Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, the Nuclear Safeguards Bill is slim by the standards of Brexit Bills, but this belies the importance of the issues it addresses. The Bill makes provisions for the eventuality that the UK will leave the European Atomic Energy Community, or Euratom, to give its common name. In its place, we should have to establish a new safeguards regime to oversee the security of our nuclear...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I declare that I am a member of the European Union Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. My reason for this declaration is that I wish to allude to some of the evidence that we have heard from witnesses and to some of the ministerial replies to our inquiries regarding their opinions on proposed legislation from the European Union. The Green Paper on the 25-year plan for the...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, the Government’s industrial strategy cannot be adequately appraised in the short time available to an individual speaker. The Green Paper of January 2017 raised the matters of concern. The White Paper of November 2017 sets forth the Government’s intentions. The White Paper ignores many of the issues raised by the Green Paper. There is, however, a surprising element in it that I...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, Britain needs to continue to generate a substantial proportion of its electricity from nuclear power. The supply of electricity will need to increase considerably to accommodate the electrification of transport and the continuing decarbonisation of our energy resources. The growing volume of wind-generated and solar-generated electricity, which is affected by a wide variability,...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I follow an excellent speech. The six sub-committees of the European Union Committee of the House of Lords have produced a collection of authoritative documents that have revealed in detail the nature of Britain’s relationship with the European Union. I have counted 17 such documents that are addressed specifically to the problems of Brexit, and there are more to come. The reports...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, the tenets of a political ideology can endure for a very long time, even when they have become utterly inappropriate to current circumstances. The nostrums of Margaret Thatcher were absorbed by members of the present Conservative Government when they were adolescents or young political aspirants and they have been followed by some of them without a second thought. One of the aims of...
Viscount Hanworth: To ask Her Majesty's Government when they intend to report on the progress of the competition to design a Small Modular Reactor for the United Kingdom.
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. The Government announced the competition for a small modular reactor in March 2016, as we have heard, but it was expected that phase 1 of the competition would be completed by autumn 2016, with the publication of a road map. We are still waiting for that. Meanwhile, some UK companies have invested heavily in developing their solutions. I am told...
Viscount Hanworth: To ask Her Majesty’s Government what progress has been made in assessing the submissions to the Small Modular Reactors Competition, and what steps are being taken to dispose of the nation’s stocks of high-grade plutonium.
Viscount Hanworth: I thank the Minister for that Answer. I am glad to hear that the second stage of the competition is forthcoming. The competition has been a confusing affair. It has been inhibited by the rules that prevent the Government engaging directly with competitors. The decision on how to handle our stocks of plutonium has been held in abeyance for many years. Is it true that the Government are now...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords—
Viscount Hanworth: Will the Minister tell us how many of our Typhoon aeroplanes are deployed in the east and how many are operational at any one time?
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I do not believe that the speakers in this short debate will be entirely reassured by what the Minister has told us. It is clear that there is work to be done in this area of the Bill. I trust that the Minister will take the opportunity to react to what he has heard today and bring something back to us on Report. Therefore, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment 166A...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, Amendment 166A and the allied Amendments 168A and 173 propose that the body that is to judge the quality of the teaching and the standard of assessment in universities should be independent of the Office for Students. Amendment 173 declares that no members of the body should also be members of the Office for Students. These amendments are overshadowed by my noble friend Lord...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I should like to testify that there is something utterly perverse in the current system of rating the quality of the provisions of individual departments within universities and of universities as a whole. The system depends on the National Student Survey, which aims to determine the degree of customer satisfaction. Because the ratings of the NSS are determined within these...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, when the military capacity of a nation or an alliance of nations becomes demonstrably inadequate, then it serves not as a means of defence but as an encouragement to the ambitions of its potential adversaries. Britain’s military capacity is utterly inadequate to meet the threats that are posed to us and our European allies by an expansionist Russia. We have allowed our Armed...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I wish to speak to my own Amendment, Amendment 66, and in doing so I declare my interests as I did at Second Reading. In common with many commentators, I fear that the Bill gives unprecedented powers to the Secretary of State to interfere directly in the academic business of universities and providers of higher education. As it stands, the Bill will allow the Minister to give direct...
Viscount Hanworth: My Lords, I begin by declaring that I have spent my working life as an academic in British universities. The objective of the Higher Education and Research Bill is to further the marketisation of higher education and to increase competition within the sector. Universities have traditionally undertaken functions and have operated in ways that no competitive profit-seeking organisation would...
