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Proceeding contribution from Lord Marland (Conservative) in the House of Lords on Monday, 23 January 2012. It occurred during Debates on delegated legislation on Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Inspections etc.) Regulations 2012.


Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Inspections etc.) Regulations 2012

It is all in 2012. I am sorry that I did not clarify that but that is the case. As I said, a lot of people are interested in competing—which is encouraging. On the referendum issue, regulation is in place within Scottish powers so that that is dealt with. On the whole business of inspection, clearly an inspection is annual but the inspectors have—and should have, as the noble Baroness said—the right to carry out spot checks. As the noble Baroness indicated, that is to ensure that this should not be telegraphed and they think, ““Ooh, we have to get ourselves ready for the inspection””. An awful lot of people will spend a lot of time on this because it is very important that the inspection is right. The noble Baroness then moved on to ask whether the information will be publicly available. The short answer is yes. The reports of any non-compliance with the recommendations will be put on the public register so that it will be there for all to see. She then mentioned reasonable excuse and I had to invite a comment from my officials. I will quickly go through what they said. There is an existing regime to deal with operator failures to comply with licences directions of the Secretary of State. A reasonable excuse might be that there is a good safety reason for not complying during an inspection period with inspectors’ request, for example, to switch off the equipment. If the inspector has requested that the equipment is switched off, that would be a reasonable excuse. However, there will not be many reasonable excuses. I hope that that answers the many excellent questions asked.


Secondary information

Type
Proceeding contribution
Reference
734 c155-6GC 
Session
2010-12
Chamber / Committee
House of Lords Grand Committee
Subjects
Carbon dioxide Inspections Storage Safety
Legislation
Storage of Carbon Dioxide (Inspections etc) Regulations 2012
Link
View this Proceeding contribution on www.publications.parliament.uk