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Energy: Radioactive Waste Management (S&T Report)

My Lords, to reiterate the last point of the noble Lord, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, I am grateful to the noble Earl for bringing the committee’s report before the House. We are not stuck for time; I will not fill all of it, but I am determined to put as many answers on the record as I can. Having listened to the speeches, I think it would be best to use my prepared notes first and then move to the individual answers rather than the other way around. There is a reason for that. First—I am not going to argue the toss on this—the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, was looking for examples of other types of organisations; she used the British Library and the National Archives. I agree: this is unique. We do not need to look for other examples; we just get on with it. This is not about decades but about millennia. Let us not use any arguments of procrastination. The Liberal Democrat spokesman gave away the reason why this has taken so long: so many people have been determined not to find a solution to the waste as a means of stopping any discussion of new build. I have heard those points made by members of various committees in the past 10 years. You cannot have a civilised, organised, professional debate at two levels. First, you do not want to discuss the waste because you might find a solution and, if you do, that knocks on the head any arguments about possible new build to cope with climate change. This is a complicated argument—