House of Commons Hansard Debates for 9 Jul 1990

Mr. Holt : Will my hon. Friend give way?

Mr. Lord : With respect to my hon. Friend, I think that I should make progress. I am conscious that I do not represent a Welsh constituency, so I am imposing on the House tonight.

I appreciate that my remarks may be rather more emotional than scientific. In an age in which we can put a man on the moon, when it takes four hours to get from London to New York by aeroplane and when satellites

Column 49

allow us to sit in our homes and watch what is happening on the other side of the world, I cannot believe that it is right to simply discharge our waste products into the ocean. Time does not allow this evening for detailed technical arguments like those which my hon. Friend the Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) is encouraging me to enter into.

Anyone who has paddled or swum in the sea, sailed on it or fished it, thrown a pebble into it or simply sat and looked at it--that is, every one of us--must be aware of the physical and emotional importance of that hugely important asset and must accept that it should not be damaged or risks taken with it. I am aware of the difficulties, but as there is a White Paper in the offing I urge my colleagues on the Government Front Bench to consider the possibility of a commitment at some point to treat all our sewage on land. 5.31 pm

Mr. Geraint Howells (Ceredigion and Pembroke, North) : Many of my parliamentary colleagues from Wales travel weekly to London. When I left Cardiganshire today to motor over the Plynlimon mountains to join the InterCity train at Caersws to take me across the border, I took a look at the environment. The countryside from Cardiganshire to the border is worth looking at at this time of year.

Dr. Thomas : And then?

Mr. Howells : I will come to that later.

That environment was so beautiful, green and healthy-looking. Trees have been planted everywhere, perhaps with the help of the Forestry Commission, which planted many trees on the Plynlimon mountains 30 years ago.

I then asked myself, "Who has been responsible for our wonderful environment in mid-Wales?" I suppose the answer is the farming fraternity, the agriculturists and our fathers and forefathers who, over many generations, tilled the land and planted the trees. I also asked myself whether I could find any fault with the environment as I see it today. I could not find any faults. It all looked so beautiful.

I agree entirely with the sentiments expressed by the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas) and by the Secretary of State that agriculture plays a major role in our environment. However, we must remember that agriculture is in dire financial straits at the moment. I am sure that the Secretary of State will agree that our industry does not have the opportunity to compete on equal terms with its counterparts in Europe. It should be the Secretary of State's top priority over the next 12 months to try to ensure that our farmers compete on equal terms. For example, with regard to the ewe premium, there is a variation between Ireland and Wales. In Wales, the premium is £7 per head, while I am told that in Ireland it is £18 per head. Confidence in our industry is at its lowest ebb. When I was a little child, there were about 30 full-time farmers in my village. They were all viable. They were all self-contained, and farmers' sons stayed at home. However, there are only three full-time farms in my village today and the rest are all part-time farmers like me. The others work in Aberystwyth and other areas. I am not

Column 50

against part-time farming. It is a wonderful achievement to farm 20 or 30 acres and also be employed in industry or in a profession of one's own choice. That is a wonderful life.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Meironnydd Nant Conwy on introducing this debate on the environment. I will not disagree with him, but I hope that, when we next have tea together, he will define what he means by an organic Welsh lamb. I am sure that there are quite a few of them in Meironnydd and Cardiganshire, but unfortunately for his constituents and for mine, the majority of all those small lambs that are born on the hills are being exported to Italy. I am afraid that he has not eaten an organic lamb yet, but time will tell.

What advice can the Secretary of State offer to the silage farmers, the majority of which are dairy farmers, some of whom unfortunately are breaking the law? That is a major problem in many parts of Wales, especially in Anglesey, the vale of Clwyd, Carmarthen, Pembrokeshire and my constituency. I hope that the Minister will be able to offer advice to some farmers who may be flouting the law unintentionally. This motion is welcome. It focuses on an important problem. With concentration on the North sea, it is some times forgotten that similar, or in some cases greater, problems exist in the Irish sea. The condemnation in the motion is, if anything, too mild. The Government have no answer to the charges, as can be seen from the fact that their amendment does not mention the Irish sea, but provides the usual self-congratulatory, wishy-washy generalisations which are the hallmark of the Government's approach to the environment.

The Irish sea is gigantic proof, if any of us needed it, of the cavalier and irresponsible approach adopted by this Government and the previous Labour Government towards the environment. The Irish sea is shallow and slow to drain, and it will harbour some of its poisons for thousands of years.

