My Lords, I am happy to give Amendment 11, in the name of the noble Lord, Lord McNicol, the support of these Benches. It is particularly important given the failures of the early cost recovery model in the United States. Whatever one’s view of nuclear energy, we really do not want to end up spending more than $20 billion, like they did, and getting no new nuclear plants at all. South Carolina in particular spent $9 billion before Westinghouse went bankrupt. If we are to go ahead with this, we certainly need to ensure that it delivers something at the end of it.
On Amendment 12, I will not go into the detailed debate about the taxonomy issue. The one thing I will say, in the context of the amendments from the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, is that whether or not nuclear is regarded as a sustainable means of producing energy, it is certainly not clean. It produces significant amounts of waste that have to be dealt with. Nearly 70 years after our first nuclear plant came online, there has been a scandalous failure to provide a permanent solution. We heard from the noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, that discussions are ongoing about the geological disposal facility. I am sure we will hear more from the Minister on that. This has been going on for years and years and there is no permanent solution.
I note that the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, is not going to move her amendments. We certainly discussed this in some detail in Committee so I will not dwell on it further, but the nuclear industry’s failure to take its responsibilities seriously in this way is notable. Indeed, until the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority was set up there was no national plan to deal with waste at all. It has done a great job trying to quantify the level of the situation—of course, we have seen bills and disposal costs go up and up year on year—but it is a really important point and I am grateful to the noble Baroness for bringing her amendments to the attention of the House.