NUCLEAR SAFETY

HC Deb 23 February 1976 vol 906 cc81-151

6.7 p.m.

The Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Anthony Wedgwood Benn)

I beg to move, That this House takes note of Commission Documents Nos. R/2663/75 and R/2662/75 and of the importance which the Government attaches to matters of nuclear safety.

Mr. Speaker

I inform the House that I have selected the amendment in the name of the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen).

Mr. Benn

As you have indicated, Mr. Speaker, that you have accepted the amendment, perhaps I might complete the good will by saying that we intend to recommend the House to accept it. I make that declaration so that there is no artificial anxiety hanging over the debate. I greatly welcome the opportunity to speak on this matter in the House as it is the first opportunity I have had since my appointment as Secretary of State for Energy. I understand that the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) will be taking part in the debate.

This is an issue to which Parliament will have to give greater attention. I say that with some feeling because since 1966, when I became Minister of Technology, I have had ministerial responsibility on and off for matters of nuclear policy. It is a lonely responsibility in that the decisions that fall to be taken by Ministers involve an understanding, as far as that is possible for laymen, of complicated issues. Although the safety record in nuclear affairs in terms of loss of life, compared to mining or North Sea diving, is a splendid one, the risks with which we are dealing are of a unique kind in the history of mankind in peace-time work.

It is obvious to anyone who follows these matters that the debates now taking place world-wide—in Japan, for obvious reasons, with memories of the 1945 explosions at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, in Sweden and in the United States, where I was last week—indicate that there is an interest in nuclear policy and nuclear safety that now goes beyond people with expertise in the matter and is extending to the whole Community.

For my own part, I think that the only way in which the Government can respond to anxieties of this kind is by adopting policies of the greatest possible openness, disclosing and publishing all the information that Parliament or the people wish to have, and listening most attentively to the debates that then centre round that disclosure. I intend to pursue that policy of openness and public debate. I have sought to do it with the nuclear re-processing contract proposed for Windscale.

Another issue, which is either before the House or will be shortly, is how we should handle problems of disposal of radioactive waste. Today we are discussing a Community interest and rôle in nuclear safety matters. I very greatly welcome the interest of the Community in this, as I do of all other countries, because clearly the question of nuclear safety knows no boundaries and cannot be confined to any one nation or group of nations.

At the Luxembourg Council last June I spoke about the Resolution No. R/681/75 on the technological problems of nuclear safety, on which the two documents are based. I said then, and I repeat now, that the Community should certainly improve its standards but should do so as quickly and openly as possible. We should not conceal what we are doing but should try to make it open so that others can join in. This debate will give us an opportunity to further that discussion.

We are fortunate—I mean this very sincerely—in having the view on these documents of the Select Committee on European Secondary Legislation. I shall try to deal with the points made by the Select Committee, but first perhaps I might briefly explain the documents themselves.

Document No. R/2662/75 is concerned primarily with light-water reactor safety, but it provides for consideration of pressure tube reactors, which include the SGHWR adopted for the next nuclear power station orders in this country. Document No. R/2663/75 is about fast reactor safety. Both documents are under consideration by Council working groups, and we shall be seeking to introduce any amendments which appear necessary.

The Council resolution on technological problems of nuclear safety was adopted in July of last year. It called on member States, with my very full support, to improve their collaboration on safety matters, with the aim of harmonising safety practices and criteria.

The two proposals we are discussing today follow directly on this resolution. Their titles are perhaps a little misleading. The Commission has referred to them as research and training programmes. This is really a matter more of jargon than anything else. What these proposals are seeking to do is strengthen the secretariat of the Community working parties of national experts who are already engaged on discussions in the areas of light-water reactor safety and fast reactor safety.

The Commission wants five extra people to support each of the working parties, and there is nothing very dramatic in these proposals. There is no suggestion for an increase in the number of working parties. The proposals do not seek to extend the rôle of the Commission or to increase the number of committees and the consequent demands on our technical expertise, and they do not interfere with present arrangements for the safety approval of nuclear installations.

The Commission has undertaken to find the staff required for these programmes from existing resources and not to ask for the creation of supplementary posts. There should, therefore, be no net increase in our existing contribution to the Community's research budget, the staff cost of these programmes, about £50,000 a year, being offset by savings elsewhere.

The object is entirely praiseworthy, because it is intended to relieve the burden on the technical experts on the working parties and thereby to increase their efficiency. Nevertheless, we shall need to be satisfied whether the proposed additions to the staff are right in terms of numbers and types and that the increases in staff will contribute to the greater effectiveness of the expert mem- bers of the working parties, and hence to the benefit of member States.

Concerning the reservations expressed by the Select Committee, first we do not see Community action as a substitute for, but as an addition to, national action. I emphasise this very strongly. The great increase in nuclear power proposed for the Community by 1985 and onwards demands some Community action, and by 1985 the Community's programme, if it goes ahead, will be very much larger than that of the United Kingdom on its own.

The technical expertise available to the Commission through the working parties is obtained from the national resources of member States. We shall take care, along with other member States, to ensure that it is employed efficiently, and that undue demands which might prejudice effort at national level are not made.

Exchanges of information to seek common ground, as I said at the beginning, with a view to common action are desirable, but there is no suggestion that licensing standards or approvals might be centralised on a Community basis. It would be many years before major proposals for harmonisation or standardisation could be agreed or introduced, and they could not be imposed without the agreement of member States at the Council.

There is some evidence that standardisation of, for example, components could be beneficial to the United Kingdom. That is a matter of a rather different kind. Although our own nuclear programme does not call for light-water reactors, United Kingdom industry has already exported some light-water reactor components, and standardisation could increase our prospects here. This is not so much on safety but more generally as well.

More immediately, the exchange of information on research programmes among member States provides a valuable method of making us all aware of the safety areas being studied within the Community. Benefits include the opportunity for exchanges within individual member States of research information where appropriate.

From information exchanges in the Community committees, it is possible to identify potential duplication of effort and make member States' research and development programmes complementary where this is practicable. Certainly we in this country have a very great deal of knowledge of nuclear power matters, including nuclear safety matters, stretching back over a period of many years. I think that the Magnox stations were first authorised in 1957. We do not have a monopoly of such knowledge, however, and progress can and will be made in collaboration with other member States. For instance, to take one example, the achievements of France in the development of the fast reactor are comparable with our own. Information on the progress of the United Kingdom and French fast reactor types—the PFR and Phoenix respectively—and on research results has been provided in general terms.

I emphasise—I hope to this extent to be able to allay the fears expressed by the Select Committee—that we use appropriate discretion and caution in the handling of commercial information. But the membership of the appropriate committees has given Community members access to information that would otherwise not have been readily available. There is, of course, close co-ordination within the Community particularly in the fast reactor safety field. This arrangement contributes substantially to the effectiveness of the work of the Euratom working groups.

The Report of the Select Committee refers specifically to the budgetary contribution of member States. The financial contributions of member States to the Community budget are fixed. We think that it would be impracticable to try to vary each contribution as between one project and another and between one State and another and to try to assess the relative national efforts in each case.

On this issue we hope that the cost to the United Kingdom, as I have explained, would be no more than our existing £50,000 a year—a very modest contribution. We cannot sensibly ask for a reallocation of the budget on this tiny item in return for providing expertise. The working parties already exist. We are also providing our expert knowledge. The demands on our own experts' time will not be increased by increasing the secretariat, but the committees on which they serve will, we hope, be able to work more effectively as a result. We are satisfied that our experts will be able to ensure that we get a worthwhile return for the effort which this country is putting in.

The Select Committee has pointed out quite properly that our power generation programmes do not include the use of light-water reactors. This, of course, is true, but, as all our partners in the Community who have nuclear power employ the light-water reactor, it is in our interests to keep abreast of the technology in this field. It is important to recognise that decisions made in relation to one reactor system will influence the approach to safety on other types. That is the case for approaching the recommendation of the Select Committee in the way that I suggest.

Nuclear safety is an international matter——

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet (Bedford)

If the right hon. Gentleman wants to keep abreast of all the technicalities of the water reactors, why does he not suggest that we buy one?

Mr. Benn

Far be for me to imply that the hon. Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet), in seeking to reopen a debate about the nuclear reactor system that we adopted, is out of order. But it is one thing to spend £50,000 to keep an eye on safety and another thing to reverse a major decision involving the abandonment of a British reactor and the importation of a foreign one. But that is almost a matter of order rather than a matter of merit. However, I should be happy to go over that ground with the hon. Gentleman on some other occasion if he so wishes.

As I emphasised, nuclear safety is an international matter, and we should be burying our heads in the sand if we were to decide that nuclear safety in the territories of our neighbours and partners was not our concern. Furthermore, our own SGHW reactor, as a water reactor, although it is different in design and concept from the LWR, has some features in common with it, and involvement in considering these aspects must be of benefit to us. Perhaps the hon. Member for Bedford should urge others to buy the steam-generating heavy-water reactor and try to see whether he could contribute his voice to the boosting of the export possibilities of British equipment as well as indicating that we should buy foreign systems.

Mr. Skeet

We have not got one going yet.

Mr. Benn

Document No. R/2662 in any case envisages the possibility of work on the safety of pressure tube reactors, which includes the steam-generating heavy-water reactor.

I turn to the fast rector, because it is well known that it can use uranium much more efficiently than the commercial reactors at present in use, and it is therefore seen as the means of bridging the gap between the demand for energy and the supply from other sources. I am not pre-empting such decisions as will need to be made later about the fast breeder reactor, but that is its rôle conceptually in the development of nuclear energy.

Detailed consideration of the safety issues involved is a matter of prime importance in which collaboration with our Euratom partners can be of major significance. The United Kingdom and other member States have developed standards for their own reactors. For new systems, however, especially the fast reactor, detailed standards have yet to be fully developed, and the member States will be able to make major contributions to the formulation and acceptance of such Community standards as may be considered and which might be adopted later.

My Department's evidence to the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, which I asked should be specially published last July, points out the benefits of international collaboration in problems of this kind which spreads the costs and risks, shares experience and might lead to improved production if it is possible to go ahead with it. The House will have noticed that Document No. R/2663 envisages a possible extension of the fast reactor safety programme beyond the five-year period so that, subject to later Council approval, the project might run for a further five years.

The Select Committee also suggests that consideration of these nuclear safety matters might be appropriate on a wider international basis than the Community, and I share this view. The similarity of interest amongst the developed member States and the general objectives of the Euratom treaty will help us to arrive at a common approach within the Community. But this does not mean that we do not play an active part in the work of international organisations on a much broader plain. There is the IAEA, the International Atomic Energy Agency. Then there are the NEA and the IEA.

The United Kingdom is represented as a member and is concerned with nuclear safety matters on all these and on other international bodies which speak with authority on nuclear safety. There is nothing exclusive about approaching nuclear safety on a Community basis, and the secretariats of the working parties which we are considering today also take part in the specialised groups of these and other international organisations. In effect, therefore, the secretariats whose staffing we are now considering are a link and provide a means of maximising ideas between the Community working groups and the larger and more diverse international groupings.

I think it is helpful to recognise that the membership and objectives of other international bodies differ as between one and another and also differ from those of the Community. Countries which already have nuclear power predominate in the NEA of the OECD, whereas the International Atomic Energy Agency's membership consisting of United Nations countries contains a good many which at present have no nuclear power facilities. In its turn, the IEA has interests which are not entirely or even mainly in the nuclear field, and in any event France is not a member of the International Energy Agency. So there is undoubtedly some overlap in the work of these organisations. But the secretariats are trying to keep abreast of what is happening. In any event, a certain amount of overlap in a matter as important as this can be helpful, and information can be exchanged to the advantage of each organisation.

There has been very close contact for many years between the European Community and other international bodies. As recently as last December a cooperation agreement was concluded between the European Community and the International Atomic Energy Agency providing for regular consultation and the exchange of information on nuclear matters of mutual interest.

These proposals, modest as they are, relate to the valuable contributions which international discussions can make in the interests of nuclear safety. The redeployment of Commission staff can help to ensure the most efficient use of available expertise. The United Kingdom has much to gain from continuing to play a full part in this Community activity and as a part of a wider international interest—I think a growing interest—in nuclear safety and its further development.

I conclude, as I began, by drawing attention once more to the great advantage which will flow not only in terms of public understanding but, I hope, in the improvement of safety standards from the public debate which is now developing on nuclear power. To me, it is in a way somewhat surprising that the country which first developed nuclear power should have been so slow in public terms to enter into the debate which is now taking place about it. Looking back from the 1990s, if the House understands me, there are very few people who doubt that, in the generation of electricity, coal and nuclear power will have a very significant part to play. For that reason, it is of crucial importance that all these issues should be fully and publicly debated, wherever possible, before decisions are taken so that the British people, as the issues come forward for decision, will be well acquainted with the nature of those decisions and will not, as has happened sometimes in the past, find that their interest is awakened only after the decisions have been taken.

For these reasons, I recommend the motion and the amendment, when it is moved, to the House.

6.28 p.m.

Mr. John Biffen (Oswestry)

I beg to move, at the end of the Question to add: 'and invites the Government to take account of the observations of the Select Committee on European Secondary Legislation on these documents'. The Secretary of State said early in his speech that there was nothing dramatic in these proposals. I do not think that any fair-minded person would disagree with that assessment, but I think that a similar fair-minded person would also concur with the sentiments that the right hon. Gentleman expressed in his peroration—that these are matters in which public discussion and public examination are absolutely essential and that what might seem to be very modest beginnings can sometimes have very considerable consequences.

