My Lords, I apologise for coming in rather late, but I am in good time for the amendment that I wanted to catch up with, Amendment 11, and to follow on from the question regarding nuclear decommissioning. I live in a part of north-west Wales where there are two nuclear power stations. Trawsfynydd nuclear power station stopped generating two decades ago. It now employs some 600 people on decommissioning, more than it ever employed when it was generating electricity. The message that comes home from that is the uncertainty with regard to the cost of decommissioning and the length of time, and the need, therefore, to have financial cover for that.
This becomes particularly relevant with regard to be new reactor that is likely to be forthcoming with Hitachi at Wylfa in Anglesey. There is considerable support in Anglesey for the renewal of the nuclear power station. But the one reservation that people would have is if there were uncertainty as to the eventual decommissioning and the resultant costs arising from that station, particularly if in the private sector the company running it were to go out of existence. There needs to be a cast-iron guarantee with regard to funding for that purpose in order to maintain the good will towards the building of that new reactor at Wylfa. It is needed in energy terms and in terms of investment in the local economy in north-west Wales.
Therefore, the amendment goes to the heart of some very important aspects of nuclear power. Whereas I have a considerable amount of sympathy with the amendment in terms of the green bank and developing green alternative sources of electricity, that has to go on side by side with the nuclear dimension. Whatever settlement is finally reached it has to encompass both sides of that equation.