Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Viscount Trenchard and Lord Warner

Report stage (Hansard): House of Lords
Tuesday 20th March 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard]

I accept what the noble Lord says but if you are bound to commit, through the Euratom programmes, to a greater amount of funding for the sector as a whole, that could effectively mean that you were constrained in what you do on your own. I am not saying we would not wish to contribute or to continue to participate, but it would be our decision on whether we participated or not. We would recover the right to make decisions and to apply our research and development funds, which we would then own in so far as they were invested in programmes that we were running independently.

On Amendment 9, I do not see the need for the taxpayer to have to fund a further independent reviewer. The IAEA will ensure that we follow the approved safeguarding regimes, check and verify our safeguards regime and ensure that we work only with verified customers.

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I support Amendments 7 and 9, and I compliment the Government on Amendment 6. I remind the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, that scientific research, in this area or anywhere else, is now overwhelmingly collaborative. If you do not get in the game collaboratively, you find that some of your best researchers and ideas are rapidly transferred abroad to someone else who is much more interested in collaborative research. We have moved on from being a Great Britain that does all this stuff ourselves to being a collaborative, global, international participant in research, including in this area. That is one of the reasons why I support Amendment 7; I think it takes us in the right direction. I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord Broers, whose amendment last night I sadly missed, will want to say a bit about that.

I am really pleased that we have come back to talking about medical isotopes and having a report that keeps Parliament up to date in that area. There is huge concern outside this House about whether the supply chains around medical isotopes will be sufficient to cope with the needs and demands of NHS research and NHS patients.

On Amendment 9, after the last debate that we had before the vote, you would have to be one of life’s perennial optimists—I am not a Liberal Democrat so I do not join that particular club—to believe that everything is going to be okay by March 2019. I suggest to the Minister that he might find it useful to have an independent reviewer who can make independent reports to Parliament to convince sceptical parliamentarians such as me and, I suspect, a few others in this House that good progress is being made on some of the critical issues. That is why I support Amendments 7 and 9.

Nuclear Safeguards Bill

Debate between Viscount Trenchard and Lord Warner

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard): House of Lords
Thursday 22nd February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Trenchard]

I am well aware that the Government have explained that their policy is to meet Euratom standards, and I am not saying that that would be in any way a bad thing, but I understand that there is a problem over the timescale it would take to reach Euratom standards. Nevertheless, I question whether it is necessary or desirable to meet Euratom standards in full because, as I said, many in the industry consider the IAEA standards better as far as process, procedures and controls are concerned. I think I have now concluded my remarks.

[Lord Warner]

Before the Minister sits down—

[Lord Warner]

Well, I am sure the noble Viscount is in the Prime Minister’s thoughts for ministerial office. I am a bit confused about where he is on completing either IAEA-acceptable standards or Euratom standards by 29 March 2019. Is he saying that he accepts that neither of those standards will be met by March 2019, therefore we need a transition period and therefore he supports my amendment on a transition period?

[Viscount Trenchard]

I am saying that I believe it is not possible by March 2019 to achieve the necessary nuclear co-operation agreements with our four key partners, principally, and that therefore we will not be in a position to operate our own nuclear safeguards regime. I believe the ONR could manage to establish recognition of its own nuclear safeguards regime in that timescale, but—because we will not have the NCAs or an agreement with the EU on nuclear in that timescale—I look forward to hearing from the Minister how the Government propose to avoid a cliff edge in the nuclear industry.

European Union (Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Viscount Trenchard and Lord Warner

Committee: 1st sitting (Hansard - continued): House of Lords
Wednesday 21st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Lord Warner]

My Lords, I rise as a co-signatory of Amendment 8, moved by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt. I do not want to repeat all that he has said; I want to talk about this from the point of view of the industry. The industry’s legal opinion is that leaving the EU did not require the UK to leave Euratom. The noble Lord, Lord Hunt, has set out all the conflicting arguments that the Government have had over their attitude to the ECJ. I will not go over those this evening, though I will not be able to resist the temptation tomorrow morning to go over them again with the Minister.

The fundamental point that I wish to make is that the Government have set out on this reckless course without taking the nuclear industry with them and without allowing sufficient time to put an alternative nuclear safeguards regime in place. I want to quote a few extracts from the excellent briefing provided by EDF, which after all provides 20% of the electricity generated in this country and is the Government’s preferred contractor for delivering new nuclear power stations, including Hinkley Point C. My first quote from the briefing is:

“The best thing for the UK nuclear industry would be for the UK to remain within Euratom. However, if the UK exits Euratom, new arrangements must be in place before existing arrangements are terminated, and there must be a smooth and orderly transition to the new arrangements”.


