Sellafield

Alistair Carmichael Excerpts

Tuesday 6th September 2016 Commons Chamber

[Mr Hurd]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving me the opportunity to reaffirm again the Government’s appreciation for the extremely challenging and incredibly important work that is done by people on the site. It is deeply impressive that, given the complexity of the site and the legacy—this is really difficult stuff—Sellafield’s safety record over the past three years is the best that it has ever been. I quite understand why residents and people working at the site may have been upset and disturbed by the programme last night, but I hope that my statement and corroborating statements from other Members have reassured them that as far as the Government are concerned—not least because the independent regulator attaches enormous importance to Sellafield, as reflected in the resources committed to monitoring the site on a very proactive basis—Sellafield is safe.

[Mr Alistair Carmichael (Orkney and Shetland) (LD)]

I appreciate that the Minister has a duty to offer reassurance, but I have to warn him that the content and tone of what we have heard today come dangerously close to complacency. The people who have been responsible for the historical errors of judgment and underinvestment are still involved in the industry today. These words will be heard with concern in the north of Scotland, where we are seeing nuclear waste shipped out from the former Dounreay plant. Will the Minister have the risk assessment for that operation scrutinised independently of the people who were responsible for making the plans?

[Mr Hurd]

The right hon. Gentleman is an experienced Member of Parliament so I take seriously his warning about tripping over a boundary into complacency. I said at the start that I was determined not to do that. What I am trying to do is reflect genuine empathy with people who live close to the site and who work on the site, who will have been unsettled by the programme last night, which raised nothing new and which, I am keen to stress, in the eyes of the regulator does not change its position in relation to the safety of Sellafield.

The right hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I give some priority to that. He knows the reality of the situation at Sellafield, which is that as a legacy of the cold war, vast amounts of nuclear waste, dumped with no plan for how it would be disposed of safely, languished for decades without anyone properly tackling the problem. The priority for us is to do what we are doing now, which is to continue working to turn that round and clean up Sellafield as safely, cost-effectively and quickly as possible.