Draft Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018

Lord Harrington of Watford Excerpts

Monday 14th January 2019 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (Richard Harrington)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018.

I am honoured, Mr Sharma, to serve under your chairmanship for the first time on a Delegated Legislation Committee. If Hansard is not listening, I would like to ask the Whips what their secret agenda is in providing us with sweets. I will not go into that, but I thank them very much.

The regulations define the terms “fissionable material” and “relevant international agreement” for the purpose of sections of the Energy Act 2013, as amended by the Nuclear Safeguards Act 2018. They are linked to the Nuclear Safeguards (EU Exit) Regulations 2018, which will be considered in the Commons tomorrow and in the Lords very shortly afterwards.

I shall begin by emphasising that the two sets of regulations are essential to establishing our domestic regime, whether we leave the EU with a deal or not—their effect will be exactly the same in either outcome. The powers to make this secondary legislation are found in the 2013 Act, which we amended with the 2018 Act. The territorial extent and application of the regulations is to England and Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. A second set of affirmative resolution regulations will be debated tomorrow, after Parliament has considered these regulations. Those regulations will set out the detail of the legal framework for our new domestic safeguards regime and, in certain places, use the terms defined in the regulations before us.

To remind hon. Members who are perhaps less familiar with the matter than I or the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test, nuclear safeguards are accounting, reporting and verification processes designed to assure and demonstrate to the international community that civil nuclear material is not diverted unlawfully into military or weapons programmes. That is not to do with nuclear safety and nuclear security.

We have a very good record as a responsible nuclear state and were a founding member of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957. The IAEA ensures that states honour their international legal nuclear safeguards obligations in connection with the non-proliferation treaty, and basically stops civil nuclear being used for military purposes.

We have always voluntarily accepted two safeguards agreements with the IAEA: a voluntary offer agreement and an additional protocol, which is defined in the regulations. Those bilateral agreements will replace the trilateral safeguards agreements between the UK, the IAEA and Euratom that have been in place since 1978. We need that to enable the continuity of civil nuclear trade with our international trading partners.

The Government have prioritised putting agreements in place with key countries—Australia, Canada, Japan and the US—that require nuclear co-operation agreements, unlike others. NCAs are legally binding treaties that allow states to formally recognise their willingness to co-operate with each other on civil nuclear matters. We have now concluded—and Parliament has now approved—the ratification of replacement bilateral NCAs with Australia, Canada and the US. We already have a bilateral NCA with Japan.

I reiterate the Government’s commitment to establishing, by December 2020, a regime that is equivalent in effectiveness and coverage to that currently provided by Euratom, and that will exceed the commitments that the international community expects us to meet. I am confident that the fissionable regulations and nuclear safeguards regulations do that. We want to establish a regime that will operate in a similar way to the existing arrangements, taking account of best practice in our regulation making and considering the need to minimise disruption to industry, which were undertakings I gave during the passage of the Nuclear Safeguards Bill.

These regulations and the nuclear safeguards regulations are structured to require information concerning nuclear safeguards to be supplied to the relevant entity, whether that is the Commission or the Office for Nuclear Regulation. The regulator may then forward that, as appropriate, to the IAEA.

Turning to the regulator, the ONR, Members will be pleased to hear of the significant progress it has made in the set-up of the domestic regime since I last updated Parliament in October. From this month—in the past couple of weeks—our domestic regime has commenced parallel running alongside Euratom, processing and checking reports received from industry through our IT system—the safeguards information management and reporting system—and producing the declarations required to enable the UK to meet its international obligations. We have been running the scheme in parallel so that we have time in the next few weeks, if we need it before the end of March, to see whether any adjustments need to be made.

Another point made during the passage of the Bill was about recruitment of suitable inspectors. I am pleased to report that the ONR’s recruitment target for the first phase has been met: 16 safeguards officers are in place, which is seven more than the minimum of nine required to deliver the regime at the end of March; and four nuclear material accountants have been appointed, so 20 are in post.

Between July and September last year, my Department held a consultation on the content of these draft regulations and the nuclear safeguards regulations. In total, 28 formal responses were received. At the end of November we published our response. No major changes to these regulations were suggested.

I feel that I ought to go through the detail of the draft regulations, if hon. Members will bear with me for a few hours—[Interruption.] I am just checking whether anyone is listening, Mr Sharma, and I am pleased that you were. I will not be a few hours, but I feel it is important to set out the detail for the record.

The 2013 Act defines various elements of qualifying nuclear material and provides that “fissionable material” and “relevant international agreement” be defined in regulation. Fissionable material forms a component of “qualifying nuclear material”, which is defined in section 76A(6) of the Act, as amended by the Nuclear Safeguards Act. Fissionable material is therefore to be defined as: plutonium-239; uranium-233; uranium containing the isotopes 235 or 233, or both, in an amount such that the abundance ratio of the sum of those isotopes to the isotope 238 is greater than the ratio of the isotope 235 to the isotope 238 occurring in nature; and any material containing one or more of those. Basically, we use the definitions in the IAEA statute.

The second definition in the draft regulations is of a “relevant international agreement”, again under the amendments made by the Nuclear Safeguards Act. There are six agreements. The first two were signed on 7 June last year, and are between the UK and the IAEA. The other four are with other states: new bilateral agreements between the UK and the US, Canada and Australia were signed in 2018, and the existing one with Japan was signed in 1998. Parliament approved the ratification of the new bilateral agreements on 19 December last year.

The definitions contained in the draft regulations are of importance, as the nuclear safeguards regulations, which the House will consider tomorrow, will apply to qualifying nuclear material, including fissionable material. The nuclear safeguards regulations will also require operators to provide additional nuclear safeguards information to the ONR on qualifying nuclear material, and to the Secretary of State on certain non-nuclear materials, which are subject to a relevant international agreement, as defined in these draft regulations. I look forward to contributions of right hon. and hon. Members on the proposed definitions.

--- Later in debate ---

[Richard Harrington]

I will be brief for two reasons: first, I would like not to ruin further the Labour Whip’s birthday; secondly, I would not like to keep Labour Members from attending the parliamentary Labour party meeting that I understand is going on. I am sure the leader of the Labour party will be delighted if you, Mr Sharma, attend in a different capacity from your chairmanship, and I am sure the hon. Member for Southampton, Test will be able to speak for longer than five minutes in that meeting.

Of the two points raised, I will deal with the Japan issue first. A bilateral NCA between the UK and Japan is already in place. It is not like the other one. I confirm that it will remain in place following the UK’s departure from the EU. It is not necessary to conclude a new NCA with Japan. We are having detailed discussions with the Japanese on this issue and negotiations to make sure that if any adjustments are needed, they will be made. Without doubt, that the agreements remain operable after our exit from Euratom is very important, but I really am not concerned about that.

In response to the hon. Member for West Dunbartonshire, we have every intention of continuing discussions with the Scottish Government. I thank him for saying that, but we have a series of meetings not just with the devolved Assemblies and Governments but with all interested stakeholders. That continues on a regular basis.

Question put and agreed to.