Lord Hunt of Kings Heath:

Moved by Lord Hunt of Kings Heath

53B: After Clause 12, insert the following new Clause—“Removal of duplicative regulatory justification decisions(1) Where a specified consent is granted for a nuclear generating station—(a) the practice of the generation of electricity or heat from that nuclear generating station which is so consented is deemed to be justified for the purposes of the Justification of Practices Involving Ionising Radiation Regulations 2004 (SI 2004/1769) (“the Regulations”),(b) the decision to grant a specified consent is deemed to be a justification decision for the purposes of the regulations, and(c) without limitation to sub-paragraphs (a) and (b), regulations 14, 17, and 18 of the Regulations do not apply.(2) Where a specified consent is granted by a person other than the Secretary of State, regulation 19(2) of the Regulations is to be construed as though that provision applied to that person.(3) Nothing in a national policy statement designated under section 6 of the Planning Act 2006 (review) prior to this Act coming into force affects the operation of this section, and any national policy statement designated prior to this Act coming into force is to be construed so as to give effect to subsection (1).(4) Nothing in this section affects any power to review, take enforcement action in respect of, or otherwise vary (with conditions or otherwise), a justification decision under the Regulations. (5) In this section—“nuclear generating station” means a nuclear installation used, or proposed to be used, for the purpose of generating electricity or heat with a view to giving a supply to any premises or enabling a supply to be given;“nuclear installation” means any installation the operation of which requires a licence under section 1 of the Nuclear Installations Act 1965;“specified consent” means a licence under the Nuclear Installations Act 1965, permission under Part 3 the Town and Country Planning Act 1990, development consent under the Planning Act 2008, or a consent under the Infrastructure (Wales) Act 2024 (provided, in the case of that consent, the Welsh Government provides an approval for the purposes of this section), or any other equivalent planning or land use approval, permission or consent for the development of a nuclear generating station.”Member’s explanatory statementBefore a nuclear power station is built (and in addition to the planning process) an assessment must be made of whether the social, economic or other benefits outweigh the health detriment of ionising radiation. This Amendment seeks to disapply the need for this assessment where planning consent is given.

My Lords, my Amendment 53B seeks to remove the current requirement for what is known as “regulatory justification” in relation to new nuclear power stations. I want to acknowledge the work of Mustafa Latif-Aramesh on inspiring the amendment and Stephen Tromans KC, who has produced an opinion for Last Energy on the Justification of Practices Involving Ionising Radiation Regulations 2004.

I read with great interest the Opposition’s amendments coming from the noble Lord, Lord Offord—Amendments 346B to 346D, which have not been grouped with mine but which we will be debating later in September. He is much more radical than I am in his three amendments: he would disapply all the provisions of the Conservation of Habitats and Species Regulations 2017 in relation to the development of new nuclear power stations.

The noble Lord, Lord Offord, would give the Secretary of State the power to grant planning consent to a nuclear power station regardless of an environmental impact assessment. The Opposition also want to prevent applications for judicial review of the Secretary of State’s decision to grant development consent for a nuclear power station on the grounds of non-compliance with habitat regulations or environmental protection obligations.

It is a bit of a turnaround from what the Opposition were saying last week. The point I am making is that my amendment is very modest in comparison with the one from the noble Lord, Lord Offord. I hoped that I would get support around the House for this.

Only a few days ago, we had the very welcome conclusion of the final investment decision for Sizewell C. That followed on just a few weeks from the decision to give Rolls-Royce financial support after an exercise conducted by Great British Nuclear to develop a fleet of small modular reactors in the UK.

Globally, we are seeing a renaissance in new nuclear power. The International Energy Agency this year reported that more than 70 gigawatts of new nuclear capacity is under construction globally, one of the highest levels in 30 years. The IEA in its report also comments that to take advantage of the opportunities that nuclear power offers, which are low carbon and essential baseload to an energy infrastructure largely moving towards renewables, we need a stable regulatory framework. I very much welcome the appointment by the Government of the Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce, which has been asked to look at how the regulation of safety, environmental planning and other relevant areas could be improved. It is charged with publishing a final report this autumn and its recommendations will go direct to the Prime Minister.

One area that I hope the task force will be considering is the current ludicrous requirement for regulatory justification. Before a nuclear power station is built,

“its design must be assessed to find out if the social, economic or other benefits outweigh the health detriment of ionising radiation. This assessment process is known as Regulatory Justification … In the UK, this principle is set out in the Justification of Practices Involving Ionising Radiation Regulations 2004. These regulations require any new class or type of practice involving ionising radiation (such as nuclear power stations) to undergo a generic, high-level pre-optimisation assessment of whether the social, economic or other benefits outweigh the health detriment”.

