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Clause 100
Power to deal with cause of imminent danger of damage to the environment
Amendments made : No. 281, in page 105, line 36, leave out anything' and insert any thing or substance'.
No. 282, in page 105, line 38, leave out from beginning to and' and insert
a genetically modified organism or that it consists of or includes genetically modified organisms'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
Clause 101
Offences
Amendments made : No. 246, in page 106, line 14, leave out 91(1) above to or' and insert
( risk assessment and notification requirements ) (1) above'. No. 247, in page 106, line 16, at end insert--
(aa
(to fail to comply with section ( risk assessment and notification requirements ) (3) above when keeping something which is, and which he knows or has reason to believe is, a genetically modified organism ;'.) No. 258, in page 106, leave out lines 17 to 23.
No. 266, in page 106, line 24, leave out above to, or' and insert or (1A) above.'.
No. 255, in page 106, line 27, leave out from first of' to above' in line 28 and insert
subsection (2), (3) or (4) of section ( general duties relating to importation or acquisition, keeping, marketing or release of organisms)'.
No. 248, in page 106, line 30, at end insert--
(aa
(to fail, without reasonable excuse, to comply with section ( risk assessment and notification requirements ) (5) or (6) above'.) No. 249, in page 107, line 7, leave out 91' and insert
( risk assessment and notification requirements )'.
No. 250, in page 107, line 14, after (a)', insert (aa)'. No. 259, in page 107, line 14, leave out (b), (c)'.
No. 260, in page 107, line 23, leave out (b), (c) or'. No. 251, in page 107, line 29, after (a)', insert or (aa)'. No. 252, in page 107, line 36, after paragraph', insert (ee)'. No. 253, in page 108, line 4, leave out (a)' and insert (aa)'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
Clause 103
Definitions
Amendments made : No. 283, in page 108, line 26, leave out the acquisition of'.
No. 284, in page 108, line 27, leave out by any person'. No. 285, in page 108, line 28, leave out his' and insert a person's'.
No. 286, in page 108, line 32, after conditions' insert subject'.
No. 287, in page 108, line 32, leave out from which' to has' in line 33 and insert
the consent for the time being'.
No. 261, in page 108, line 40, leave out 99' and insert (Prohibition notices) '.
No. 295, in page 108, leave out lines 41 to 45.
No. 288, in page 108, line 45, at end insert--
(2) This Part, except in so far as it relates to importations of genetically modified organisms, applies to the territorial sea adjacent to Great Britain, and to any area for the time being designated under section 1(7) of the Continental Shelf Act 1964, as it applies in Great Britain.'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
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Clause 117
Power to prohibit or restrict the importation or exportation of waste
Amendments made : No. 192, in page 116, line 29, at end insert-- (dd) provide for the keeping by the Secretary of State, waste regulation authorities and waste collection authorities of public registers of information relating to the importation and exportation of waste and for the transmission of such information between any of those powers ;'.
No. 193, in page 116, line 41, after "waste" ', insert , "waste collection authority",'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
Clause 118
Powers to obtain information about potentially hazardous substances
Mr. Andrew F. Bennett : I beg to move amendment No. 104, in page 118, line 7, at end insert :--
(5) Regulations under this section shall, in relation to any requirement to be imposed under subsection (e) above where there is more than one person who manufactures the substance in or imports it into the United Kingdom, make provision for allocating the responsibility for providing test data on an equitable basis.'. Madam Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient to take Government amendments Nos. 228, 227 and 231.
Amendment No. 318, in clause 133, in page 125, line 10, at end insert--
(2) The following provision of the Act shall come into force on the day on which it is passed, namely--
section 128 (application to Crown).'.
Government amendments Nos. 232, 229, 230, 296, 297 and 233.
Mr. Bennett : I want the Minister to concentrate on amendment No. 318, which deals with the commencement day for the provision on the removal of Crown immunity. I want from the Minister an assurance about how quickly he will bring hospitals under the control of the legislation. The Minister is well aware that on several occasions I have raised the problem of the disposal of clinical waste in the greater Manchester area and the problems which the greater Manchester waste disposal authority has in getting a plant suitable to deal with it.
The Minister will be aware that from 1 April the disposal authority stopped taking hospital waste and left it to the hospitals to dispose of it themselves through private contractors or by putting it into their own incinerators. He will also be aware that several hospital incinerators in greater Manchester are out of date and do not reach the standards which will be required when Crown immunity has been removed.