I want to consider now some of the specific problems. Since Sellafield opened, half a tonne of plutonium has been discharged into the Irish sea, making it the most radioactively contaminated--not radioactive--sea in the world. There are more nuclear installations bordering the Irish sea than any other sea.

Britain's dirtiest estuary, the Mersey, drains into the Irish sea. In the recent Mersey clean-up campaign, the Government took steps to limit sewage discharges into the river. They shipped it all out to sea and dumped it. In other words, they made themselves reliant on sewage sludge dumping, which every other country has phased out. However, the Government intend to continue with such dumping until 1998. The Irish sea contains the second biggest sewage sludge dumping ground for the United Kingdom.

The biggest industrial dump site in the north Atlantic is in the Irish sea, just off Cork. Each year, millions of tonnes of untreated sewage and industrial wastes are dumped in the Irish sea. The Irish sea is heavily contaminated in certain coastal areas with synthetic materials and heavy metals, especially mercury from the ICI works at Runcorn, although, thankfully, that company has at last stopped that practice.

I now give some of the alarming facts. The Irish sea contains more man-made radioactivity than any other sea. It is bordered by more nuclear installations than any other sea. I have just mentioned Cork. Also, 250 chemicals were found in a single sample taken from a discharge into the

Column 51

River Mersey. Three hundred million gallons of sewage go into the Irish sea every day, and 80 per cent. of it receives no treatment or is only screened.

Whales and dolphins are now rare, but I have a dolphin family in my constituency. The other dolphin family lives on the north-east coast of Scotland. We are proud of our dolphins, as they have been with us for a long time. Let us hope that, in their wisdom, the Government will safeguard their interests as well as those of our constituents. After 1990, only two nations in the EC will be committed to dumping industrial waste into the sea. Those two nations are Britain and Ireland.

On swimming, there is a message about the North sea--swim at your own risk. Nine million holidaymakers visit the coast of the Irish sea, yet not one beach has a "blue flag" to show that it is clean. Eighty per cent. of sewage outfalls into the Irish sea receive no treatment, or only a simple screening. Seventy per cent. of the pipes discharge at or above the low water mark. Untreated sewage discharged into bathing water brings the risk of illness, ranging from salmonella poisoning to hepatitis. Full sewage treatment would virtually eliminate those risks.

I could go on for a long time, but the message is clear. I urge the Government to give extra financial aid and resources to research and development. It is a great pity that the Countryside Council for Wales is going to Bangor. [Interruption.] The hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy and I agree on nearly every issue, but the council should have been in Aberystwyth, the agricultural capital of Wales. I ask the Minister and the Government to do what they can to safeguard the coastal belt. The National Rivers Authority will need more financial help in the years to come. Our rivers, whether they start in Plynlimon, Snowdonia or Cader Idris, all flow gently and take everything with them to the sea. We must do all that we can to ensure that our rivers are made clean for the next generation. As I said, mid-Wales is a beautiful area. I thank the right hon. and learned Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris), who, as Secretary of State, established the Mid Wales development board. It is now 14 years later. I congratulate the right hon. and learned Gentleman because that board has done excellent work in mid-Wales. It is a great pity that the present Secretary of State cannot extend the boundaries of that rural board for mid-Wales to include areas in my constituency in north Pembroke, because we have an important link with Ireland at Fishguard and Goodwick. It would be a wonderful achievement if we could give the same facilities within the board area to that part of the country, which is in dire need of financial help.

5.44 pm

Mrs. Teresa Gorman (Billericay) : I, too, thank the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas) for giving hon. Members this opportunity to talk about the environment. This is not my first chance to discuss Welsh matters with him. I also thank my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for his sensible remarks. When we consider the environment and pollution, we must remember that man-made problems are subject to

Column 52

man-made solutions. We should remember that substantial costs are involved in dealing with alleged forms of pollution. Therefore, we must be sure that the pollution that we identify is real and is as important as we see it.

The hon. Gentleman and other hon. Members talked about pollution of the seas and of the land because of mineral extraction and, in particular, the application of fertilisers. He did not talk a great deal about pollution of the air, which is of great significance to people in Wales, especially because of the alleged global warming and greenhouse gases. Dealing with that problem could have a profound effect not just on the environment but on jobs and industries in the Principality. We should deal with that issue at a little more length.

If we had been debating this matter in the 1970s, we would probably have been talking about acid rain. Our concerns for the environment tend to go in cycles. There are fashions--issues come and go. We are very concerned about them at the time, but they pass as scientists bring a new issue to our attention. In this case, we are discussing issues that affect Wales in particular. We should talk about the effect of the carbon dioxide scare and its relationship to industry and life in that part of the world.