I have to say, from the Second Reading debate, you would not have been very confident about some of that.

My second quote is:

“It is absolutely essential that following the UK’s exit from Euratom and its EU wide safeguards regime, the nuclear sector in the UK is covered by a UK Safeguards regime. There can be no gap in coverage – the new regime must be ready for deployment on exit day, having already been reviewed and accredited by the IAEA, to ensure the UK can continue to fulfil its international obligations for nuclear non-proliferation”.


It has just about a year to achieve that.

My third quote is:

“An IAEA accredited nuclear Safeguards regime is a ‘must have’ – it is a pre-requisite for the movement of nuclear materials (including fuel) and for the agreement of NCAs”—


nuclear co-operation agreements with other countries outside the EU, such as the US, Japan, Canada and Australia. You would have to be one of life’s great optimists to have listened to the debate so far on the Nuclear Safeguards Bill and be confident that all those objectives set out by EDF will be achieved.

My final point is that, on the evidence so far provided by the Government, it is almost a racing certainty that by 29 March 2019 the UK will not have in place a nuclear safeguards regime equivalent to that provided by Euratom. Perhaps more worryingly, there is no published plan with clear milestones showing how the UK will have in place by exit day a nuclear safeguards regime accredited by the International Atomic Energy Agency. This is absolutely essential, as EDF has made plain, if the UK is to have nuclear co-operation agreements with a wide range of other countries, as it has said. These agreements are absolutely essential for nuclear trade with these other countries once we leave Euratom. The agreements have to be reached in time for them to be ratified by the political and governmental processes in the various countries. In the case of the US, they have to be ratified by Congress and even, I am told, be approved by the White House—there is a thought for noble Lords.

We are travelling very dangerously in this area, not least because of the timescales that the Government have allowed for putting in place alternative arrangements to Euratom membership. I suggest that we have a duty to make amendments to the Bill and to the Nuclear Safeguards Bill to give the Government a chance to pause and think more carefully about what they are doing. The amendment of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is the very least we should do in the Bill. I suspect that we may well need something stronger on Report which reflects the outcomes of our consideration of the Nuclear Safeguards Bill.

[Viscount Trenchard (Con)]

My Lords, this issue is not quite as simple as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, claimed. I too was present at the briefing referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Warner, given by the Nuclear Industry Association and EDF, which was very valuable.

The issue is not as simple as the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, said—namely, that Euratom is the most marvellous institution and we have to remain a member of it or continue to apply standards equivalent to those which have been developed by it. I recall that EDF explained that the international standards are set by the IAEA, and that it is absolutely necessary that before exit, other than by virtue of a transition or implementation period, which of course applies more generally to the EU, in order to exit from Euratom and continue to be able to trade in nuclear equipment and fuel, we need an IAEA-accredited—not Euratom—safeguards regime. We need nuclear co-operation agreements with four countries: the United States, Canada, Australia and Japan, a nuclear agreement with the European Union and an export licence regime. Euratom’s nuclear safeguards regime concentrates heavily on verifications, whereas the IAEA places more emphasis on process, operations and compliance with international standards.

The noble Lord referred to isotopes. It is essential to ensure a secure and consistent supply of radioisotopes. Molybdenum-99, for example, has a half-life of 66 hours, similar to human organs, and therefore cannot afford to be delayed by customs at ports and airports. There can be no delay at all. We obtain about 60% of our radioisotopes for medical use from the EU, to which the noble Lord referred, but we obtain 40% of our isotopes from non-EU countries, principally South Africa, which the noble Lord did not refer to. I understand that the procedures for importing both those from the EU, which come through the Channel Tunnel without, obviously, any customs procedure, and those from South Africa, which come through Heathrow under a fast-track procedure, are virtually identical; there is no significant difference at all. Our membership of Euratom does not in any significant way influence our access to the world market in isotopes. Therefore, our leaving the EU does not make much difference to how we get in our medical isotopes.

However, we need to have this IAEA-accredited regime, and, obviously, there is not enough time for the four essential nuclear partners to get NCAs through their Parliaments before March next year. But given that the Government have committed to an implementation period, we should be able to agree with Euratom that we remain a member of that organisation and therefore we will be able to continue to operate under its standards for that period.

[Lord Warner]

I am sorry to interrupt the noble Viscount’s flow, but does he remember that the Government voted down in the Commons an amendment which would have given him more time for a transition period on this issue? So the Government have turned their face away from allowing more time to a transition period to get things right. Whether one believes that the Government have taken the right course or not, they have committed themselves to do all this by 11 pm on 29 March next year. Does the noble Viscount accept that that is an impossible objective because at the moment the Government have not agreed to a transition period for the subject area?