Therefore, I want to make only three observation, one of a constitutional character and two points on the contents of the documents themselves. The first observation I want to make is the indebtedness of this House to my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies) for the fact that this debate is taking place at all, because while the Secretary of State is the acknowledged apostle of open government—I do not for one moment begrudge him his self-sought title—it was the determined pursuit of my right hon. Friend which necessitated these documents being discussed openly on the Floor of the House and, as accident would have it, happily in what I suppose we would call prime parliamentary time.

The more we reflect upon this, the more I hope that there will be a disposition to concur with my right hon. Friend in Early-Day Motion No. 158, in his name, which states: That this House deplores the inadequacy of consideration of important EEC measures, both in Standing Committee and on the Floor of the House; and calls upon the Government, as a matter of urgency, to improve the timing, form and nature of such debates. I hope that the events of this evening will be a happy precursor of much more adequate facilities for the House of Commons to debate these affairs, because we must make it quite clear in our own minds that it is for the House of Commons and Parliament generally to establish a satisfactory relationship with whoever shall be representing this country at the Council of Ministers, because that Council in effect will be the law-making body in respect of the Commission.

This House need have no hesitations in seeking to advise, influence and—dare one say it?—instruct, in respect of energy affairs, especially in this matter. Within the context of the European Community, we are not a supplicant nation. We are in a position to have an active and determining rôle. That is not merely the prerogative of the Treasury Bench. It is the prerogative of Members of this House, to whom the Treasury Bench must eventually answer.

Having dealt with the constitutional point, I turn to the two points of substance which I have selected from the documents. I do not think that anyone examining those documents can have any doubt that the Thirty-Second Report of the House of Lords Committee and the Seventh Report of our own Commons Committee elaborated very considerable reservations about these two documents. They are reservations the validity of which has been underlined by the Secretary of State himself when he said "We are at the beginning of processes which may have very considerable consequences and the public debate cannot begin one moment too soon."

I want to deal with only two points. The first point was to some extent conceded, in a rather generous fashion by the right hon. Gentleman himself—that is, whether the International Atomic Energy Agency might not be the most suitable body to carrying out this form of safety monitoring. We know from the evidence obtained from their Lordships' Report that the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna has a staff of 1,100 and a budget running annually at over £11 million. By contrast, we know that the proposals before us are of immense initial modesty in respect of the additional organisation which will be vested in the Commission. Therefore, one is tempted to ask, with some slight bewilderment, whether this really is the most appropriate way to set about furthering international co-operation in this vital area of nuclear safety.

I cannot but have great sympathy with the hon. Member for Farnworth (Mr. Roper), who, when the Under-Secretary was giving evidence to the Scrutiny Committee, put the following question very fairly: Is it really the best use of our funds and our resources to do this particular thing at the level of the Community rather than in the wider body? It seemed to me a very fair question—from an impeccable source, perhaps I may say in this debate. The Under-Secretary said: I think by the simple fact of geography the answer would be yes. The Under-Secretary will doubtless tell us that he went on to elaborate at some length beyond the facts of geography, but the question, which was placed with devastating simplicity, did not really receive a very reassuring answer. Nothing that I have heard this evening indicates to me that there is any overwhelming necessity to interpose this additional committee.

Indeed, I should like again to refer to the evidence that was offered in their Lordships' Committee by Lord Hinton. In evidence to that Committee, he said: Surely if the present international bodies are in any way falling short of what is required by an expanding nuclear programme, it would be better to strengthen them, if necessary. That is evidence from Lord Hinton, a former Chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board, which in my view constitutes a very formidable contribution which this House would be very unwise to neglect.

Finally, I should like to quote almost a third impeccable source for the restrained scepticism that I am showing, that of Lord O'Hagan, who had been a member of the delegation at Strasbourg in early days. He said: Yes, but the Commission itselt, you would feel, is rather stretched so tar as technical expertise is concerned? In reply to that, the Under-Secretary said: Yes, but it has a lot to draw from. It seems to me that there is a perfectly reasonable case to be made, as was made by both the Scrutiny Committee of our House and by their Lordships, for the proposition that perhaps the wider international agency would be the more appropriate body for this kind of work.

However, I turn now to the second point, which is possibly of more substance. I know not; I do not seek to balance a judgment between the two. Although the numbers involved are immensely small and the funds quite extraordinarily modest—and one says this a week after the publication of our domestic Public Expenditure White Paper, so we have something against which to gauge these things—there is always the feeling—I have to quote a French proverb which I must translate into English for the purposes of order—that it is only the first step that counts. The budget, for all its modesty, acknowledges that it will double between 1976 and 1980, and one has an instinct that it is a pretty good idea of its future trend line, until some super-axe is wielded in an area of public spending where hitherto the axe has not been noticeably wielded. However, I leave that point because the sums involved are extremely modest and I should not wish for one moment to pretend otherwise.

The Scrutiny Committee observed—the Secretary of State referred to this—that Document No. R/2662/75 gives initial priority to aspects concerning light water reactors, which are not a feature of United Kingdom future plans. It is at this point in our debate that I raise a question which is wholly legitimate to raise now, namely, whether the harmonisation of safety becomes a Trojan horse for a standardised European nuclear industry. We cannot avoid that question. It is a question which will be evident in the minds of many outside the House who follow these matters closely. I suspect that they will be grateful that that question has been asked.

I am advised that the Secretary of State is a politician with the most formidable characteristics. I am told that he is an extremist. I put all those whispers to one side. I have only one charge against him this evening, and that is innocence. Innocence, perhaps, could be the most serious of all in matters such as this. I worry for his virtue when he goes across the sea. I suspect that he has just returned from a North American trip where he has been telling his audiences in Washington and elsewhere that participation in the North Sea is something very different from what a number of his hon. Friends below the Gangway had supposed. I am anxious to erase from him any traces of innocence by the processes of this debate.

Mr. Skeet

Would it not be advisable for the Secretary of State to make in the United Kingdom the same speech as he made in the United States?

Mr. Biffen

Yes, but if he made it in this debate it would be ruled out of order.

I return to Annex III of Document No. R/2662/75, which states: Whereas, by aligning safety requirements, the national authorities responsible for nuclear safety and constructors and energy producers will be able to benefit from a harmonized approach to the problem at Community level. It is noteworthy that their Lordships in their examination of the document and of the evidence they took from the Under-Secretary of State concluded: The Commission argue that the present tendency for Member States' safety techniques to develop separately may result both in varying levels of safety and in new non-tariff barriers. They continued: Progressive 'standardisation' of design, manufacturing procedures, safety standards and quality control are therefore needed which should increase the nuclear industry's profitability and perhaps lead to better relations with the public in the Community as well as with countries outside. It will not be lost on hon. Members that there is reference there to manufacturing procedures. The House would be well advised to consider some of the implications of these proposals when they are applied against the real world context of nuclear design and manufacture throughout the European Community.

I can do no better than to quote again from an impeccably dispassionate source, namely, the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer). He may recollect speaking in a debate in this House on Community energy policy last year. My quotation will be of some length, but that is merely my tribute to the hon. Gentleman. He said: The Americans have more or less a monopoly, direct or under licence, of the European market with their light-water reactor. The British decision to use the heavy-water technique backed by the considerable resources of Canada means that we should be urging our partners in the EEC to take development of the British heavy-water reactor as seriously as they take the American version. We do not want to cause unnecessary fear, but there are much greater risks with LWRs than with other types. The hon. Gentleman concluded: Therefore the argument for diversity of reactor type in Europe as elsewhere is a very strong one, and it is the business of British Ministers to urge the adoption of this approach within the EEC.—[Official Report, 11th February 1975; Vol. 885, c. 263.] I am delighted to have the hon. Gentleman's assent, because early in the speech he described himself as a "low-profile European". We have only to ask ourselves this question: to what extent may the philosophy of diversity clash with the philosophy of harmonisation particularly where the Commission, in the language of the Under-Secretary of State, is to be a catalyst, presumably with a view to producing a much wider degree of uniformity than might otherwise exist?

We appreciate the remarks which the Secretary of Slate made initially about the great importance that the public attach to nuclear safety. I am sure that when he made those remarks he was conscious of their Lordships' conclusion after examining the documents. I quote: Standardisation generally, as proposed by the Commission, must imply that decisions will be taken centrally and, therefore, by an agency remote from the public affected. In making that judgment, their Lordships were drawing upon the evidence submitted by Dr. N. L. Franklin of the Nuclear Power Company Limited. In the light of that, I am sure the right hon. Gentleman would agree with me that decisions must be seen to be taken by authorities which are as close as possible to the public affected. Perhaps most important of all, we know that shortly he will be going to the Council of Ministers to do battle—that is a reality—to ensure that the Joint European Torus is sited at Culham and not at Ispra. On this occasion we ask him not to do battle in the sense that there will be gore all over the floor and the ceiling at the Council of Ministers.

We know that the issue at stake is not of that magnitude, but there are a number of pertinent questions that this House in all charity and amicability should put to the Secretary of State. The very fact that there will be no Division this evening underlines the constructive way that this debate is being handled. The very fact that the right hon. Gentleman will accept the amendment in the name of my hon. Friends and myself again underlines that this is a House of Commons occasion.

However, three questions must be asked. First, is this particular pursuit of harmonisation necessary or are there not other agencies which provide a thoroughly adequate alternative? Secondly, is this modest expenditure, however it is shunted around within the accounts, justified, and, would it have provided the same kind of scrutiny as the Chancellor of the Exchequer has been carrying out on other sectors of the Government's domestic programme? I have not sought to translate the sums into the number of nursery schools—that is the kind of petty political point that I shall put on one side. The scrutiny of public spending by the Community must at least in part proceed from this House, or at the end of the day it will be this House which will have to vote a great deal of taxation that will go into the general Community fund.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)

No, we do not vote it.

Mr. Biffen

I am sure that my right hon. Friend will make his own contribution to the debate, but perhaps he will allow me to come to my peroration.

Third, there is the fear which I have expressed that nuclear standardisation could be a hidden danger which would imperil our own distinctive nuclear technology. This Parliament has an obligation to perceive and to proclaim the national interest, and to ensure that the Minister secures those interests within the Community of nation States. The work of the Select Committees in this instance has shown that Parliament can do this task in detail and with a dispassionate analysis and comment. It is now for the Secretary of State to match their advice with his action in the Council of Ministers.

6.51 p.m.

Dr. John A. Cunningham (Whitehaven)

Like other hon. Members present, I have a nuclear installation in my constituency. In my case it is the Windscale and Calder Hall plant, possibly the most sensitive nuclear installation in the United Kingdom.

I agree with the Secretary of State about the great and developing public concern about the nuclear industry and the need for a more open and informed debate of the issues. I subscribe to that view. It is in the best interests of the industry itself that the debate should develop in such a way. However, I add one word of caution. My right hon. Friend should distinguish between a genuine desire to debate the issue and the use of those techniques to oppose any development of the industry. There is a fair amount of that going on.

I welcome the opportunity to discuss these Community problems and I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen). The hon. Gentleman spoke about every nuclear issue except disarmament in his wide-ranging and typically idiosyncratic speech. If I were in any doubt about whether I should be ruled out of order in some of the remarks that I want to make, I am no longer in doubt after his speech.

Mr. Speaker

Do not be too sure.

Dr. Cunningham

Perhaps that reflects the different view which the Chair takes of Back Benchers and Front Benchers.

I welcome these documents as I do any further attempt at co-operation which will bring added knowledge in nuclear safety. They are modest documents, both in scope and in intent. I hope that other hon. Members too will have noted that in each case the explanatory memorandum says that there will be no impact on United Kingdom law. This is very important. If, as the hon. Member for Oswestry was perhaps hinting, the suggestion had been that our own Nuclear Installations Inspectorate should be downgraded, that would have been a matter for grave concern, probably for outright opposition. I should not have subscribed to it and I am pleased to know that it will not happen.

It was of paramount importance that our inspectorate was not prepared to license light-water reactors in the United Kingdom at least until there had been a thorough study of the designs, which was so important in the debate and the subsequent decision about reactor choice. It is important for us not only to build upon but to maintain the independence of our inspectorate under the Health and Safety Commission because of the tremendous knowledge we have developed in safety matters.

There has been some discussion also about whether harmonisation of safety rules and standards would somehow lead to harmonisation of the industry as a whole in Europe. It is almost too late for that. It is certainly too late for the most part for the development of nuclear fission reactors. We have gone our own way with gas-cooled technology and we are still going our own way in Europe—although we have co-operated with the Canadians—in terms of steam-generating reactors. I should have thought that it was impossible now for the European industry to be harmonised in the development of fission reactors.

Harmonisation would be possible with fast-breeder reactors. It is well known within the industry and outside, in politics, that the French and the Germans in the recent past made approaches to us about developing joint programmes of work on fast breeders. I am disappointed that we have not been able to respond. Participation in that kind of work is surely a principal argument for membership of the EEC. If we cannot cooperate in the Community—I too speak as a low-profile European—on this kind of expensive high technology, there is little point in trying to co-operate within the EEC on energy matters at all. Far from not wanting some joint approach in that area, I should welcome it.

It is important, particularly with fast breeders, for us to decide in the not-too-distant future about the line we should adopt in the United Kingdom. I should have thought that the Government could soon be announcing their intention to order a commercial fast-breeder reactor so that those industries associated with the construction could order their developmental work accordingly. If, under European co-operation, we can learn from the French or Germans about the safety of this kind of reactor, so much the better. It is a matter of record now that a very modest outlay is involved. If we could gain in safety knowledge, the expenditure would be more than justified.

