My Lords, I remind Members of what the Euratom treaty says in Article 2(g)—that, in order to perform its tasks, the community shall,
“ensure wide commercial outlets and access to the best technical facilities by the creation of a common market in specialised materials and equipment, by the free movement of capital for investment in the field of nuclear energy and by freedom of employment for specialists within the Community”.
I have not taken the whole of the article, or of part 2(g), into the amendment, but rather the important post-Brexit part, which concerns the free movement of nuclear specialists. I will not make a long speech because I believe that this is self-evident. The Government have an industrial strategy around the nuclear sector: to expand it and for it to be part of where this country goes economically.
We have heard in previous debates that our most important need in the short term is to have a functioning safeguarding authority, whether that is Euratom or—as soon as that stops—our own Office for Nuclear Regulation. We need those bodies, and that body in particular, to function. We have a shortage of qualified people in this area and a shortage of specialists in the industry more generally—although the amendment is, because of the Bill, primarily around safeguarding. Therefore, it must be in the interests of the Bill, and of the country at large, to ensure that we maintain the mobility of those specialists in the nuclear industry and the nuclear sector, so that we maintain this benefit post Brexit and post our membership of Euratom. That is why the amendment is absolutely appropriate to the Bill and is of great importance not just to this sector but to our national security.
I very much hope that the Minister will be able to give a greater reassurance—perhaps higher up on my noble friend Lord Fox’s Richter scale of assurances—than we have received so far that this area will be looked after by the Government, that we will not be browbeaten by the Home Office into having a minimal circulation of specialists, and that this country will benefit from those with the experience and skills that will enable us to perform in this sector, not just in safeguarding but in the nuclear sector more broadly. I beg to move.