Supplementary memorandum submitted by
Radiation Free Lakeland
ADDITIONAL EVIDENCE
TO WRITTEN
SUBMISSION—INSURANCE
As a wildlife artist I have to take out at least
£5 million of public liability insurance every year. This
is needed before I can attend shows in Cumbria as an exhibitor.
For example Cumbria's County Show will have a marquee of exhibitors
doing rather benign and joyous things such as charcoal drawing
with children, making walking sticks or sticky toffee pudding.
The marquee may have around 60 exhibitors. The full public liability
insurance for that marquee in the case of accident or incident
such as an easel falling over will be far more than the nuclear
industry is now required to insure itself for in the case of an
accident with the High Level Liquid Waste Tanks at Sellafield.
The nuclear industry has been given an indemnity by government
which allows it to operate with pitiful public liability insurance
of £140 million or to put it another way the same insurance
as 28 artists are required to have in order to attend the County
Show. In the case of a serious accident at Sellafield the taxpayer
would foot the bill which could run into trillions. This is an
obscenity on a grander scale to taxpayers footing the bill for
MP's duck pond houses. The extraordinary thing is that while the
nuclear industry is not required to insure itself for radioactive
waste liability -the Department of Energy and Climate Change is
promoting the building of high burn up fuel reactors that will
produce radioactive waste much more hazardous than the existing
waste.
An industry at the very top of the polluting
food chain is given special treatment by government- with a potentially
unlimited draw on the public purse, while an artist—a fairly
benign occupation—would not get away with not having adequate
insurance arrangements to step inside a show marquee.
ADDITIONAL REFERENCESMarianne
Birkby Wildlife Artist—MADE IN CUMBRIA
PUBLIC LIABILITY INSURANCE
Public & Product Liability to an indemnity of
£5 million pounds for all Made in Cumbria members selling
at UK direct sales events, has been obtained from AXA Insurance
via Talbot Insurance Brokers Ltd, Kendal on policy number MR COM
1760165 for the period ending 31/1/2009.
Sellafield has public "blank cheque"
The Independent Monday
4 August 2008 By Michael Savage The consortium with a £20
billion contract to clean up Britain's Sellafield nuclear plant
has been handed a blank cheque by the Government to pay for future
accidents there. "There is no commercially available (nuclear)
insurance" Malcolm Wicks
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/sellafield-has-public-blank-cheque-884231.html
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