Euratom Membership

Kit Malthouse Excerpts

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Westminster Hall

[Peter Grant (Glenrothes) (SNP)]

The sentence that I think sums up how we got into this mess came from the hon. Member for Stone (Sir William Cash), who said that we have to start getting answers to some of these questions. How about getting answers to the questions before we had the referendum, or how about Members asking those questions before they trooped through the Lobby to vote for the shortest and most destructive Act that this Parliament will ever pass, and possibly the only Act of Parliament for which the explanatory notes were half a page longer than the Bill? The fact is that the first full day of debate on the triggering of article 50 lasted almost 11 hours, and Euratom was mentioned once by a Conservative Back Bencher—hats off to the right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey). His mention of it came nine hours into the debate.

The Government’s entire White Paper on leaving the European Union devoted only eight sentences to Euratom. It is described as an important priority for the Government—so important that it is mentioned on page 44, paragraph 831. Even then, there is no recognition whatsoever of the need for life-saving medical isotopes, which were mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), who is no longer in her place. She has had an illustrious career saving lives in the NHS using radioisotopes. Without the Euratom treaty, the United Kingdom will have no—I repeat “no”—reliable source of those radioisotopes.

[Kit Malthouse (North West Hampshire) (Con)]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that plenty of countries outside Euratom have easy access to medical isotopes and that there is no reason why, if we leave, we will suddenly become an international pariah and be denied those treatments?

[Peter Grant]

I accept that membership is not essential, but this is not the only item on which we need negotiations finalised and ready to implement within a ridiculously short and entirely self-inflicted timetable. If Euratom were the only thing the Government had to negotiate between now and March 2019, there would be no problem. But there are areas that will have an essential long-term impact that the Government will not have time to negotiate properly in order to get the best possible deal. With a bit more candour from the Government about how difficult that process will be, we might all be better off.

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[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.

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[Paul Blomfield]

I thank my hon. Friend for her intervention, which demonstrates her commitment to the Culham facility not only in her current role but in her previous job. She is right on both points. The hon. Member for Oxford West and Abingdon made this point forcefully: we need certainty now—not at some stage in the future, but now—because otherwise the facility is at risk.

[Kit Malthouse]

Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that actually the biggest threat to fusion research in Europe generally is the stance of the European Union itself? Given that Germany has decided to phase out nuclear power, the hostility of the Austrians and the fact that the anti-science Greens now pepper the European Parliament and parliaments across the EU, the likelihood of Horizon 2020 funding continuing to go into nuclear research at the same level is very low, and likely to reduce.

[Paul Blomfield]

Those thoughts are contradicted by the enormous investment that the European Union has put into the Culham facility and is committing to.

Moving back to the benefits of Euratom, it oversees the transport of nuclear fuel across the EU and enables vital co-operation on information, infrastructure and the funding of nuclear energy. It provides safeguarding inspections for all civilian nuclear facilities in the UK—a point made well by the hon. Members for Dwyfor Meirionnydd (Liz Saville Roberts) and for Copeland (Trudy Harrison), who was right to say that if we get this wrong, it will have an economically crushing impact on the UK. Euratom is the legal owner of all nuclear material, and is the legal purchaser, certifier and guarantor of nuclear materials and technologies that the UK purchases. That includes our nuclear trade with the United States.

As has been highlighted this week and by other Members, including the hon. Member for Central Ayrshire (Dr Whitford), Euratom also plays an important role in our NHS. A Conservative Member questioned that point, but I take the judgment of the Royal College of Radiologists, which has expressed genuine concern that cancer patients will face delays in treatments if supply is threatened. My hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr Whitehead) highlighted the National Audit Office report on the risks to Hinkley Point. In all areas, our membership of Euratom is vital.

Indeed, the Government stated that they want to replicate the arrangements we have with Euratom. They have talked about probably the exact same benefits, in the way that they have about the trade deal they want in place of single market membership and customs union membership. It is an ambition that they have yet to demonstrate how they will achieve.

Outside Euratom, the Government would have to negotiate individual nuclear co-operation agreements with every single country outside the EU with which we currently co-operate on these matters. Those would be complex, lengthy negotiations within a 20-month framework. I am interested to hear from the Minister how far they have progressed on those. The Nuclear Industry Association has been clear that if we left without them in place, it would be a disaster—a point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Barrow and Furness (John Woodcock), who is a strong champion of these issues.

All this prompts the question: why add this whole other burden to run alongside the negotiations for our withdrawal from the European Union? The bigger issue at play here was summed up very well—I loved the football analogy—by my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (Daniel Zeichner): the Prime Minister’s obsession with the European Court of Justice. In that context, it is deeply unfortunate that Ministers from the Department for Exiting the European Union have dodged today’s debate. It is becoming something of a habit. We have had three debates in this and the main Chamber on exiting the European Union since the election. DExEU Ministers have dodged every one. That is an unfortunate habit, because both sides of this House demand a level of accountability that they are not demonstrating they are up for.

Back in February, I challenged the then Minister of State at DExEU, the right hon. Member for Clwyd West (Mr Jones), about allegations that it was the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice that had led the Government to issue a notice to withdraw from Euratom alongside the notice to withdraw from the EU. In response he told the House, along much the same lines that he has repeated this morning, that this was not the case. He said:

“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.]

The right hon. Member for Wantage (Mr Vaizey) and the hon. Member for Henley (John Howell) have expressed the view, which many of us share, that legal opinions are never that straightforward. The hon. Member for Henley made that very explicit.