Nuclear Research and Technology (Science and Technology Committee Report)

Lord Fox Excerpts

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, it is always a pleasure to hear the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, speak but it is also a challenge to follow him. I predict that there will be no swirling waters of the Pentland Firth in my speech.

Along with everyone else who has spoken, I thank the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, for his leadership on the report and during my early years on the committee, and join him in thanking the team that supported us in producing this report. I also thank my fellow members of the committee, many of whom were able to give a seminar on this subject at the drop of a hat, as noble Lords have heard.

This is a subject of great complexity, but I hope that the Minister has received some clear messages from what has been said today. The time for the Government to sit on their hands, if ever there was one, has gone. As the noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, said, the time for push and go is with us.

The report sets out three things that have to happen for us to see some action in this area. First, as my noble friend Lady Bowles, the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, and others set out, the Government need a strategic plan for the UK energy market—the road map which the noble Lord, Lord Broers, set out in detail on the kind of energy that we will need, how we will generate it and when we will need it. Without that master plan, it will be very difficult for us to fit this one technology into the wider picture. It is clear from the Clean Growth Strategy that some of the elements of that are in place. However, as the noble Lord, Lord Broers, very clearly set out, there is work to do before this becomes a clear and obvious road map. I hope that the Minister can tell us when and how this will be forthcoming and whether it follows on from the Dieter Helm review. If we are to have a nuclear section within the industrial strategy, surely it has to be based on something of this nature in the first place. In a sense, what is the chicken and what is the egg in the process of developing the industrial strategy?

Secondly, as other speakers, including my noble friend Lady Bowles, set out, the Government need to firmly establish what sort of nuclear industry we want to have. Are we a maker or a taker, as she said? Are we going to be a player in electricity generation technology or are we going to settle back and buy it off the shelf? If the answer is that we are going to be a player, time really is at a premium. For example, our position regarding Generation IV and SMR reactors needs to be clarified very swiftly. This report sets out those questions, but the Government’s response largely avoids giving us an answer to them. In the Government’s opinion, are we going to be fully in the generation technology business—because being half in and half out is an expensive way of not achieving that?

Looking at the committee’s report, the pedestrian nature of the Government’s response should not be a surprise. For a long time, we have had slow progress and, frankly, a lot of retracing of steps as well as shuffling forward. Yet, to be fair, some elements of that response were positive. It is good to see that a successor organisation to NIRAB is on the horizon. I found the language about its nature in the Government’s response somewhat sphinx-like, so if the Minister can set out when he thinks this organisation will emerge and what differences and similarities it will have in relation to NIRAB, that will be very helpful. It is also interesting to see that the NIC will soon meet. What outcomes does the Minister expect from the NIC, and when will these begin to flow?

I said that there are three conditions. Obviously, the third of those is funding. It was good to see set out in the Clean Growth Strategy that the Government are earmarking £460 million. Sadly, in the atmosphere of suspicion, I had exactly the same questions that the noble Earl, Lord Selborne, had. Is this new money? Is it coming out of the Challenge Fund, or where is this money coming from? Perhaps the Minister could fill that in.

Before closing, I would like to say a few words about SMRs—there has been a lot said already—and about Euratom. It is good news that, after stalling a year ago, the SMR competition is moving forward. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, set out the situation very thoroughly. My understanding is that there are more than 30 entrants sitting in the in-box for this competition, and it is going to be a challenge to deselect these. The issue of comparing apples with pears is going to arise very quickly. Some of these bids will be finished for very highly developed concepts and designs; some will be merely front-end concepts. Some, I suspect, will be genuine light-water Generation III-style; some will border on Generation IV. How is that deselect process going to be embraced? It is a challenge, and it could happen that we will end up spending another year or two in that comparison process, so it would be very helpful to know how that technical comparison is going to be carried out.

In their response, the Government talk about the SMR market—“the market”—in abstract, but frankly, the Government are the market, and they need to take responsibility for being the market. Indeed, in some cases, or many cases, the UK alone will not be a sufficient market for the economics of these reactors, so the Government have to be in, in order for whoever wins this complicated down-select process to be able to step forward into the international market and gain purchase in that market to create an economic product. Therefore, I would welcome the Minister’s view on how the Government intend not just to encourage other people to be the market but to be the market themselves.

On Euratom, I associate us with all the comments that have been forthcoming, particularly those of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne. The Government are making reassuring noises about the post-Euratom environment in which we will find ourselves. We on these Benches still consider this to be an unnecessary burden that the Government have taken upon themselves. There is still an opportunity for the Government to buy themselves some more time. The Prime Minister is acknowledging that the ECJ will have a role in certain aspects of the transition process. Given that the major bugbear for the continuing relationship with Euratom is the role of the ECJ, it seems perfectly reasonable that, if the ECJ has a role in some aspects of the transition process, it could also continue to have a role with Euratom, and we would not have to leave Euratom until after the transition period. Can the Minister say what thoughts the Government have had on that point, so that, rather than leaving Euratom on leaving day, we would leave after the transition period? Perhaps that is what they are already planning, but it would be very helpful to have that information.

The noble Lord, Lord Hennessy, asked whether we had lost our national nerve; the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, pointed out that we need a nuclear vision for the United Kingdom. Now is the time for that clarity because, if the Government wait any longer, the corporate will and the people—the engineers, the people with the knowledge to deliver any vision—will be gone. I would welcome the Minister’s views on those points.