Mr. Wigley : Although those matters certainly got more attention a few years ago, regrettably in Wales the problem has not gone away. In western Wales, there are 200 lakes in which fish life has died because of the acidity of the water. We are still struggling with that problem.

Mrs. Gorman : I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I commend to him a paper written by Professor Sir James Beament of Queen's college, Cambridge, in which he analyses the acid rain problem and casts grave doubts on the suggestion that sulphur dioxide is the cause of it. He identified leaching of the soil, magnesium and so on. I shall not go into the scientific details now, because of the time available, but there are other causes. We often identify the wrong cause and then set about dealing with it. In fact, we offer wrong solutions, and, in doing so, we can cause grave damage to industries and jobs and spend a great deal of taxpayers' money. One of the important points that have been raised so far is the need to make sure that the scientific evidence on which we base some of our policies is accurate and valid. Many of our concerns in the recent past arose as a result of a conference called Global 2000, which was staged by the American Government in the 1980s. Many scientists got together to survey the future, and they came up with many apocalyptic scenarios, one of which included global warming and greenhouse gases. It was suggested that that problem was largely caused by carbon dioxide and other carbon gases being released into the atmosphere.

The conference neglected to consider other atmospheric gases, such as water vapour, which has important heat and radiation effects in the atmosphere, and oxygen. We all know that oxygen is never talked about in terms of radiation and global warming, but it is of great significance. Furthermore, the effect of the sun and our proximity to it was hardly mentioned. The sun is the great engine of our climate, as are sun spots, and both affect global temperature.

Such things tend not to be covered in scientific papers, because we cannot legislate to do anything about our position in relation to the sun or the occurrence of sun spots. We can, however, legislate to cut our use of carbon

Column 53

dioxide. That means that we place increased restrictions on the coal industry and on the manufacture of motor vehicles. In so doing, we may be over-reacting to the effect of carbon dioxide on what is only a small part of global warming.

Hon. Members who represent the Principality know of coal's importance as a mineral. It is one of the most important minerals in all economies, and generates 40 per cent. of the world's electricity. We are all concerned about wasting energy and talk about putting tea cosies on our houses to keep them warm. However, we do not necessarily pay enough attention to making energy production more efficient.

That brings me to the role that Governments can play in reducing alleged pollution. That could sometimes take the form of backing research and development into making energy production more efficient, instead of concentrating on saving energy at the level of using insulating devices in our houses, which results in only a small saving when compared with what we could do in terms of improving energy production.

We must keep an eye on scientists. There have been scares throughout history. At the time of the millenium of the 10th century, people castigated themselves and their leaders because, according to the Book of Revelations, the earth was about to warm up and we would all frizzle and die. That apocalypse came and went, and nothing very much happened.

The earth is the most amazing self-correcting organism. When there are changes in the balance of minerals, atmosphere and temperature, the earth generally corrects them. The carbon dioxide in our atmosphere, which is produced partly by the coal industry, is a fertiliser and can be absorbed by plants and the ocean. The more carbon dioxide there is, the more plant growth there is and, as a result, there is sometimes more animal growth. Throughout its enormously long history, the earth has corrected the imbalances that occur in nature. Therefore, before embarking on costly and often ineffective methods of dealing with today's pollution, we should try to keep the scale of the problem in perspective.

The earth is a water organism--70 per cent. of it is covered by water. The tides and the movement of water have enormous significance for our coasts, and for other coasts around the world. Humanity clings to only about 15 per cent. of the land mass. If we keep in mind that percentage of human activity on our globe, and compare it with the effect that the evaporation of water and the formation of clouds has on radiation and with the absorption of heat from the earth, we begin to see that many of the problems that have been identified have far less significance than we may believe. We tend to measure things against the scale of humanity. We tend to measure pollution within our own immediate geographical areas. We then extrapolate from those facts and produce great proposals for legislation and to change industrial processes way beyond what is necessary or important.

Therefore, I urge my right hon. Friends the Secretaries of State for Wales and for the Environment to keep the problem in perspective and to remember that, for every scientist who holds one view, another will hold a balancing view. The smaller voice may well be the voice talking the truth. Galileo's time did not believe that the earth went round the sun, but he could prove that it did, and he said so. His views were so welcome that he was forced to recant by the Church and ended up denying that solution.

Column 54

Mr. Barry Porter (Wirral, South) : I am following my hon. Friend's argument with interest. I would not choose to cross swords with her about Galileo, who I assume is Welsh. I remind her of an old northern saying, "Where there's muck, there's brass." It therefore follows that, where there's brass, there's muck. Does she agree that, by creating lots and lots of brass, we have created infinitely more muck, which, however one sees it, cannot be to the advantage of Wales, the United Kingdom or anybody?