This is a completely arcane, wasteful process, costing a huge amount of money and delaying an application process by about two years. It achieves absolutely nothing, given that we have world-renowned extensive regulatory systems in place to ensure the safety of nuclear power stations.

I suspect my noble friend might say that we will have to wait and see what the task force says. I get that, but I hope the Government will be prepared to amend the Bill on Report if the task force comes up with very strong recommendations around this area. In the meantime, the Government could take a small step to improve the situation. I am grateful to Catherine Howard of Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer for her work on this. Our understanding is that under the current regulatory justification procedure, each and every small modular reactor developer has to submit their design for regulatory justification. I think we should go back to why we have these regulations in the first place. Examples might be the use of X-rays in prisons or bone density scanners for sports performance assessments, which are required to obtain regulatory justification. Basically, this is to ensure that the small risks to human health that they pose are outweighed by their benefits.

The regulatory justification applies not to each and every type of X-ray machine and bone density scanner but to them as a class of ionising radiation practice. Under Regulation 5, something

“is an ‘existing class or type of practice’ if either—(a)” it is a practice carried out lawfully without regulatory justification before 6 February 2018; or

“(b) it has been found to be justified; or both”.

I argue that the small modular reactor designs coming forward could be included within both (a) and (b). The result is that we could do away with what seems to be the current position, that each SMR developer has to make separate applications for regulatory justification.

I am very grateful to Stephen Tromans KC for the opinion he produced. It made me then look up a 2010 justification decision by the relevant Secretary of State on European pressurised reactors. In essence, the Secretary of State basically says, “It is justified because we have a strong regulatory system in practice”. So if ever a regulation was completely useless, this is it. The trouble is that once we have such a regulation, it is very difficult to move away from it. All sorts of reasons will be given, but here is a simple way of speeding up the introduction of SMRs. It is clear that Rolls-Royce has government support, and many other SMR developers are bringing forward proposals in the UK. It is perfectly possible that we may be able to get entire private sector investment in developing this. We need to encourage it, not put a wasteful, useless regulatory system in place to disadvantage those developers. I hope the Government will be sympathetic to this. I beg to move.

My Lords, I strongly support Amendment 53B, which seeks to relieve newly commissioned nuclear power stations of the burdens of the regulations on ionising radiation. These regulations have accumulated over time and become a byzantine legal code. They require justifications for a wide variety of daily practices involved in the handling of radioactive materials. Specialist firms exist to enable their clients to identify the specific compliance requirements of their organisation, to enable them to complete legal compliance audits and to develop bespoke legal registers.

The regulations are the products of successive enactments in the UK that date from the inception of the nuclear industry. They have also arisen out of the directives of the European Commission, and Euratom has been responsible for creating many of them. I observe that we are no longer a member of that organisation; had we remained a member, we would doubtless be involved in an endeavour to rationalise and alleviate the regulations.

There are two reasons why the burden of justification should not fall on newly commissioned nuclear power stations. First, their designs and operating procedures have already been scrutinised in detail by the generic design assessments conducted by the Office for Nuclear Regulation, which renders further justifications unnecessary. The second reason concerns the stringent culture of safety that nowadays characterises our nuclear industry. Anyone who has visited a nuclear power station will testify to it. The Office for Nuclear Regulation is the UK’s nuclear inspectorate. Its job is to ensure that these standards are maintained, and it can be relied on to continue to do just that.

My Lords, I strongly support this Amendment. Rolls-Royce was ready to move forward with SMRs some five years ago but, under several Governments, no decision was made. More inquiries were done on this, that and the other. The net result is that Rolls-Royce goes to do it on the ground on the continent, and gets permission within a few months. Here we are vacillating again. This important amendment is really needed, and I very much hope that His Majesty’s Government will take it on board.

My Lords, it will probably not surprise the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, to know that I oppose his Amendment. It is well known in your Lordships’ House that the Green Party opposes new nuclear power plants. Proponents of new nuclear power should be careful what they wish for and consider the whole issue of public consent and concern.

I commend the noble Lord on managing to get this amendment considered at an extremely timely moment, given that this week the Government are seeking to go ahead with Sizewell C. As the Financial Times notes, it is

“the costliest nuclear reactor in the world” and will see the UK taxpayer bearing huge costs and risk, with government loans of £3.8 billion and a £36 billion loan from the National Wealth Fund.

