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Energy Bill

These amendments have been grouped together because, if accepted, each of them would place additional statutory consultation requirements on the Secretary of State in relation to this part of the Bill. The purpose of a funded decommissioning programme is to ensure that the operator sets out the steps to decommission the power station and to manage and dispose of the waste that is produced. The programme will also have to contain the information that sets out the estimates for the costs of those activities and how those costs will be accrued. As the Bill stands, in discharging his responsibilities in relation to a programme, the Secretary of State is required to consult with the Health and Safety Executive, the Environment Agency in England and Wales and the Department of the Environment for Northern Ireland, where appropriate, prior to making a decision about whether to approve or reject a programme or propose a modification to a programme or prior to making regulations or publishing guidance. The purpose of the duty on the Secretary of State to consult with the interested parties is to ensure that a programme submitted for approval or any subsequent modification conforms to the safety and environmental requirements of the relevant regulatory body. The parties I have named have expertise in relation to nuclear safety, security and environmental matters. It is also to ensure that any decision that the Secretary of State might make—for example, to impose certain conditions or additional obligations or, equally, to issue guidance—does not adversely affect the existing regulatory structures for the nuclear energy sector. For example, it might not be helpful for the Secretary of State to approve a modification to a programme submitted by an operator that would not be acceptable, say, on environmental grounds to the Environment Agency. I shall briefly set out how the various bodies referred to in the noble Baroness’s amendments are already involved in any potential new nuclear build, how their relationship to the provisions in this section of the Bill is different to that of the interested bodies and why, because of this, I am unable to support these amendments. I am going to talk about each body in turn, rather than speak to each individual amendment. The amendments that concern local authorities would require the Secretary of State to consult with them when exercising his duties. We believe that they add an unnecessary layer of bureaucracy to the Bill’s provisions and would not enhance the level of scrutiny given to funded decommissioning programmes. We do not believe that local authorities always have the competence to assess the technical or financial content of funded decommissioning programmes, especially given that the primary focus of these provisions is about ensuring that appropriate financial security is put aside to decommission the power station and clean up the site on which it stood. In our mind, such a statutory requirement would simply place further burdens on already pretty burdened local authorities. These additional burdens would result from the local authority—on occasion, certainly, if not on the majority of occasions—having to seek external advice on the detailed content of the programme in order for them to engage in a meaningful way with the whole process. Of course, we recognise the enormous experience that local authorities have in the field of planning and their role in assessing the impact of infrastructure projects on the local community and representing those interests through the planning process. However, there is a difference between these roles and the roles performed by the interested bodies that are more closely affected by decisions made by the Secretary of State under the nuclear provisions in the Bill. Where a new nuclear power station is proposed, existing arrangements will allow local authorities to be involved in that process. In the future, when the independent Infrastructure Planning Commission is established through the Planning Bill, which is in another place as we speak, local authorities will continue to be consulted on the proposed development prior to construction. The local authority will be able to scrutinise all relevant aspects of the proposal, such as the impacts of transport and traffic flow. Later, were a change to occur to a power station, for example, following a modification to a decommissioning plan, and that change amounted to a ““development”” within the meaning of the planning legislation—such as constructing or demolishing a building—then planning consent would be required and at that point the local authority would again become involved. However, there may equally be modifications which do not constitute a ““development””—that is, they would not have an impact on the local community—and in those instances the local authority would, quite rightly, not need to be consulted. In other words, getting the appropriate involvement is important. We think that that is rightly through existing processes and not through the framework established under the Bill. I believe it is appropriate that the Bill grants a statutory role only to the bodies that have a responsibility for health and safety, security and environmental matters. In our view, there is already the right balance of formal and informal consultations with local authorities to deal with concerns that they might have regarding a nuclear power station in their community. We think that the Bill as drafted strikes the right balance. Local authorities and local communities are of course represented on British Energy and NDA site stakeholder groups, and we would expect new nuclear power stations to be similarly involved in local communities. These are important forums; they help to establish long-term relationships between local residents and operators of nuclear power stations throughout the lifetime of a plant.