Euratom

Lord Wallace of Saltaire Excerpts

Thursday 20th July 2017 Lords Chamber

[Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)]

My Lords, I note the silence on the Conservative Benches in this debate. I fear it is perhaps because no Conservative Peers are willing to defend the Government’s current position on this matter. I want to quote the Commons report on this, which states at paragraph 85:

“We are not aware of any substantive arguments in favour of leaving Euratom made either during the referendum campaign or afterwards. This outcome seems to be an unfortunate, and perhaps unforeseen, consequence of the Prime Minister’s decision to leave the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice”.


Liam Fox said on the “Today” programme this morning that our negotiations to join the WTO would be entirely straightforward, provided people did not put politics ahead of economics. He lacks a sense of self-irony to some extent, because it is quite clear that the politics of getting out from under the ECJ have driven the decision to leave Euratom. I was told this morning that, of all the cases on Euratom that the ECJ has considered, none has been decided against the United Kingdom. Nevertheless, the wickedness of the existence of the ECJ and the passionate feeling of Sir William Cash, Martin Howe QC and a small number of ultra-Europhobes who believe that common law is wonderful and Roman law is subversive have pushed the Prime Minister into making this a red line.

It is quite clear, however, that if we leave Euratom, the international nature of the nuclear industry means that some other form of legal arbitration in this as in so many other sectors would have to be used. Absolute sovereignty is not possible in the current global economy. That is one thing that the Prime Minister has to admit if we are to get through the current complex series of negotiations that we are about to undertake.

Timescale questions come in here. We leave in less than two years if we carry on without the process of transitional implementation. I see from the various reports that I have read that it takes five years to train a new nuclear inspector if we wish to set up our own nuclear safeguards agency. It takes a minimum of 10 years to build and get into operation a new research reactor, if we think that we are going to find radioisotopes from a British source.

I also note that the continued free movement of nuclear workers is vital. I am not sure what the noble Lord, Lord Green of Deddington, would say about that, because not only would they be foreigners but they would bring in foreign wives and might have foreign children. There are real questions here which relate to some of the absurdities of our debate.

My noble friend Lady Bowles of Berkhamsted has talked about the difficulties of finding alternative sources of supply. We cannot go to China or to Australia; geographical propinquity matters.

Managing the many complex aspects of a global economy means that international regulation is necessary and that some form of legal arbitration is required. Getting out of Euratom because you are not prepared to accept that it is a regional organisation in which regional legal arbitration is needed seems an enormous mistake. The Nuclear Industry Association stated that,

“Euratom has played a key role in underpinning the UK’s nuclear industry since the country joined the EEC in 1973”.

Our companies benefit from the supply chain. Our researchers and research centres benefit enormously from the networks to which they belong. The Government are jeopardising all that; they need to think again.