I declare an interest in that I know many of the people who have opposed the Sizewell C project and, I have no doubt, will continue to do so. There are many reasons why they oppose it. Cost is the obvious one, but there are also the local environmental impacts and concerns about future security, sea level rise and water use—a whole list of things. Safety is a big issue that people have continuing concerns about with nuclear power; it is no wonder when you consider the list from Chernobyl to Fukushima to the continuing concerns regularly highlighted by the International Energy Agency about Zaporizhzhia in Ukraine. The public are very much concerned about trust and safety.

Many in your Lordships’ House are undoubtedly familiar with the phrase “policing with consent”. When we were discussing physician associates, I spoke about regulating with consent. What has happened since with the Leng review and the many concerns expressed showed that there was a problem when the previous Government went ahead without real consent and clear understanding within the health sector. If you are looking at nuclear power, those who propone it would want to see that there is construction with consent and reassurance of security. Taking away regulatory justification is not going to play very well.

My Lords, I listened with interest to the remarks of the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, and I can assure her that, having heard last week from both the chairman and the chief executive of the Office for Nuclear Regulation, who appeared before the Industry and Regulators Committee on which I serve, I was very satisfied that their regulatory process and policy would more than satisfy the consumers and residents of the area of Suffolk near the Sizewell nuclear power station.

The secret of the Amendment tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, is in its title:

“Removal of duplicative regulatory justification decisions”.

We do not need duplicative regulatory justification decisions if, in the singular, they protect the safety of the public to a sufficient degree. I was very satisfied by the answers to questions on safety that we received in our committee last week from the senior management of the ONR. I strongly support the amendment in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt.

My Lords, on these Benches we fully recognise the need for nuclear power and nuclear generation to be part of our baseload capacity, which is needed to combine with renewables as we transition to clean power. I have the utmost respect for the noble Lord, Lord Hunt, his work and everything that he has done for energy transition. However, I am surprised that he calls these regulations “ludicrous”, “arcane” and “wasteful”. It may be that the broader landscape needs reform and he is able to raise his points with an Amendment, but clearly an amendment is not a way to look at the reform of this stuff.

I worry that, were we to rip up regulation in haste, we would repent at leisure. These measures are completely different from the planning process. They are designed for new types of nuclear generation technology, to check whether new designs are safe and fit for purpose. I do not see them as duplicative; they are separate to the operation of the planning system and fulfil different functions. My worry is that, were these two to go ahead in this way, they would serve to undermine confidence in the safety and security of the nuclear processes that we have in this country. Indeed, this is an international standard that is recognised by the ICRP and in the EU and is used around the world.

It takes up to 18 months to undergo these processes, but they start before planning. I do not see exactly how, even if this amendment was successful, it would do much to speed up the new nuclear generation that is needed. The noble Lord’s central argument is that these are duplicative—I do not agree; I think that they are separate—and that passing this amendment would speed up the process of getting new nuclear power. Since the process at issue happens first, I do not think that is the case either.

We will not support the noble Lord’s amendment. Obviously, all regulations need to be kept under review and, if the Government want to do that, we are open to it. However, I do not think that an amendment here is the way—other than to pressure the Government—to look at these things with a broader scope, so we will not support the noble Lord on his amendment.

My Lords, Amendment 53B in the name of the noble Lord, Lord Hunt of Kings Heath, proposes a sensible and pragmatic change to the current requirement that, before a nuclear power station is built, an assessment must be made as to whether the social, economic and other benefits outweigh the health detriment caused by ionising radiation. The amendment seeks to disapply this requirement in cases where planning consent has already been granted.

This change is both timely and necessary. We must look carefully at how to prevent nuclear power projects from being blocked or delayed, especially in the context of a wider energy landscape. Notably, the Government are currently presiding over the highest prices for offshore wind in a decade, which highlights the urgent need for diverse, affordable, reliable and resilient energy sources. Nuclear power stations provide that critical alternative—one that is essential to the UK’s growing demand for electricity in a cost-effective and secure manner.

Noble Lords across the House can agree on the vital importance of nuclear energy to our energy strategy. Nuclear energy remains a cornerstone for delivering a cheap, stable and low-carbon supply of electricity. It is crucial not only to meet our ambitious climate commitments but to safeguard energy security in an increasingly unpredictable world. The reliability of nuclear power provides a steady backbone to the electricity grid. As such, it is an indispensable part of our efforts to build a resilient energy system.

We acknowledge that we need rigorous planning and regulatory processes, but these are already in place for nuclear projects. These processes thoroughly assess health and safety concerns, including the risk posed by ionising radiation. While I might not go as far as some other noble Lords today about “wasteful”, “useless” and “byzantine” regulation, I certainly believe that it is duplicative. We therefore do not need to do it again, if planning consent has already been granted and has already assessed those risks. It would create unnecessary complexity and delays, without delivering any meaningful public benefit.

