I am moving Amendment 39 in the name of my noble friend Lord McNicol. It would require the Secretary of State to undertake an assessment of the case for establishing a state-owned entity to take over the delivery or operation of a nuclear project in the event that a nuclear company fails and cannot be saved or have its assets transferred. Having such safeguards is familiar to me from my time in local government, where every project brought risks of overrun and rising costs, despite our best efforts to nail down the terms and conditions.
However, let us not deviate from the ultimate aim of this Bill: to get power generated and distributed to homes and businesses across the UK. We sincerely
hope that firms will not fail, but if they do there needs to be a clear process to ensure that plants are built and continue to operate. The Minister may well argue that the special administration regime does this, but there is still potential for further steps to be needed. Surely, we should define options in legislation now rather than wait for the worst to happen. “Fail to prepare”—I am sure noble Lords know the remainder of that phrase.