Many of those incinerators are old but sadly the incinerator at Manchester Royal infirmary, which is relatively new, will not meet the standards. That incinerator is used to dispose of large quantities of hospital waste and is pumping out noxious materials over the people in the surrounding area. It is ironic that a hospital, which is supposedly there to improve people's health, is causing problems by the pollution which is coming from its incinerator. I hope the Minister will tell us that Crown immunity will be removed as soon as the legislation receives Royal Assent and that the Government will not delay the
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removal of Crown immunity, thus allowing plants like that at Manchester Royal infirmary to go on polluting the surrounding area. I will listen with interest to the Minister's reply.Because of our desire to finish at a reasonable time, I did not get a chance to speak on amendment No. 317. If I send the Minister a note about it, I hope that he will try to produce an answer before the matter reaches the House of Lords. The amendment deals with the removal from footpaths of obstructions which the Ramblers Association regards as nuisances.
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory : The reason I cannot accept the amendment, as I am sure the hon. Gentleman will recognise, is that there is normally at least a two-month period before provisions are brought into effect. If we accepted the amendment, we would have the rather odd position of part of the Bill being brought into effect with nothing to which to apply it. I ask him to accept that two months is the minimum provision for bringing the clauses into effect. It is our aim that that should apply in this case.
Mr. Bennett : May I have an assurance that Crown immunity will be removed two months after the legislation comes into effect?
Mr. Heathcoat-Amory : Yes ; it is our firm intention to bring that provision into effect within two months of Royal Assent.
Amendment negatived.
Clause 121
Burning of straw and stubble etc.
Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed) : I beg to move amendment No. 309, in page 120, line 15, leave out may' and insert shall'.
Madam Deputy Speaker : With this, it will be convenient to consider the following amendments : No. 310, in page 120, line 21, leave out in all, or'.
No. 311, in page 120, line 22, leave out in all, or'.
No. 312, in page 120, line 23, leave out in all, or'.
No. 313, in page 120, line 23, at end insert
where disposal of crop residues through incorporation, baling, briquetting or composting is not a practical option.'.
Mr. Beith : This is only one of a group of amendments that are designed to strengthen the Government's resolve. Hon. Members will see that they deal with the various options for exempting the ban on straw and stubble burning.
I warmly welcome the Government's decision to include the ban in the Bill. The amendments try to ensure that it really is a ban and that the provision for exemptions does not make it inoperative. I speak with feeling, because a large part of my constituency is on fire, although not in this case because of stubble burning. It may have been started by operations conducted by the Forestry Commission. Such fires spread extremely dangerously. Hon. Members who think that it is funny should go out now with the full-time and part-time fire brigades who have been out night after night for the past month trying to put out serious forest fires. Fires cause enormous damage. There has been a fair amount of straw burning in the past that has not given rise to dangerous fires, but some of it clearly has. One of the most compelling reasons for the
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ban is the fact that any such uncontrolled fires are dangerous. They will be especially dangerous this year. We have had a dry winter and the summer has started dry. We face a serious danger. A decade ago, serious fires in the north of Scotland ravaged forestry crops there. The same is likely to happen in Northumberland this year if the utmost care is not taken--and not only by the public, who always get the blame. Fires always supposed to have been started by a member of the public discarding a match or cigarette end, but fires started in the course of agricultural or forestry operations often spread.Last summer, we had fires that caused serious danger to road traffic. There was a fire that caused serious smoke over the A1 not far south of Berwick for a long time. It is extremely dangerous if smoke billows across a busy road, often unexpectedly because of a change in wind direction. There is nuisance and danger ; there is also enormous damage to animal and plant life, as anyone who visits areas ravaged by fires can see.
Above all, it is wasteful to destroy straw. Enterprising farmers in my constituency have taken straw to west coast farms for some years now. Usually, they can get a reasonable price for it, or at least a price that pays for the cost of transport. In some years, that has not been possible, and the National Farmers Union has organised the transhipment of straw from the east to the west coast, to the general benefit.
It is in the interests of all those farmers who have tried to abide by and operate the voluntary codes that we adopt something strict enough to deal with the handful of people who still cause problems, danger and waste. We have felt it necessary to table the amendments because we fear that exemptions might be sufficiently numerous to make it impossible for the public to know whether straw or stubble burning is taking place within the law.
I think that the Government's intention--it was certainly our belief--was that it should be quite clear that, as of this Bill coming into force, stubble and straw burning was banned. Exemptions must be so rare as not to cast doubt on a general understanding by farmers, farm workers and the public that people cannot burn straw and stubble. That understanding would be fatally undermined if there were so many exemptions, for which there is not usually strong justification, that there did not appear to be a general ban. One of our amendments indicates the numerous other things which can be done in order to make good use of straw and stubble. Stubble itself, for instance, can be ploughed back into the land.
I therefore ask the Minister for an assurance that the Government intend to see this through and ensure that there is a general ban on straw and stubble burning and that they do not envisage widespread exemptions. If there are widespread exemptions, some farmers will say that the ban is not serious and will feel that they can do a bit of straw burning and check up later to see whether they would have been exempted ; and the public will not have the confidence to report any incident which poses a danger to them or a threat to wildlife and which is a wasteful use of products which can be recycled.