There have been one or two references to what the Select Committee said about this kind of co-operation. I should have thought that most, if not all, of the literature here is published in any event. The references to commercial information are a separate matter. Obviously that is not published, and there is no reason why the full details of commercial information should be made available in the exchange of ideas about safety. Therefore, although one recognises the need for commercial security, that is not a major objection to cooperation.

I hope that the House, in taking note of these documents, will ratify the Government's decision to co-operate within the EEC on matters of nuclear safety. Even allowing for our participation in other international agencies which are much more important, much more able, much better financed and much better served technically and scientifically, there is nothing to be lost by this sort of cooperation. I wholeheartedly support the idea.

7.0 p.m.

Mr. John Davies (Knutsford)

I am grateful for the opportunity of contributing to this debate. I wish first to speak on behalf of the Select Committee which considered these matters and benefited from the advice of the Under-Secretary of State for Energy. The Committee realised that the proposals put to the Community were in themselves relatively modest. The Committee did not suggest that the instruments were of earth-shattering importance, but the issue the Committee had in mind was of great importance. Even if one believes that the minimal programme of the Community for the displacement of imported energy is being realised, the weight of the programme depending on the development of nuclear electricity is formidable.

The Commission has put forward proposals for an optimum programme to try to reach a position where no less than 40 per cent. of the total energy needs of the Community would be found indigenously by 1985, and it is hoped that by that stage 50 per cent. of needs would be so secured. The prospects of doing so are doubtful, but if the lower level were to be attained, the impact on the growth of the nuclear industry would be phenomenal, indeed. The proposals, modest though they are, are related to what must be an immense, growing activity industrially and financially in the next decade. The Select Committee, partly for that reason, thought that these matters were of the utmost importance. Because they involve research intentions in terms of safety of installations, they are of prime importance to all people in the Community.

Nuclear safety is not confined by national frontiers. There are problems of a major character that transcend national frontiers. Therefore, it is unreal to imagine that we can conduct a nationalist programme of nuclear safety which would not prove to be safety in a real sense.

The Select Committee's task is not to pass opinions about the validity of proposals by the Commission to the Council of Ministers. It is to seek to draw the attention of the House to what seems important in those proposals and, when it has reservations, to express them because it feels that hitherto there may not have been an adequate degree of exposure in the House of the issues concerned. Therefore, I wish to underline to the Secretary of State for Energy in view of his remarks today that there is no question of the Scrutiny Committee having passed judgment on these instruments. The Committee is incapable of doing so, and would not seek to do so.

There are two aspects of these proposals to which I should like to return. Reference has been made to the competence of the Community, particularly in the framework of the instruments, and the scale now proposed to handle what undoubtedly is primarily a question of research. Is the Community competent in these respects? Will it attain competence in the light of these instruments? Will the Community be able to hold up its head in international discussions on research programmes? Will it be able to secure the degree of competence of opposite numbers in any discussions?

I regard those matters as questionable because of the co-ordination of research on this scale. In the light of experience in this country to date, are we entitled to imagine that the Community will be a profound force in nuclear safety matters? I call in doubt whether the modesty of the proposals argues in their favour. Indeed, it may argue substantially against that body being competent and backed by the resources needed to handle such a substantial question.

I ask whether the Community, backed by these instruments, has the organisation to handle the kind of operation with which we are concerning ourselves. I am a believer in the Community and also a believer in the nuclear programme and the compatibility of national programmes. However, I do not share the opinion that we should have a rigid, strait-jacket nuclear system in the Community. It seems to me likely that it will develop in a more flexible way although it also seems that in the longer term that there is a probability of development of the fast-breeder reactor as the best form of electrical generator in the Community in the latter part of the 1980s and early 1990s. If the Community is to frame a co-ordinated development, it is necessary to make good the indigenous resources of the Community rather than to rely too heavily on continuing imports of the majority of its calories for a research programme to make such a programme a valid force in any discussions.

I turn to a matter which hitherto has not been discussed and which seems to me of substantial importance. It is true that the Secretary of State thought it invalid at this stage to contemplate any variation in the budgetary system. I do not think that that is a practical proposition in regard to these instruments, but I strongly suspect that in the future the developers of the great nuclear systems will regard safety requirements and safety know-how as not insubstantial parts of the technical package. I believe that in future they will be prepared to put questions of safety know-how alongside the questions of major know-how in terms of plant and systems.

One would need to be convinced about the wisdom of pursuing a Community programme by pooling some of the painfully acquired knowledge of the last generation. Let us examine the matter from a commercial point of view. Commerce has managed to possess itself of a degree of expertise in vital areas of generation of power for the future. It has mastered the technical aspects. Should it consider making that knowledge available in terms of a pooling operation when the input of other members may be substantially less? I do not think the budgetary system of the Community enters into the argument. We would be contributing research experience which has been gathered together in this country at great cost, expense and effort. I gather from evidence given to the Select Committee and from discussions with the Under-Secretary of State for Energy that this problem has not ranked for consideration in framing the instrument. That appears to be irrational.

I am a good, true European, but there is no need for a good, true European to empty his pockets unnecessarily in favour of those who sit around him. I do not see the object of that. I prefer a straightforward commercial attitude in such matters when great commercial costs are involved. When I look back on the history of the country in the post-war years I am constantly faced with the extraordinary experience of our developing formidable projects and seeing them develop fatally into marketable projects elsewhere, out of our pockets and with scant return on the cost of our research. I find that unacceptable. Both I and the Select Committee felt that this was a matter which at least warranted an explanation. The Committee did not get one and has not yet got one. I therefore look forward to clarification from the Under-Secretary. The issue was put to him clearly on several occasions during his discussions with the Committee, but no adequate reply has been received.

Dr. John A. Cunningham

It will be within the right hon. Gentleman's memory that when he was Minister for Europe he came before the Select Committee on Science and Technology and adduced as one of his reasons for being pro-European his anticipation of sharing high-cost technological developments of this kind. What he has been saying today seems to contradict that.

Mr. Davies

No.

Dr. Cunningham

Would not the right hon. Gentleman also agree that most of the knowledge on the subject of reactor design is already in the literature on the current types of reactor in use?

Mr. Davies

We are dealing here with nuclear safety. There has been an enormous amount of work undertaken in this country and in others, not least the United States, and it is to be hoped that the degree of knowledge and experience accumulated here will prove a valuable means of exchange for equivalent knowledge available in the United States, certainly growing in the next decade in relation to those reactors in which we specialise, against those in which they specialise. I cannot agree that the desire actively to pursue a co-operative research programme automatically means that one begins by making available the totality of one's knowledge in exchange for a negligible counterpart from others. That is not my view of sharing a research programme. One seeks to start off on a fair basis for the input of information and where that is not practicable because there is an absence of information in one area, one gives reasonable compensation. That is the basis on which most international co-operation on scientific research has taken place in the past.

That does not imply that I am a renegade European—far from it. But let us at least do it on a rational basis. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will assure us that that is precisely what the Government intend to do.

7.14 p.m.

Mr. Frank Hooley (Sheffield, Heeley)

This matter should have come before the Select Committee on Science and Technology under the admirable chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer) rather than before the Scrutiny Committee. We have not yet developed the right technique in this House for handling European matters. On issues such as this that are technical the Select Committee on Science and Technology would have been more appropriate. The study made by the Scrutiny Committee was, however, pertinent and helpful to the debate. I understand that the House of Lords Select Committee has power to consider not merely what is called legislation but also resolutions.

The origin of this matter was a resolution by the Council of Ministers, and the House has been brought in at the second stage of the game when ideally it should have been concerned at an earlier stage. I understand, however, that the terms of reference of the Scrutiny Committee cover only legislation.

Mr. John Davies

That is not so. The Scrutiny Committee has full access to and right to report on all matters which are constituted by documents passing from the Commission to the Council of Ministers, be they instruments of legislation or consultative documents with the resolutions attached. In this case the instrument flows, as the hon. Gentleman rightly says, from earlier consultative documents which we draw to the attention of the House as being matters of importance. Although they were part of a non-legislative instrument at the time, they were part of a whole which embraced a forward look at the Community's energy policy.

Mr. Hooley

I accept the right hon. Gentleman's explanation. I was under the impression that the Scrutiny Committee could concern itself only with secondary legislation. If it can also deal with the decisions of the Council of Ministers, I am reassured. As the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) hinted, we are dealing with a syndrome, a technological juggernaut which seems innocent and straightforward in the early stages but which builds up until one is unable to stop a development in high technology which, for other reasons, one might wish had never been begun. A classic example is Concorde, which arose from a contract between the British and the French signed by the Conservative Government and from which the Labour Government found they could not retract.

In the second of the documents before us there appears to be the implied assumption that the fast-breeder reactor must go ahead and that we must set up coordinating machinery to look at the safety aspects of that project because it will go ahead anyway and be the Community's future source of power. It implies that we need to take the first step and to proceed steadily and inevitably down the road which is being questioned in all parts of the world.

There is a drastic difference between the United Kingdom's energy position and that of the other members of the EEC We have massive reserves of coal, oil and natural gas. We have a potential in tidal power and we may have a potential in wave power if it becomes technologically possible. In addition we have our vast knowledge in the nuclear field. I have the impression that in Brussels in the last 12 to 18 months there has been a panic decision to rush towards nuclear power because it has been felt to be the way to dish OPEC and to deal with the Arabs. This is a violent, almost hysterical reaction to the quadrupling of oil prices, which has led to the decision on the Continent for a programme designed to quadruple in 10 years the output of nuclear energy.

My modest reading on the subject leads me to believe that that is virtually impossible anyway, though this thinking seems to lie behind some of the documents. There seems to be a school of thought in Brussels that if the Community wants successfully to rush through this panic programme of nuclear power over the next decade it will have to draw on United Kingdom know-how.

We should think very carefully before taking the first step which is implicit in the documents. It has already been pointed out that the light-water reactor system which is being used across the Channel is not the system for which this country has opted. We have gone for the SGHWR instead. It has also been pointed out that there are already high-powered international bodies which are perfectly adequate for exchanging information and resources between nations. For example, there are the International Energy Agency and the International Atomic Energy Agency. I understand that there is also a Nuclear Energy Agency which is a subordinate body of OECD. Within such bodies are available the experience and resources of countries such as France, Germany and Italy as well as the United Kingdom and the United States.

We must remember that the international exchange of knowledge and experience may well be helpful and constructive but can sometimes be negative and flash a few warning lights. It seems to me that the warning lights are flashing in the United States, where both the economics and the safety aspects of nuclear power are becoming the subject of acute controversy. We should be unwise to take no notice of those controversies and some of the things which highly expert people in the United States are beginning to say. It would be unwise to join a narrower grouping in Western Europe to deal with such matters as the safety of nuclear installations when there is vast experience elsewhere and when we already have the three bodies I have mentioned, which have great resources and where, to the best of my knowledge, no special limitations are placed on the exchange of information.

To underline my points about the controversey in the United States, I shall quote from a report in the Financial Times of 19th February, in which David Bell says: Three nuclear scientists who earlier this months resigned their jobs with General Electric of the U.S. told a Congressional committee to-day that many of the nation's atomic power plants 'do not meet Federal safety standards and should be shut down.'.… Apart from the three GE scientists, an official with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, which oversees the nation's nuclear installations, has also resigned.… Both environmentalists and the industry are … waiting to see the result of a referendum in California in June 8 which could severely restrict the freedom of operation of companies seeking to build nuclear plants in the state. One can infer too much or too little from those straws in the wind, but if a State the size of California, with roughly the population of the United Kingdom, considers that the safety of nuclear installations is so important that the matter should go to a referendum, somebody at any rate thinks that it is a question on which there should be serious debate and that it is a cause for concern.

I come to Document No. R/2663, which deals particularly with the fast-breeder reactors. It is here that I am most afraid of the first step which has been mentioned and of the technological juggernaut syndrome of which I spoke. The covering note to the document, kindly produced by the Department of Energy suggests that the long-term objective is to ensure the commercial introduction of fast-breeder reactors on a Community basis. In other words, the document envisages the beginning of a process of co-ordination of information, certainly on safety—an innocent topic to begin with—which will gradually, perhaps almost imperceptibly, lead us down the road to a Community system of nuclear reactors and, what is worse, a system about which there is considerable public controversy in this country and elsewhere.

To substantiate what I have said about controversy, I wish to read from a letter from Sir Brian Flowers, FRS, Chairman of the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister on the subject of the fast-breeder reactors. In that letter dated 14th November 1975, he says: we are not yet persuaded that the energy needs of the UK in the next 30–50 years (bearing in mind the tremendous difficulties and uncertainties in making such projections) are such as unavoidably to require the deployment of the FBRs of on a massive scale. … At present the FBR raises serious fundamental difficulties. There are the dangers associated with the management of highly radioactive waste. There are unresolved problems of the stability of the reactor itself (which appears in important respects to be qualitatively different from the stability of a thermal reactor). There are the hazards associated with the need to process large amounts of plutonium, and the possibility of sabotage or theft, especially during transport. Sir Brian says that if a demonstration station is set up It should not be viewed as a commercially competitive power station. The demonstration station should be remotely sited; it should have its own fuel reprocessing and fabrication plant on site in order to remove the security risks of the shipment of plutonium; it should be provided with every means of protection, including both physical devices and an armed security force". The critical point in the letter is: We are, however, concerned that a massive investment of money and technological effort in a large-scale demonstration of the FBR system might make the ultimate choice of a fast reactor programme seem inevitable. In other words, we must proceed with immense caution in this matter or we shall find ourselves going steadily down the Concorde path, finding that we have neither the political will not the economic sense to turn back, even though it is obvious that we are getting into an economic and technical quagmire.

