My Lords, I will speak also to the other amendments in this large group, to which the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, and my noble friends Lord O’Neill and Lord Judd, have already referred. The ONR does not operate in isolation. Many other bodies—both regulatory bodies and operational, quasi-regulatory bodies—operate in this field. The ONR has relations with government departments and bodies such as the
Environment Agency. I declare a recent past interest as a board member and non-executive director of the Environment Agency. In my final two years on the board, I had responsibility for nuclear matters.
The Nuclear Decommissioning Authority has huge responsibilities in relation to nuclear waste. Although not directly a regulator, it is a quasi-regulator on account of the conditions in which it deals with contracts and with the care of nuclear waste. We have referred to the Defence Nuclear Safety Regulator; there is clearly some overlap in responsibilities there. On the security side, there is also the Civil Nuclear Constabulary. There may be others. There are certainly some local authority responsibilities as well.
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It is very important that the ONR acts in co-ordination with these other bodies, knows what the boundaries are and who is responsible for what, and can, where necessary, act jointly with them. As the noble Lord, Lord Jenkin, says, there are existing memoranda of understanding. I am familiar with the one with the Environment Agency and there are others. When we talk about the Environment Agency, we must also recognise that there are also different bodies in Scotland and, shortly, in Wales that have those responsibilities. All those facets of the ONR’s responsibility need to be addressed.
Before I come to the issue of general co-ordination, the first two of these amendments, Amendments 38G and 38H, deal with a different matter: the relationship between the ONR and government departments. I was slightly surprised, to be honest, when I read quite recently the Commons debate on this, to realise that the ONR was going to have the DWP as its sponsor and not DECC. The logic of that is that the HSE’s sponsor is the DWP; some people would query the logic of that but nevertheless that is the situation. It seems absurd to have the ONR dealing with such a vital sector of the Department for Energy and Climate Change’s responsibilities but being the responsibility of a different Secretary of State—so when we refer to the Secretary of State in this legislation, the presumption is that it will be the DWP unless otherwise specified. There are references in the text to co-ordination with DECC. The amendments suggest that there should be rather more. Frankly, I would prefer the sponsorship to shift to DECC and then it would be pretty obvious that co-ordination and joint activity between the department and the regulator was necessary. Failing that, we need some sharper requirements on co-ordination between the department and the ONR.
Amendments 38K, 38L and 38M concern co-ordination, which can be dealt with through the memorandum of understanding. It would be useful if the Minister could provide us—not now but some time before Report—with a diagram of where all those different authorities interface and who is responsible for what in relation to nuclear sites. Amendment 40E requires co-operation as regards the health and safety function, which is understandable. Amendment 38P requires joint regulation with the Environment Agency, for example, in relation to design. That was referred to before: the generic design is actually a joint activity
between the ONR—or the HSE as was—and the Environment Agency. Amendment 38S, which deals with offences, recognises that some of the powers and some of the enforcement have to go to other agencies under the nuclear regulations. Amendment 40Q concerns Schedule 12, which deals with the transfer of responsibilities between bodies. The text refers to the ONR and the Rail Regulator. The Environment Agency, at least, also needs to be in there because there are some areas where some future rationalisation of the responsibilities between the two authorities ought to be addressed.
I think that I have dealt with most of the major points in this group. I hope that, while we can have a further debate, people will recognise that whether we achieve the co-ordination and the understanding between the agencies via an existing memorandum of understanding or a new one, it is vital that the legislation reflects the need for the ONR to act in co-ordination with these other bodies and for the public and management and workers in the nuclear sector to understand where the authorities’ responsibilities begin and end. I am not expecting the Minister to accept all or any of the amendments in this group as they stand, but this needs to be addressed, at least in some generic way, in the Bill. I beg to move.