Will she accept that the real problem is to reduce the amount of muck--or its modern version, "pollution"--and to ascertain how we can do that without having too great an economic effect on the industries that produce that muck or on the taxpayer? There is no point in going around saying, "It it not this or that," because there is too much muck and we want to achieve the same amount of brass with less of it.

Mrs. Gorman : I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I am sure that he agrees that we do not want to tear up what we have achieved in industry and in the progress in people's standards of living for what could well be false hypotheses. There are plenty of false hypotheses in the scientific world, one of which is the greenhouse effect and the amount of attention that we pay to that effect.

As and when we identify real problems, such as industrial waste being poured into rivers, where we can see that it is killing our fish, we must make those industries stop such practices. We have laws to do that. Where we can be sure that savings in energy can be made by more efficient energy production and new methods, clearly we should do so and the Government should encourage that. However, we should not spend billions of pounds of taxpayers' money and do great harm to industry without knowing what we are doing.

The earth is not a delicate and fragile thing that is difficult to damage. It is resilient and has lasted for thousands of millions of years. A little alteration in terms of earth or water pollution--or even air pollution-- will not destroy our planet as the greenmongers would have us believe. There have always been natural climatic changes. I refer now to the dinosaurs--but not those in this place. Dinosaurs are evidence that the climate of the earth changed naturally over time. Our greenhouse effect here and now is tiny in comparison. [Laughter.] I give up.

5.58 pm

Mr. John Morris (Aberavon) : I am glad of this opportunity to raise the problem of environmental policy as it affects my constituency in the context of the administration and control of pollution in Wales. I join all those who have expressed their concern about the level of pollution in the sea. However, in the few minutes available to me I shall concentrate on the Government's amendment with its strange and nauseating phrase that Her Majesty's Government and Minister "congratulate" themselves

"on the positive lead it is giving in areas of environmental concern".

That was the very Government who slaughtered the Clean Air Council which I chaired 25 years ago as a young Minister, and the Noise Abatement Council. It is late in the day for the Government to start putting the environment first.

It is my privilege to represent what I regard as an important industrial constituency. Without industry it is nothing. We have two major plants. Employment at the

Column 55

Port Talbot steelworks has been savaged. Enormous efforts have been made by the unions, the management and me to ensure that the plant survives and investment in the harbour, the concast plant and the new mill flourishes and provides opportunities for my constituents and others to work.

The other major industrial plant is BP Chemicals, which is much newer. It provides employment for a large number of people but on a smaller scale than the steelworks. We are an industrial constituency and I hope that we shall continue to be so. In future, industry must conduct itself in such a way that people's lives are not made a misery. I appreciate that large sums of money have been spent and will be spent locally by management to redress the balance and reduce pollution. However, my constituents continue to be dissatisfied with what they see, feel, smell and hear around them. The result must satisfy them, and that is what worries me about the smugness of the Government's proposals.

People simply will not put up with the standards of yesterday. Children must be able to play in gardens. People must be able to hang washing on lines and leave windows open at night. Cars must not be smothered with soot and the air that we breathe must not be as polluted as it is now. Air pollution is far to frequently a problem in our major industrial areas, and it is certainly a problem in my constituency.

After the problems of last year, I hoped that the problem at BP chemicals at Baglan, which persisted for so many days a few weeks ago, would not be repeated. The House can imagine my horror when I read the strongly worded letter from the chairman of the local authority's environmental committee expressing his anxiety and dissatisfaction. The local authorities in my constituency and elsewhere will do what they can, but the basic problem with pollution is the division of power and the ineffectiveness of existing powers. I fear that, if industry cannot come up to the required standard, it will have to compensate the locality. Compensation will have to be paid for each hour during which standards are transgressed.

We do not live in the era of the pre-Aberfan syndrome, when people were resigned to living in bad conditions. After Aberfan, a programme of land clearance began with which I was proud to be associated later. Before Aberfan, we simply put up with the tips. The same applies today to air and general environmental pollution. Today people simply will not allow the clock to stop in the pre-Aberfan era.

How can standards of pollution below which industries must not fall be measured? What is the acceptable norm? There should be public participation and consultation in making that decision. The standards are not necessarily the same everywhere. I wish that they were. Anyone who has had to spend time in London, even with the successful clean air policy in place, knows that. I pay tribute to the clean air policy. People such as Sir Gerald Nabarro and Mr. Harold Evans, when he was editor of The Northern Echo, played a formidable role in telling people about the importance of clean air and pushing for a clean air policy.

