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Lord Blackwell: My Lords, I shall not detain the House for long, but I thank all noble Lords who have spoken and to pay tribute to the outstanding maiden speech of the noble Lord, Lord Howard of Rising.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I apologise to the House for failing to say what I had written but have lost. It was a first-class speech and I was very interested to hear it, although, like the noble Lord, Lord Newby, I agreed with little of it. I apologise for not saying so.

Lord Blackwell: My Lords, not at all. I was also about to thank the Minister for his reply. I shall not pick up all the points that he made. Although I am sure that he will seek to interpret it in other ways, I repeat that it is not necessary to argue for reducing public expenditure to reduce taxes, it is simply necessary to argue for public expenditure that grows a little less fast than the economy. That is an important technical and real point.

I listened carefully to all contributions. While there are different degrees of enthusiasm for reducing taxation, I did not hear anyone argue for a higher tax economy. I was delighted to hear the noble Lord, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, say that the Government's objective was, indeed, a lightly taxed economy. The problem is that after 30 years of falling public expenditure as a percentage of GDP, we are now back on a trend where public expenditure as a percentage of GDP is rising, and taxes are rising and will rise with it. Whatever the objective, the reality is that the Government's policies are moving towards a higher taxed economy. This debate has drawn attention to the importance of these issues, including the economic and political arguments around the need for a low or lightly taxed economy. If the debate has done nothing other than to focus attention on those arguments, it has served its purpose. I beg leave to withdraw the Motion for Papers.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

Radioactive Waste Management (S&T Report)

Lord Oxburgh rose to call attention to the report from the Select Committee on Science and Technology, Radioactive Waste Management (5th Report, Session 2003–04, HL Paper 200) and to the timescale for establishing a long-term strategy for the management of the United Kingdom's radioactive waste; and to move for Papers.

The noble Lord said: My Lords, no one very much enjoys talking about wastes of any kind—least of all nuclear wastes. There are always more interesting, more pressing and more tractable matters with which
 
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to deal. At least, if that is not the case, it is certainly the impression that one gains from looking at the actions of governments in this country over the past decade or even longer. Indeed, there is only one thing that they like less than talking about nuclear wastes and that is doing anything about them.

It is possible that there are those who do not want to see a solution to the problem of how to handle the materials arising from the country's nuclear activities—perhaps in the belief that, so long as the problem remains apparently unsolved, it will be impossible for the country to embark on other nuclear initiatives to which they are implacably opposed.

Your Lordships' Science and Technology Committee believes that, regardless of the policy on new nuclear initiatives that might be pursued by the present or future governments, the problem of the accumulated wastes from earlier activities cannot simply be postponed indefinitely. Indeed, it has made repeated representations to that effect.

The risks associated with these wastes are hard to assess and do not appear to be immediate. But they exist, and the Government must be mindful of the thinking that led Asian leaders to conclude that a tsunami warning system would not be worth while. The message is clear: as risk theory tells us, very serious events, even though they may be of low probability, we ignore at our peril.

We were therefore pleased when the Government announced their intention to set up a Committee on Radioactive Waste Management (CoRWM) to move matters forward after years of inactivity, or, at any rate, years devoid of any productive activity. As noble Lords will be aware, towards the end of last year the Science and Technology Committee decided to take evidence from CoRWM and the Defra Minister whose responsibility this was to see how matters were progressing. It is no exaggeration to say that we were both astonished and dismayed.

First, the terms of reference of CoRWM were wide, vague, poorly thought through and, indeed, implausible. The committee was expected not only to recommend a technical solution but also to inspire public confidence in that solution. We discovered confusion even over whether CoRWM was expected to identify such places. It is well known that, understandably, people have very little interest in these matters until places where repositories might be built have been named. At that stage, even a whisper about a possible site is headline news. The vagueness over the terms of reference fed through into an extraordinarily extended timescale.

Secondly, CoRWM was instructed to start with a blank sheet of paper and to consider all conceivable technical solutions—by implication, ignoring the enormous amount of work that has already been done in this country, not to mention overseas, where, in some cases, the construction of repositories is already well advanced.

