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.