Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Layla Moran and Drew Hendry

3rd reading: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Tuesday 23rd January 2018 Commons Chamber

[Drew Hendry]

No, I am going to make some progress. I may come back to the hon. Lady, but we will have to see.

Many of those workers will need to be skilled in the nuclear industries, yet current policy does not support the ability to get those workers if there is no concession on the movement of people, but achieving even that is put into a harsh light when it comes to getting highly specialist staff to meet the new safeguarding functions. Those positions are already challenging to fill. Nuclear inspectors do not live on every street—in fact, they are very rare—and they are in global demand. The Minister says that such staff are required only in the tens, but can he tell me today how many are in place? I offer him the opportunity to intervene. He was asked in November about recruitment. I am trying to get his attention, Madam Deputy Speaker. Will he tell us how the first phase has gone? I will offer him another opportunity to intervene and tell us how many recruits are in place. Is it 15? Is it 10? Is it five? Is it one? Is it none? How many nuclear safeguard inspectors have been set up?

Prospect and Unite the union have given evidence, and Ms Ferns from Prospect said:

“A reasonable approximation is several years—it is not a matter of months but years for people to be able to do that job…It is a small talent pool…even in the best of times.”

Many Members today have cited the testimony of Dr Mina Golshan, the deputy chief inspector and the director of the Sellafield decommissioning, fuel and waste division in the Office for Nuclear Regulation. She has said:

“I have been very clear from the outset in previous evidence sessions, and in discussions with industry as well as BEIS, that it would be unrealistic for us to expect to achieve an equivalent regime to what is in place currently by the time we officially leave Euratom, and that is March 2019.”

The BEIS Committee report, “Leaving the EU: implications for the civil nuclear sector”, states:

“To deliver the new domestic regime the ONR will need to double the number of its inspectors by 2019, and triple its numbers by 2021. Skilling-up the new recruits on time will present additional challenges, as even existing specialists will require 12-18 months of training to become an inspector, and generalists may need five years.”

Those are hefty timescales.

Let us look at the cost. So far, the Government have earmarked £10 million for all the operations in Euratom, yet we can already see that there are going to be much more expensive consequences for the UK. That £10 million figure is dwarfed by the £50 million of Euratom funding that the UK receives for the Joint European Torus project—JET—so it will be interesting to hear from the Minister how that funding is going to be replaced. Leaving Euratom and the JET project has been described as “bonkers” by Steven Cowley, a physicist at the University of Oxford and a former director of the Culham centre for fusion energy, which hosts JET. He is absolutely right. Can the Minister tell us how that funding will be maintained?

Can the Minister also tell us about our future in ITER, the project to build the world’s largest tokamak? The ITER agreement was signed in 2006 by China, the EU, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the US, and the building of the tokamak has been under way in France since 2010. The official start of ITER’s operation is scheduled for December 2025. Euratom also funds DEMO, a demonstration fusion power reactor planned to follow ITER by 2050. The UK is a key participant in ITER and sends information, results and design studies from its JET programme to the French site. This co-operation will continue throughout the Brexit process, but it is unclear what the impact of Brexit will be on this co-operation and the continuation of these programmes. Perhaps the Minister can advise us on that. We need to know all this information. Without it, we will need safeguards in place.

The hon. Member for North East Hampshire (Mr Jayawardena), who is no longer in its place, mentioned medical isotopes. He said that it was scaremongering to say that they would no longer be available, and that treaties would be in place to allow access to them. However, the critical point is not whether people can get the isotopes; it is that they have a very short half-life. Sometimes they have to be used within hours of being produced in order to maintain their effectiveness. If they are sitting at a border point because there is no customs agreement, they will be completely useless. Will the Minister tell us how we are going to put in place the necessary customs arrangements to prevent that from happening?

[Layla Moran]

The issue is that we are leaving the single market and the customs union. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that, even if we have a customs arrangement, the fact that we are leaving the single market is what will cause the delays? As he rightly points out, the half-life of those radioisotopes will mean that fewer people will be able to be treated by them.

[Drew Hendry]

Without alternative arrangements to allow the free movement of such goods across borders, there will be considerable complication and delay, which could affect patients.

As it stands, it is a risk too far to leave Euratom without cast-iron guarantees. I respect the Minister and heard his messages of hope about having people in place. I heard him say that he would like to ensure that that will happen, but we have had no guarantees about the set-up or whether it will be in place. There are no figures and no definite timescales, and we have heard nothing from the industry to suggest that it is satisfied. Without cast-iron guarantees to protect such things, we know that the new arrangement will cost us more, deliver less and diminish our influence. Given the evidence, it is hard to see even how it could be delivered.