Brendan Ryan (Labour)

Sellafield is one of the issues on which Government bashing, which we all enjoy, would achieve little. I have learned during my years in politics that there is little point in it, even though I, like most capable Ministers, enjoy it.

As Members will be aware from my frequent allusions to my profession, I am a chemical engineer. While I am not a nuclear engineer, I am certain there is no such thing as absolute safety. Anybody from Sellafield who comes here professing to be a professional engineer or technical expert and states there is no risk is either being dishonest or betraying his or her profession. There is no such thing as certainty, merely a possibility of minimising risk.

I am not trying to give the House an academic lecture. However, even my first year students know that risk involves two elements, the probability that something might happen and the scale of the damage that would result if it were to happen. It is possible to play games with numbers and put together risk indices by multiplying scale by probability. Obviously, there is high and low risk but one never has zero risk. For this reason, one always examines the risk and makes a judgment as to whether it is acceptable.