Question to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the statement in the letter of 28 February from Lord Henley to Lord Carlile of Berriew, that "As part of these discussions, both sides have agreed that the UK will have sole responsibility for its international safeguards obligations from the date of withdrawal", whether the Office for Nuclear Regulation will be the UK's safeguarding authority from the date of the UK leaving Euratom rather than at the end of a transition period.

The Government is working closely with the European Commission to ensure a smooth implementation period for setting up an effective civil nuclear safeguards regime in the UK ready for withdrawal from Euratom. The precise nature of this implementation period, including the role of the Office for Nuclear Regulation (the ONR) in relation to nuclear safeguards during this period, is subject to negotiations with the European Commission.

Although the outcome of these negotiations is not yet known, the Government’s strategy is to seek to include Euratom in any implementation period, in line with the Secretary of State’s Written Ministerial Statement of 11 January 2018. Furthermore, the European Commission recently published its draft text for an implementation period which proposed that the period will cease at the end of December 2020 and will cover all parts of the Euratom acquis. We would expect this to include the Euratom safeguards regime.

Whatever the outcome of the negotiations on an implementation period for Euratom, the Government is confident that the ONR will be in a position to deliver civil nuclear safeguards to international standards on the UK’s withdrawal from Euratom.