Nuclear Safeguards Bill — House of Lords, 2018-02-07
Topic: International Affairs
David Edward Lea (Labour, Centre-left): My Lords, first, I will refer again briefly to the question I raised in my earlier intervention about the umbilical—or otherwise—relationship between EU membership and Euratom membership. I am endeavouring merely to ascertain the objective truth about this matter. It cannot be a matter of opinion; it must be somehow a matter of fact. I hope that the Minister, if he cannot give a more definitive answer today, will put a letter in the Library giving the facts of the matter, because I think it may be more complicated than either he or I have stated, but it needs to be clarified I will mention just one relevant anecdote. I happened to chair a meeting in 1961 at the Cambridge Union for Seán Lemass, the Taoiseach—the Prime Minister of the Republic of Ireland—and he took the opportunity to announce to Irish TV Ireland’s accession to Euratom. Of course, it was not until 1973, 12 years later, that Ireland, along with the UK and one or two others, actually joined the EEC. So there was no umbilical connection at that time and I think the degree of umbilical-ness is perhaps being exaggerated. The registration regulations may well have changed since then but I am not sure how umbilical it is—or the opposite. Unless I am totally wrong, I suspect that I am following a train of thought which the noble Baroness, Lady Neville-Rolfe, was hunting for on the same point It is clear from the debate that there is a strong feeling in both Houses that we should be seeking as a minimum some form of associate membership of Euratom. I do not know whether there is such a thing. My view is that there is a clear option in principle if we stay in the EEA Another point that I would like to mention which has not yet been raised, but been implied by many, is that there is a very strong multinational dimension to all aspects of this, not only in the scientific co-operation but in the generation of power. We only have to think of EDF, the Chinese, the Japanese and so on. We are inevitably under the umbrella, and one of the strongest umbrellas for technical co-operation on standards is Euratom. As many noble Lords have said, the Office for Nuclear Regulation will do its best but, according to the note that I have, the Government have cut the grant to the ONR between 2015-16 and 2019-20 by 70%. How can it deal with all this extra work I shall not go into any more detail about the red lines on the European Court of Justice, because they are very tangential to this decision. However, if the UK were to leave Euratom, we would need to have a properly resourced regulatory framework in place by exit day. Everybody has pointed out the difficulty of doing that. Euratom currently employs about 160 staff, 25% of whom focus on UK installations. Without Euratom’s infrastructure and resources that work is likely to fall to the Office for Nuclear Regulation, which currently employs eight professional staff. Those are relevant numbers. We are placing extra responsibilities on the ONR but are not providing extra resources to fulfil them or, as far as I know, holding any open conversations, certainly with the trade unions, about how the regime would be funded. I have a couple of specific points to put to the Minister, perhaps for response later. First, have the Government given any thought to the liability that they are taking on with regard to purchasing or obtaining existing Euratom equipment in UK facilities? By taking ownership, would that then make the ONR and/or BEIS liable to facilities for the decommissioning, removal and disposal of that equipment were it not to be used or replaced? The decommissioning, removal and disposal of contaminated equipment is not easy and will come with a price tag. Secondly, what is the purpose behind Euratom equivalence, which my noble friend Lord Whitty mentioned? Who will the ONR be expected to satisfy by performing Euratom-style inspections using video surveillance and equipment to verify that nuclear material has not been diverted from peaceful purposes? It is already known that the UK has a weapons programme, and we already have security cameras and portal monitors mounted on our sites to protect against theft and neutron monitors to provide a safety function. What benefit is there to the UK in providing our own internal verification of our own UK declarations? Those measures will not be recognised by bodies external to the UK as we are self-verifying, therefore not providing any independent verification.