That kind of attitude is not confined to this country. I have already referred to experience in the United States, and I shall quote from the International Herald Tribune of 16th February, which states that the possibility of a nuclear explosion in experimental reactors, a source of power that the Ford administration and most US nuclear officials feel is essential to the continued growth of nuclear energy, was contained in a report written March 13 by Stephen H. Hanauer, one of the most senior technical experts on the staff of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Mr. Hanauer states: This would be nothing like an atomic bomb but would involve a vast release of energy … such an accident, however, most agreed, could lead to the breaching of the reactor's containment capacity and to the injection into the atmosphere of vaporised plutonium. A further concern was that liquefied plutonium might somehow reach underground sources of drinking water. One does not have to accept the views of Sir Brian Flowers, of Mr. Hanauer or of other senior nuclear scientists, but the fact that these views are expressed by people of this standing, causing an immense public debate which is developing in the United States—and, I suspect, will develop in this country—should cause this House to pause before agreeing to modest expenditures of £50,000 on setting up co-ordinating committees whose end, the documents says, is the long-term objective to secure the commercial introduction of fast-breeder reactors.

Safety is not the only consideration. There are questions of radiation protection, the transport of nuclear materials and the danger of terrorism—which may seem remote, although I understand that there have been terrorist incidents in Germany and in France, so that the matter cannot be entirely ignored. There is the question of the management of radioactive waste and the problem of reprocessing.

On this matter of reprocessing I want to draw attention to what seems to me to be a slightly less than frank attitude on the part of the BNFL. In a document which the BNFL published on 10th November last year—presumably some sort of PR hand-out—it is stated: Reprocessing is a well-established technology based on chemical treatment. The objective is to recover the commercially valuable uranium and plutonium …". I repeat: Reprocessing is a well-established technology". A layman like myself might come to the conclusion that, while it may be complicated, we can control it and it is nothing to get excited about. But, oddly enough, only four days before that document was published, on 6th November 1975, Sir John Hill, the man who inherited the mantle of Sir William Penney, who was Chairman of British Nuclear Fuels, and who knows as much about this technology as any man in the United Kingdom, said this about reprocessing in the Cockcroft lecture, reported in the journal Atom in January 1976: To turn now to reprocessing, I think it is fair to say that processing highly irradiated fuel from commercial power stations is very much more difficult than anyone imagined ten years ago. At that time all the countries that had been undertaking reprocessing thought that they understood what was required and apart perhaps from finding better ways of chopping the fuel prior to dissolution all that was required was to build larger plants. It is not like that at all… The blowback incident at Windscale just over two years ago was due in part to our not appreciating all the differences in processing more highly irradiated fuel. He then went on to talk about certain technical details concerning ruthenium, rhodium, technetium agglomerate particles and so on, which I confess are over my head.

It is quite clear from what Sir John Hill was saying that the combination of the much higher activity levels, a more difficult and less homogeneous material to process and, above all, increasingly strict effluent and environmental limitations have combined to make life very difficult for the reprocessor. On the economic side, the cost will be very much higher than was thought a few years ago. At today's uranium prices the value of the recovered fuel will not cover the cost of reprocessing. I am not in a position to judge between the BNFL Press hand-out and Sir John Hill, but, from my reading of that extract from his speech, it means that this reprocessing, which is part of the fast-breeder system, is far more complex than some people have given us to imagine, and certainly far more complex than the publicity boys of BNFL want us to imagine. To that extent, I think that more discussion and more public debate are required on this matter.

I think it is right that we should spend a lot of time on this issue. Nuclear safety is becoming more and more a sensitive topic in the public mind. What is going on in the United States makes it clear that there are differences of opinion and different schools of thought about safety, about economics and about the techniques of nuclear power. That does not mean that we must abandon the idea or that we do not wish to pursue this or that system, but it does mean that we need to maintain a very rigorous control over what we are doing in this country and take no steps that would appear to downgrade or modify that control.

Secondly, it would be much better for this country to pursue the already well-established powerful international cooperation among the genuine international agencies rather than go wandering down the path to a rosy little coterie in Brussels.

7.36 p.m.

Mr. A.G.F. Hall-Davis (Morecambe and Lonsdale)

I welcome this debate and I particularly welcome the terms in which the Government have drawn the motion, because I am interested in this subject from a constituency and safety point of view.

When I heard that we were to debate the two EEC documents, I could see myself engaged in one of those rather undignified games of hide and seek, trying to keep within the bounds of order while making my case. The motion, I am glad to see, refers to the importance which the Government attaches to matters of nuclear safety and I can assure the Secretary of State, whom I am delighted to see in his place, that my constituents certainly attach great importance to matters of nuclear safety.

We have in Heysham an AGR nuclear generating station at what I think, in relative terms, one would call an advanced stage of construction. As the hon. Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham), to whom I listened with interest, knows, our constituencies adjoin and the northern part of my constituency is not very far removed from the British Nuclear Fuels plant at Windscale.

The Secretary of State said that he was surprised that the country had been so slow in developing public debate. I am not surprised. I shoulder my modest share of responsibility for the fact, because we have given far too little of what my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) called prime parliamentary time to this issue. I am therefore particularly grateful to my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies) and the Select Committee on Science and Technology who have batted on behalf of the whole House of Commons over the years to an extent that I have followed with great interest and appreciation. However, by the very nature of our proceedings, they could not make quite the same general impact as would proceedings on the Floor of the House.

My assessment of the bewilderment—I do not think that that is too strong a word—of the general public on this question of nuclear safety is that if the explanations have not been confused, they have been far too fragmented when the Government and Government Departments have come to deal with the question of safeguards for those who may be affected by our nuclear programme. The Secretary of State also said that the United Kingdom and other EEC countries had developed satisfactory standards for existing systems, and he mentioned our long experience in these matters, going back to the 1950s. Yet my constituents do not know where to find a comprehensive explanation of how these safety systems and checks are operated.

There are some elementary questions on nuclear safety which they want answered in simple, layman's terms and in a comprehensive document. Among their questions are how and by whom safety factors in reactor design are assessed. I know that I am speaking in the presence of hon. Members who know these things very well, but I can assure them that the general public do not know much about what is familiar ground to those hon. Members.

How have successive Secretaries of State assessed safety factors in taking decisions on reactor siting and by whom they they were advised? This is particularly pertinent for my constituents, because Heysham is the nearest station to major centres of populations, with tens of thousands of people living in Morecambe and Lancaster within a mile or so of the station. Many of my constituents will have families affected and they want to know how the safety of workers in the station and those living near the plant will be protected. I know that these seem elementary points to some hon. Members, but people also want to know the nature of the risks to which they might be exposed and the health consequences if the highly unlikely should happen.

They feel that they should have had earlier and franker explanations of the problem of residual radioactive material when a plant is finally closed. When the working life of a plant is over—and this will be within the lifetimes of many younger people—there will be some radioactive material that will have to be sealed off on the site. This presents a picture which must cause people to think seriously about the morality of such an operation.

The public also wants to know why we are engaged on re-processing spent fuel for other countries. We know that there are very good reasons, which are to be discussed over the next few months, but people want to know why Britain is undertaking this work. This is of particular significance to my constituents, for spent fuel travels through my con- stituency from Barrow-in-Furness, where it is landed.

One avenue has been opened which, if utilised, could provide a way of making clear the information and procedures about which I have been speaking. This explanatory and watchdog rôle could be a valuable service for the Health and Safety Commission. This is a new body and, while I am not suggesting that it should become a defender of advances into the new frontiers of technology, it could explain the checks in being and what is being done to see that they are operating effectively.

I received a favourable answer from the Secretary of State when I asked that the Commission's annual report should include a section on nuclear safety, its comments and any matters brought to its attention. Instead of the lengthy technical letters I have had from Ministers, with their piecemeal replies and comments—I do not say that in a derogatory sense—we should have as a matter of urgency a comprehensive safety manual showing exactly what safeguards are operated and by whom. I hope that the next time this question is raised we shall be told that a proper working relationship has been established between the Nuclear Safety Executive and the new Health and Safety Commission. This is important.

I am conscious of my own inadequacy and that of most other hon. Members, to make a judgment on many of these issues, but all hon. Members have a very heavy personal responsibility in these matters when their constituencies are affected. I have endeavoured to find out what bodies are involved and who serves on them. There are numerous bodies and their members are men of high personal and scientific reputation. In a free and democratic country, I am sure that if one of those men were deeply concerned about safety aspects, he would speak out. I have no qualms on that score. The bodies are of such a kind that they constitute a real protection. But that does not relieve the general public from the difficulty of sifting these issues for themselves.

For instance, it was a long time before many of my constituents realised that the nuclear technology in the power station being built at Heysham was not that which was causing so much discussion on the other side of the Atlantic. That was not understood by them when television and the other media started to deal with these issues.

There is a continuing need for reassurance and for probing and examination by the House. Tonight I am asking that when we have procedures built up over the years, operated by men of integrity, good standing and great knowledge, the public should be able to follow them clearly and simply and understand what has been done by successive Administrations to protect them from the risks they may not be qualified to assess but which we all know can arise in nuclear power generation.

7.49 p.m.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell (Down, South)

This is, in the terms of the motion, a debate on matters of nuclear safety; but it is also, equally in the terms of the motion, a debate whereby this House, by taking note, approves what is a working and effective document of the European Economic Community.

During the 18 months or so that we have been having debates of this kind, though usually at a less reasonable hour, it has constantly been observed that we seem to get back over and again from the debate on the proposition immediately before the House to the fundamental issue of the membership of the European Economic Community by the United Kingdom. It is sometimes suggested that that is because those of us who are opposed to membership take the opportunity of making these debates a field day for the purpose; but usually it is possible to observe that it is those who are on both sides of that divide who find themselves obliged to move on from the immediate proposition, from the documents directly under the examination of the House, to consideration of the fundamentals. There is something about the fact of the House taking note—even more, of the House approving—of documents and legislation of the EEC that forces us, whether we want to do it or not, to examine again the nature of our commitment and the effect of that commitment upon the House.

I cannot this evening be accused of having dragged this topic into the debate, for my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) opened his contri- bution to it by a glowing panegyric to the supremacy of the House of Commons and the undiminished responsibility and powers of the House of Commons. My hon. Friend has every right to utter that panegyric, and it does my heart good to hear him repeat from that position of somewhat greater responsibility and inhibition what he has said over and over again from these Benches.

My hon. Friend was not one of those who voted to surrender the exclusive legislative and taxing power of the House. He was one of those who from beginning to end of the debate—and, so far as I know, until this present time—maintained intact his defence of the supremacy of Parliament—I notice that the custom is creeping back of referring to that supremacy as the "sovereignty" of Parliament—although speaking this evening to an entirely innocuous motion and amendment.

I invite the House to consider how far what we are doing even in this debate is consistent with the arbitrament and the sovereignty of the House of Commons. Several hon. Members who have spoken—notably the hon. Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley)—pointed out that this modest—my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry called it a tremendously modest—proposal is nevertheless the beginning of something very large and that we commit ourselves very deeply by the even tacit approval which I think it is the inclination of the House to give.

That decision will not again return to the Floor of the House. With great respect, my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry fell into error—a venial error—when he said that in due course the House would be asked to vote the cost of these research projects. He will recall that these are not expenditures which the House votes and that once the project has been approved—not by us, but by the Council of Ministers—the apportionment and the laying upon our taxpayers of whatever expenditure results follows automatically. So we are confronted with the incompatibility, even upon this minute scale, of the very principle of this organisation with the assertion of the control of the House over the law and the taxes of this country.

Much more interesting is the case of the right hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies). He, too—very deservedly—on behalf of his Committee and himself personally has received the meed of praise which has never failed in these debates for the work which the Select Committee on European Secondary Legislation does for the House. Now, the right hon. Gentleman is not merely a confessed but an exultant supporter not only of British membership of the EEC as it is but of what the Community professes to intend to develop into. The notion of political and economic union as the outcome of our membership does not shock the right hon. Gentleman. Indeed, he regards it as the ultimate justification for all these earlier stages and procedures.

That being so, I was particularly interested to read the grounds upon which he and his Committee had been left with reservations which they thought should be communicated to the House in the context of these instruments and which they believed merited debate. These were that the efficacy of centralised Community handling might compare unfavourably with that arising from national treatment; that in the United Kingdom's case information had been obtained at considerable national effort and expense; that it was not clear whether information of demonstrably commercial value which we owned was likely to be compromised by pooling; that one of the documents gave initial priority to aspects which were not a feature of United Kingdom future plans; that consideration on a wider international basis than the Community one now suggested might be felt appropriate.

I do not intend to put too much weight upon mere wording; but every one of those considerations is a national consideration. It is a consideration which looks at these proposals and their consequence from the point of view of the nation state. Even the view which quite a number of participants in the debate have taken, that this is a matter better handled in a wider international forum, in the forum of more states than are comprised in the EEC, is itself the point of view of the national state; for nationalism is not necessarily, and certainly should not be, inconsistent with the widest and deepest co-operation and understanding between nation states.

Yet the concept of the EEC legislation which binds this House—and, it so happens, the very documents which we are considering—rests upon the assumption that the nation state, and in particular the United Kingdom as a nation state, is obsolescent and is in course of being absorbed into the structure of the EEC. Sure enough, that is what we find upon the face of these documents.

