Carriage of Dangerous Goods (Amendment) Regulations 2019

Lord Jones Excerpts

Tuesday 26th February 2019 Grand Committee

As I have mentioned, Part 2 of the regulations makes a technical update to a cross-reference in the Transfrontier Shipment of Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel Regulations. Part 3 reinstates a previously revoked provision that implements an EU directive on volatile organic compound emissions resulting from the storage of petrol and its distribution. The impact of these changes will be minimal: the main burden will be any costs associated with familiarisation with the amendments and making any revisions to emergency plans. This will be a relatively minor, one-off cost. The other two changes included in this instrument, those on volatile organic compounds and transfrontier shipment of radioactive waste, are purely technical and will have no impact on industry. I beg to move.

[Lord Jones (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister again for his exemplary exposition. This is a most important instrument. I look at page 5, under “Interpretation of Part 1”, and I see the words “ionising radiations”, “dose consequences”, “endangered persons”, “exposure” and,

“‘emergency services’ means those police, fire and ambulance services that are likely to be required to respond to the radiation emergency”.

I support what the Minister proposes and I will not detain the Committee but I will give an insight.

Some of your Lordships may have heard of CP Snow, a novelist who ended up in your Lordships’ House and was at one time a Minister under a trade union leader who was a Cabinet Minister, Mr Cousins. As a novelist, CP Snow wrote a series of 11 novels, Strangers and Brothers. One—which I have read, as I have the others—is relevant to these regulations, in a historical sense if no other, and might be of interest to the Minister and his able colleagues in the department who brief him.

The novel in question is The New Men, which describes, clearly based on what had happened, the consequences of an individual receiving an unwanted dosage—that is, a radiation emergency, the words in the regulation. The novel is set in north-east Wales in the small village of Rhydymwyn, where the first steps of Britain’s attempt to make an atom bomb were taken under the cover of chemical substances that were possibly to be used in war. That small village is outside Mold, the county town of Flintshire, and I have always lived within eight or nine miles of it.

Snow describes the scientists who were transplanted from their dreaming spires and assisted by university men from Liverpool and Birmingham, to name but two centres inhabited by the scientists who were making, or attempting to make, our first bomb. Noble Lords may know that the attempts were ended and went lock, stock and barrel to Los Alamos in New Mexico. A former Member of the other place wrote a tract entitled How the Americans Stole Britain’s Bomb. That is not for me to describe further.

The novel that I have been referencing is an attempt by the insightful novelist, who was engaged in science and the upper echelons of the Civil Service, to describe the making of our bombs. These regulations relate to that, and it may occasionally be the duty of any Parliament to consider how a regulation first came about. Once again, the novel is The New Men by CP Snow, part of the 11-novel Strangers and Brothers sequence.

My question, if I may pose it, is: how many shipments, if any, are by road annually? Is there any information that the Minister can give responsibly?

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Jones]

My Lords, I restate my question: how many shipments, if any, are by road annually? I presume that transportation is inevitably through urban centres. Is the Minister able to give us any detail or information of any responsible kind? The proposals on page 7, looking at emergency plans, are clearly well-considered and very sound, but who oversees them? What arm of the British state is responsible in the end for these emergency plans, when one takes into account the chain of command?

I referred very briefly to the village of Rhydymwyn in the county of Flintshire, where the dosages were first suffered. I conclude by telling the Committee that there was an upshot in 1979. It was a general election, and as a Minister I found myself in the wilds of Meirionnydd, not a million miles from Blaenau Ffestiniog. I was hunted in that locality by the constabulary, on the basis of urgent representations made by officials from my department at that time. They had established that in the proximity of Rhydymwyn, which was making something like mustard gas but deep in the bowels of the buildings, there was the beginnings of a trace of atomic energy. The point was: my officials told me that the road outside that factory had shown evidence of collapse, and very dangerous substance material was feared to be leaking. It did not happen, but that is the context of these words.

[Lord Fox (LD)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for introducing this statutory instrument. I am enjoying the novelty of dealing with one that is not related to Brexit, so it is almost like a holiday among all the others.

I have three points to make. First, I welcome the extension of the definitions of an emergency. Some of those are quite subjective in their description—for example, “quality of life”. I wonder what work has gone on to make sure that an emergency is indeed an emergency, and that transporters are not exposed to unwarranted legal action through what would be described as a loose definition in the Act. What impact analysis has been done on the litigation risk around the looseness of the term?

It was very helpful that the Minister brought up the issue of whether this was in order around the Transfrontier Shipment of Radioactive Waste and Spent Fuel (EU Exit) Regulations 2018. He mentioned that these regulations would in the event automatically be nullified—“nullity”, I think, was the word he used. How is that nullifying process triggered? Is it part of an overall Bill where a group of SIs or parts of SIs are triggered? My sense is that only a part of this SI gets nullified; or is all of it nullified? What is the mechanism for the triggering of its nullification?

The noble Lord, Lord Jones, paints an interesting picture of his home village. I cannot help thinking that it must be very beautiful and he is hell-bent on keeping people out with tales of mustard gas and atomic leaks.

[Lord Jones]

I am not a nationalist. Borders mean nothing to me.

[Lord Fox]

There is another point to consider. Essential to this is the definition of an emergency worker. Is it someone who is predetermined as an emergency worker? We have heard of the heroic efforts of ordinary engineers and ordinary people during the massive meltdown of the Japanese reactor, and we know that in Chernobyl heroic individuals took it upon themselves to be part of an emergency exercise. Although there is a definition of emergency workers in the SI, it is clear that, if there is an emergency—let us hope it never comes to pass—individuals will become de facto emergency workers by their proximity to what is happening. They perhaps are not covered by these regulations. In any case, how do you limit these people to 500 millisieverts when they are in the middle of an emergency? They do not necessarily have monitoring equipment to hand; they are dealing with an emergency. While this is a useful limit, no emergency is planned, so unless these people are already wearing the necessary monitoring equipment, they will not be monitoring the dose; and if they are accidental emergency workers—if you follow my drift—they will not have that monitoring equipment either. I would welcome the Minister’s response to those three points.

[Lord Henley]

My Lords, again I thank all three noble Lords for their contributions; in particular I thank the noble Lord, Lord Jones, for his insights on CP Snow, particularly The New Men. It is a long time since I read any CP Snow, but I feel that I must go back and read some.

[Lord Jones]

May I recommend to the noble Lord Corridors of Power, which delineates activities here in this House?