Draft NuclEar Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021

Anne-Marie Trevelyan Excerpts

Tuesday 13th April 2021 General Committees

[The Chair]

Before we begin, I remind Members to observe social distancing and to sit only in places that are clearly marked. I also remind Members that Mr Speaker has stated that masks should be worn in Committee, though obviously not when people are speaking. Our colleagues from Hansard would be most grateful if Members sent their speaking notes to [e-mail].

[The Minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth (Anne-Marie Trevelyan)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) (Amendment) Regulations 2021.

The draft regulations were laid before the House on 25 February 2021. This is an uncontroversial statutory instrument that is required to implement a protocol signed by the Governments of the United Kingdom and Japan on 16 December 2020 to amend the 1998 nuclear co-operation agreement between the UK and Japan. The draft statutory instrument will amend regulations to ensure that the United Kingdom may comply with the provisions of that protocol.

To understand the importance of the draft statutory instrument, one needs first to understand the purpose of the protocol. Nuclear co-operation agreements are commonly used international agreements that give legal underpinnings to civil nuclear co-operation. They provide key non-proliferation assurances, including respective nuclear safeguards and a framework for nuclear trade. Japan is an important partner of the United Kingdom in nuclear co-operation and non-proliferation. Both countries collaborate in the areas of nuclear regulation, research and development, decommissioning and advanced nuclear technology development.

The primary aim of the protocol is to maintain that mutually beneficial relationship between the UK and Japan on civil nuclear trade and co-operation. It achieves that by ensuring that the United Kingdom-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement, which it amends, is fully operable now that the United Kingdom operates its own domestic safeguards regimes and is no longer part of Euratom.

The protocol goes further, by including provisions that strengthen the mutually beneficial relationship between the UK and Japan. The additional provisions cover issues such as co-operation on R&D, intellectual property, safety and the expansion of the scope of the nuclear co-operation agreement to include technology.

I will now seek to explain what changes the draft statutory instrument will effect. First, it will amend the Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019, so that the protocol is included under the definition of “relevant international agreement” for the purposes of the Energy Act 2013.

That primarily concerns the role and responsibility of the UK’s nuclear regulator, the Office for Nuclear Regulation. One of the office’s statutory purposes is to ensure that the UK complies with relevant international agreements. The draft regulations will ensure that the protocol is captured as such an agreement. Failure to pass the statutory instrument would therefore mean that the Office for Nuclear Regulation’s role would not include any reference to what has been agreed in the protocol, leaving the UK at risk of breaching the agreement. That, clearly, would not be an acceptable outcome.

The second change effected by this draft secondary legislation is the inclusion of the protocol under the definition of “specified international agreement” for the purposes of the Nuclear Safeguards (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. The change will extend the requirement in those regulations for operators to provide information to the Secretary of State relating to qualifying nuclear material or other relevant items in respect of the protocol. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.

--- Later in debate ---

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his support, his forensic analysis and his challenge to the Government on process. Once I and officials have looked at his points in detail, I will absolutely write to him.

As the hon. Gentleman has highlighted, the UK and Japan have previously had relevant nuclear co-operation agreements in force—the 1998 UK-Japan bilateral nuclear co-operation agreement and the 2007 Euratom-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement—which was not the case with the US, Canada and Australia. Of course, the 2007 agreement ceased to apply when we stepped away from the EU, but the 1998 nuclear co-operation agreement remains in force.

Given that the policy changes made to the 1998 UK-Japan nuclear co-operation agreement were minor, it was not deemed necessary to agree a whole new nuclear co-operation agreement. Instead, a protocol to the agreement was deemed to be the most appropriate measure. There was an exchange of notes, which was considered a temporary solution that would come into force in any scenario where Euratom arrangements ceased to apply, which indeed they did, and the protocol had not then come into force. This protocol obviously represents a robust solution for our UK-Japan civil nuclear trade and co-operation, following our departure from Euratom, and it ensures continuity with an important partner.

[Dr Whitehead]

I thank the Minister for that partial elucidation. However, does she appreciate that, in terms of our leaving Euratom, at the very least this did not appear to have been made in time for the arrangements set out under the 2018 Act? I think she has partly confirmed that in her consideration of the status of the original protocol and what needed to be added to it in order to get us to a proper position—which is, indeed, the position we are now in today.

[Anne-Marie Trevelyan]

I hope that I have provided the necessary assurances for now and I absolutely commit to writing to him with the finer points of detail that I hope will give him the reassurance he needs that the UK-Japanese relationship is absolutely watertight and continues to be of great importance to both countries.

As I said at the start, these draft regulations will ensure that the United Kingdom can comply with the provisions of the protocol agreed between the Governments of the United Kingdom and Japan, and by extension will help to maintain mutually beneficial civil nuclear trade and co-operation between ourselves and Japan. Therefore, I commend these regulations to the Committee.

Question put and agreed to.