In his memorandum to the House upon them the Secretary of State has in each case said that the document will not do very much for United Kingdom safety. In one document he states: It is not expected that the proposal would have a significant effect on existing United Kingdom safety standards. In the other document there is a similar expression: It is not expected that any significant changes in United Kingdom safety standards will be required. In other words, no direct contribution from this activity towards the standards and the practice of safety here in the United Kingdom is anticipated. However, the hon. Member for Heeley put his finger upon the really significant sentence, the key to the whole business, when he quoted the sentence—and I quote the words again because they are worth quoting again— The long-term objective is to provide the software"— I take it that that is a word which, in the purer language of William Shakespeare, would have been "know-how"— to ensure the commercial introduction of fast reactors on a Community basis". The ultimate objective of all that is being introduced on the front of safety is that the Community as the Community—the words are "on a Community basis"—shall set up in the nuclear business on the basis of fast reactors. I repeat the words, the commercial introduction of fast reactors on a Community basis". This debate comes a week or two before our first consideration in this House of a further legislative step which will further mark the absorption of the United Kingdom, as a nation, into the European Economic Community. I refer, of course, to the question of direct elections to the European Assembly by the electorate of the United Kingdom. Whether hon. Members will vote for or against that, the House should recognise that we are insufficiently clear, as yet, and we are therefore insufficiently clear with our partners in the Community, as to what we really mean by our membership.

Even tonight we shall allow a document to receive what will be regarded as approval when it is perfectly clear that the long-term objects which lie behind it are not accepted by many hon. Members on both sides of the House. There can be no advantage for this country or for any other in that degree of unclarity. There can be no advantage, no justification, in our moving forward from one stage to another of absorption into the Community with mental reservations on our part—ever deeper mental reservations—which are not understood and not shared by others who will misinterpret our actions.

Therefore, I believe that this motion, although in itself it is concerned with nuclear safety, ought to be used as one further occasion for forcing ourselves, by debate in this House, to say what it is that we intend for the relationship of this country with the EEC and whether we are really heart and soul assenting to what we appear to have done in the Act of 1972, to what we appear to have affirmed by the referendum of last year, and to what we may be about to do by the decision this year, next year or the year after on the question of direct elections.

No, it is not in the deeper sense an abuse of the functions of this House—if it were an abuse of order you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, would of course have stopped it long ago—nor a misuse of these debates when we find, again and again, as tonight, that they bring us back to the central question. They do that only because the question is not yet settled.

8.6 p.m.

Mr. Arthur Palmer (Bristol, North-East)

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) has spoken with his usual eloquence and penetration, and very sincerely from his point of view. However, I am not at all sure whether it is possible successfully to argue a present case in a retrospective context.

The debate has been interesting in many ways and I should like to congratulate the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) on his speech. His speech today was the first I have heard him make from the Opposition Front Bench. It was most colourful and was delivered with great feeling and enthusiasm. It was slightly nationalistic in tone, although I do not object to that, and it was the kind of speech which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy might have made himself about a year ago. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will agree that that is high praise indeed, as, I am sure, would my right hon. Friend. However let me assure the House if I praise the hon. Gentleman's speech it is not because he was good enough to quote me at length.

As my right hon. Friend said when opening the debate, the United Kingdom is well to the front in all nuclear matters. It is important that we should keep our lead. I know the difficulties with the French concerning nuclear fission technology. They started off, as we did, and as we are continuing to do, with the gas-cooled technology. They did not make much of a success of it and they allowed themselves to be sold out to the Americans or to the American companies, which have captured the French and European markets generally with the light-water reactor. As the French have placed themselves in that situation, they would like to drag us the same way.

As I argued on a previous occasion, there is no reason why, if there is to be a standard technology for Europe—I am not so sure that it is necessary, I think diversity is probably better—it might not as well be on the British model. It could continue with the gas-cooled system and perhaps later move on to the heavy-water system rather than adopt permanently the very doubtful technology of the American light-water reactor.

I repeat that it is most important that this country should keep the lead which it has had for a long time. This is certainly true in respect of the nuclear fission processes such as the Magnox reactor and now the AGR. We have Hinkly Point, part of which is now commissioned, and I noticed in the Financial Times this morning that David Fishlock, the science editor, said that it was likely that the AGR would yield comparatively cheap electricity because of the general rise in fuel prices. That is good news, because it is at least some compensation for the time it has taken to develop the advanced gas-cooled reactor.

At any rate, this country is ahead when it comes to nuclear fission processes. It is important that we keep that lead. I agree with the observations of my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Heeley (Mr. Hooley), who serves with me on the Select Committee for Science and Technology, about fast breeders. I am doubtful whether the fast breeders will be commercially available in the near future if only for the reason that in a previous incarnation when I represented Cleveland in North Yorkshire I made a speech on nuclear matters—it was my last speech before my defeat, but I hope that I was not defeated on account of that—and I was assured by the Minister of the day, a Conservative, that we should have fast-breeder reactors in commercial operation by the early 1970s. It is still a long way ahead.

I predict that the greatest difficulty will be when it comes to putting a fast breeder on site, because the nuclear inspectorate will be doubtful about whether to approve that reactor. There is all the difference in the world between developing a reactor as a prototype under special conditions and placing it commercially into an electricity supply system.

Another area in which we probably still have a good lead is fusion research. That has nothing to do with these documents, but I mention it because it is extremely topical. The Russians are claiming a breakthrough with their Tokamak 10. It sounds like a raincoat, but it is in fact a nuclear process.

We are still in the United Kingdom at the laboratory stage, but it is important to devote far more funds to fusion research than we are doing at the moment. There should be no cuting back of the money devoted to that research. If the world generally succeeds with a fusion reactor, radiation leakage and other problems which make ours and the so-called European nuclear safety regulations necessary will be removed at a stroke, because fusion would be a much better way of using the power of the atom for peaceful, not warlike, purposes.

My hon. Friend the Member for Heeley was a little gloomy about nuclear safety. Our own nuclear safety record has been excellent. We have kept records since 1962. There have been only four fatal accidents in nuclear power stations, none of which had anything to do with the nuclear process. They were accidents of the type which, unfortunately, occur in all large industrial establishments.

The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Hall-Davis) asked some questions about nuclear safety. The hon. Gentleman charmingly admitted that he did not know much about nuclear reactors. Indeed, he rightly commented that the public had not and could hardly be expected to know a great deal about this subject. Those who pride themselves on having studied it, including many nuclear experts, are probably not as knowledgeable as they pretend.

I am sure that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will confirm that these matters are controlled by the independent nuclear inspectorate. That has been one of the strengths of the nuclear safety system in this country. In the United States this matter has been looked after by the Atomic Energy Commission, and the Commission has at various times been a nuclear executive. Here we have an independent nuclear inspectorate.

The licensing system, first set up under the 1959 Act, has been extremely successful. It has been operated with great understanding and it has worked well. So far the British nuclear safety record has been very good. That should not give rise to complacency. We need only one serious nuclear accident with loss of life or great injury to future generations by radioactive fall-out for the whole programme to be condemned by public opinion. There is that ever-present danger.

We shall have to develop and build a nuclear power programme whether we like it or not because fossil fuels will not last indefinitely. As we build extra nuclear power stations, they will inevitabily have to be closer to centres of population. The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale referred to a power station at Heysham near his constituency. There are three nuclear power stations within 30 miles of Bristol—Hinkly Point, Berkeley and Oldbury—and another site has now been chosen for a nuclear power station on the other side of the Bristol Channel, in South Wales. This is a matter of great and continuing public interest and should be of parliamentary concern not only in specialist Commitees, but on the Floor of the House.

There is a common international interest in nuclear safety. I was and remain a convinced pro-European. However, I do not argue that every question must be decided within the context of the EEC. If there had been no EEC, we should have been discussing nuclear safety regulations with the French and the Germans, who are physically closest to us, because this is a matter of neighbouring common interest as with navigation, lighthouses, and other matters of that kind.

Incontinent nuclear fall-out—rogue radioactivity—moving away from where it is properly controlled knows no frontiers. Therefore, we should be grateful to the Select Committee, led with great conscientiousness and care by the right hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies), for drawing attention to the financial, administrative and political problems which arise from these two sets of documents.

I wish to make one point of criticism not so much of the Committee—that would be ungenerous—as of the way we do things. Evidence was taken from the Under-Secretary of State. I have read that evidence. My hon. Friend valiantly and ably defended his Department's view. It must have been a little difficult for him, because I know that he is not one of God's natural Europeans. However, no evidence was taken by the Scrutiny Committee from technical witnesses. In its Report the Committee deals with other EEC regulations and documents. For example, there is one relating to meat products. The Committee took written technical evidence on meat products, but it does not seem to have taken any technical evidence on this matter.

Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport)

The hon. Gentleman said that the Under-Secretary of State defended his Department's view. However, it seems that the hon. Gentleman defended the Commission's view. Would the hon. Gentleman care to distinguish between the two?

Mr. Palmer

I thought that I did. In his evidence—he should not be criticised for this—my hon. Friend made the point that since the summer of last year we had had a full hand in the shaping of EEC documents. I do not see why my hon. Friend should be criticised on that account. He was speaking for his Department on EEC consumptions. As I say, it must have been difficult for him, because of his past views, and perhaps because of his present views, to speak well of the merits of the EEC as an institution.

It was a pity that no evidence was taken, for instance, from the Atomic Energy Authority, or the Central Electricity Generating Board, so that some comparison could have been made available of the strengths or weaknesses of the system for ensuring safety that we have in Britain with what is now commonly proposed for the EEC generally, bearing in mind that the type of reactor that the EEC as a whole understandably is the light-water variety not the system that we are operating.

It is not criticism of the work of the Scrutiny Committee when I say that it is a pity that no evidence of that kind has been made available to the House. However, it might be possible for us in future to organise a system so that if it is felt, for example, that a technical point has arisen, it could be passed to the Select Committee on Science and Technology to look at. Such a facility might be a way of overcoming any procedural difficulties that at present exist.

8.22 p.m.

Mr. John H. Osborn (Sheffield, Hallam)

The debate began a little earlier than I anticipated and I must apologise for not hearing the Front Bench speeches.

When I first realised that this debate was taking place following a debate of a similar nature in another place, I tried to relate the work that I have done in the Committee on Energy, Research and Technology of the European Parliament with the attitude of this Parliament towards nuclear safety. I have tried to clarify my mind as to the matters with which I think we should be concerning ourselves. The primary consideration is nuclear safety, irrespective of whether that is a national consideration, an international consideration or even a European consideration.

A secondary matter which follows from the first is the clarification of nuclear safety in terms of standards and codes. It is essential that those standards and codes be international, but if they cannot be international they should be recognised within the Community, of which we are a member.

The decision that we take on what is safe, is based on the judgment of our nuclear scientists and engineers, but our judgment may not be that of the French, the Germans, the United States or the Soviet Union. There must be international collaboration on nuclear safety between engineers and scientists at inspector level and academic level. However, if a standard is to be approved by Parliament and Government, and approved by the elected people, there must be some collaboration at a democratic level, namely, within the institutions of Parliament or Parliaments.

It is right that the Scrutiny Committee should have cried "Halt". It is right that there should have been a debate in another place. We must consider where the Health and Safety Commission comes into the matter. I remember the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer) serving with me on the Select Committee on Science and Technology. I well remember the Committee inquiring into the likely programme of nuclear developments within Britain. The Committee heard a representative from the inspectorate. At that time he had to concern himself with what was then under development. He was unprepared to anticipate too far ahead the safety standards of the Westinghouse pressure and boiling-water reactors or the General Electric system pending the decision which was taken by a Conservative Government.

When I listened to that representative and interrogated him, I had immense sympathy with him for the responsibility he carried. As politicians we can expect inspectors to tell us whether a certain installation siting is safe, but I well remember discussing the development of Concorde at an early stage with representatives from Farnborough and from other centres. In the field of aviation too there is the problem of making quite certain that inspection standards are adequate.

I have had the advantage of taking part in meetings with Western European Union and the Council of Europe, and going to the United States with the appropriate science and technology committees to compare new developments and safety standards in the nuclear field. Safety and the preservation of our environment are all-important at present. It is essential that no nuclear development takes place at the risk of the community. There must be no risk of a breakdown that endangers hundreds or even thousands of lives.

International agencies such as the OECD and the Nuclear Energy Agency are considering these matters. When I was undertaking my report with Western European Union, I found that scientists and industrialists were coming together under the British nuclear forum as part of a wider "Atomforum". When we talk about nuclear development and nuclear safety we should think in international terms, defining the rôles of British and international technical bodies in relation to this Parliament.

We must think not only of safety but of development. To what extent are fusion, the Joint European Torus programme and the fast-breeder reactor and high-temperature reactor design and development competitive, in terms of national activity and co-operative in terms of international activity? Is nuclear development to be nationally competitive so that British industries can have an advantage over those of Germany, France and the United States, or is there a level at which such development should be competitive but not at the expense of co-operation?

Mr. Palmer

The hon. Gentleman is probably aware that the high-temperature reactor has been more or less abandoned with the closing down of the Dragon project, which is a great pity.

Mr. Osborn

The high-temperature reactor is an interesting case in point, and I should like to elaborate on it. In dealing with fast breeders and high-temperature reactors the question is whether they should be nationally competitive, with one nation's industry expanding at the expense of another, or whether we should try to achieve international co-operation to provide the alternative source of energy that is so vital to our way of life.

This question has been dealt with at the recent meetings of the Committee on Energy, Research and Technology. My hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle (Mr. Normanton), who will be replying to the debate from this side, is a member of that Committee, together with Lord Bessborough from another place. During the course of discussion the Dragon programme was mentioned in relation to the high-temperature reactor development, and there was a discussion on fast-breeder development. There is a good case for the development of the Phoenix-type fast breeder. Collaboration is taking place between Germany and France, and there seems to be a dialogue between these countries to the exclusion of the type of fast-breeder reactor which we are developing at Dounreay.

