My Lords, I am also a signatory to this amendment, and I thank the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, for having brought it before the House today. There is another explanation about why this has happened. Soon after the referendum, I submitted a Written Question to the Government to ask whether it was intending to leave Euratom. The answer I got back, after a little bit of foreplay, was that the people of Britain voted to come out of the European Union. It was quite clear that the Government did not realise that Euratom was not part of the European Union. They have not even thought about it. That is the answer that came back. I had to go back and ask the question again, at which point the Government answered that they were still thinking about it. Indeed, during ministerial conversations, there was a full admission that we should be able to remain part of the Euratom organisation. However, at that point it was legally impossible, for some reason which I do not understand at all. Euratom has its own separate Article 50 system, Article 106a; it is an entirely separate treaty, which did not come together during the Maastricht process when the other treaties came together, partly because there was a concern that Austria and Germany, which were anti-nuclear nations at that time—Austria still very much is—would not agree for that treaty to be integrated into the rest of the system.
I think that the Government agree that it is a good organisation. Coming out of it will certainly cost taxpayers a lot more money in terms of safeguarding and, as the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, we have a real problem regarding the timescale. As I understand it, it is the Government who are saying that they want Euratom standards. That is their position; it is not ours. It is one that I agree with but the Government’s position is that we need Euratom standards, not purely International Atomic Energy Agency standards. We have a very difficult timetable here.
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I was in Brussels earlier today. I was with Mr Barnier, although we did not talk about Euratom. However, yesterday our group talked a little about Euratom with some of the other European institutions. I was trying to get an indication of whether it was even possible to have a transition period to roll over the Euratom acquis in the same way that we will be doing for what are essentially commercial and security areas in relation to the European Union treaties. I am far from sure that a transition period will work, because with Euratom we are dealing with non-EU players—that is, the International Atomic Energy Agency and all the countries with which we have nuclear co-operation agreements, none of which is in the EU.
Therefore, we might be able to have an agreement with Euratom but I am not aware—I would be interested to hear about this from the Minister—that we even know whether the International Atomic Energy Agency will agree to our subcontracting others to run these essential facilities and procedures on our behalf for an unspecified period of maybe two years or 21 months. I would be very interested to hear that from the Minister.
We are dealing here not only with our own nuclear security. This is a question not just of building Hinkley Point C, which is a part of it, but of whether we can sustain our nuclear power stations. At the moment our fleet provides 20% of what happens to be relatively clean energy. Can we sustain that? There is also the question of nuclear co-operation agreements. Mobility of labour is the other important area. We have a huge scarcity of skilled labour in this area and we rely on freedom of movement under the Euratom treaty. Will we really be able to fulfil those areas when we leave on 29 March next year?
We need recognition by the International Atomic Energy Agency in order to import parts, skilled people and power, whether uranium or any other fuels, into our country. We need a voluntary offer agreement with the International Atomic Energy Agency, and we need to replace the nuclear co-operation agreements in order to be able to trade in those areas. There are 12 of them, although some are less important than others. They include Australia, the United States, Korea, Japan, Canada, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, South Africa and Argentina, and I think that there are one or two others. We have to replace the agreements with those countries. I think that the noble Viscount is correct in that about four of them are absolutely critical to us. I see no reason why those countries should agree to continue the agreements as they are. Maybe they will but we do not have that guarantee. Certainly as regards the United States, there has to be agreement by Congress to continue that agreement.
Therefore, we are playing Russian roulette with our nuclear industry and our nuclear energy supply industry without being clear about a way forward or about what we can do, all because we have decided that Euratom is the same as the European Union, which it is not.
I now come to the radioisotopes. The biggest challenge in this area in terms of the day to day—the noble Viscount may be right; we shall have to see, but we do not know—is the customs arrangements with the European Union post Brexit. We do not know what those will be. Certainly the Port of Dover is not very sanguine about the issue, and we know the timescales are short.
However, we do know that back in 2008-10 there was an international crisis in the ability to purchase and get a supply of those materials into Europe, including the United Kingdom. As a result of that, after long consultations, as part of the Euratom Supply Agency an observatory was set up to make sure that those supply arrangements were not ever a problem again, by pooling the might of the Euratom community and by having contingency plans to ensure that the supplies were actually available. That crisis happened, and it will happen again, because those supplies are not as stable or as rigorous in terms of their origin as many other areas. By coming out of the Euratom
Supply Agency and its observatory, we are taking ourselves out of that emergency crisis procedure that might well be needed at some time in the near future.
That is why it seems to me that, as other noble Lords have said, the sensible way forward is that at best we should seek to withdraw our Article 106a notification. If we cannot do that, we should not in any circumstances leave Euratom until we have the voluntary offer agreement, recognition by the IAEA and our nuclear co-operation agreements with the key nations. If we have those we might be okay, but I see the decision that we have made as pretty reckless and pretty unnecessary. We still have time to repair it, and I hope we will.