Mr. Morley : I rise very briefly, because we have gone through some of these points in Committee and there is no point in going over them all again. The Minister in Committee gave certain assurances about the exemptions that would be made available. Legitimate concern has
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been expressed by various organisations about what those exemptions will be, and it might help if a code of guidance was published so that we could see the exact thinking of the Government on what exemptions will be allowed.Just for the benefit of hon. Members who are present, I might remind the House, to show the scale of the problem, that in 1988 there were 160 complaints about smoke and soot nuisance to local councils, a figure which went up in 1989 to 1,635 complaints. I would also appreciate a comment from the Minister about the treatment of agricultural premises as trade premises for the burning of other wastes. Just recently, as I have travelled round the country, I have noticed large plumes of smoke coming from various farms where presumably people have been burning to dispose of such things as plastic bags, old tyres used on silage clamps and so on. I would be grateful for some clarification on whether the burning of such waste comes under the control of this Bill as it applies to trade premises and smoke pollution control.
Mr. Trippier : I very much welcome the comments of the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), and I am most grateful to him for supporting the clause. I, like him, do not wish to see widespread exemptions. Nor do the Minister of Agriculture or the junior Minister who served on the Standing Committee--I must apologise to the House that he cannot be present at this juncture, owing to the very sad and untimely death of his mother, which has meant his leaving the House today.
I can tell the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed that the exemptions will certainly be limited. It may well be a good idea to come forward with some clearer idea as to what they could be. From memory, my hon. Friend in Committee mentioned two possible exemptions : the burning of linseed in all areas and in certain circumstances and the burning of crop residues in the context of an approved agricultural training board course, even where alternative forms of disposal for that residue exist.
However, if we carry on cataloguing the number of exemptions, we fall into the trap which the hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed seeks to avoid, and I agree with him that we should not do that. I will certainly ask my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food to respond to the precise point that he has made, so that it can be clearly seen what exemptions he will consider. I hope that there will not be very many. The signal that must go out from this short debate is that we intend to stop straw and stubble burning. The move has been widely welcomed. The NFU's support of the Government's proposals shows that it appreciates that this change in the legislation is one whose time has come.
Mr. Beith : I am grateful to the Minister for his comments. I am a bit anxious about the idea that we need to train more people on courses to carry out straw burning. In the past I might have welcomed it, because it is a job which, if it is done at all, needs to be done with a great deal of skill and care and only when the wind direction can be predicted safely ; but I hope that we will not need to train people to do this at all in the future, so courses will not need to be included.
I was also a bit concerned about what was perhaps a slip of the tongue by the hon. Member for Glanford and Scunthorpe (Mr. Morley). We are past talking about codes
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of practice now. The Minister will make regulations that will be strictly limited. The fact that the code of practice proved not to be enough led us to legislate on the matter, with the support of those in the farming industry who tried to make the code work. Clearly, we needed something stronger, and the Government have given us that. The Minister has also given us the assurance that I sought, that this is intended to be a general ban and that the exemptions that he mentioned are restricted. Once the legislation and the regulations have been passed, the public will know that straw and stubble burning is banned and so will farmers. That will be a good thing for everyone.Amendment negatived.
Clause 122
Financial assistance for environmental purposes
Amendment made : No. 228, in page 121, line 29, leave out the United Kingdom' and insert Great Britain'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
Clause 128
Application to Crown
Amendment made : No. 227, in page 123, line 34, at end insert-- (7) For the purposes of this section in its application to Part II and Part IV the authority charged with enforcing the provisions of those Parts in its area is--
(a) in the case of Part II, any waste regulation authority, and (
(b) in the case of Part IV, any principal litter authority.'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
Clause 131
Consequential and minor amendments and repeals
Amendment made : No. 231, in page 124, line 46, at end insert-- (4) Any regulations made under section 100 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974 shall have effect after the repeal of that section by subsection (2) above as if made under section 116 of this Act.'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
Clause 133
Short title, commencement and extent
Amendments made : No. 232, in page 125, line 30, at end insert and, in Part VIII, the repeal of section 100 of the Control of Pollution Act 1974.'.
No. 229, in page 125, line 36, at end insert
section 55(2)(e) in so far as it relates to importation ;'. No. 230, in page 126, line 3, at end insert
section 127 in so far as it relates to Part VI and sections 116, 117 and 118 so far as they extend to Northern Ireland ;'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
Abandoned Shopping and Luggage Trolleys
Application 1.--(1) Subject to sub-paragraph (2) below, this Schedule applies where any shopping or luggage trolley is found by an authorised officer of the local authority on any land in the open air and appears to him to be abandoned.
