European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Lord Bradshaw Excerpts

Committee: 2nd sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 1st March 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Redesdale (LD)]

My Lords, from these Benches, I was the Lib Dem spokesman on energy for 10 years and was often the lone Peer who was attacking atomic energy as something we should be relying on. Our problem at the moment is that 20.9% of our power—I checked with UK Energy five minutes ago—came from nuclear energy. It is coming from an aged nuclear fleet that is almost past its sell-by date and will be decommissioned. If we are to keep the lights on, we probably will need nuclear power stations. I know that the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill, thought that he would never hear me say that.

The Minister will come up with an extremely cogent and persuasive argument for why we should leave the Euratom treaty and how everything will work well. I will ask one question, though. Considering that our new power plants will be designed and built by the French, Chinese, Americans and Japanese, we will need some standards—and, of course, Euratom provides them. The Minister will say, however, that we need to move into the new age and will look at this. Can he say—because work must have been done on this—how much the new standards body will cost to run and set up? I very much hope that he can give me a figure, or perhaps write to me on this issue—or maybe not. If he cannot give me that figure off the top of his head, can he say which department will be responsible for setting up this new body? Will it be BEIS—because DECC has gone the way of many great organisations in the past? If it is BEIS, what new funding will be made available to it to meet its new obligations?

[Lord Bradshaw (LD)]

My Lords, I live in the shadow of Culham. Like the noble Lord, Lord Hayward, I am well aware of the problems that this debate is already causing. I met a number of people from Culham last Thursday. A number are already discussing the opportunities that exist outside this country to move away, because they are uncertain. Many are married to EU nationals who do not know what their position is.

Also, from my association with Oxford University, I can assure noble Lords that not only are we in danger of losing some of the best scientists in medical science, energy and technology, but applications for post-doctoral fellowships for PhDs are declining because people are afraid of what is going to happen. Reference was made to our shortage of nuclear technologists: if those who are there at present were to go away, we would be even shorter—almost bereft—of them.

[Lord Oxburgh (CB)]

My Lords, by now the Minister will probably have got the message that this House thinks Euratom is pretty important for the reasons given. I shall not repeat them, but they are very sound. Indeed, sitting yesterday as a member of the Science and Technology Committee, under the chairmanship of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, we received evidence on nuclear matters. We raised Euratom. There certainly was dismay among our witnesses at the prospect of the UK leaving it.

Nuclear energy will play an important part in the energy plans of the present Government and, I suspect, any Government we are likely to have in the near future. That said, as my noble friend Lord Krebs pointed out, our expenditure on nuclear R&D is simply derisory by international standards. For that reason, we get enormous benefit from our membership of Euratom—proportionately more than almost any other member.

Probably the most important point to recognise is that Euratom governs not just non-proliferation, but the movement of nuclear materials and, above all, nuclear IP. If Brexit goes ahead on the timetable we have at the moment and nothing is put in place effectively to give us continuing membership of Euratom by some means or other, that occurrence would come right in the middle of the build at Hinkley. It is not impossible that Hinkley would come to a serious and grinding halt unless the Government somehow manage a better arrangement for the future.