European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Baroness Altmann Excerpts

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Altmann (Con)]

My Lords, I support these amendments and echo the words of the noble Lords, Lord Hunt, Lord Warner, Lord Teverson and Lord Carlile, from these Benches. This has nothing to do with the referendum: this is not the will of the people. We do not legally need to leave Euratom, as we have heard so many times this evening, if we leave the EU. It is not as though we asked the British people, “Do you want to leave Euratom; do you want to spend millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money to put ourselves back in precisely the position we are now, we hope; to basically reinvent the wheel; to incur huge costs and take huge risks in undermining our world-leading position in nuclear research?”

We may not be able to do this in time: we may not be able to find enough skilled people. Indeed, when we spoke with figures in the nuclear industry a few months ago, they informed us that the first they heard of the Government having decided to leave Euratom was when they read the announcement: there was no consultation with the industry on an issue of such monumental importance. What is the cost and what benefit will be achieved for incurring those costs? I urge my noble friend the Minister to relay to his department the tone of the House—that many of us on these Benches would welcome an admission that this decision is unnecessary. It risks our energy security, safety and public health and we do not need to take this risk. Let us withdraw our notification to leave Euratom.

[Lord Judd (Lab)]

My Lords, like my noble friend Lord Liddle I live in Cumbria and these issues are central for the people of Cumbria. In the wider context of all these things we are discussing, we are not expressly taking the point that it is not just in our political lifetime that the consequences will be felt. That is the gravity of the situation. The implications could reach for hundreds or thousands of years ahead. It is impossible to overstress the significance of the issues with which we are dealing. My noble friend was absolutely right to talk about the irresponsibility of discussing them at this time of night instead of at prime time in the parliamentary timetable. We ought to be ashamed of ourselves: how on earth can we convince people that we are properly scrutinising if we are pushing things through late at night?

In his amendments, with which I am associated, my noble friend Lord Whitty is bringing out very clearly yet again the cavalier, ill-prepared position of the Government as we race towards the conclusion of the negotiations. We have had reference to it in various discussions today. How on earth can all the points that have been raised by my noble friend’s amendments be met in the time available?

There is another crucial point. As my noble friend Lord Liddle said, we will be going ahead with our next generation of nuclear energy only with expertise from abroad. Can the Minister explain to us, very specifically, how we will have the people qualified to undertake inspections of the standard of Euratom if we have not got that kind of expertise available within British society for the development of our next phase of nuclear energy? How can we be lacking in that when it comes to the task itself and then say we can somehow inspect the task? Where are these people with the right qualifications going to come from? We need specific reassurances from the Government on that point.