UK Parliament / Open data

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

I fully appreciate the noble Lord’s point. That is why we will engage with Euratom and its members in order to determine continuity. Whether it will be by associate membership or by means of some additional agreement has yet to be determined.

A number of points were raised about whether we can maintain trade and standards. We trade, we have safety standards and we intend to maintain them. We had the opportunity to secure mutual recognition of our standards and trade by means of international nuclear co-operation agreements.

I have been asked by a number of noble Lords about the question of strategy and consultation. Let me be clear: we are at the beginning of this process, not at the end of it. We appreciate the need to develop a clear strategy in order to implement our desire for continuing co-operation with Euratom going forward.

A number of particular questions were posed with regard to where we were on certain issues of strategy and relationships with other international nuclear partners and how we intended to demonstrate the development of our forward strategy for nuclear research and development. The noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, raised the question of how important this was in the context of the proportion of our energy that is actually provided by nuclear installations. I understand that the figure is 17%, rather than the figure he quoted.

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
779 c879 
Session
2016-17
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords chamber
Subjects
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