contested space.

We subsequently heard, as my hon. Friend said, that perhaps it is something to do with the Government’s preferred future approach to the European Court of Justice. Perhaps they think we ought to escape immediately anything that seems to have some sort of tie to the ECJ. That may well be the view of the Prime Minister and No. 10, but it is considerably different from what was said on Second Reading of the European Union (Withdrawal) Bill, which is that we have to do it.

Leaving Euratom is a political choice and, as such, ought to be debated in the usual way. We should make a democratic decision about it. The best way for us to do that, as Members across the Committee have said, is to carry on with this contingency Bill, but in doing so prove the case either way. I am perfectly willing to accept that there will be conflicting legal advice. A Minister has been very clear in this place that he believes it to be absolutely one way, and this Committee has heard evidence to the complete contrary. The best way to resolve that is for us to see the information and talk about it. Critically, as these amendments require, future Ministers should lay before both Houses of Parliament what advice they have taken, what course they have chosen and why they have had to do that. If they do that, I believe that both the House and the public will have confidence that that very difficult, possibly traumatic, decision is the only one that could have been taken.

[Paul Blomfield (Sheffield Central) (Lab)]

Unsurprisingly, I rise to speak in favour of this cluster of amendments and the new clause, which gets to the very heart of our purpose here. We should be at one—I am sure we are—with the Minister, who described the Bill as a contingency. We should see it as a safety net, but the overriding ambition should be to stay within Euratom.

All the witnesses we heard in our evidence session on Tuesday said, when the Minister pressed them on it, that they support the Bill, but only if we cannot remain in Euratom, which would be a far more preferable option. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test set out the case very well in his opening remarks. There is a strong case for having a purpose clause that frames the Bill, because of its unique characteristics. The other amendments will fall into place. If that is the position, we need to say that full membership is our negotiating purpose in the Brexit talks. If that proves not to be possible, we need to set out, as amendment 3 suggests, a strategy for seeking associate membership, recognising that the current examples of associate membership fall short of what we would hope to achieve. However, we are in unknown territory in all these negotiations over our departure from the European Union.

Amendment 1 sets out that, if this is a safety net, what are the conditions under which we have to open it? That should be in the form of a report from the Secretary of State. Amendment 8 clearly sets out the requirement for Parliament to fully explore the many other benefits of Euratom membership, whether in relation to medical isotopes or to the research work in nuclear fusion at Culham, which we lead the world in. This is an important cluster of proposals from Labour and we hope they are all helpful.

The contribution my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham North made a moment ago brings us to a central political issue: why are we in this position when there appears to be such unanimity about wishing to remain in Euratom? He made a point about the discussion on Second Reading. As far back as February I challenged the then Minister of State at the Department for Exiting the European Union, the right hon. Member for Clwyd West, about suggestions that it was the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice that had led the Government to issue a notice to withdraw from Euratom. In response, he told the House:

“it would not be possible for the UK to leave the EU and continue its current membership of Euratom.”—[Official Report, 8 February 2017; Vol. 621, c. 523.]

However, as we know, there are conflicting legal views on that. The Government have, apparently at the desire of No. 10, chosen to take one set of views, which is why they decided to trigger the departure from Euratom alongside the article 50 proposals. I am sure that the former Chancellor of the Exchequer is highly regarded by hon. Members on the Government Benches. In his new role he wrote, on 10 July, that the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union

“was open to Britain remaining party to the Euratom Treaty…It was Mrs May who overruled Mr Davis and others in the Cabinet, such as Greg Clarke, to insist that we sacrifice those sensible international arrangements on the altar of the dogmatic purity of Brexit.”

I would not want to disagree with the former Chancellor of the Exchequer on this point.

