My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, on the comprehensiveness of his amendments. When we approached this Bill, I was rather under the impression that there had been so much thinking about the creation of the new independent body, the ONR, and so much discussion about it that allotting most of today’s session to considering it was perhaps a bit excessive. However, having studied his amendments—and no doubt there will be others who will wish to make points—I think that the discussion may well take us until 6 pm, although I hope not.
I approach this from a number of different standpoints. First, I think that I am the only Member of the Committee who took part in the debates on the Nuclear Installations Act 1965. That was a few months after I had been elected to the other place, but I have since reminded myself of the provisions of that Act, which are very comprehensive. They have been amended down the years since then—through the lovely system of LexisNexis, one can get a very good summary of what the Bill originally was and how it has changed with time. Therefore, to take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, I think that the main licensing provisions of the 1965 Act are still going to be enforced and are not repeated in this Bill. It is assumed that the authority, the ONR, will have those licensing provisions. There is a substantial area where people will need to look back. That is the first thing.
Secondly, before I entered Parliament I was an employee of a large chemical company and one of the things that we did was to supply CO2
to the Magnox nuclear power stations to be used as a cooling material—
I will refer to that later. I have also been one of those who over recent years have been pressing very hard for this change to the ONR to take place. The case that had been very firmly made to me was that remaining part of the Health and Safety Executive meant that inevitably inspectors on the nuclear regulation side were civil servants and thus bound by Civil Service terms and conditions. In fact, experienced inspectors are very valuable people, much sought after around the world. They have been though a long period of training and have a lot of experience. Sometimes people will say an inspector is not really fully qualified unless he has been doing the job for about 20 years—and that has been said to me by more than one person. Therefore, there was considerable pressure from this part of the HSE, the nuclear regulatory part, to separate. I heard those arguments and paid considerable attention to them. The noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, may remember that when the Select Committee interviewed Dr Mike Weightman, I raised this point and he was very kind to acknowledge that some of us had indeed been pushing this case fairly hard.
That is how I approach the amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Whitty. He makes some good points but I hope that he will forgive me if I point out that some of his amendments may indeed perhaps not quite be what he intended or envisaged. However, as I make these criticisms, no doubt he will have good answers. To take the amendments in the order in which they appear on the Marshalled List, the first with which I take issue is Amendment 38D. The noble Lord made quite a point about associated sites and of course he is quite right to refer to the issue—it is in Clause 57(1)(a)—but, as he readily acknowledged, his amendment may go deeper and wider than he perhaps intended.
Let me return to my previous point. The distillers company for which I worked produced CO2,originally as part of the process of fermentation but eventually as a chemical process, and supplied itto a large number of different industries, not least, of course, the drinks industry. It would be absurd to regard those distilleries and factories as anything to do with the nuclear industry. Of course, when the material is delivered to the nuclear power station it has to be of nuclear quality, which is, quite rightly, properly regulated—but it is not the site where it is made that is regulated but the material that is delivered. No doubt there are many other examples.
I have recently ceased to be honorary president of the Energy Industries Council, which represents something like 600 firms in the energy supply chain businesses, of which nuclear is clearly one. On the rare occasion I was asked to talk to them, I always made the point that they had to make sure that they were producing materials and products to nuclear standards. This was something that quite a number of the firms found quite difficult to do. Those standards are higher than most other engineering standards, particularly for pieces of equipment, but that does not mean to say that the sites where they are made become nuclear sites. I hope that my noble friend the Minister will feel that it would be quite wrong to expect the ONR to go around inspecting sites where no kind of nuclear hazard could conceivably exist.
On Amendment 38F, I agree with the noble Lord. I do not see why this should not be extended to air transport. There must be occasions when nuclear materials are transported by air, although probably not very many, and clearly that should be within the remit of the ONR. That seems to be a reasonable change, but I have criticisms of some of the other amendments.
Amendment 38N refers to,
“other relevant agencies with responsibilities in the nuclear field”.
It is my impression that the nuclear regulator has always been able to consult and go much further than just consulting, having very detailed arrangements for regulating the interaction between the various bodies. There are long and substantial memoranda of understanding that cover that sort of field. I have made it my business to get a copy of the current memorandum of understanding between the HSE, which was the body that was running what is to be the ONR under this Bill, and the Environment Agency. When I came to print it out, it was 14 pages and contained a number of very important statements. I will not begin to read them all, but the objectives of the memorandum are to,
“facilitate effective and consistent regulation by ensuring that … activities of EA and HSE in relation to nuclear licensed sites are consistent, coordinated and comprehensive … the possibility of conflicting requirements being placed on licensees, or others operating on nuclear sites (collectively referred to as ‘operators’ in this memorandum), is avoided … synergies are exploited and the appropriate balance of precautions is attained”,
and,
“duplication of activity is minimised”,
which is of course very important if you are trying to keep the costs down. Perhaps most important of all is that,
“public confidence in the regulatory system is maintained”.
I shall not read more than that, but the annexe to the memorandum goes into very considerable detail as to how it is to be done. Presumably these will all remain in force. They may have to be signed by different people because the organisations will be different. The one that I have in my hand was signed by the noble Baroness, Lady Young of Old Scone, when she was chairman of the Environment Agency, and by Timothy Walker, the then director-general of the Health and Safety Executive. If there are to be modifications in the memorandum, they will need to be signed by the current people. I hope that my noble friend may be able to address that.
Amendment 40N would not be right. It would risk all sorts of difficulties, duplication and so on. In particular, it would risk classifying a site as licensed before a nuclear site licence is granted. I heard what the noble Lord said about that, but of course there is the elaborate process of the generic design assessment. He referred to Hinkley Point C. That has been absolutely combed over by the existing nuclear regulator. It was a hugely important step forward when it finally gave approval of the design, but the noble Lord is right that there is not a site licence yet. That will be the last stage. To argue that all this should be taken into account
without taking account of the whole GDA process seems a little unreal. Therefore, I say yes as regards air transport but I suspect that the other elements may not be quite what the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, intends. I hope that my noble friend may be able to take account of these representations.