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Energy: Radioactive Waste Management (S&T Report)

My Lords, as has been said, the first inquiry by the Select Committee on Science and Technology was published in March 1999—eight and a half years ago. In the subsequent years, Government have shown a mixture of procrastination, indecision and, most importantly, a failure to grasp the nature of the problem which has been the subject of subsequent committee reports and government responses, leading to the chaotic situation that is the subject of today’s debate. The problem involves timescales that have no precedent. We are dealing not with decades and not with centuries but with millennia. It surely follows that the solution has to be of a form that will survive the hazards imposed by peripatetic Ministers and civil servants, changed Governments and the inevitable challenges imposed by societal changes in the timescale involved. There has been no sign in their various consultation papers that Government recognise these problems or, indeed, have made any effort to address them. The 1999 report recognised the need for widespread consultation and was quickly followed by a ““citizens jury”” organised by UK CEED later in the same year. A number of randomly selected volunteers with widely differing backgrounds met at weekends over a period of several months to examine evidence from parties chosen by them. They presented their findings in public and by doing so they demonstrated a sense of purpose and commitment wholly lacking in government actions over recent years. Crucially lacking is any proposal by the Government to provide a credible mechanism for managing the project. Such a mechanism surely requires a clear separation from the everyday organisation of government if it is to command the public trust and organisational independence which are central to the task. The 1999 report endeavoured to meet those requirements by recommending the creation of a body reporting annually to Parliament and enjoying statutory independence. It also envisaged that the body would be responsible for public consultations at national and local levels. The public would thereby have seen an independent organisation, responsible to Parliament with a long-term continuity appropriate to the unique task entrusted to it. Instead, the task of nuclear waste management on the timescale I have described has been grafted on to the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority. This has been accompanied by a network of government committees which was appropriately described by one of our colleagues as ““an alphabet soup””. The NDA has a large and important task already but there is no clear explanation of why it has been chosen for this additional one, and I have been unable to identify any rationale for the decision, which involved the transfer of NIREX to the NDA. I intend no criticism of the NDA, which seems to be discharging its decommissioning responsibilities reasonably competently. But there is a huge difference in technology, timescale and responsibility between that task and nuclear waste management, which surely calls for a separate body. Indeed, the combination of decommissioning with long-term storage facilities offers the prospect of internal confusion and competition for attention and funds, which would be highly undesirable in that body. The Government may argue that the new CoRWM will be staffed in such a way as to provide adequate oversight of the performance of that part of the NDA responsible for long-term management; I have grave doubts about that. I have had extensive experience of Governments failing to take a long-term view when political expediencies intervene. I have suffered my share of arm-twisting and derived much strength from the arm’s length relationship that I enjoyed with successive Governments, which limited their ability to influence my actions at will. That was prevented by the requirement that the power of a Minister to intervene was limited by the need for him to give and publish a written direction. In all my experience of the electricity supply industry, I never met a Minister who was prepared to use that power and, of course, to face the ensuing consequences. Such road blocks are necessary to frustrate ministerial dalliances, and never more so than in this case. It is depressingly clear from the present proposals that policy and crucial decisions will emanate from a network of interdepartmental committees, and it seems inevitable that a herd of camels will emerge from their compromise conclusions. That would be a recipe for delay, increased costs and, most importantly, a loss of public confidence, which ought not to be contemplated. It may well be argued that the complexity of the proposals stems from the complexity of national government organisation and also from the added complexities of devolution. My reply would be that those undoubted problems reinforce my arguments and should nullify the proposed arrangements. The long-term provision for nuclear waste is too important and sensitive a problem to be subjected to endless correspondence and hidden trade-offs. Here, surely, is a case for political leaders to recognise the over-riding necessity for a clear and simple executive responsibility with equally clear accountability. None of those objectives will, in my judgment, be met by the government proposals. I deeply hope that the Government will accept the need for a fundamental change in their proposed arrangements. The problem is not new; it was explored in our 1999 report, and a solution on the lines that I have described was put forward. We must approach a new and unprecedented problem with some original thinking and action if the task is to be satisfactorily discharged and the trust of the public maintained.