As I remember, the last time we debated this, by chance—I may be misremembering—a Home Office Minister was sitting next to me. I can confirm, however, that the Home Office is fully aware of the concerns expressed in debates of this sort, and we will make sure that it continues to be so. It is important to us that we continue to—as I put it—access the best talent. As the noble Lord will be aware, we have already doubled the number of available visas in the tier 1 exceptional talent review, and will be looking at changing Immigration Rules to enable world- leading scientists and researchers under the tier 1 route to apply for settlement after three years and to make it quicker for highly skilled students to apply for work in the United Kingdom after finishing a degree. We are, therefore, relaxing the labour market tests where appropriate.
The crux of this amendment, which relates to safeguarding staff—the Bill has been drafted in that way and so the amendment must be too—attempts to ensure the freedom of employment of specialists employed in that field. This is clearly a matter of particular interest in the light of the Government’s preparations for establishing a domestic nuclear safeguards regime, which, among other important work, means securing the right quality and quantity of appropriate safeguarding staff in the Office for Nuclear Regulation. Given the importance of attracting the right staff to work in this specialist field, the Government are committed to ensuring that the ONR has the right personnel. I can give the House a bit of information: in the most recent recruitment round for two further posts in this field there were 112 applicants for the ONR to look at. We will continue to work with the ONR to ensure that it has the right staff to regulate the UK’s new civil nuclear safeguards regime. Those figures show that there is no shortage, certainly in the world of recruiting and training the appropriate inspectors and building additional institutional capacity.
The noble Lord will not be surprised if I do not go into this, because he will then ask for further details. If I give him an assurance that the amendment is possibly itself defective and not suitable for inclusion, and he accepts that in spirit there is no need for it—since the Government are committed to ensuring that we have the right specialists and the Home Office continues to work in this field—I hope that he will feel able to withdraw Amendment 8.