Where planning consent has already been obtained, following comprehensive scrutiny, it is entirely reasonable to disapply this further requirement. Doing so would streamline the development process, reduce unnecessary bureaucratic hurdles and support the timely delivery of vital infrastructure projects, which are so central to the UK’s energy future. For these reasons, we hope that the Minister has listened carefully to the concerns raised in relation to this amendment.

My Lords, Amendment 53B would have the effect of removing the need for nuclear technologies that generate electricity or heat to undergo regulatory justification. Regulatory justification is derived from international standards. Its purpose is to ensure that all practices involving ionising radiation, including nuclear technologies, must first be assessed to determine whether the individual or societal benefits outweigh the potential health detriment from that practice. It is a key pillar of radiological protection.

That said, I am aware that there are concerns around the process of justification for nuclear reactors and that it is considered administratively burdensome—I heard that argument loud and clear from the noble Lord, Lord Naseby, and my noble friend Lord Hunt of Kings Heath. That is why I am pleased that it forms part of the nuclear regulatory task force’s review of nuclear regulation.

The Government are committed to stripping out ineffective, overlapping and unduly burdensome processes, but as we move forward with new nuclear, it is vital that we maintain high standards of health and environmental protection and fulfil our international obligations. The nuclear regulatory task force is examining all aspects of nuclear regulation, including regulatory justification, environmental permitting and nuclear licensing and planning. We expect it to come forward with recommendations that will streamline the regulatory processes and reduce unnecessary burden.

I believe that more effective solutions can be found to improve the process of regulatory justification by including it, as the task force is doing, in a holistic review of the nuclear regulatory framework. Therefore, we unfortunately cannot support this amendment. I hope that my noble friend Lord Hunt is satisfied with my response and will withdraw his amendment.

My Lords, it has been a very interesting debate. I say to the noble Baroness, Lady Bennett, that I know the Green Party does not like nuclear, and I would just point to the complete mess that Germany is in because it is turning its back on nuclear. It is then dependent on Russian oil and gas, and, geopolitically, Germany is in a very weak position still because of it.

My point of view is very simple. The noble Baroness mentioned Sizewell C. I am tempting fate seeing the noble Lord, Lord Deben, in his place when I talk about Sizewell C, but it will give power to 6 million homes, and it is low-carbon and homegrown. Although we are reliant on French technology, and there is a whole story about this country’s disastrous mistake to turn its back on new nuclear for so many years, the estimate is that 70% of the supply chain value will come from UK companies. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, public opinion has become much more favourable towards new nuclear.

My noble friend Lord Hanworth mentioned the generic design assessment, which has been a very extensive programme, looking at various designs of new nuclear proposals. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, is absolutely right about the delays that have, unfortunately, been built in.

The noble Viscount, Lord Trenchard, talked about duplication. I just say to the noble Earl, Lord Russell, that it is worth reading the 2010 EPR justification decision by the then Secretary of State, which I suspect was made by a Liberal Democrat. I will read a couple of paragraphs. Basically, its conclusion is that it is justified:

“Under this regime, the operator of any EPR would be subject to the same stringent safeguards provisions as existing operators, including inspection and verification by the international safeguards inspectorates of the European Commission and the IAEA. The Secretary of State believes that there is therefore no reason to think that the building of EPRs in the UK would result in any significant rise in proliferation risk from the current low levels … the Secretary of State is conscious of the extent of damage and health detriment that a release of radioactive material from an EPR would have”— quite right too.

“However, he has confidence in the regulatory regimes for safety and security”.

In essence, in this process a developer has to go through hugely expensive, lengthy processes only for the Secretary of State to say, “We are satisfied because we have a very strong regulatory system in the UK”, which we do. The noble Lord, Lord Naseby, is absolutely right about the Office for Nuclear Regulation.

When we see a wasteful regulatory process, I am afraid it is of no use at all; it is a complete waste of time and effort, and we should be very strong on it. I take my noble friend the Minister’s comment that we should wait for the task force. My plea to him and his department, because I think the justification process is under Defra, is that they take the task force recommendations seriously. I do not know when we are going to be on Report, but I suspect it is going to be late autumn, given the legislative load we have at the moment. There is time to amend on Report and put in place a lot of the recommendations that will come from it. Having said that, I beg leave to withdraw my Amendment.

Amendment 53B withdrawn.

Clause 29: Fees for certain services