Thirdly, the members of CoRWM, although doubtless of great distinction in their fields, appeared for the most part to be inappropriately prepared by training or experience to carry out the important
 
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technical assessment role that was inherent in the terms of reference—namely, that of identifying an appropriate technical solution.

When pressed on this question in oral session, the chairman explained that it was intended to use consultants for this part of the work. But considerable technical expertise is necessary simply to be an intelligent customer for consultants. What credibility will the advice of such a committee carry? How could it inspire public confidence in a technical solution? If this part of the work was to be done by consultants, why was the committee needed? Could the department not have engaged them directly? That would at least have led to shorter and clearer lines of accountability.

Fourthly and finally, it appears from written evidence given to us by the Minister of State that, in establishing CoRWM, advice was neither sought from nor given by the department's Chief Scientific Adviser. That appears to be in flagrant disregard of the advice given to departments by the Government's Chief Scientific Adviser several years ago. Nor did the department consult the Royal Society or the Royal Academy of Engineering. Is it conceivable that the department did not understand that science and technology was of crucial importance in this matter? If that is the case, it raises serious questions of competence.

We have been told that the composition of CoRWM was designed to be "representative of a broad spectrum of opinion". I now ask the Minister the same question that I asked his ministerial colleague from the other place when he gave evidence to our committee. Would he be happy to fly in an aircraft for which the engine design had been chosen by a committee "representative of a broad spectrum of opinion"?

In our brief report to your Lordships, our committee made several suggestions for improving matters and afforcing the technical expertise of the committee. They were not radical and were intended to be constructive. I hope that the Minister will address them in his reply. I believe, too, that the House would be grateful to know whether the departmental Chief Scientific Adviser has now been consulted and whether his advice has been followed in taking this matter forward.

Before concluding, I should like to express my thanks to all noble Lords who agreed that this matter was of such importance that they should put their names down to speak. They did so in such numbers that our Unstarred Question evolved into this debate.

As I pointed out earlier, we cannot tell how acute the problem of our existing wastes may be. We can, however, be sure that it is not improving with time. No one pretends that the long-term management of our nuclear waste is either a quick or an easy matter. Clearly, questions of both technical sufficiency and social acceptability relate to any solution. But it seems to me that no technical solution is likely to win social acceptance if it does not come with the best scientific credentials. At the moment, that seems extremely unlikely. I beg to move for Papers.
 
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7.37 p.m.

Lord Hunt of Chesterton: My Lords, I congratulate the Science and Technology Committee under the able chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Oxburgh, on its trenchant report. The evidence in its report of interviews with CoRWM and with the Minister do indeed suggest that there is not likely to be much progress soon in dealing with radioactive wastes in the UK in a practical fashion.

Other speakers in the debate will doubtless focus on the need to move ahead with existing technology in relation to the underground storage of high-level radioactive waste and, indeed, the need to resuscitate the UK's nuclear power programme. One very much hopes that the Minister will give us more assurance about those plans and, indeed, about the maintenance of UK technology to enable those plans to move ahead. Meanwhile, the UK will continue to rely—perhaps somewhat hypocritically—on the French nuclear programme.

I want to underline the importance of the remark on page 12, paragraph 3.13 of the report that all possible solutions can be considered by CoRWM, including transmutation. Transmutation means that the elements are changed—perhaps in a more benign form—into ones that will decay faster than the several thousand years associated with high-level nuclear wastes.

The noble Lord, Lord Flowers, emphasised the importance of dealing with plutonium stocks associated with the weapons programmes. At the moment, these issues tend to be considered separately. However, the United States, Russia and the International Atomic Energy Agency are considering a wide range of options for dealing with nuclear policy in a more integrated way, including nuclear fusion, fission and proliferation.

I explained those issues in a debate on the Queen's Speech at the end of November, so I shall not repeat my remarks. However, I believe that the fact that there are important policy options that would enable one, for example, to use the fusion programme to help to deal with wastes and the fact that that is being considered, is a further example of why it is absolutely essential that the committee should have extremely high level technical capability. The idea that one can just bring in consultants on the core policy is not credible. That is the other point that I hope the Minister will consider seriously and respond to.

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