I make this comment as an observer of a dialogue and discussion and as one who has been associated with the Phoenix development as a rapporteur of another committee. I have visited Dounreay three times during the course of the development there.

Is fast-breeder reactor development to be competitive between industries and engineers of the United States of America, France, Germany and Great Britain—let alone the Soviet Union—or is there to be a level of collaboration? I believe that there should be much more collaboration in the field of research and development, let alone safety standards, within the Community—let alone between the Community and the United States of America—than is the case at the present time.

If we permit this sort of competitive development in the fast-breeder field, we should try to prevent what occurred at Detroit Edison some 12 to 14 years ago, when the pilot plant had so many engineering short-cuts that it broke down, fortunately with no danger and no loss of life. In this instance, by cutting down the safety precautions a breakdown resulted. This is the danger facing the United States of America, where the development is more competitive than in this country.

The hon. Member for Bristol, North-East mentioned the Dragon project. There have been debates here and it has been very much the concern of the Member of Parliament for the area concerned, my hon. Friend the Member for Dorset, West (Mr. Spicer), who is also a member of the European Parliament. Is there a rôle for the high-temperature reactor, whether nationally or internationally? I regard what has happened to Dragon as a classic tragedy for international co-operation at Community level, let alone at world-wide level.

The Germans, based on Brown Boveri and others, have high-temperature development in hand, and collaboration with the Swiss. The General atomic pilot project at Fort Vrain has encountered certain difficulties, and obviously there are technical problems involved. At Winfrith there has been a first-class back-up team, a first-class development team and a first-class research team, but that has been disbanded to the extent that it is not worth while bringing it together again.

I have attended a discussion when the Commissioner concerned has been talking to the Committee on Energy, Research and Technology, and I could only reach the conclusion that, had the Germans been more sensitive and more willing to cooperate with Britain and the team here, and had our Ministers, working at the Council of Ministers level, been more willing to offer co-operation to the Germans, let alone a joint offer of commercial ventures in the United States of America, there could well have been a case for keeping the team that has worked so well, and making arrangements to ensure that it continued at a very small cost to the British taxpayer. But that is too late and it is no use crying over spilt milk.

It is essential that we should have an alert Front Bench willing to co-operate internationally at ministerial level. This willingness seems to be greatly lacking.

At Culham we have the greatest expertise in fusion. I have been in touch with the Culham team and its head. I am concerned that fusion development should go ahead. But it seems that for political reasons, although British and European money will be used to develop the fusion project, the decision will be with political rather than industrial, commercial or technical criteria dominating and if this should be at the expense of our own team we would suffer as a result. That is one more example of poor international and European collaboration.

I fear that I have spoken at far too great a length on development, and before concluding I want to come back to safety. In the nuclear field I believe that development must be on an international scale, and a useful basis for this is within the Commission. But it is essential that we have the right outward point of view from this House, and that our scientists and engineers are encouraged at every level to collaborate with their counterparts first in the Community and secondly in the Western world.

But, thirdly, if there is to be this collaboration in development, there must also be collaboration in safety and safety standards. I accept that to have a European training programme in connection with safety and safety standards gives us cause to think that perhaps we should consider this again and consider whether it is a rôle that the Commission should take on itself or whether there should be some other structure for it. I am not prepared to comment on this, but what is essential is that in the absence of a better alternative perhaps what has been put forward by the Commission is a positive step in the right direction.

The value of a debate of this type is obvious when issues of nuclear safety are raised. We have had a fine report from Frau Walz in Germany on safety criteria in the siting of power stations. The report was debated in Luxembourg. In the report, Frau Walz developed a comparison with the standards set in other countries. There have been individual initiatives and efforts to compare what each member of the Community is doing to assist in this assessment of standards to reach a common denominator so that no one country goes ahead to the disadvantage of any of the Nine or of any other country.

Therefore, I welcome this debate. It is of value to us in the European Parliament to know the conclusions of this House.

8.37 p.m.

Mr. Peter Viggers (Gosport)

This is a wide-ranging debate, and I want to follow the example of my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Hall-Davis) and refer briefly to nuclear safety in this country and the public concern that there is about it.

I had an example recently in my own constituency—and I refer to it only briefly—when I had occasion to discover that there are three ways of disposing of nuclear waste. There is the high level of nuclear waste which must be disposed of in special circumstances. There is the very low level of nuclear waste which can be disposed of without special precautions. Then there is a medium level which can be disposed of on refuse disposal sites. After putting down a number of Questions, I discovered that it was difficult to get at the exact truth about the amount of radioactive material which had been disposed of on such sites. I raised the matter upstairs in Standing Committee when the Under-Secretary was present, and I am glad to have this opportunity to raise it tonight on the Floor of the House.

In a democracy it is not good enough for the Government to imply that they know best and that they can conceal information from the people. The fear of being alarmist is ever present with every Member of Parliament. Nevertheless, when a subject is of such importance to their constituents, Members of Parliament have to follow matters through. When they do, I trust that the Government will respond with clear answers, because in a properly organised democracy there should be nothing to be afraid of on this score.

On the wider subject before us, we can be enthusiastic members of the European Community without losing our critical faculties. We have seen my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies) exerting his critical faculties, although no one would accuse him of not being a friend of Europe.

There is an interesting relationship between the Commission of the European Community, the Government of the United Kingdom and the Select Committee, the membership of which is drawn from all parts of the House. It seems from this short debate that the Government are taking the attitude towards reports by the Commission that they have towards their own legislation when it goes through the House and to Standing Committee. Those of us who sit on Standing Committees find that the Government have a feeling that their virility is being impugned if anyone seeks to change the legislation before the Committee. I was rather surprised to discover that the Government seem to have the same sort of attitude towards reports and suggested agreements of the Commission, although the Government have only a one-ninth share in creating those reports of the Commission.

It seems to me that it would be quite appropriate to suggest to the Government—and this is something for the House to consider—that Parliament ought not to divide between Government and Opposition on subjects such as that now before it, but should consider very carefully as a House of Commons whether it has a duty to act as such. Indeed, it can take account in considering that duty the report of its own Select Committee, drawn from both sides of the House, which has been quite harshly critical of this proposal.

The principle of Cabinet solidarity has been breached by hints and innuendo over the last year or two. I was interested to see that the Secretary of State seemed to be four-square firmly behind the Commission's report. It seems to me that it is not completely necessary that that should be so on every occasion, because, after all, there can be issues on which the United Kingdom Government and the people of the United Kingdom have an angle which does not necessarily reflect precisely the view of the Commission. Therefore, in each case of participation in Europe we all can and all should look with a critical eye at the advantages and disadvantages.

By supporting the Commission proposal the Secretary of State was led up some strange paths—for instance, the path of argument on cost-effectiveness. No effort appears to have been made to assess the value of our skill and expertise which is to be pooled in the Commission research faculty. My right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford made this point far more forcefully than I can, and it requires an answer from the Under-Secretary this evening.

I note in particular that the pooling is really all that can happen at this stage, because the working parties are to meet up to four times a year and each time for one or two days. During the "up to three or four times a year" and during "for one or two days" there is no opportunity at all of carrying out a meaningful programme of research. All that can be done at this stage is to pool skill and expertise and consider a programme of research. There certainly cannot be any real European programme at this early stage. It will be merely a build-up of knowledge at the European headquarters and a carrying away of skills by the less advanced. Therefore, pooling may not be to our benefit.

The Secretary of State skated neatly around the cost of pooling our own research. We have learned that we have to watch the right hon. Gentleman. He can be the most persuasive and logical of people, but we must watch for the moment when his feet leave the ground and he enters the clouds of woolly Never-never Land. He skated expertly and without any connection with reality around the true cost of our pooling of research. I tried to note what he said when talking about a cost of £50,000 and pooling our research. I tried to jot it down and I think I am right in saying that he said "Our experts will ensure that we receive a fair return for the contribution we make." However, how is that to be done? If we have more skill and expertise than other countries, how are we to ensure that we receive a fair return for the skill and expertise that we contribute? Is the right hon. Gentleman suggesting that we should hold back any excess over a fair proportion, or is he saying that he does not really want to face the question?

The second major point concerns the pooling of research and training. Is not standardisation the aim and should we not consider, regardless of the warm personal regard we may have for our European colleagues, the British aim to compete rather than to collaborate? I do not entirely agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Osborn) when he says that collaboration rather than competition should be the aim. The type of reactor upon which the research programme is to concentrate is not one that we should choose to pursue.

I concur with the view that our processes for dealing with European legislation are far from right. European institutions have their own impetus. Once a body is created, it becomes self-perpetuating and tasks are found for it rather than its continuing with tasks that need to be done. An example of this is the Joint European Torus where there is a body of opinion that wishes the project to be based at Ispra. I suspect that that is because Ispra is there rather than that it is the best place for it. A visitor to European institutions is impressed by the on-going and expansionist view of European activities. There is no real thought of retrenchment or retraction, or even of standing still. Those committed to Europe are committed to continuity and expansion. Therefore, in view of this commitment to expansion it is right that we should look with a jaundiced eye at any new concept and it is entirely right that the Select Committee's view and its criticisms should be noted by the House and the Government.

8.46 p.m.

Mr. T. H. H. Skeet (Bedford)

It is right that the House of Commons should discuss a matter of this magnitude. Although the hon. Member for Bristol, North-East (Mr. Palmer) said that the Scrutiny Committee was incapacitated in that it did not call expert witnesses, it had the services of the Under-Secretary and all his resources. The Committee could also refer to the Thirty-Second Report of the Select Committee of the House of Lords on the European Communities which dealt with technological problems of nuclear safety. That Report contains all the arguments of the technical people who considered this matter extremely exhaustively from all points of view.

Later I shall refer to some of the items as they were adduced. However, first, I want to refer to the Secretary of State. He has given me the impression that he is purely and simply a paper tiger, going abroad but not doing the best for the United Kingdom. Unfortunately, when we expected a continuation of the high-temperature reactor, Dragon, at Winfrith Health we found that it was to be discontinued, although the French and Germans are collaborating on the importance of the high-temperature reactor for process heat.

The right hon. Gentleman is also on trial in the sense that we are debating both here and in Europe where the JET project is to be located, whether it will be in the United Kingdom or at Ispra in Italy. There is every reason, because of expertise, why it should be located in the United Kingdom, although according to Press reports it will be located in Italy. Will the right hon. Gentleman stand up to the Europeans and say that the collective view of this House is that the JET project should be located in the United Kingdom?

When the Secretary of State went to the United States to deal with the oil companies, he made some speeches. I notice that he has not made similar speeches in this House to inform hon. Members of his precise views. I listened carefully to what the right hon. Gentleman said. He said that nuclear safety was an international matter. It is an international problem with which we are all concerned. However, one matter is outstanding. There is a plethora of international authorities. Although my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) said that he would stand by the International Atomic Energy Agency of Vienna, the selection I would make is the Nuclear Energy Agency as part of OECD. I suggest the latter because it associates under one umbrella considerable expertise from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, the Federal Republic of Germany, France, Italy and Belgium. Those are the countries that have the expertise.

The organisation in Vienna tends to give information to the less-developed States. However, I agree that it has made a significant contribution in producing a code for the transportation of radio-active materials. These bodies and others, like the International Energy Agency and the United Nations affiliates, cover all necessary aspects of nuclear safety.

The Under-Secretary said in Committee that we should look at these matters in a world-wide context. If he is looking to Europe, he is dealing with a regional context. Could we not take a broader view than that? Lord Hinton of Bank-side said at page 25 of the evidence to the Lords Select Committee: If you already have close contact between the nuclear members of the EEC and if you already have two international bodies which are broader than the EEC, is there need for another international body? What can it contribute? What will it supply to the United Kingdom for £50,000? What will we contribute to it in information, and what will we receive in return? Harmonisation at this stage is premature. I hope that the Department will observe that Mr. F. R. Farmer told the Select Committee of the House of Lords, dealing with Paper No. R.681/75: I believe it is very much too early to do this and that it is questionable whether the safety of reactors over the past 10 years has been best promoted by regulation rather than by more perceptive identification of the major technical problems. Is not that expert evidence clear? Should we not try to decide this matter technologically instead of acting as a political Chamber?

Lord Hinton of Bankside, in another pertinent remark, said: Where there is no uniformity of design, how can design be standardised in a new and advanced technology? Mr. R. R. Matthews, Chief Nuclear Health and Safety Officer of the CEGB, said: The feasibility of trying to harmonise and standardise safety equipment is doubtful. This can inhibit design and safety improvements and only seems practicable if fully standardised plant is being considered. The two memoranda before us suggest to me that the Community is set on a course of harmonisation. While I am prepared to concede that it may be desirable to harmonise direct taxation, death duties and so on, it is madness to pursue that course with an expanding technology which has not fully evolved. There are certain difficulties in the method of approach. In the United Kingdom, we have the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, which has had a fantastic record. A paper that I have before me says: The Magnox reactors have between them accumulated over 200 years of operating experience at high load factors. As may be expected, there have been a number of defects and failures, but comparatively minor, and no major leaks… There has never been an accidental release of radioactivity from the nuclear power stations of the United Kingdom, having significant effects outside the site boundary and no member of the public has been exposed to radiation, either from planned discharges of low level radioactive waste or direct radiation from the plant which approached the permissible levels recommended. We see the United Kingdom's approach as expressed by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate, which says to the manufacturers "You must produce safe plant, otherwise we shall not allow you to build it. You must design equipment that is in accordance with the specifications that are laid down." In other words, if those specifications are observed, the inspectorate will agree them.

