My Lords, in moving Amendment 38R, I will also speak to the other amendments in this fairly mixed group. Perhaps Amendment 38R, and Amendment 38Q with which we have just dealt, should have been in the earlier group relating to workers in the nuclear sector. However, Amendment 38R deals with the provision that the ONR would have the ability to prohibit the employment of certain people under paragraph 10 of the schedule. Paragraph 9 provides that employment can be restricted to those who have met appropriate qualifications. I therefore wonder why we need the additional provision here; it is a relatively technical point.
Amendment 38V would make clear that the ONR is not seen as a Crown agency, whereas the HSE for most purposes is seen as a Crown agency or at least as a body which is an emanation of the state. Even where other regulators are public corporations in the form of their incorporation, there is no denial of their Crown status in legislation. I wonder whether this is simply to ensure and underline the fact that ONR employees will no longer be regarded as Civil Service employees, and therefore the inspectorates and highly technical skills that are needed by the ONR in the nuclear field can be rewarded at, probably, substantially higher rates than would be allowed under the Civil Service pay structure. That seems a slightly heavy way of ensuring that one could make appropriate market-rate payments to a very small and important sector. I hope that I can get clarification on that.
Amendments 40H and 40J relate to the provision of training, which is of course another important aspect. You do not need the quality of staff only when you recruit and pay them, you also need to continually update them within the ONR with the best possible training. Clause 8 provides that the ONR may provide training, whereas the HSE’s provisions, the equivalent of the Health and Safety at Work Act, provides that the HSE must provide training. Amendment 40J makes it clear that training is appropriate and relevant—it is not training for anything—but the lack of a requirement on the ONR to provide training needs to be addressed.
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The final amendment in this group, Amendment 40P, deals with the issue of staff coming out of the Civil Service. In general, if they are getting paid better and are on better terms and conditions, I suspect that
those staff, at least in immediate terms, will be quite happy to leave the Civil Service. However, there are important issues of seniority, access to pensions, and dates of retirement which need to be preserved in this transfer. Although there are correct references to the TUPE provisions or equivalent in this Bill, “or equivalent” is normally interpreted as the provisions that the Cabinet Office lay down, which effectively means that transfers within Civil Service bodies are covered by the equivalent of TUPE.
It is not clear whether transfers from a Civil Service body into a new public body, which is explicitly deemed not to be the Civil Service, also means that the staff retain the same seniority that they would have if they were still part of the Civil Service. That is important. Although some of these staff are extremely specialist, some may wish to return to the Civil Service at later stages in their career. Therefore, their entitlements as civil servants need to be preserved however they may be treated in a period in which they are on the staff of the ONR as a non-Civil Service body. These points need to be clear and they need to be tidied up, because this ought to be a relatively seamless transfer. However, there are some loose ends and I hope that the Minister can reassure me on these points.