My Lords, on the controversial comment that was just made, I find it very difficult because I do not believe that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has quite got it right. The sort of error that would cause there to be a special need to be able to sue would be suable under the law without the breach of statutory duty, which is a very narrow statement that you can sue for the statutory duty being breached irrespective, in a sense, of the effect. The kind of concern that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, has raised, which he does not mention but is pressing towards, is something that I cannot conceive could possibly not be available in a law case for someone who was damaged by it.
I have a particular reason why I hope that the Government will not give way to this proposal. One problem of nuclear sites—I have dealt with them for much of my adult life, with Sizewell A and Sizewell B—is that for the most part they are like any other site. One difficulty of treating them as if they are always nuclear rather than like any other site is that often quite unnecessary concerns are raised. I always remember a very small fire in a small shed a long way from the actual nuclear site, but on the nuclear periphery, and the sort of headlines that it got, whereas if it had been on an allotment there would have been no news about it at all. It became a nuclear accident.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Whitty, will understand that the sort of issues that might properly excite him, the Daily Mail and the Morning Star—although whether anybody would notice that the Morning Star had been excited by it would be a real question—are covered by the law in any case. To make a special exemption here would cause a problem to those of us who have to deal with those sites, because it suggests that they are so different from other sites that they should have special protection, of the sort that we talked about in the previous debate. I hope that noble Lords opposite will remember that I was not entirely a supporter of the Government on many aspects of that
Bill, so it is not because I am trying to defend it. However, this amendment would be a mistake, is unnecessary and would not be worth having, because it has a disadvantage in how it treats nuclear sites that would be damaging.