(2) This Schedule does not apply in relation to a shopping or luggage trolley found on the following descriptions of land, that is to say--
(a) land in which the owner of the trolley has a legal estate ; (
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(b) where an off-street parking place affords facilities to the customers of shops for leaving their shopping trolleys used by them, land on which those facilities are afforded ;(c) where any other place designated by the local authority for the purposes of this Schedule affords like facilities, land on which those facilities are afforded ; and
(d) as respects luggage trolleys, land which is used for the purposes of their undertaking by persons authorised by an enactment to carry on any railway, light railway, tramway or road transport undertaking or by a relevant airport operator (within the meaning of Part V of the Airports Act 1986).
Power to seize and remove trolleys 2.--(1) Where this Schedule applies in relation to a shopping or luggage trolley, the local authority may, subject to sub-paragraph (2) below,--
(a) seize the trolley ; and
(b) remove it to such place under its control as the authority thinks fit.
(2) When a shopping or luggage trolley is found on any land appearing to the authorised officer to be occupied by any person, the trolley shall not be removed without the consent of that person unless--
(a) the local authority has served on that person a notice stating that the authority proposes to remove the trolley ; and
(b) no notice objecting to its removal is served by that person on the local authority within the period of fourteen days beginning with the day on which the local authority served the notice of the proposed removal on him.
Retention, return and disposal of trolleys 3.--(1) Subject to the following sub-paragraphs, the local authority, as respects any shopping or luggage trolley it has seized and removed,--
(a) shall keep the trolley for a period of six weeks ; and (b) may sell or otherwise dispose of the trolley at any time after the end of that period.
(2) The local authority shall, as respects any trolley it has seized or removed, as soon as reasonably practicable (but not later than fourteen days) after its removal, serve on the person (if any) who appears to the authority to be the owner of the trolley a notice stating--
(a) that the authority has removed the trolley and is keeping it ; (b) the place where it is being kept ; and
(c) that, if it is not claimed, the authority may dispose of it. (3) Subject to sub-paragraph (4) below, if, within the period mentioned in sub- paragraph (1)(a) above, any person claims to be the owner of a shopping or luggage trolley being kept by the authority under that sub-paragraph, the local authority shall, if it appears that the claimant is the owner, deliver the trolley to him. (4) A person claiming to be the owner of a shopping or luggage trolley shall not be entitled to have the trolley delivered to him unless he pays the local authority, on demand, such charge as the authority requires.
(5) No shopping or luggage trolley shall be disposed of by the local authority unless (where it has not been claimed) the authority has made reasonable enquiries to ascertain who owns it.
Charges 4.--(1) the local authority, in fixing the charge to be paid under paragraph 3 above by the claimant of a shopping or luggage trolley, shall secure that the charges so payable by claimants shall be such as are sufficient, taking one financial year with another, to cover the cost of removing, storing and disposing of such trolleys under this Schedule.
(2) The local authority may agree with persons who own shopping or luggage trolleys and make them available for use in its area a scheme for the collection by them of trolleys they make available for use ; and where such an agreement is in force with any person, no charge may be demanded under paragraph 3 above by the local authority in respect of any trolley within the scheme in relation to which the provisions of the scheme are complied with.
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Definitions 5. In this Schedule--"luggage trolley" means a trolley provided by a person carrying on an undertaking mentioned in paragraph 1(2)(d) above to travellers for use by them by carrying their luggage to, from or within the premises used for the purposes of his undertaking, not being a trolley which is power-assisted ; and
"shopping trolley", means a trolley provided by the owner of a shop to customers for use by them for carrying goods purchased at the shop, not being a trolley which is power-assisted.'.-- [Mr. Trippier.] Brought up, read the First and Second time, and added to the Bill.
Schedule 1
Authorisations for Processes ; Supplementary Provisions
Amendments made : No. 81, in page 127, line 6, leave out and advertised'.
No. 82, in page 127, line 7, at end insert--
( ) An application to the enforcing authority for an authorisation must also, unless regulations made by the Secretary of State exempt applications of that class, be advertised in such manner as may be prescribed in regulations so made.'.
No. 83, in page 127, leave out lines 15 and 16 and insert (4) Regulations under this paragraph may make different provision for different classes of applications'.
No. 84, in page 127, line 18, at beginning insert
Subject to sub-paragraph (1A) below,'.
No. 85, in page 127, line 21, at end insert--
(1A) The Secretary of State may, by regulations, exempt any class of application from the requirements of this paragraph'.
No. 86, in page 128, line 35, leave out (2) and'.
No. 87, in page 128, leave out lines 40 to 44.
No. 62, in page 128, line 47, after shall' insert
if the applicant notifies the authority in writing that he treats the failure as such'.
No. 88, in page 128, line 50, at end insert
and different periods may be substituted for different classes of application'.-- [Mr. Trippier.]
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