Nuclear Safeguards (Fissionable Material and Relevant International Agreements) (EU Exit) Regulations 2018 — House of Lords, 2019-01-22
Topic: Energy
Oliver Michael Robert Eden (Conservative, Centre-right): My Lords, I hope that I can deal with most of the points that have been made in the debate by noble Lords. If I miss any, perhaps on Regulation 4, we will be able to catch up on them. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, said that he had only one speech for both sets of regulations but I am sure that he will want to come in again if I fail to address his points First, the noble Lord asked whether we needed an NCA with Euratom. I can give an assurance that an NCA is not required for these regulations. Secondly, he regretted what he described as the demise of the nuclear industry. It is sad that last Thursday we had to make the announcement that I think he was referring to. I offered to repeat the Statement made by my right honourable friend in another place but, sadly, the House did not feel that necessary It is obviously a difficult situation, although I do not accept that we are looking at the demise of the nuclear industry—I think that it has a future. Being one of the world’s great optimists, the noble Lord should remember that some of the problems facing new developments in the nuclear industry—and we are still committed to seeing what we can do there—are possibly down to the success that we have seen in renewables, with the costs of offshore, onshore, wind and solar coming down. That makes the costs of nuclear, for example, much harder to deal with. We would like to bring those costs down but I do not think that they are likely to drop as much as has happened in the case of some renewables. Similarly, the costs of renewables include the cost of electricity storage, which, again, is coming down. Therefore, I suspect that the noble Lord, rather than being a Jeremiah, should always take a positive approach to changes and always look on the bright side of life, if that is possible I turn to the noble Lord, Lord Adonis. I am grateful that he referred to the debate in another place on 14 January, and I will certainly pass on to my honourable friend Richard Harrington the noble Lord’s welcome for his response to that debate, which I think dealt with most of the points that he raised. However, in my incompetence, I muddied the water and raised further points for the noble Lord. I hope that I will be able to deal with his concerns relating to additional qualifying material and the extra information required for the Secretary of State On additional qualifying material, all operators will provide accountancy and control plans to the ONR. That is a new requirement, which will come into effect in January 2021. The noble Lord also asked about the principal requirements of Regulation 45, which concerns the notification of receipt, production and transfer. That regulation requires an operator of a qualifying nuclear facility or other person to notify the Secretary of State of the receipt of a relevant item or qualifying nuclear material, the production, processing, derivation or fabrication of a relevant item from another relevant item or from obligated qualifying nuclear material, and the proposed transfer of a relevant item, together with details of the transferee and their location I turn to the process for NCAs and the questions raised by the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, particularly in relation to Japan. I made it clear that we had concluded new agreements with Canada, the US and Australia. The situation is slightly different with Japan, in that, as I think I made clear in my opening remarks, a bilateral NCA is already in place. It will remain in place following the UK’s departure from the EU and therefore it is not necessary to conclude a new one. We have had detailed discussions on this and are in negotiations to ensure that we have appropriate arrangements in place with Japan to allow the agreement to remain operable after our exit from Euratom I note the remarks made by my noble friend Lady Altmann on the comments from whichever committee it was regarding these orders. I give an assurance that, with these orders, we are making sure that we have broad equivalence; we will have the same protection in place as existed before.