Here we see a Bill that has been introduced partly because there has been an apparent surrender of the real negotiating ambition that we should have of remaining within Euratom, simply because of the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That dogmatic red line, as the former Chancellor of the Exchequer describes it, is something we should be concerned about, because remaining in Euratom makes such overwhelming sense to everybody involved in the industry and to Members on both sides of the House. It was interesting when we had the debate on Euratom in Westminster Hall in July that the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who is not a noted dove on issues relating to the European Union, said that we should surely explore some closer form of co-operation and that we should not rule out some form of associate membership of Euratom. There is a huge consensus on this issue. It is unfortunate that this red line about the ECJ has got in the way of what is transparently in the interest of not only the industry but our country. It is all the more ludicrous when we recognise that in all the period the ECJ has been the arbitration body in relation to the European Atomic Energy Community, the Minister would find it hard to identify a single ruling—there have not been many—that we have not supported.

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[Alex Norris]

I rise to support the amendment. I will start by stating something that is possibly a considerable understatement as well as possibly a major statement of the obvious. It is important that the arrangements that follow from the legislation work—that the arrangements that the Office for Nuclear Regulation puts in place to transition us from Euratom as the safeguard in our British law work. It is important for the jobs involved in the supply chain, for energy security and public safety. Although that may be an understatement and a statement of the very obvious, it is not inevitable that that is the case.

My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test referred to Dr Golshan, who is leading for the ONR, and her oral evidence to the Committee on Tuesday. I want to pull a few paragraphs out of it. The most striking was when she said:

“Our aim, currently, is to have a system in place that enables the UK to fulfil its international obligations by March 2019, which is when we intend to leave Euratom. I have been very clear in the past—I will repeat it here—that we will not be able to replicate Euratom standards on day one.”––[Official Report, Nuclear Safeguards Public Bill Committee, 31 October 2017; c. 7, Q9.]

So things will get worse before they return at some point to parity. I do not think anything in that is revelatory. The ONR and the Government have not got long to prepare. This will lead inevitably to conversations in future sittings of this Committee about what transition periods may or may not be available to the ONR for it to continue its work. Nevertheless, at its root, we need to understand that things are likely to be challenging for the ONR and for the regime that it puts in place.

As a result, it is absolutely imperative that we understand the extent of that, how we might be able to mitigate that and what support could be given from across the House. The best way to do that is through amendment 4, by fully publishing the impact assessment and by showing the evidence from the consultation with the ONR. The amendment is supportive and Ministers will be able to be clear that the ONR had the right resources.

I know we are on a budget at the moment. I was a member of the executive board of my council in my six years before coming to this place, which was obviously on a much smaller scale than here, but I know that at budget time there can be a bit of an arm-wrestle where even close friends have disagreements about priorities. It will be no surprise to hear me say I suspect that even happens at the highest level of Government. The amendment would strengthen the hand of Ministers to make sure that the ONR is properly equipped so that on day one the standards are as good and safe as they can be, and so that the gap that Dr Golshan talked about is closed as quickly as possible.

I will try not to duplicate anything quoted by my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test, but forgive me if I do. There were clear warning signs in the oral evidence about how difficult it will be to get the basic personnel who will be so important. My hon. Friend touched on this, but Dr Golshan said that

“it has not been necessary for the UK and ONR to build capacity and resilience in this area.”

We have unwittingly deskilled ourselves over previous decades, so we are having to break that very quickly. She mentioned the success in recruiting so far:

“We know that we are dealing with a limited pool of expertise, and our success so far, although encouraging, is by no means the end of the story.”––[Official Report, Nuclear Safeguards Public Bill Committee, 31 October 2017; c. 5, Q3.]

She continues that theme later on. Although they are not looking for large numbers, she states:

“we are dealing with a limited talent pool...the expertise is unique...the UK as a whole has not had to focus on developing resilience in this area, so we are limited in what and who we can recruit.”––[Official Report, Nuclear Safeguards Public Bill Committee, 31 October 2017; c. 7, Q8.]

So the ONR has a real job on. Having talked to her, that was very clear. I have no doubt we will play this out when we return to future clauses that talk about transition. It means that two things are imperative: first, that Ministers and we, as legislators, are assured that those day-one safeguards will be the best they can be; and secondly, that the ONR is being properly resourced to do this job. The best way to do that is to lay before Parliament a statement, as referenced in amendment 4.