That is our pragmatic approach, which is somewhat different from that adopted in the United States. In the United States the Atomic Energy Commission adopts the practice of requiring and regulating the design and construction of nuclear plant in considerable detail. It is noteworthy that the Commission is pursuing the line adopted in the United States. However, we are moving in a different direction. If Europe must harmonise, perhaps we can provide a field for it. It may be that more rewarding areas for harmonisation lie in general site criteria, considerations of external hazards, such as the effect of earthquakes, aircraft crashes and sabotage on nuclear power stations, radiological protection and the disposal of nuclear waste. That is one way in which the system could operate.

I turn to the next substantial point, namely, that regional harmonisation is inferior to multinational agreements. Mr. F. R. Farmer, Director of the Safety and Reliability Division of the AEA, said on 3rd July last: I believe that standardisation, that is harmonisation of the efforts of the different countries, does not need to be done under the EEC. It would in any event be done by bilateral or trilateral discussions and one needs to have a lot of knowledge of the design and future intent to test the relevance of these assumptions… The growth from bilateral to trilateral to multi-lateral might take place in any event and I think that the Commission … might promote that. It is significant to see how far Mr. Farmer goes.

On the question of collaboration between countries, Mr. Farmer said: It is a very effective way at the present time … bilateral is already proceeding to trilateral and multi-lateral. Some agreements are now between the CEA, France, the Federal Republic, Japan and the United Kingdom and might indeed include one other country.

If arrangements are spread throughout Europe on a national basis and if there is an interest in ensuring that safety be maintained in nuclear reactors, why should we set up a composite body costing £50,000 a year from which it is difficult to assess benefits? We were told by the Secretary of State that there would be considerable overlap, and he suggested that that in itself could be helpful. However, the House of Commons is not here to suggest that there should be any overlapping of facilities. There are already in existence international facilities to cover this topic. Why bother to have a regional set-up when one has an international problem? These are questions of nuclear safety and are not only regional problems. If the expertise exists at national level, let the nations get together.

It is worth bearing in mind that Mr. D. R. Fryer, Assistant Chief Inspector, National Nuclear Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive, said on 3rd July 1975: I think that the national authorities will have to operate very much as they are for a very long time in the future. I think that the Commission's rôle is one of a catalyst and a centre for encouraging harmonisation, but I would not envisage that the Commission would be able to exercise an effective control… It would be extremely difficult to institute any central control which would be effective. The national authorities must for the time being retain their national responsibilities in the field of regulation…".

Mr. Benn indicated assent.

Mr. Skeet

I see that the Secretary of State has acknowledged that that was indicated. I am sorry that he has come into the Chamber so late, but I expect that he will have the opportunity of reading what I have said. The debate required some technical information from the report indicating what should be done. The advice of the Department, which must be prompting the Secretary of State almost every day, is that what is required is not another European body—because one must be rational and sensible about it—but an interlinking of national bodies in Europe with Japan and the United States. That is the way to ensure nuclear safety.

9.1 p.m.

Mr. Tom Normanton (Cheadle)

At this stage in the evening after an unexpectedly long debate it is appropriate to refer to the forthright manner in which my hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) moved the amendment to the motion. He said that Britain was not a supplicant nation. I hope that that statement will be endorsed by all. We are, and I hope that we shall always be, seen internationally as an active, energetic, prosperous nation in all the processes involved, particularly those involving our membership of the EEC.

The Secretary of State referred to the great chance that will flow from the development of public debate on energy. I hope that Britain's participation in the Community is better and more definite than the right hon. Gentleman's participation in the Community at home.

I shall try to concentrate on the theme of Britain's involvement in the research and technological aspects of our membership of the Community and those matters referred to in the two documents rather than on the procedural aspects of the debate. But is incumbent upon me, not for the first time and perhaps not for the last, to stress what has been said on the Opposition Benches about the effective and appropriate way of dealing with Community legislation.

The House will recognise the debt that we owe to my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies) and his Committee. I regret that we still have not established a procedure appropriate to the Scrutiny Committee's standing and importance and relevant to the subjects presented to it. The timing fails to ensure that the views and knowledge of the Committee members are taken into account in formulating policy in the Community. The House still fails to use to the full the experience and active involvement of hon. Members on both sides in the European Parliament and its many committees. They are in the unique position, denied to many of us, to see in advance Commission documents covering most if not all aspects of policy formulation. They enjoy the opportunity to influence the formulation of Commission proposals, and they should have the benefit of the expertise, opinions and influence of this House.

Hon. Members fail to realise that there are opportunities for initiatives in the European Parliament, opportunities for putting new lines of thought to the Commission in the interests of Britain and of the Community as a whole. The House should speed up progress towards establishing the right procedures and mechanisms to deal with important Community matters effectively and at the right time.

I turn to the subject of the debate, which is research into nuclear matters. We are debating a motion about two sets of Commission proposals, which I can only describe as minnows compared with the much vaster and far more important document which I believe should have been taken in conjunction with them. I refer to the Commission proposals concerning "The overall concept for the next multinational research programme of the Joint Research Centre," COM(75)529 final, a communication from the Commission to the Council. It is now that the House should be making its views known and making sure that they are reflected in the formulation of Community policy, but that document is not mentioned on the Order Paper.

I do not believe that I am stretching the rules of order, to which I bow, or imposing on your willingness to be flexible, Mr. Speaker, when I say that the documents before us have as their background the programme of multinational Community research. They refer to the various sources from which the two working parties will draw their information and expertise. One of those sources, though only briefly hinted at, is the projects in which the JRC has been energetically involved for a long time. Therefore, we should not take the view that we are debating something completely new, something which has suddenly appeared and which has no connection with the past. It is part of an on-going process of which the House should have been more forcefully made aware.

We must also take into account that the documents are, in budgetary terms, comparable with a petty cash account seen against the massive amount of money consumed by the JRC and the many projects for which it is responsible. The JRC was formed by the legislation which created Euratom. Its main object was to deal with nuclear research and development. I believe that its resources amount to about £200 million of committed budgets and that it employs 800 to 1,000 staff, most of whom are dealing with the very subjects to which the two working parties will be directed.

I have no hesitation in saying that throughout the three years that I have been a member of the European Parliament, during which time I have served on the Community Research and Technology Committee, I have been hypercritical of the basis on which the Joint Research Centre was founded and of the way in which it has been managed and directed. I cannot describe it in terms permissible by our parliamentary procedure, but if I describe it as a politicians' muddle, I hope that it will be appreciated that I am using the word "politicians" in substitution for one which might not be regarded as a parliamentary expression.

It is a calamity, a most appalling waste of public money, because political policy and political decisions have dominated the technological research which is the real purpose of such an institution. Therefore, I earnestly ask the Under-Secretary, but more particularly the Secretary of State himself, to give serious attention to the waste of public money and technological resources which are involved in this Community project.

That should not for a moment be construed as implying any criticism from myself as a member of the European Parliament or as a Member of this House. It should not be construed as implying that there is not a rôle for the Community to play in the matter of research, but the way in which that rôle has been played in the past—and certainly if it is allowed to continue in that form—is a matter which could well be one for debate and recrimination across the Floor on some other occasion. Therefore, I earnestly appeal to the Secretary of State to take a very close and intense look at what is happening at that centre.

My hon. Friends have raised a number of points to which I hope the Under-Secretary will reply. Although I do not share the intense anxiety and concern about the commercial value of the United Kingdom contribution to these projects that was expressed by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford, I agree that it is of crucial importance that the concern expressed by others should be met. I do not believe that it is possible to quantify the value of expertise in nuclear safety; nor do I think that it should be the subject of negotiation. It is, however, a point of considerable importance to many hon. Members on this side of the House, and I therefore ask the Under-Secretary to be clear and explicit on the subject when he replies to the debate.

My hon. Friend the Member for Oswestry sought an assurance that the implications of the proposals in the two documents would not result in a movement towards a policy of standardisation of nuclear equipment and plant. I believe that there may well be grave disadvantages in standardising on any one or a series of technologies, techniques, plants and systems concerned with nuclear generation. There is great virtue in giving the maximum scope for individual industrial and national expertise in all fields of nuclear technology. I am sure all hon. Members here and in the European Parliament are deeply concerned that we should have minimum standards of health and safety. This should be the meat and drink of the working parties proposed in these documents.

My hon. Friend the Member for More-cambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Hall-Davis) did a very great service to the people of Britain and, no doubt, to many hon. Members when he referred to the AGC at Heysham and British Nuclear Fuels at Windscale and particularly to the very important point about the piecemeal treatment of nuclear matters in this House. There has been a total absence of reliable knowledge and well-informed opinion for the public. These are certainly matters within the scope of the proposals which should be receiving consideration at both national and Community level. Perhaps the Under-Secretary can tell us what the Government are proposing to do to fill this crucial void.

Among the people of Great Britain and, regrettably perhaps even more so, the people of Holland and Denmark there is a fear of matters nuclear. The only way to dispel it is by telling people the technical, economic and political facts. As politicians, we have a rôle to play in influencing, guiding and leading public opinion and not bending to every whim and will of those who wish to disturb progress.

The right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) is highly consistent in pursuing his total opposition to the concept of what he regards as the abdication of sovereignty by this House. I can assure him and those of similar mind that the Opposition have never and will never abdicate their determination to influence the course of events affecting Britain. For that reason, we welcome this brief debate. We are active, each in our own way, inside the Community at such levels as are open to us and we insist and urge that the Government should be constructively active and energetic in these fields.

My hon. Friend the Member for Sheffield, Hallam (Mr. Osborn) spoke as a Member of this House and of the European Parliament. He has done a great service by stressing a number of points which concern parliamentarians from all member States of the Community. One common denominator is safety and health. We must have co-operation at all levels on safety and health, even if the character of the measures and the actual mechanics are to establish need and underpin standards rather than make them precise and fixed. Flexibility, yes, but not below a certain level. We shall get from Community policies in proportion to what we put into them.

My hon. Friend the Member for Gosport (Mr. Viggers) referred to the disposal of nuclear waste. The Secretary of State should have told the House that the Joint Research Centre is committed to a massive study of this subject. I hope that at the meetings of the Energy Ministers the right hon. Gentleman will stress the importance of this study and let the public know that it is being pursued actively, energetically and constructively. Only by means of such an active policy at home and inside Community institutions shall we allay the widespread and deep-seated fears about the danger of progressing further with nuclear generating capacity.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bedford (Mr. Skeet) touched on a matter of profound importance when he referred to the future of JET. I do not wish to adopt a highly critical partisan view, but Britain's activities in collective technology in the European Community leave much to be questioned. Through our own failures and lack of will we have missed the opportunity of the JET project's being based at Culham. I do not under-estimate the deep and growing anxiety about the will of the Government to proceed with European Community projects.

Mr. Palmer

Is the hon. Gentleman suggesting that a decision has been made on JET?

Mr. Normanton

Perhaps that question will be answered by the Under-Secretary. The parliamentary political assessment is that the project will not be based in the United Kingdom. We therefore appeal to the Secretary of State in his further negotiations to do all that lies in his power to show the Community and his fellow Energy Ministers that he has the will and resolution to pursue a Community policy on this issue.

Mr. Skeet

Does my hon. Friend think that there is anything in the point that, because of the attitude taken by the Secretary of State in not going ahead with the Dragon project, the Europeans have been alienated and have therefore decided that the JET project must go to Italy?

Mr. Normanton

I can only voice the political views of parliamentarians in the European Parliament, which is that the decision has already been taken. If I am incorrect, I hope that the Under-Secretary of State will refute that statement.

Mrs. Elaine Kellett-Bowman (Lancaster)

It is vital to press on the Minister the importance of not giving in. He must get his teeth into this matter and keep at it until the project is based in this country.

Mr. Normanton

No doubt my hon. Friend has made the point far more effectively and articulately than I could possibly have made it.

Mr. John Davies

My hon. Friend is dealing with an extremely important point Does he agree that the tendency not to quantify the importance and value of British activities lies at the seat of so many failures to carry forward our great progress and achievements?

Mr. Speaker

Order. I do not know what has gone on earlier, but we are concerned with safety.

Mr. Normanton

I bow to your ruling, Mr. Speaker, and simply add that I am sure that the point has already been made.

I should like the Minister to answer three questions. First, is he satisfied with the appropriateness and the effectiveness of co-ordination in connection with the Commission, the two proposed working parties, the JRC and especially Ispra, concerning matters of safety? Secondly, is he satisfied that we shall not see duplication and proliferation of more and more institutions, although as small as minnows? Shall we see during the implimentation of these proposals another example of the way in which Governments spawn institutions like a frog spawns in a pond? I hope that the Minister can convince us about that.

Thirdly, I hope that the Minister will convince the House that co-operation at commercial level in the European Community on an industry-to-industry basis is effective and appropriate for nuclear safety. We are not satisfied at present.

Conservatives are not opposed to policies being proposed in the Community by the Community. We are determined to ensure that we play a positive, dynamic and constructive part in the formulation of those policies. We have grave misgivings about the effectiveness of Her Majesty's Government in making such constructive contributions to the policy formulation in the Community. My hon. Frinends and I look forward to hearing the Minister answering misgivings that have been expressed fairly, forcefully, fully and frankly.

9.28 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for Energy (Mr. Alex Eadie)

The task which the hon. Member for Cheadle (Mr. Normanton) placed before me in his closing words is most formidable. Although you, Mr. Speaker, challenged the question of procedure, I find it rather strange that the hon. Gentleman on the Opposition Front Bench should make a statement which could undermine any possible negotiations which the British Government could have in relation to JET.

