My Lords, the noble Lord’s amendments go too far. We are talking about only five non-executive members who are going to be appointed by the Secretary of State. One must have regard to the main purpose of non-executive directors of a board, which is, broadly, to hold the executive to account. I have been a chairman of a board, although only part-time, in a totally different environment, and found the non-executive members of that board extremely
useful. They assisted me in holding the executive members of the board to account—not because of their expertise in a particular area in which an executive director would be operating, but because they had wider experience and could look at the activity of the executive in a wider context.
That is obvious in the provision in the Bill for at least one non-executive member to have responsibility for the security aspects of the ONR’s job. I do not know whether this is the Government’s intention but it seems to me that what is wanted is not somebody who is expert in nuclear security, but who has wider experience of the whole of the national security position and can bring that background knowledge and perspective to the particular issues that arise in the nuclear field.
If that is right, it is entirely understandable that the Government should want to see that in the schedule. On the question of safety, however, I do not understand what, exactly, a non-executive member’s role would be. This is essentially a management matter. A non-executive director would want to be sure that the right procedures were being followed, particularly when it is a question of appointing someone who will have some executive responsibility in this. You want somebody with the experience of being able to do it, but to have a specific safety non-executive person would be very difficult. I am not sure where it leaves the professional management. Is it constantly being second-guessed? That is not what you want from a non-executive board. It should not second-guess the management but satisfy itself that the management is approaching the problem in the right way and has made sensible decisions.
To some extent, that is equally true of labour, staff relations and so forth. I would not expect a non-executive director who had come straight from a human resources job to say, “I’m going to tell the human resources director exactly how to do his job”. That is not the way in which non-executive members of the board should be expected to operate.
The amendments mistake the purpose of having non-executive directors. The Bill has the right approach because having someone with a wider experience of national security could be extremely useful, and nuclear security could be looked at in that context. However, I would not want to take it further and I would be very much opposed to the amendments proposed by the noble Lord.