Yesterday was a significant day in Parliament. We had an Opposition day debate, to which my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield Central contributed skilfully, about precisely this issue. The hon. Member for Poole said that this will inevitably get wrapped up in the wider conversation about leaving the EU, which I think is reasonable. We know that nuclear is one of the sectors on the list of impact assessments. The debate yesterday and the comprehensive vote showed the settled will of Parliament for those assessments to be revealed. Nowhere is that more important than in this area, because people need that assurance. That needs to be triangulated, too, not only by the Government’s own sense of impact but by sharing the full consultation. We more than dipped our toe into this—we had a day’s worth of experience—on Tuesday, when we talked to people with a variety of interests in the sector. We heard a lot of very important, and in some cases quite concerning, messages. We need to see the whole consultation, as the Bill continues its passage.

The issue came up at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee yesterday. People need to know that they will be kept safe; that is obvious. They also need to know what this will mean in pounds and pence and what resources the ONR will need, compared with the resources that go into Euratom. People would then have a full understanding of what has happened and why, and whether that has been a good thing.

Anything that involves leaving the EU is necessarily hotly contested space. The things we talk about are not necessarily so hotly contested politically. I think Members across the House would want to have a sensible conversation about this, as we have done today, and I do not think it offers much political opportunity or that there are votes in it in our constituencies—certainly not for me. People need to know that they are safe, and they need to know the financial consequences for them of the legislation. The only way to do that is to accept amendment 4, which is very helpful, and underpin it with amendments 12 and 13, to ensure we have full transparency.

[Eleanor Smith (Wolverhampton South West) (Lab)]

I support the amendment on the impact assessment.

In my previous life, before coming into Parliament, I was a nurse, and part of my role was to look at patient safety and, of course, staff safety. We always had an impact assessment. Any new policies introduced by our trust were given a risk assessment to make sure the patients we were looking after and the staff working in that environment were safe. I have now come into Parliament and seen the different structures here and how it works, particularly through this Bill Committee.

I have to break it down to understand it. I see this as similar to what I would do if I was working in a hospital, looking at the safety of our patients. The only difference is that this is nuclear, which strikes me as really important. I would look for 100% safety for my patients, and I certainly would look for 100% safety within the nuclear power industry.

We heard from different witnesses, and from what I gathered, they agreed with the Bill. The one thing they want is the resources they need. To do that I want to see, as it says in the amendment, an “impact assessment” published, so that we can see for ourselves that everything put in place is 100% guaranteed safe—not 99%. I asked Sue Fern about training, because in hospitals they always say, “You’ll be able to do this and you’ve got the nurses required to do it.” But unfortunately, we never have the experienced nurses that we want. That takes time. I am sure that that will be same for inspectors, because it takes time to gather the experience—they cannot just be found. If those experienced people are not out there, the risk is that things will not be as safe as they should be.

I support the amendment so that we can have the impact assessment to see for ourselves that the ONR has the resources it needs to guarantee—that is the important point—the safety of members of the public. My constituency is not in a nuclear area but people work in those establishments and we have to guarantee their safety as well.

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[Alex Norris]

On the impact assessment, I am heartened to hear that. Given what Dr Golshan said about us not being able to replicate the benefits of Euratom on day one, will that impact assessment state what we currently have the benefit of that we will not have on day one of the new regime?

[Richard Harrington]

It will not do that, because it is impossible to forecast how the recruitment and everything will go. I am not trying to dodge the hon. Gentleman’s very legitimate question, but in recruitment at its most basic, when placing a job advert, it is unknown how many people are going to reply. I am not dodging his question, but the impact assessment cannot specifically say that.

I accept the quality of Dr Golshan’s evidence. She spoke again yesterday at the Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy Committee and she meets regularly with all my colleagues in the Department.

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[Richard Harrington]

Dr Golshan is a very impressive person. I think in my answer to the hon. Member for, pardon me—

[Alex Norris]

Nottingham North.