Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Lord Teverson Excerpts

2nd reading (Hansard): House of Lords
Wednesday 7th February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister, particularly for his explanation at the beginning, not least that the Nuclear Safeguards Bill is not about safety but about security. I look forward to the Government’s nuclear security Bill, which will look after safety in due course—the whole of this area is perhaps a little confusing.

On the intervention made by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, I am relatively relaxed about the Bill and the transfer of medical isotopes. However, he pinpoints the right issue with the Bill, which is that out of Euratom we are then out of the observatory, which is there for emergencies when supplies of these difficult commodities are short. That itself is probably a key area as regards the Euratom aspect.

I welcome a number of things from the Government on the Bill. The Government, unlike with the shambles of the EU negotiation, are getting on with it, and I give them credit for that. In comparison with the other negotiating stream, they are positively better. I also welcome the Minister’s undertaking in his opening remarks that we would go not for IAEA standards but for the continuity of Euratom standards. That is an important point—if only we had that guarantee of alignment elsewhere, perhaps in the negotiations. I also welcome, as did the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, the advance publication of the draft regulations. Therefore, it is good from all those points of view.

As my noble friend Lord Fox mentioned, the Euratom treaty and organisation is around research projects. I was privileged to visit Culham a couple of weeks ago with the other members of the EU Energy and Environment Sub-Committee that I have the privilege to chair. It is important that the work that is going on there—the co-operation, future planning and the promise that we hopefully have from the project as it moves on to ITER, into France and then on to a demonstration project—is here in the United Kingdom and co-operates on research projects as part of Euratom.

The Euratom treaty is also around the movement of materials, which I will come back to later on, and, as my noble friend Lord Fox said, around freedom of movement for individuals. When we remove ourselves from the Euratom treaty, we will then stop those freedoms that come with the treaty, and I very much hope that the Home Office will take note of the fact that we need to have that freedom of movement for nuclear experience to continue. That is not just about the most professionally advanced people but about people at all levels. For instance, I know that one area that EDF has been particularly concerned about at Hinkley Point is steel fixers, as the lack of that key skill could stop that project going ahead. So it is not just the PhDs and the nuclear fusion research; we need to keep that freedom of movement right the way through the nuclear chain.

However, the thing that really concerns me, which has been mentioned by other noble Lords, is timing. The deputy director of the Office for Nuclear Regulation has already been quoted a number of times. I find it very difficult indeed, from both her evidence and that of others, to see that we can have an approved organisation—the technical term for what we need is a voluntary offer agreement—with the IAEA by the time we leave Euratom on 29 March next year. It seems that there is a high risk that we will not meet that. That has a number of implications for our international relations. It particularly means that, if that is not the case, we will be unable to fulfil our obligations under international treaties and the legislation of other countries with which we deal.

If the Minister answers one question I ask today, this is the one I would most like him to answer. Let us suppose that we get to 29 March next year and do not have the voluntary offer agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency. If we manage to get an agreement with Euratom that we can subcontract and still work those safeguarding arrangements through Euratom, will the IAEA agree to that? I would be interested to understand from the Minister whether we have an agreement with the IAEA on that, because it seems fundamental.

We cannot guarantee that we will have that agreement with Euratom, however. Why? Again, I share the view of the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, about extending our membership of Euratom instead of having a transitional agreement; it would make everything so much easier. The referendum did not cover Euratom, so politically it is not an issue. It is not a given, however; the situation could be more sensitive than we might think, because Germany and Austria are often difficult about the Euratom treaty in areas including future agreements.

Finally, on nuclear co-operation agreements, I went through the Commission’s website earlier today to see how many such agreements Euratom had to which we were privileged to be party. The list covers Australia, the Russian Federation, Japan, Canada, the United States of America, Switzerland, South Korea—strangely, it was described as the Korean peninsula—Argentina, South Africa, Kazakhstan, Ukraine and, of course, the International Atomic Energy Agency itself. To continue the 20% of generation that we already have and complete the construction of Hinkley Point and the remainder of a new nuclear programme if we have it, we need to replace significant numbers of those nuclear co-operation agreements very quickly, before we actually leave the Euratom treaty. That seems an extremely tall order, and I would be interested to hear from the Minister exactly how we intend to achieve it.