I hope that later the hon. Member for Cheadle will be able to reflect and do something that will not undermine the position of the British Government. He said that it is a question of negotiation. The hon. Gentleman went to great lengths to tell us that he had had experience over three years as a European parliamentarian and that, based on that experience, he knew all about these rather complicated negotiations and was able to inform the House that, within the compass of his knowledge, the decision had been taken in connection with JET. The hon. Gentleman must seriously reflect on the attitude he has adopted in this connection tonight. Of course, it would be out of order for me to go into that matter.

I am grateful to hon. Members for the views they have expressed in the debate. I assure them that their views will be taken into account in preparing for the discussions which have still to take place in Brussels. In those discussions we shall need to consider precisely what the proposed additional staff will do, to what extent they will increase the effectiveness of the working groups and whether they will result in the technical expertise being employed as effectively as possible in the interests of nuclear safety. The Commission has already given an assurance that, with the additional staff, the work can be carried out by the existing working groups without making further demands on the technical experts.

The general aims of these proposals are entirely in accord with our thinking. There is no suggestion whatever that licensing and control of United Kingdom nuclear installations will be centralised in Europe.

Safety at nuclear installations in the United Kingdom is controlled by means of nuclear site licences granted by the Health and Safety Executive. Licence conditions, in the interests of safety, are imposed and enforced by the Executive's Nuclear Installations Inspectorate.

The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority and Government Departments are not subject to the licensing regime, but the legislation imposes on them the same obligations. The proposals will have no effect on our present arrangements.

The hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale (Mr. Hall-Davis), with refreshing candour, expressed concern about information being made available and asked whether I could give him some information on the question of giving advice to the general public as he had a constituency interest. The hon. Gentleman mentioned Windscale, which is in close proximity to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Whitehaven (Dr. Cunningham).

On the question of informing the public, contact between the licensee of a nuclear installation and the public in the area is maintained through a local liaison committee, on which local authorities and other local interests are represented.

Mrs. Kellett-Bowman

We know that.

Mr. Eadie

The hon. Lady was not present when the hon. Member for Morecambe and Lonsdale made his contribution. That committee serves to inform the local population about activities and operations at the installation and to provide an opportunity for expressing views and asking questions. The Nuclear Installations Inspectorate is represented at the committee's meetings. I have tried to be helpful to the hon. Gentleman. If I have told him something which he already knew—he did not give me that impression—I apologise.

Mr. Hall-Davis

The difficulty is that small patchworks of the safety protection quilt are unveiled bit by bit. I knew about the committee. I get the minutes of each meeting of the liaison committee. I should like to see a whole framework of protection of the public brought together and outlined in a single document. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will look at what I said.

Mr. Eadie

I shall certainly look at what the hon. Gentleman said. However, he did not give the impression that he knew about those matters. I am glad that he gets the minutes of the meetings and studies them. I hope that he will inform his constituents about what is taking place, because he seemed to indicate that there was some mystique in relation to these matters. I hope that he will try to do the job that he asked his Front Bench to do. I shall look at the points he made.

There is no question of "harmonising downwards" or reaching a common Community position by lowering national standards. As my noble Friend in another place said, we shall maintain the right to superimpose on Community standards or procedures any additional measures which our independent regulatory authorities consider necessary to protect the public.

It cannot be emphasised too strongly that the Commission's proposals to increase the secretariat staff are designed to support existing Community working groups. Two of those groups are already engaged in the study of light-water reactor safety, and another two on fast reactor safety.

The working groups have now been at work for several years. They consist of technical experts from member States, including the United Kingdom. Although each of these groups meets only about three or four times a year, the services of the experts are needed for preparation and follow-up work connected with the meetings. It is for the Council to decide whether extra support is needed and, if so, what increase is appropriate. The rôle of the Commission is to reflect the consensus of the national experts within the working groups. Support is provided by the secretariats, which already include five Grade A staff—who are qualified engineers—on light-water reactor safety and three on fast-reactor safety. It is proposed that there shall be an additional three qualified engineers, one technician and one clerical grade under each of the proposals R/2662 and R/2663. That is a total of 10 extra staff in all. The Commission has undertaken to provide these staff from its existing personnel resources.

The scope of the work envisaged is summarised in the Explanatory Memoranda which my right hon. Friend submitted on 26th November 1975. The Government are considering the proposals in terms of the relative strengths of the two secretariats as well as of actual staff numbers. We regard the work being undertaken by the working parties as exploratory. Any draft recommendations from the Commission which might in due course arise out of this work would be carefully considered by the United Kingdom Government and would require to be approved by the Council of Ministers.

If we consider the role of nuclear power in terms of Community energy policy, no matter how successfully the Community develops its fossil fuel resources it seems clear that by the end of the century they will be insufficient to meet all its energy needs. Much of the deficiency will have to be met by nuclear power, an energy resource for which the Community has ambitious targets. Although we do not regard those targets as realistic, there is no doubt that there will be a rapid expansion of nuclear power programmes in the Community. It is vital to ensure that the reactors meet proper safety standards.

The United Kingdom is more fortunately placed with reserves of fossil fuels than our Community partners. Our own immediate nuclear programme is relatively modest, but we cannot be complacent about reactor safety. Our regulatory procedures are under constant review and we are always ready to discuss our arrangements with our European partners. [Interruption.] Does the hon. Member for Oswestry (Mr. Biffen) wish to intervene?

Mr. Skeet

Is the hon. Gentleman running out of material?

Mr. Biffen

I was a little uneasy about the fatness of the hon. Gentleman's brief. As the Treasury Bench has accepted our amendment, I wanted to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he intended to deal specifically with the points raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies) about the balance of the budgetary contributions.

Mr. Peter Hardy (Rother Valley)

Give him time.

Mr. Biffen

I was also wondering whether the hon. Gentleman would indicate which of the Scrutiny Committee's five specific comments he found most persuasive.

Mr. Eadie

The hon. Gentleman is being a little impatient. His hon. Friend the Member for Cheadle spoke for 35 minutes. I have been speaking for 10 minutes in trying to answer the various matters raised in the debate. I think that the hon. Gentleman will have to contain himself and allow me to try to answer the points that have been raised. Indeed, there were differences of opinions on both sides on some of the issues involved. Therefore, I should be obliged if I might be permitted to answer the debate in my own way.

Since Ispra was mentioned in relation to reactor safety, I should point out that the work there involves an analysis of possible accidents and their causes and the development of methods to prevent failures of essential reactor components. We regard this research as a useful focus for practical reactor safety work in Europe. If a new research programme for the JRC is agreed, the reactor safety field is one in which Ispra would be likely to make a useful contribution. This new programme is due to start on 1st January 1977.

A number of hon. Members referred to the health and safety aspects of nuclear power. All commercial nuclear activities in this country—including transport, handling, treatment and storage of waste—are subject by law to the most stringent regulation and monitoring. This work is undertaken by various authorities, such as the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive, and by my right hon. Friends the Secretary of State for the Environment and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, who operate quite independently of the nuclear and electricity industries to ensure that the environment and the health and safety of workers and the public are protected.

I have already described what I saw when I visited various nuclear installations as to the protected environment of the people who work in them. Something was said specifically about this in the debate.

I assure the House that the Government take the health, safety and environmental aspects of nuclear power very seriously. There is no question of permitting activities which would be prejudicial to the stringent standards with which the nuclear industry in this country has to comply.

Concerning public involvement, the good record of the United Kingdom in the matter of openness to the public has been recognised in a recent report to the European Parliament by its Committee on Energy, Research and Technology. The Report said that The United Kingdom would seem to be the only country at present in which the public is kept informed and involved in a truly satisfactory manner. We intend to maintain this record.

Commercial interests were mentioned particularly by the right hon. Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies). It has been suggested that in attending the Community working groups the United Kingdom is giving away its hard-won technical knowledge in the nuclear field.

The United Kingdom is represented on the working groups by experts from the Atomic Energy Authority, the Central Electricity Generating Board, the Nuclear Power Company and the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive. Thus the commercial as well as the licensing and regulatory interests of the United Kingdom in this field are fully represented, so that the commercial confidentiality of information is safeguarded. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will accept that.

We do not freely hand over research information. The member States give information on the extent of the research programmes. Results are put into the pool of information only after due consideration of the commercial value of information which we expect to get in return. Additionally, we are aware of the research programmes within the Community which allow collaboration arrangements to be made between two, three or four of the member States. These are private and confidential arrangements.

In the course of his remarks, the right hon. Gentleman referred to the competence of the Commission, which I thought was a very important point. I might say to him that the expertise is provided by the national representatives. The Commission provides the secretariat. It is up to the experts, including those of the United Kingdom, to ensure that their efforts are suitably directed towards achieving achievable goals.

There is clearly some misconception on the part of Opposition Members about the rôle of the Commission. I repeat that it is up to the experts to call the tune.

Mr. Skeet

If the information is supplied by the experts from the nations involved, why have a third body—a regional body under the EEC?

Mr. Eadie

If the hon. Gentleman had listened to what I said about commercial confidence, he would have realised that I had already dealt with that point.

A number of questions were asked about the safety of reprocessing. I fully understand the concern about the safety aspects of nuclear fuel reprocessing. However, such operations carried out in this country—at Windscale, for example—are subject to strict safety procedures supervised by the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate of the Health and Safety Executive. The Government are satisfied that these arrangements ensure a high degree of safety.

Other questions were asked about the transport of nuclear materials. I assure the House that the arrangements for the safe transport of radioactive nuclear materials conform to standards laid down by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment on the basis of stringent requirements established by the International Atomic Energy Agency.

These requirements include provisions for leak-tightness of the container, which is a massive steel flask, under both normal conditions of transport and under accident conditions. There are tests of the ability of containers to withstand these conditions, including subjecting them to impact, to fire and to immersion in water, including sea water.

The hon. Member for Oswestry raised two important aspects which I shall try to answer. To begin with, I do not think he appreciates that our involvement in the other international bodies and in the Community groups concerned with nuclear safety has been going on for some years. The hon. Gentleman quoted to me what one of my hon. Friends had asked and said that I had not answered it correctly or adequately. However, I think that I answered it perfectly adequately. If the hon. Gentleman cares to consult his hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Mr. Marten), who asked me a similar question, he will find that I tried to outline to him as best I could the impact which international bodies had on nuclear safety.

It may be that the hon. Gentleman did not understand what I said. I was trying to describe our concern about nuclear safety and the fact that our involvement had been going on for some years. There are parallel activities. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has explained the differences of function of the various international bodies. The International Atomic Energy Agency has about 100 members covering nations at all stages of technology and nuclear development. The Community, on the other hand, consists of advanced nations, which forms a strong base for co-operation in this field and helps in relation to research and ideas of a wider nature. We are ready and willing to join in the activities at both these levels in the quest for nuclear safety.

The hon. Member for Oswestry raised the question of standardisation as a hidden danger. We believe that by involving United Kingdom experts in these committees—the hon. Gentleman appears to be unaware of the fact that they have been in existence for some years—we shall ensure that our view is very clearly heard, and our experience will be heeded in the quest, if it be a quest, for harmonisation. We regard the work of the working parties as exploratory. We shall not be drawn into a programme for the fast-breeder reactor or any other kind of reactor unless and until we are satisfied from the expert advice of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate that our high standards of safety will be fully maintained.

It is the Government's view that we must continue to investigate nuclear matters with thoroughness and care and to make plans accordingly. We must look to the future both in terms of the demand for nuclear power and the means by which it is to be supplied. There are many aspects of nuclear safety. Some of them have been referred to by hon. Members in the debate—radiological protection, radioactive waste and the transport of radioactive material. All of them call for attention and vigilance in whatever way or ways may be most appropriate at national level, Community level and, more widely, internationally. In all these areas we have played and continue to play a full part.

However, today we have been concerned with one particular aspect—reactor safety in the Community context. In this country our record is a good one and a long one. We intend to keep it so. We think that the work of the reactor safety working parties, already well established, is already giving a valuable service on a Community scale which will profit from support along the lines proposed in the two documents that we are considering, Nos. R/ 2662/ 75 and R/2663/75. The details have still to be worked out through the Council machinery. Aided by the views expressed by hon. Members today, the United Kingdom's interests will be fully represented. As my right hon. Friend said in opening the debate, we are accepting the Opposition's amendment. There has been a conflict of views, to some extent, on both sides of the House, but we shall take full cognisance of the views that have been expressed and, indeed, take cognisance of the views of the Scrutiny Committee.

Mr. Biffen

Will the hon. Gentleman address himself specifically to the point about the budgetary contribution, which was raised by my right hon. Friend the Member for Knutsford (Mr. Davies) and which was the second observation contained in the Scrutiny Committee's Report? It is a matter which has excited serious concern in all corners of the House.

Mr. Eadie

I know that the hon. Gentleman raised that matter, which was also raised by his right hon. Friend in relation to the procedure. The hon. Gentleman put down the amendment. I have said that all of this will receive consideration by the Government. On the points laid down by the Scrutiny Committee, we have given the assurance by accepting the amendment. That is what the amendment means. That is what we are accepting, and we are accepting what it means.

Amendment agreed to.

Main Question, as amended, agreed to.

Resolved, That this House takes note of Commission Documents Nos. R/2663/75 and R/2662/75 and of the importance which the Government attaches to matters of nuclear safety, and invites the Government to take account of the observations of the Select Committee on European Secondary Legislation on these documents'.