Science and Technology Committee: Nuclear Research and Development

Lord Marland Excerpts

Tuesday 19th June 2012 Grand Committee

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department of Energy and Climate Change (Lord Marland)]

My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness on her star performance at the Dispatch Box. Of course, there have been star performances overall. We have a galaxy of scientific brains here. I wore my special tie with stars on it because I knew there would be. Of course, this report is a credit to the House of Lords, on which I congratulate the committee and its chairman, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs—and, of course, for his work on the climate change committee, for which we in our department are so grateful. Of course, as you can imagine, a lot of this is way above my head. I was reflecting on my own school report the other day, and pulled it out to see what it said about my science O-level. It was one simple sentence: “This boy will not be a scientist”.

Therefore, it is no surprise that the committee did not call me to give evidence, because I am not sure I could have added much other than some of my limited business experience of a few years. One point that is fundamental to understanding this nuclear issue is that for 27 years we have had no nuclear business. We have had nothing to export and no expertise to grow because there has been no future for the younger generations that have been mentioned to work into. Because there has been no activity in the nuclear world, we have also had the brain drain. I have been quite interested in what this committee would have said had it come up with this report five years ago and am slightly depressed by some things that some noble Lords have said about the Government not doing enough.

I want to mention some of the things that we have done. We have been in power for two years, in which time we have identified and given clearance for eight nuclear sites to go ahead. We have persuaded companies to come back and invest in the United Kingdom. We brought planning back to the Secretary of State so that we can clear the decks for a lot of the planning issues that are there. We have agreed and brought into law provisions, which were drawn in this House, for two new nuclear reactors so that they can be used immediately. We have dealt with the appalling mess, which preceding Governments should be ashamed of, over the decommissioning waste that was left up at Sellafield. I have brought in a plan whereby waste is going to be exported from all of our shockingly badly managed waste pools during this Parliament. We have revolutionised the security of our nuclear power stations and have set a very clear mandate for those investing in nuclear in this country about their security requirements. We have totally overhauled the civil nuclear police force, in a process that has happened very quickly—it is not quite finished yet, but is happening now. We have announced electricity market reform and contracts for difference to set the framework for a clear pathway for investment. On decommissioning, I have persuaded the Treasury, amid the appalling economic climate that we have inherited, to invest £10 billion of new money in our nuclear waste and decommissioning. We have made very significant strides. To touch on a point made by the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, we have committed and commissioned a business case for a Mox plant, which will solve the huge plutonium pile that we have inherited as a Government.

If that is not enough, think of the backdrop that we have inherited—Fukushima, Switzerland and Germany withdrawing from nuclear as a result, and the appalling balance sheets that E.On and RWE have as a result of Germany withdrawing. I do not need to dwell on it for too long, but we have inherited unprecedented economic conditions that have made investment into anything new by any industries, let alone by Government, extremely vulnerable and volatile. However, it is not all bad. The UK has come out of it as a world leader—not a world leader in the technology but in the way that it reacted to those horrific events at Fukushima. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, mentioned, we are indebted to the work of Mike Weightman, who has, in a great credit to our country, been asked to come up with a report for the future of nuclear. We noble Lords have, as a group, responded with great diligence and calmness to all the activity going on, and this report adds to the momentum that we are trying to create.

Because we have now got our inherited nuclear industry into better shape, we have started exporting our skills abroad. It was only last week that I hosted the entire Abu Dhabi nuclear organisation and their security people here. We are now signing a memorandum of understanding and supplying security expertise and waste management expertise to them. We have a draft memorandum of understanding with Saudi Arabia to do the same. Of course, as regards the continued fall-out from Japan, we are right at the forefront of advising on it. It is a question of getting that export focus and the confidence back into our industry. Despite our not being in the vanguard of new nuclear, we still have terrific expertise in this country of which we should be proud.

We readily dismiss the assertion that we are not investing enough in R and D. We have spent £500 million on R and D through the NDA in the past four years. That is not an inconsiderable amount of money. We have invested £20 million on R and D on fission alone in the past four years. Therefore, it is not all bad news. There is a lot of good news. I hope that the committee will give us some credit for that.

I now wish to deal quickly, as I know that the noble Lord, Lord Winston—

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

Is the Minister saying that the figures on this page of the report are misleading?

[Lord Marland]

I am not sure to which page the noble Lord refers.

[Lord Hunt of Chesterton]

I am referring to paragraph 19, which gives comparators of government-funded research.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Marland]

I am merely giving the figures concerning investment by the NDA in nuclear R and D. I am very happy to supply the noble Lord with a breakdown of the figures on an annual basis, and as regards fission. I am happy to supply the noble Lord with those figures and place them in the Library.

