Euratom Membership

Carol Monaghan Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Carol Monaghan (Glasgow North West) (SNP)]

I congratulate the hon. Member for Ynys Môn (Albert Owen) on securing this important debate. He made a clear case for the importance of remaining either a full or an associate member of Euratom. Many hon. Members spoke about their own constituency interests, and I will mention a couple of those. One of the most telling comments came from the hon. Member for Feltham and Heston (Seema Malhotra), who said, “If you ask people on the doorstep why they voted leave, would it be because of Euratom?” Of course people are unaware of what Euratom does; they are probably unaware even of its existence. However, it is fundamental to our everyday lives.

[Chris Green (Bolton West) (Con)]

Is the hon. Lady really saying that we can develop a list of all the organisations that were not mentioned in great detail during the referendum campaign, and that we must remain part of them just because we have not had that full and open debate? Actually, we voted to leave the European Union; that is what the British people voted for. We have to do that, and if it entails leaving Euratom, so be it, but we will do it on the best possible grounds, with a transitional period.

[Carol Monaghan]

The hon. Gentleman’s first point is the correct one: yes, give us a list of everything that we have agreed to leave, and let us start working out the mess that we have created.

[Suella Fernandes]

I am grateful to the hon. Lady for giving way again; I know that she wants to continue with her comments. It is clear that the British people did vote last year to take back control over our laws and for freedom from the European Court of Justice, the Commission and the Council; and of course the EU and Euratom share an institutional framework through the ECJ, the Commission and the Council. Does she not think that by remaining a member of Euratom we would be going against what the British people voted for?

[Carol Monaghan]

Absolutely not. In the Scottish National party we do not share the love of nuclear fission that those on the Government Benches seem to have, but it is a fact that we have nuclear facilities in Scotland. Scotland’s future lies in renewables—last year, 59% of our energy needs were met from that source. However, although we are moving towards a target of 100% renewables, we still have nuclear facilities and they still need regulation and materials. Although nuclear safety is a reserved matter, regulation of waste and emissions from nuclear sites is devolved, but it appears that, once again without any consultation with the Scottish Government on the implications for future regulation, we are being dragged out of Euratom as well as the EU.

[Antoinette Sandbach]

Does the hon. Lady agree that not a single European Court judgment has compromised any British interests relating to Euratom, because they have all related to technical aspects and details of the treaty?

[Carol Monaghan]

Absolutely. I do not know about all the European Court judgments, but that certainly is not something that many of us have heard anything about. Euratom has operated very successfully for 60 years, but now we seem to be taking ourselves out of the regulatory framework.

[Kit Malthouse]

Will the hon. Lady give way?

[Carol Monaghan]

No, I am going to make some progress.

Any future negotiations on whatever membership of Euratom we might have—I hope that it is full membership, but there could be associate membership—must include the Scottish Government, as they are dealing with the regulation of nuclear facilities in Scotland. Some people have talked about putting our own regulatory framework in place. Of course, we could get our own regulations in place, but the problem is that the clock is ticking, we do not have a lot of time and producing these frameworks takes many years, not 20 months. That is a real issue.

A number of hon. Members have mentioned medical isotopes. The Euratom Supply Agency ensures the security of supply of medical isotopes for all members of Euratom. My hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford) gave us some statistics. She said that 500,000 diagnostic scans and 10,000 cancer treatments are carried out annually as a result of those isotopes. However, we cannot produce our own medical isotopes and must therefore import them. Medical isotopes have very short half-lives, which means they need to be transported quickly, and there are only a few facilities in the world that produce them. A number of the reactors that produce medical isotopes are coming to the end of their useful lifespan, which means that in future there could be real problems with their supply worldwide anyway. This is not the time to take ourselves out of the agency that ensures that we have a supply.

[Layla Moran]

Does the hon. Lady agree that the real issue with these radioisotopes is that their half-lives are so short that any delay in getting them to the UK—even hours—means that they will have expired?

[Carol Monaghan]

As a fellow physics teacher, the hon. Lady will know that something such as technetium-99, which is used in medical diagnostics, has a half-life of six hours, which means that after 24 hours it is pretty much useless, or its activity has dropped to a level that makes it inert. These isotopes must be transported and used very quickly after they are produced.

The hon. Lady has already given us a physics lesson on fusion, so I will not do that, but fusion is a field in which we are world leaders in the UK. The hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) talked about JET in his constituency. It is one of the world’s most important facilities and one of Euratom’s main facilities, so we need to ensure that funding continues. JET currently receives about £48 million annually. The contract runs to the end of 2018, so we must ensure that pulling out of Euratom does not affect future funding.

We must ensure that transitional arrangements for nuclear safeguarding, trade and funding are in place until the EU-UK negotiations are complete, and that should be done with the full consultation of the nuclear industry and community. We need to retain our membership of the European observatory on the supply of medical radioisotopes and continue to work with Euratom and global partners to mitigate any shortages of medical isotopes. We need to ensure that Euratom funding for our nuclear research projects continues. Finally, the UK Government must involve the Scottish Government at every stage of the negotiation process, to ensure that the deal reached works for Scotland’s nuclear industry as well.