My Lords, we are getting to the important issue—quite rightly raised by the noble Lord, Lord Vaux—of control, the involvement of foreign companies and, behind them, possibly foreign Governments in this vital part of our energy security. There is one thing that I would like to know before the Minister replies. He will remember, as will most of your Lordships, that my right honourable friend Theresa May, back in 2016 after she became Prime Minister, ordered a review of Hinkley Point C, in particular the involvement of Chinese interests in that vast project, which is now going ahead. Everyone got quite agitated at the time. I remember the Chinese ambassador walking around saying, “Has there been a coup? What’s happened? What’s gone wrong? Was the Chancellor of Exchequer not in Beijing the other day agreeing that this was a new golden area of co-operation between China and the United Kingdom and, in the words of Xi Jinping, that there was going to be ‘unlimited’ partnership in all sorts of investments?” The Chinese, along with EDF and the French, were welcomed with open arms to get the Hinkley Point C project off the ground.
After a while, there was a review, which concluded that Hinkley Point C should go ahead, to the great delight of the Chinese. The whole thing was a very good bargain for them: not only did they get involved in Hinkley Point C, but they had a promise of involvement in Sizewell C and, even better for them, a promise of bringing in Hualong technology and managing their own project at Bradwell-on-Sea. This was a great delight and was going to be the poster boy project for the Chinese, as they moved into massive sales of Chinese technology and development, which would go well beyond a GDA for Bradwell into the possibility of building and managing a nuclear power station right at the middle of our system.
The review that Theresa May authorised was thorough and went into considerable detail into the conditions that there should be on the Chinese going forward. I would like to know from the Minister whether those conditions still prevail or whether they have been modified 10 years later, under further pressures, when the public attitude towards Chinese involvement has changed 180 degrees. We have moved from an age of loving everything Chinese to getting rid of everything Chinese. Has there been a change? It would be helpful if he could describe to what extent we have moved on that and to what extent those review conditions of 2016 still prevail.