Energy Bill

Lord Stoddart of Swindon Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Judd]

My Lords, with great respect, I do not follow the arguments of the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin. We are not talking about a chocolate factory or even a motorcar manufacturer: we are talking about highly sophisticated, advanced, cutting-edge science. It has the potential to adversely affect staff and the wider public acutely. It is not either/or; it is a matter of having people with wider experience. The noble Lord is right: that is the purpose of a non-executive director. However, there must be people on the board who know what they are talking about, if they talk about it, when we come to the specific issues of this special, advanced and potentially very dangerous new form of energy generation.

This is not, incidentally, just limited to the nuclear sphere. I remember very vividly many hours toiling home to the north-west finding myself isolated on Preston station in the small hours. Railtrack had built up a great record of property development and all the rest, but it was suddenly realised after Hatfield that it had neglected the very special knowledge about how to run the railways and what that is about. It is not just any industry: it is about having the knowledge and background to ask whether management is taking this or that into account. It is not an either/or.

In the case of the railways, with that awful Hatfield incident, we had reached a stage where virtually nobody knew where the danger spots were on the track across the country. If we take those experiences seriously, it is a matter of getting the right combination of knowledge and expertise. I realise that when you use the word “expertise” you are beginning to go down a questionable road, but there has to be enough real knowledge of the special tasks and hazards, together with the wider experience to which the noble Lord rightly referred.

[Lord Stoddart of Swindon (Ind Lab)]

My Lords, I support the amendment, especially subsection (3)(b) dealing with,

“representation of employees in health and safety”.

That is so important. I worked at a power station myself. It was not a nuclear power station, but it was a power station. I was also secretary of the local advisory committee. I therefore have some experience of how essential it is that working people are taken into account regarding management of a plant.

Those advisory committees, incidentally, both at national and local level, were set up under the electricity and gas Acts of, I think, 1949 and 1950. There was a statutory duty to provide opportunities for employees to be consulted, at least, not only on matters of health and safety but on the broader workings of power stations and other installations. Indeed, it is necessary for employees to have those powers because it is helpful to management to ensure that working at ground level is safe. Managers cannot know everything that goes on, but most of the employees do. I support the amendment simply and solely because the question of employee consultation should appear somewhere in the Bill.

[Baroness Verma]

My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, for this amendment to Part 3 of the Bill, and my noble friend Lord Jenkin for his sensible and measured intervention. Noble Lords will recall that we debated the matter of the make-up of the ONR board in Committee. Amendment 78A would introduce a requirement for the ONR board to have at least one member with experience of, or expertise in, nuclear safety management and one member with experience of, or expertise in, employee health and safety representation.

As currently drafted, the legislation allows the Secretary of State to appoint non-executives with skills and experience that best meet the needs of the ONR. This may include experience or expertise in nuclear safety, which I think is what the phrase “nuclear safety management” means, although this is already provided by the chief nuclear inspector, who is an executive member of the board. This experience or expertise may include that of employee health and safety representation. However, that should be a matter for the Secretary of State to determine over time and, while the matters identified in the amendment are no doubt of great importance, it should be left to the Secretary of State to determine whether that experience would benefit the ONR.

The ONR also requires flexibility to change its skills-mix over time as it develops as an organisation and as the industry it regulates changes. The amendment significantly restricts the flexibility available to the Secretary of State in setting those appointments to only two non-executives. It would be unwise to restrict the ONR’s flexibility in this way. However, the legislation does make provision for a non-executive with security expertise. This role is required to ensure that the ONR’s security interests are carried out in the context of wider national security policies. It is required to prevent nuclear security matters being developed in isolation from the wider, national security agenda. The current security non-executive, for instance, does not have specific nuclear security experience.

Turning to employee representation on the board, as I have explained, the intention is to have a skills-based board, not one made up of representatives. Therefore, just as it would be inappropriate for the board to include a representative of the nuclear industry, it is also inappropriate to mandate a representative of workers.

It is important to remind noble Lords that the Health and Safety Executive, which will retain overall policy responsibility for wider health and safety in Great Britain, including health and safety on nuclear sites, will have a trades union representative on its board. Thus the interests of employees will continue to be represented in the ONR’s wider work on health and safety on nuclear sites. In addition to this, Schedule 7 makes provision for the Health and Safety Executive to appoint one of its members to the ONR board, should it wish to do so, and for the arrangement to be reciprocal. This will also provide for employee interests to be represented on the ONR board. I hope that noble Lords find my explanation reassuring and I hope the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.