LORDS AMENDMENT (Hansard, 25 July 1989)

§ Lord Sanderson of Bowden
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendment No. 9 to which the Commons have disagreed for their Reason numbered 10.
The amendment deals with the licence conditions for nuclear generation. The noble Lord, Lord Williams, who moved the amendment at an earlier stage of the Bill, argued that the Government might need to take over a nuclear station in order to take control in an emergency so as to ensure that the public would be fully protected.
It was explained during Committee that we did not believe the amendment to be desirable or even helpful. The powers of the Nuclear Installations Inspectorate—part of the independent Health and Safety Executive —which have been referred to earlier today are such as to enable it to take action at any time if it considers a risk to the safety of an installation might exist. Those powers include directing that the installation be shut down and not restarted until the inspectorate's consent is given. The powers are sufficient to ensure that the risk of an accident is extremely small, a point borne out by the 30 years of safe operation of our civil nuclear industry.
The noble Lord also referred to the need for the Government to take control of the installation in the unlikely event that an emergency arose. I should point out that there are two major steps to be taken in such an event. First, there is the implementation of whatever emergency measures are necessary to ensure that the public are protected. Secondly, and also of vital importance, there is the need to restore the plant to a condition of safety as quickly as possible. I shall return to the question of emergency 1351 planning in a few moments but I wish first to deal with arrangements for restoring safe conditions on site.
The only people who can properly undertake the task of restoring a plant to safety are its operators' own staff, the experienced people who know the plant and who are trained to deal with an emergency. The Secretary of State cannot do it; nor, with all their ability and skills, can his civil servants. Nor would it be right to take control away from the operating management of the station and hand it over to the NII That would serve only to undermine the existing arrangements under which responsibilities for plant safety are clearly understood and are in the right hands. The NII's role is a vital one. It is to monitor the situation, advise as appropriate and, if necessary, give directions to the operator. The Secretary of State taking over the station would in no way help to restore plant safety.
I should have said at the beginning that when speaking to the amendments I would also speak to Amendments Nos. 14 to 23, which we also need to debate now.
I turn now to those amendments to Clause 92 which the noble Lord, Lord Williams, argued at Committee stage were consequential on the new clause before Clause 11. The power in Clause 92 to give directions is aimed at fulfilling two specific objectives: maintaining the physical security of electricity installations and planning for civil emergencies such as severe weather conditions or natural disasters which would be likely to affect electricity supplies.
One of the effects of the amendments is to remove the requirement for the Secretary of State to consult the intended recipient before giving a direction under this clause. Directions under this clause could involve very detailed technical matters. In order to ensure that they are both accurate and effective, the Government believe that it is essential that the intended recipient should be given an opportunity to comment on the proposed contents.
I regret that I am also unable to accept the amendment which would remove the Secretary of State's power to withhold the laying of a direction before Parliament if he considered that that would be against someone's commercial interests. Directions relating to plans for dealing with civil emergencies could contain highly sensitive commercial information. For example, they could identify the terms under which certain customers received their electricity supplies, information which could be very useful to competing suppliers. The Government believe that it would be wrong to disclose such information. Moreover, we would not wish the effectiveness of the directions to be constrained by worries that commercially confidential information might be made public.
In addition to requiring a licence under Clause 6 to generate electricity, any person operating or installing any nuclear installation will continue to require a nuclear site licence from the Health and Safety Executive. As a condition of such site licences all operators of nuclear installations are required by 1352 the NII to prepare emergency plans, including plans for dealing with an accidental release of radioactivity. Those plans, on which the local authorities, police and other involved bodies must be consulted, are tested regularly in exercises monitored by the NII. They cover emergency procedures at the site and off-site arrangements to protect the public.
Post privatisation those safety requirements will continue to be placed on operators through conditions set out in the nuclear site licence. There is no question of privatisation resulting in a lowering of safety standards, a matter which I know your Lordships treat seriously. Neither is there a need for the existing regulatory framework to be duplicated in this Bill.

§ Viscount Hanworth
My Lords, I have not read the amendments in detail but I am sure that they are good for the Bill. However, what ought to be said very clearly is that such amendments would not be necessary if the Bill had been properly drafted and considered in advance. The Government must stand condemned for having produced an ill-considered Bill which has no possibility of producing cheaper electricity. They have gone on with it regardless. That should be said now as an obiter dictum.

§ Lord Peston
My Lords, speaking for those of us who helped to insert the new clause in the Bill, I am bound to say that we are rather sad that the Government have decided that they are unable to accept it. They are making a serious mistake, particularly if they have the interests of the nuclear industry and nuclear generation at heart.
The most that could be said against the amendment is that it over-eggs the pudding, so to speak. So far as I understand the objection, Members of the other place claim that the amendment is adequately secured by existing legislation. I do not believe that that is the case. Even if it were, the Government would have been better advised to lean excessively in the protection direction rather than rejecting what noble Lords inserted in the Bill after due deliberation.
As has been said—I do not want to go over the ground again—there are genuine question marks over the future of nuclear power generation. I, for one, am unhappy that those question marks have been introduced as a result of the Bill, given that there are already sufficient question marks. The amendment would have been helpful; it is a great pity that the Government do not care for it.
We hope that there will not be a nuclear accident. We do not seek to suggest anything that would undermine the role of the inspectorate. I hope that the high standards in the area of safety that the industry in public ownership has met will still be met given that, regrettably, the nuclear generating part will be in private hands.
1353 Nonetheless, we know enough to realise that accidents are possible. The point that concerns me about the noble Lord's arguments is that I do not believe that, if there were to be an accident, the public would accept anything less than the amendment states. The noble Lord is entirely right that, in practice, those who operate the stations will have to be the ones who set to work to get things sorted out. However, under no circumstances would the general public accept a statement from the Secretary of State, whoever he turns out to be—it has nothing to do with party; we have no idea who the Secretary of State will be—that he would not take control and full responsibility. If a Secretary of State rose at the Dispatch Box in another place and said, "There is a nuclear accident and the industry will get it right", he would be hounded out of his job within an hour.
Finally—I am genuinely surprised that the noble Lord has raised the matter at this time—I cannot believe that, if there were to be a nuclear accident, any question of commercial interests could be allowed to arise. If there is a nuclear accident in this country, we shall simply have to deal with it. No one will take any notice whatsoever of the alleged commercial interests of the companies concerned. People will be concerned only with dealing with the accident. I did not think it helpful of the noble Lord to refer to anything to do with commercial interests. We had no such thoughts. We were solely concerned with taking a realistic view of how a nuclear accident would be dealt with in practice.
I regard this as an area where noble Lords were right to try to advise the Goverment to do the right thing. If my memory serves me correctly, it was not just noble Lords on this side who took that view, although I do not have the papers to hand. I can do no more than say that one is disappointed and one feels that the Government have misled themselves. There is nothing more to add.

§ Lord Sanderson of Bowden
My Lords, I respect what the noble Lord, Lord Peston, has said and his belief that we have not dealt with the matter as he would have wished. We believe—and we have looked at the matter carefully—that the amendments are not simply unnecessary; they are misconceived. By creating confusion, they could undermine the existing well thought out and—the noble Lord, I believe, referred to this—detailed proven safety regime. I shall study what he said, but noble Lords can take it that it is the Government's view that safety must predominate and that we believe that we have dealt with this effectively in the Bill.

§ Lord Sanderson of Bowden
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do not insist on their Amendments Nos. 11 and 12 to which the Commons have disagreed for the reason numbered 13. I have already spoken to these amendments. I beg to move.