Recommendation 7

Given the scale and complexity of decommissioning the AGR stations, we are concerned that the Department’s oversight of a complex set of governance arrangements is itself not subject to sufficient scrutiny and challenge. The Department is performing a variety of roles with regard to the decommissioning of the AGRs: it negotiated the decommissioning agreements with EDFE and has an ingoing role in ensuring the agreements work in the interest of the taxpayer; it is the sponsoring department of the NDA but will need to ensure that both the NDA and EDFE work effectively, for example to ensure that a site licence is granted by the regulator to the NDA prior to the handover of each station; and it has existing relationships with EDFE in relation to new nuclear projects. However, the centre of government has yet to put in place arrangements that can provide assurance that the Department is discharging its various responsibilities appropriately and that the decommissioning programme is performing effectively. The Department told us there were no immediate plans to include the programme in the Government Major Projects Portfolio (GMPP), which provides independent assurance of government’s riskiest or costly projects, but it expects it to do so when the stations transfer to the NDA. In the meantime, the Department is developing metrics that would be akin to GMPP to provide assurance to HM Treasury and Cabinet Office. However, these metrics have not yet been developed. Recommendation: The Department should write to the Committee within the next six months setting out how it is assuring itself that it is discharging its oversight role effectively and detailing the current and future plans for reviewing the Department’s own performance. In addition, despite the Department’s assertions to the contrary, it should write to the Committee and explain why it shouldn’t place the programme on GMPP at an earlier stage in the transfer phase from EDFE to NDA so it can benefit from advice on