PRIVATE MANAGEMENT ORGANISATIONS FOR NUCLEAR COMPANIES: GOVERNMENT PROPOSAL FOR NUCLEAR DECOMMISSIONING AUTHORITY INDEMNIFICATION

That this House notes that on 6 February 2014 the Department for Energy and Climate Change (DECC) presented to Parliament a departmental minute concerning a contingent liability relating to an indemnity to be given by the Nuclear Decommissioning Authority in relation to the proposed Magnox Ltd and Research Sites Restoration Ltd Parent Body Organisation (PBO) competition (6 February 2014, Official Report, columns 33-4WS); recalls that a similar notification for Sellafield PBO indemnification was made in August 2008, with significantly negative implications for the public purse; further notes that the minute asserts that the prospective PBOs ‘are not prepared to accept liability’ for certain nuclear liability claims; further notes that despite international protocols being established to cover nuclear operational liabilities since 2004, the UK has not yet ratified them in the subsequent decade; further notes that the justification put forward by DECC to Parliament is that there is a ‘low probability’ of a claim against the public purse; but further notes with serious concern that the minute also reveals that ‘because of the nature of nuclear activities the maximum figure for the potential liability is impossible to accurately quantify'; believes that such a proposal unacceptably privatises the profits and socialises the liabilities; and calls on the Government fully to explain and justify the basis of the minute, and not to incur such an uncapped liability upon the public purse until it has received the explicit support of Parliament for doing so.