My noble Friend the Minister of State for Energy and Climate Change today made the following statement.

The OSPAR Radioactive Substances Strategy was agreed by Ministers of all contracting parties in 1998. The objective of the strategy is to prevent pollution of the maritime area covered by the OSPAR convention (convention for the protection of the marine environment of the north-east Atlantic) from ionising radiation through progressive and substantial reductions in radioactive discharges.

It was agreed that contracting parties should report to the OSPAR Commission on progress in achieving the aims of the 1998 strategy.

Today, an updated Strategy for Radioactive Discharges (the first having been published in 2002) was published by the Department for Energy and Climate Change. The UK Discharges Strategy forms our national report on progress and will be presented at the next OSPAR ministerial meeting in 2010.

The UK Strategy is available via the DECC website: www.decc.gov.uk.