Before we give these enormous powers—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central (Mr. Palmer) called them—may I ask two questions, the first of relatively minor importance and the second of critical importance?

The relatively minor question is ; after all that has happened in the last few weeks, is it not possible to publish the report of the committee which sat under the chairmanship of Peter Vinter, setting out the various options on atomic energy? I make no bones about the fact that I have always thought it should be published but, in a normal commercial setup, I can see reasons why the Vinter report should not have been made public. But we now have a completely different situation, where the whole world is in search of every form of energy that it can lay its hands on, and in these circumstances it would be sensible to publish such information as the Vinter Committee gave the Government on which they could base their options. But I do not make too much of that point.

On the second issue, I hope that before the evening is out we can get some kind of undertaking that before the House goes into the Christmas Recess there will be a statement, albeit an interim statement, on precisely the kind of decisions that will be taken in relation to nuclear policy. It is very easy to ask questions of the Government. I should like to say what I think they ought to do, and what the Minister ought to choose to do. As a first step, the Minister should get into his office all the experts who may have anything to contribute, and probe as deeply as possible whether the advanced gas-cooled reactor is, or is not, a starter on the information that will come from Dungeness B and Hinckley B, and all other available information.

This may be the most important decision which the Secretary of State will take in his political career, wherever that may lead him. It is of great importance, because we could sink thousands of millions of pounds into it. If there is anything approaching certainty, and the gas-cooled reactor looks like working and being completed within a 7 or 8-year period, then perhaps the Government would be right to take the risk and go ahead and have a whole programme of AGRs. This would be the best solution. But I have grave doubts, based on the views of those who know far more about the matter than I ever shall do, whether any Government would be justified in taking such a risk, because, at the end of the day, we might find that the corrosion problems were too considerable and this country really would be left in the proverbial cart.

There are two less attractive but more realistic propositions. One of them is to say "All right, let us go back to the British reactor system, the old hat Magnox, because at least we know that it will work." My information is that the Magnox reactor could be built within a 4 to 5-year period, and, if it were done on the basis of replication, a pattern of Magnox reactors could be created throughout this country. The costs would not be unreasonable by present-day standards, the engineering problems have been more or less overcome and this would give us the certainty of major nuclear production by 1978–79. That would be one option. It would be the safe course. It may not be on the frontiers of technology, but at least it is a serious option.

The second option is to go ahead with the country which has perhaps had the most successful nuclear power programme of any of the past 20 years, and I refer to Canada. The question is whether we should accept negotiations with the Canadians, to put our eggs in the one basket of the CANDU duterium reactor. I mention this because Lorne Gray has been in London this week and I think he has met the Minister ; at any rate, he has met senior officials. I should like to ask—it may be too early ; I have a Parliamentary Question down to ask for a full Government statement on discussions that are very new—whether we can have a statement on what the Canadian offer is, because those of us who have been to Chalk River, as I think my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central, has, to the centre of the Canadian nuclear energy programme, know how extremely impressive it is. They would provide expertise and a market and, perhaps most enticingly of all from our point of view, by going ahead on the basis of CANDU much of the technology of the steam-generated heavy water reactor—as my hon. Friend the Member for Bristol, Central, and I know from Win-frith—could be used in a joint British-Canadian programme. Also, we know that the CANDU nuclear reactor actually works.

As I said, there are these two options, and I hope that the Minister will be able tonight to give the House an undertaking that before the Christmas Recess we shall have a statement—at any rate, an interim statement, about something which deserves the most senior and urgent ministerial attention.