Nuclear Energy (Financing) Bill

Debate between Lord Foster of Bath and Lord Wigley

Committee stage
Tuesday 8th March 2022 Grand Committee

[Lord Wigley (PC)]

My Lords, I will speak very briefly indeed. I have added my name to Amendment 27 in this group alongside that of the noble Lord, Lord Foster; I did so with particular regard to my strong feelings on new paragraph (e), proposed by the amendment, which concerns

“how decommissioning costs of the project will be met”.

Of course, this issue appears in sub-paragraph (iii), proposed by new Amendment 5, which refers to

“an estimate of the costs of decommissioning the project”.

As I indicated in our earlier debates, I feel that this is a critical aspect of the Bill that needs to be covered and where assurance needs to be given, whatever the mechanism of doing so. I would have thought that the Government could recognise that and say that, whether or not these amendments meet the standards that are acceptable to them, there may be some way of giving an assurance that the questions asked by these amendments can be answered—and that the answers will be forthcoming to this Committee.

[Lord Foster of Bath (LD)]

My Lords, I am afraid that I cannot be quite as brief as the noble Lord because I have a number of amendments in my name. I am also conscious of the pressure on the Committee’s time, so I will do my very best to be as quick as I possibly can. I will concentrate rather more on Amendment 12 than on any other of the amendments in my name, that of my noble friend Lord Teverson and those of other noble Lords.

Basically, Amendment 12 would require the department to define “sufficiently advanced” in its guidance. What we know is that designation will come at a certain point. We have already debated the fact that we have no idea what the criteria will be and that we may or may not see them before we finish our deliberations on this Bill. However, we are at least grateful that the Minister is apparently listening to what we have to say. I hope that he will listen to this particular bit because the designation can come only when the Secretary of State is satisfied that the project is sufficiently advanced; this amendment merely requires the Secretary of State to be clear about what that means.

Earlier, I referred to the fact that I live near Sizewell so it is a particularly good example to use, not least because it is the only project in the offing that might use this methodology. In the case of Sizewell, it is worth being aware that the planning application has been submitted and is awaiting the decision of the Secretary of State. Yet, at the conclusion of the planning examination, numerous issues were outstanding. They still have not been sorted out.

They include the crucial issue of the design of the hard coastal defences. If you live near Sizewell, as I do, you know that the coast there is eroding incredibly rapidly. Three weeks ago, I went for a walk on the clifftop and saw, in a field where the crops were planted this year, that some of the initial plants have already fallen over the edge of the cliff. The erosion is very rapid; appropriate measures must therefore be put in place, yet this has not been done.

Moreover, nothing has been done to ensure that there will definitely be potable water. Frankly, if you have a nuclear power station with no guarantee of potable water, it is a completely pointless exercise; that work has not been done. Also, there has been no work to look at soil mixing and ground anchor trials, which are vital because a huge hole will be dug in the ground and we have to be sure that the whole thing is not going to collapse. There are numerous issues that have not yet been sorted at this stage.

Using those three examples, my question for the Minister is this: does he see that a designation could take place without those three things having been addressed, or not? Will there be sufficient progress? I seek a definition and an understanding. I have given some specific examples for the Minister to consider; I hope that he can tell me whether they have gone on.

The other amendment in this group, Amendment 18, aims to provide further transparency about how taxpayers’ money is going to be allocated and what taxpayers’ money is being used. The recent announcement of £100 million of taxpayers’ money being given to the project at this stage, before any decision has been made, does not look good locally. It almost appears as if the green light has been given to Sizewell before any of the issues that I have been raising have been taken into account. We need to have more transparency about the taxpayer contribution to projects.

Amendment 27 picks up an issue that was raised on an earlier amendment by my noble friend Lord Oates, so I will not go through it in any detail. It requires the Secretary of State to provide a report about the up-front and overall expected cost of the project, the likely cost of electricity going on to the national grid and decommissioning costs, which have already been the subject of much debate, so I shall not repeat that.

The subject of Amendment 28 was also raised in an earlier amendment by my noble friend Lord Oates. It is something that various consumer organisations have been calling for, which is that before final agreements are made, there should be an independent assessment of the information that is being provided to the Government. It would require an independent impact assessment to be conducted and to be approved by the House of Commons before licence modifications could be permitted.

The amendments in my name are all about transparency. If I go away at the end of the proceedings with one message, it is that at the moment the Government seem unable or unwilling to provide a great deal of information about the Bill. This is not about being pro or anti nuclear but about transparency, and at the moment I do not think we are getting anything like enough of it from the Government.