I will not dwell for too long on some of the specific points that were raised in the debate as the Government have responded to the report. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, has asked for a credible plan. He knows that the credible plan will be developed before the end of the year. He is absolutely right to hold us to task and to say that we should not be complacent and ensure that we have the right advisory board in place that has executive powers to create the momentum that we are determined to develop. The noble Lord mentioned the Generation IV International Forum. Professor MacKay has been asked to come up with his consideration and advice on that. Again, it is not a case of pushing it into the long grass. We will receive his considered reply and I am glad that he found favour with the committee. The NNL reports to me. I will discuss it in a bit more detail in a minute but it is developing a business case for the new facilities. I suspect that that will be positive. As we know, the ONR is considering what the position will be as regards the Nuclear Safety Advisory Committee and establishment. Therefore, I hope that within the next few months we will have a straight edge on that. We have committed to doing that. That was one of the positive things in the report. As I said, the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is right to hold us to account and make sure that what we have said takes place.

I have mentioned Mox, to which my noble friend Lord Jenkin of Roding referred. We remain very open-minded as regards PRISM. It is not yet a proven technology. It may be so in time but the industry has on many occasions gone down following the introduction of new technologies which have had disastrous consequences, as, indeed, did the previous Mox plant. However, as I am responsible for Mox I take on board what the noble Lord says.

The noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Chesterton, talked about a plan. However, there is a 2050 plan, which is a long enough vision as far as I am concerned. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, spoke about the NNL. The NNL reports to me. We have just reappointed the chairman. I have been working very closely with him and I am disappointed that the impact has not been seen.

The NNL is a profitable organisation, and it should not be dismissed but its biggest client is a government entity—the NDA. The NNL does a fantastic job; its management team is in the right place, whereas three or four years ago it probably was not. It has done a terrific job in the pay negotiations, which have given certainty to their staff for the future, and I have no doubt that there will be an increase in their activity as, wearing my other hat as the Prime Minister’s trade ambassador, we seek to promote their activity and skill abroad. My noble friend Lord Crickhowell talks about shale gas. In the past few weeks, at my instigation we have set up the office of shale gas assessment to make sure that we can establish public confidence in shale gas. We all know how difficult it is to do things on land in the UK, and it is very important that we establish public confidence.

The noble Lord rightly refers to the abundance of gas in the world—there is effectively 240 years of gas. As I have told noble Lords before, I have been in Algeria recently where they have discovered as much shale gas as there is in America, which will one hopes have long-term effects on our pricing. We have had a record number of licence applications for exploration off our coasts, so one hopes that we can develop that side of things.

The noble Lord, Lord Winston, talks about Wylfa, which is a problem, as we know and as has been well documented in the press, and we are in active negotiations with several parties. I cannot go into detail but they are positive negotiations and clearly we are determined to find a solution for Wylfa, because it is key and the second phase of our rollout. The noble Lord referred with great knowledge to education. If we can get a viable future for nuclear in this country, the jobs will flood back, and we must be there to take them. The universities—and I greatly appreciate the noble Lord’s influence on this—should be there to provide courses for them.

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Broers, for his support and the work that he has done on the committee, and the discussions and input that he had before. The noble Baroness, Lady Hilton, mentioned fission, which is important and not something that we should be complacent about. It is something that we should explore, but we should explore every avenue and create the hub to which the noble Baroness, Lady Worthington, referred, as did the noble Lord, Lord Crickhowell. That is why the manufacturing and engineering capacity through the Nuclear Advanced Manufacturing Research Centre could and does act as the hub, but we must put greater importance on it to achieve the vision that we all have. I am looking at my watch because I am mindful, along with the noble Lord, Lord Winston, that we may be 1-0 down by the time we finish.

There is no doubt that we have to play catch-up, and we all understand that. This report helps us to identify the number of issues that we have and, of course, as a Government, we welcome it. It is incumbent on us all in this Room and in successive Governments to work together. The road map being put together by the Dalton Nuclear Institute and NLL, with input from the committee, has to set out our R and D capability and requirements. The Government have then to put their full weight behind it, not tiptoe behind it. It is key to future growth for this country, as has been mentioned by a number of noble Lords, and it is something very simple for us to attain. We will have the structure in place by the end of the year, and we must vest in it the authority that the committee looks for. Research and development is absolutely fundamental to the future, and as a Government we know it.

As I said earlier, we have a great deal to build on and we must not beat ourselves up. We have enormous skills and capabilities in this country in so many walks of life. We are the envy of the world for a lot of things we do. As has been demonstrated by the ONR with Mike Weightman, we have the expertise; we have Professor Beddington, who has tremendous status in the world, and we have a very good platform from which to develop.

As I said, we have a committed Science and Technology Committee and a Government committed to new nuclear, and I am very pleased to report that we have a company by the name of EDF which only today appointed Bouygues and Laing O’Rourke in a joint venture as a preferred bidder for Hinkley Point C main civil works contract. If that is not a good start, I do not know what is.