Taxpayers are to be liable for clean-up bills running into many billions of pounds as ministers quietly underwrite the insurance costs of the nuclear industry.

Gordon Brown insisted recently that there would be no special subsidies to fund a new generation of power stations and that companies wishing to build them must bear the full costs of dealing with waste.

A spokeswoman for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs confirmed, however, that the nuclear industry will not be required to foot the bill to restore land polluted by a “nuclear occurrence”. Instead, under the terms of a proposed change to the law, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, will become liable in the event of such an accident.

The potential costs are so vast that the Government says they are impossible to calculate and yet ministers intended originally to slip the change through the Commons without a vote. The Radioactive Contaminated Land Regulations 2007 are intended to comply with an EU directive to ensure that nuclear operators are insured against the costs of cleaning up land in the event of an accident. The small print of a proposed amendment makes clear that the Government - under pressure from the European Commission – has had to step in because commercial insurance would have been prohibitively expensive.

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An explanatory memorandum states: “Unfortunately, under pressure of infraction proceedings from the European Commission, we are now obliged to complete our transposition of the directive or face punitive fines, although it has still not proved possible to secure commercial insurance or to put in place another form of financial guarantee. This instrument . . . [places] an obligation on the Secretary of State to deal with contamination arising from a nuclear occurrence.”

The Tories condemned the proposed change and said that it gave the lie to government claims that the competition for new power generation would take place on a level playing field. They have registered an objection ensuring that the measures, contained in a statutory instrument, must now be debated in Parliament.

Greg Barker, the Shadow Environment Minister, said: “It is quite breath-taking that the Government sought to sneak through what is quite clearly a hidden subsidy for the nuclear industry as well as a potentially massive liability for the taxpayer. We need transparency and honesty in the debate about the potential role of nuclear generation . . . not covert state support given without consultation or debate.”

A spokesperson for the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform said: “We have been extremely clear that the taxpayer will never be asked to subsidise new nuclear power stations. Only two weeks ago we introduced new legislation to give the Government extra powers to force private companies to set aside the full cost of decommissioning and cleaning up the waste from any new nuclear power stations.

“However, we have also been clear that, as with any industry, in the extremely unlikely event of an accident or emergency, the Government will, of course, act to protect the public.”

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