HC Deb 06 December 2001 vol 376 cc467-8W
Llew Smith

To ask the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs what was the basis of the criticisms of the competence of the authors of the report prepared for the European Parliament's Scientific and Technological Option Assessment Programme on possible toxic effects from nuclear reprocessing plants at Sellafield, that the Attorney General put before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea on 19–20 November.[19880]

Mr. Straw

The Government, in their submissions before the International Tribunal for the Law of the Sea in the MOX plant case, drew attention to criticisms that had been made of the Wise report regarding its possible lack of objectivity. As these statements were made in the context of legal proceedings, I would not wish to paraphrase them. I refer my hon. Friend to the full verbatim transcripts of the statements made by the Government to the Tribunal during the hearings on 19 and 20 November. These are available on the website of the Tribunal at http://www.itlos.org.

The relevant sections from the transcripts are as follows:

Transcript of public sitting held on Monday, 19 November 2001, at 3.00 p.m.

Page 23, lines 34–41

http://www. itlos.org/case_documents/2001/document_en_194.pdf

Transcript of public sitting held on Tuesday, 20 November 2001, at 9.30 a.m.

Page 5, lines 43–50, page 6, lines 1–17, page 29, lines 4–41

http://www.itlos.org/case_documents/2001/document_en_195.pdf

Transcript of public sitting held on Tuesday, 20 November 2001, at 3.15 p.m.

age 20, lines 22–27

http://www.itlos.org/case_documents/2001/document_en_196.pdf

Alternatively, these transcripts may be accessed by starting from the home page of the Tribunal's website (http://www.itlos.org) and making the following selections:

  • English
  • Proceedings and Judgments
  • Docket
  • Case No.10 (The MOX Plant Case)
  • Oral proceedings
  • ITLOS/PV.01/07,
  • ITLOS/PV.01/08, and
  • ITLOS/PV.01/09.

The above page and line references are to the uncorrected versions of the transcripts which are currently displayed on the Tribunal's website. When the Tribunal replaces these with the corrected versions, there might be some slight changes in the line numberings of the relevant text. If these are material I will write to my hon. Friend to inform him.