§ Mr. MeacherTo ask the President of the Board of Trade what factors led him to terminate the loans to the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority under the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority (Extinguishing of Liabilities) Order 1996. [4147]
§ Mr. Richard Page[holding answer 14 November 19961: The loans in question were taken out from the national loans fund by the UK Atomic Energy Authority following the Atomic Energy Authority Act 1986, which enabled it to act as a trading fund, borrowing to finance 371W its commercial activities and servicing the loans out of commercial revenues. Following the successful privatisation of the commercial parts of the authority as AEA Technology plc on 26 September 1996, the remaining authority exists principally to manage nuclear decommissioning and radioactive wastes. My Department now provides most of its funding, and the authority does not have the independent commercial profits that would be needed to service the loans. No purpose would be served by our using public expenditure to enable the authority to service national loans fund loans. We therefore extinguished the loans, which we were able to do under the powers given last year by the Atomic Energy Authority Act 1995 because the sale proceeds from the privatisation of AEA Technology plc were larger than the total of the outstanding loans and commencing capital debt of the authority.