A Sunday newspaper is claiming collusion by top civil servants and nuclear administrators over the running of Sellafield.

The Independent on Sunday says they prevented MP’s from challenging a massive sweetener to a private business taking over the nuclear plant in west Cumbria.

The paper claims the Government pushed through the handover at breakneck speed because it feared that the "unstable management arrangements" risked its safety.

The investigation in today’s edition is by Geoffrey Lean, Andy Rowell and Rich Cookson who obtained documents through the Freedom of Information Act.

The IoS journalists say that a leading Labour MP is try to get a parliamentary investigation into the revelations in the documents, which run to 140 pages and have been so heavily censored prior to release that many whole pages, and the names of most of the officials involved, have been systematically blanked out.

Paul Flynn MP, a member of the House of Commons Public Administration Committee – which examines the performance of the Civil Service – is to ask it to inquire into what he calls "an egregious example of obstruction of parliamentary accountability".

The cover-up arises from the awarding, late in November, of a contract to run the nuclear complex to Nuclear Management Partners, a consortium of US, French and British companies.

Although the contract is worth some £22bn, the consortium told ministers that it would walk away from the deal unless it was fully indemnified against the costs of cleaning up an accident at what is one of the world's most hazardous nuclear sites.

Normally, as the documents repeatedly acknowledge, the Government would place a special minute before Parliament if it intended to undertake a liability of more than £250,000.

MPs would then have 14 days to raise an objection, which would stop the undertaking going ahead until it had been dealt with. But MPs were not told about the Sellafield indemnity until 75 days after the last moment when they could object, even though it potentially exposes the taxpayer to liabilities running into billions.

The energy minister Mike O'Brien blames a "clerical oversight" for this. But the documents clearly show that the senior civil servants and nuclear administrators had been actively discussing how to limit MPs' chance to object at least since early last year.

The documents have come to light only as a result of persistent pressure from Dr David Lowry, an independent environmental policy and research consultant, who is a member of Nuclear Waste Advisory Associates.

The documents make it clear that the Government was determined to hurry through the handover of operations at Sellafield as quickly as possible because of what one of them calls "the current unstable management arrangements overseeing these extremely sensitive sites, and their high hazard inventories".

Another adds that this instability "constitutes a genuine risk to health, safety and environmental performance" at the complex.

A rushed timetable was drawn up which involved naming a preferred bidder for the contract on 11 July and signing a transitional agreement on 6 October. But this clashed with the long parliamentary summer recess, which ran from late July to the very day set aside for the signing.

If the Government were to stick to its speeded-up timetable, the documents say, "the very earliest date" in which the minute could be laid before Parliament would be 14 July, shortly before the recess began on the 22nd.

Determined not to slow down the handover, the Government decided to reduce the period in which MPs could object.

To read the full IoS version of what subsequently happened click on http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/ios-investigation-officials-plotted-sellafield-coverup-1224473.html

*The picture of Sellafield above is by DAVE THOMPSON A/P.

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