Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-07
Topic: Energy
Oliver Michael Robert Eden (Conservative, Centre-right): I said nothing of the sort. I hope that the noble Lord will look very carefully at what I said. I said that we want to continue to develop our relationship with Euratom but that, of course, we will not be in it. Therefore, it is important for us to set up alternative arrangements, which is what this Bill is about, so that we can have the appropriate nuclear safeguards regime in place. Similarly—this point was made by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and others—we want to make it clear that we will have nuclear co-operation agreements with other countries around the world. We already have some, but our officials are engaging with some key international partners, including the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia, to ensure that we have essential nuclear co-operation agreements in place to ensure uninterrupted co-operation in trade and the civil nuclear sector. I confirm to the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on his questions on how we want to develop any further nuclear co-operation agreements, that our intention would be to present any new agreements to Parliament, as is appropriate, prior to the Government’s ratification, as provided for in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act 2010. I turn to medical radioisotopes, which have exercised a great many noble Lords. This is important. I am not sure that I can add much to what I said at the beginning, other than to stress how important the Government consider this issue. We will continue to make sure that appropriate arrangements are in place at our borders to allow their seamless import into this country. When I talked about customs arrangements I was not talking—if the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, will bear with me—about a customs union but just about the usual arrangements that HMRC is responsible for, to make sure that things can come through quickly, particularly things that have a very short life, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, and others reminded us, and as I think I reminded the House at the beginning. The important point to get over is that we take this very seriously, we will continue to discuss it and I will certainly write to all noble Lords, and in particular to the noble Lord, Lord Warner, to make it quite clear what we are doing. I will write before Committee and will probably continue to write on other occasions throughout the course of the Bill I turn to the role of the ONR and whether it feels that it can implement the necessary changes in the timescale that is before it. The first point to get over is the simple question of funding. I can give an assurance to the House that the Government are making another £10 million available to set up the new regime. When noble Lords talk about cuts to the funding that has been available to the ONR in the past one should remember—I think that there has been a degree of "economy with the actualité", as someone once put it—that the ONR is actually very well funded and that changes to the level of the grant it gets from government are only a very small part of the overall ONR budget, which is actually growing and not shrinking. More than 90% of the ONR’s budget is recovered from industry; it is not coming from government. The safeguards work is being paid to ONR directly from BEIS’s budget, so I can again give the assurance to the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, that there will be no charge on industry to pay for safeguarding work. The charges to industry are to cover other matters and, as I said, more than 90% of its budget comes from those sources It is important to get over just what the ONR is doing and the Government’s commitment to make sure that we have a robust regime that is as comprehensive as that currently provided by Euratom. Euratom standards, as has been made quite clear by me, by other Ministers and by many speakers in this debate, are considerably higher than those that other bodies would achieve. Achieving such international standards will allow the UK to discharge its international commitments and will underpin international nuclear trade arrangements with countries such as the United States, Canada, Japan and Australia The ONR is in the process of developing an expanded safeguards function by recruiting and training additional inspectors, building additional institutional capacity and developing necessary IT systems. It is aiming to have in place sufficient staff, including inspectors, from 29 March 2019 to meet international standards as applied by the IAEA. Current estimates suggest that the ONR would require a team of some 20 to 25 staff, which would include up to 17 safeguards inspectors. It already has 11 safeguards officers in post who are all in training to become safeguards inspectors by 29 March 2019. The ONR estimates that, to be able to deliver its functions to a standard broadly equivalent to Euratom standards, it may require a team of around 30 to 35 staff, which would include around 20 safeguards inspectors. It is actively recruiting and interviewing further candidates. The first phase of recruitment last year was successful: four individuals were recruited and are currently in training to become safeguards inspectors. A further recruitment campaign is under way. Successful candidates will join the ONR’s training programme and the ONR assesses that it will take a further 12 months or so to upskill new recruits to inspector level. So we have confidence that the ONR will be able to get up to the appropriate level. We also have confidence that, if necessary, it will be able to recruit from abroad. We are working with the Home Office to make sure that whatever happens with our future immigration system, that will be set out shortly and we will be able to ensure that the right people can get in at the right time The final matter raised by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, was the Henry VIII power. I admit that it is a Henry VIII power. It is quite clear that it is a Henry VIII power. I cannot remember who very politely said—I think it was the noble Lord, Lord O’Neill—that it was just drifting into being a Henry VIII power. It is a classic Henry VIII power—it is seeking to amend primary legislation by means of secondary legislation—but it is as limited as it can be. Clause 2 can amend any of the three Acts that I mentioned in my introduction, "in consequence of a relevant safeguards agreement"; in other words, it is limited to changes as a result of the safeguards agreement and can be only in consequence of that. It cannot be used in any other way. It is very specifically drawn. It is limited to those consequential changes and sets out the three pieces of legislation that may be amended. I look forward to hearing a little more about the views of the Delegated Powers Committee and I hope that it will, for once, give the Government a clean bill of health I hope I have dealt with most of the points that are relevant to the Bill but obviously I will write to noble Lords in due course, as is appropriate. In the meantime it behoves me only to beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.