Speeches by Chope.

“So he was in breach of a sub judice rule?”

“So what Lord Hain did was not in breach of any sub judice rule—is that what you are saying?”

“But being quite serious about it, does that not underline a lacuna? If we are saying that we are trying to set up a set of rules, and the rules were breached in the Hain case in the House of Lords, is there anything we should do to try to change that?”

“Isn’t there also a legal reason why first-tier tribunals should not be covered? That is because, for example, witnesses in first-tier tribunals do not have to give evidence on oath and the tribunal judges do not have the powers of the Contempt of Court Act to hold witnesses and other participants to account if they mis…”

“Why was that allowed to happen in the House of Lords? In this House, the Speaker would have intervened to prevent it.”

“I have a basic question to start off with. Meg talked about the good old days. I remember when I first arrived in this place in 1983 that the then Member for Gosport spent an inordinate amount of time canvassing my support for him to be the Chairman of the Defence Committee. I could not get a word in edgeways, but at t…”

“Exactly. It is an argument against that system; it is not necessarily an argument against the revised system that I have been describing. You talk about this issue of canvassing. I think this is the point that is emerging already. At the last general election, I did not know many of my new colleagues—there were only 25…”

“Can it not be argued that, because the results of the individual parties choosing the members for each Select Committee are then reported to the House by the Committee of Selection and there is a motion on the Order Paper, which normally goes through unamended and on the nod, there is a power of the House to force a di…”

“The example I was taking was the Intelligence and Security Committee, where it was quite clear that there was pressure on the Government members of that Committee, who were appointed, to choose another Government-supporting member, other than Julian Lewis.”

“Is that failure something for this Committee to look at in this inquiry?”

“But if they said how they are going to meet those, why is there a problem? Why does it take so long?”

“So because you are not prescriptive, you are not validating these claims?”

“If it is not safe, you will not get a licence for it so there is no point in going through the planning processes. Surely, the person who makes the application is going to have to have satisfied themselves that they meet all these criteria, and they will have entered into pre-application discussions with all the regula…”

“You say that it is difficult to evaluate claims that are made—that applicants will claim this, that and the other, and that you as regulators have got to try and see whether those claims are valid. Instead of second-guessing that, is it not possible instead to bring in conditions to cover? If the applicant says it is g…”

“But you speak as though this is an exact science—“Is a nuclear power plant in this particular area going to be safe?” These are matters of judgment, essentially, aren’t they? What is happening is that you have competing regulators exercising different areas of judgment at different stages in the process. Could it not a…”

“Would it affect safety, for example, if we did not have EN-7, and a nuclear project instead had to rely solely on the generic aspects of EN-1?”

“Are you asking for this power?”

“May I ask some specific questions? Mitigation of seismic risk is a non-negotiable requirement for a site licence, yet it is being added into EN-7 as a planning consideration. Is that really helpful? What is the point of it?”

“I know that, but would you like to see the legislation or guidance changed?”

“That is a bit of a cop-out. So you are saying that these individual licensing authorities have to agree to do it? Do you think that is a satisfactory state of affairs, bearing in mind the problems?”