My Lords, I think we should allow the noble Viscount to sit down, and remind ourselves that he is not the Minister. To go back to something that the noble Lord, Lord Warner, said, in a way, none of the amendments in this group is perfect. Why are
they not perfect? It is because we have given our notice to withdraw from Euratom, yet we all know that that was not the greatest thing to do. So we are now trying to claw our way back to the status quo, having given notification under Article 106a of the Euratom treaty. We are trying to find a way to get back to where we want to be, but we are not allowed to withdraw our notification under the treaty. We certainly cannot within the scope of this Bill, but perhaps under the EU withdrawal Bill there is more scope. Who knows? It does not seem so long ago that we were debating that.
I presume the Minister will confirm that we do want to achieve Euratom standards, not bargain-basement, superstore value in terms of just the IAEA standards, although those are important. Can the Minister confirm that a transitional agreement is possible and would work, and that the EU 27 are up for this? Certainly in the publication on transitional arrangements, which was published last month, Euratom is a footnote on a couple of occasions, so I presume that it is in the mix in terms of the continuing acquis during the transition period.
What concerns me most about this is the need—as the noble Viscount has said, and he is quite right—to avoid this rather more precipitous cliff edge than there is even in the other areas of transitional commercial arrangements. When the break from the treaty happens, are we certain that the International Atomic Energy Agency would be prepared to have Euratom act as our safeguarding authority during a transitional period even though we are not legally a member of Euratom? That is a fundamental question. An answer would provide a lot more clarity and perhaps enable us to come back on Report with a suitable amendment which might actually work. We are not in a position to do that at the moment because we do not have that information.