I am delighted to be here with the Minister, who is a genial and hard-working man. I know that he will try to answer some of my questions, and I hope his answers are clear.
When the Secretary of State launched the Bill, he said it was “straightforward”, but the amendments are required because there is nothing straightforward about leaving Euratom. The Scottish National party is concerned about the whole process. The hon. Member for Copeland (Trudy Harrison) talked about us being “there or thereabouts”, but that is not good enough when it comes to nuclear safeguards. As it stands, the Bill is a safeguards Bill without any safeguards; there is no contingency for anything going wrong, yet Ministers have failed to convince not just hon. Members in this Chamber, but industry and the people. Leaving Euratom will result in more cost and less value, and the opinion of many in the industry is that it will be impossible to set up an equivalent UK authority within the timescales outlined. That is the view of industry, the Office for
Nuclear Regulation, the Nuclear Industry Association and the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority, all of which gave evidence to the BEIS Committee. I was delighted to hear the Chair of that Committee, the hon. Member for Leeds West (Rachel Reeves), point out the great concern about the Government’s ability to do as they propose. All the nuclear industry and all those bodies do not want us to leave Euratom; either they see no benefit in our doing so, or they are actively concerned about the consequences.
Ministers have simply ignored the difficulties and the overwhelming evidence before them. They have plodded ahead, and when asked “How?” they use their favourite word: hope. They hope that things will be in place—that agreements, funding and people will be available. Despite the impending loss of influence in developing policy in Europe on future nuclear decisions, the unanswered questions about cost, the difficulties in training or even recruiting replacement inspectors, they plod ahead. As the Minister said in response to questions on these matters in the Select Committee, “They don’t really know and we don’t really know.”
There are a lot of unknowns in the Bill, which is why it is imperative to amend it. The ONR says plainly that it might need more than a two-year transition period after 2019, yet the Government still provide no assurance.