After it got rid of the smog, London made great progress. But even today, if one leaves one's shoes out for two days, there is a layer of dust on them. Unhappily, the

Column 56

standard of the air varies. I wish that the standard was always as good as that in the constituency of the hon. Member for Ceredigion and Pembroke, North (Mr. Howells). It is entirely different from the environment in our industrial constituencies and in London. Therefore, we must tackle clean air and the environment with the same energy as our predecessors did--I played a small part in it--in tackling problems of burning smoking fuels in our industrial conurbations. The same energy must be applied to find acceptable standards which accord with a reasonable quality of life in our industrial areas.

The basic problem of dealing with pollution is the division of control over it. Local authorities have limited powers. I wrote recently to the chairman of the Health and Safety Executive, who took over three weeks to refer my letter to Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution. The time of the inspector responsible for Wales and the west was so precious last year that no power on earth, not even the private office of the Minister for the Environment and Countryside, could make him change the day of his visit to my council. I willingly postponed my holiday to ensure that I was present when the great man arrived from his business in Nottingham or wherever it was. That showed the pressure on that inspector.

Underfunding and undermanning of Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution is a major scandal. It is peculiar that the inspectorate does not come under the control of the Secretary of State for Wales. I doubled the size of the Welsh Office and ensured that a vast amount of responsibility was transferred to the Welsh Secretary, so I was particularly sorry to learn that he had no control over Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution. I had to go to the Department of the Environment.

Wales is part of the south-western region. The number of inspectorate personnel based in Wales was recently depleted. The Cardiff headquarters has become little more than an outpost of the south-western region which includes the whole of the Principality and a substantial part of south- western England. The number of inspectors who administer control of pollution measures in Wales was recently reduced effectively from three to one. The obvious result was a deterioration in the inspectorate's response. One gentleman from Cardiff has been seconded to a special project for an indeterminate period, so we shall not have a great deal of help from him. Is the Minister aware of what is happening to the inspectorate in Wales? It is simply not good enough. It is a major step backwards. My constituency and other industrial areas of Wales require the constant vigilance of an effective authority to minimise and control the effects on the population and the environment.

I wish to propose some ideas for the Government's White Paper to be published in the autumn. First, supervision and overall responsibility for pollution and the environment in and around Wales should come under the direct responsibility of the Secretary of State for Wales. I do not understand why it is not already his responsibility. Perhaps he is not aware of it, but precedents have been set in other areas of policy. The Manpower Services Commission is part of a national body, yet the commission for Wales is the responsibility of the Secretary of State for Wales. The Secretary of State could attend to that matter in the White Paper.

Secondly, the number of staff in the Cardiff branch of Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution should be

Column 57

increased immediately. Thirdly, local authorities should be given a new role as agents for the inspectorate on a day-to-day basis with statutory powers to impose restrictions on behalf of and in accordance with the policy of the inspectorate. That should ensure a more speedy response when it is needed.

Fourthly, there should be an immediate plan to assess and examine the worst areas of Wales to reach a view on a reasonable standard of and target for clean air in our industrial areas. It would start in the worst areas and be a sort of pollution Domesday book. What is wanted is an assessment of the position and a determination of what standards should be. We can then build on that and we could have a major breakthrough on improving the environment. I concede that it may take a little time to set the right standards and get the right machinery.

The Secretary of State mentioned the 21st century. As we approach the 21st century, people will not accept the standards of yesterday. For too long, fathers and mothers have put up with low standards which are no longer acceptable. We must put all our energies into ensuring that the quality of life is improved everywhere, taking into full account, as I did in my opening remarks, that we live in and represent industrial areas. Ideally standards should be the same everywhere, but I fear that that cannot be achieved.

A great deal could be done, if the Government ceased to adopt the smug attitude reflected in their amendment. Then we could at least target the main areas and have plans to counteract the worst difficulties.

6.11 pm

Mr. Keith Raffan (Delyn) : Before I make a brief contribution, I apologise for my late arrival. I was at a meeting of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs which had to approve our report on sea defences in advance of tomorrows' estimates debate on sea defences and the avoidance of sea flood damage in Wales.

I congratulate the hon. Member for Meirionnydd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas) and his two colleagues on enabling us to have this debate. I am sure that we would agree on one thing--that we have debates on Welsh affairs on the Floor of the House too infrequently. It would be in the interests of the Principality if we had more. Equally, the hon. Gentlemen will acknowledge that much useful work on Welsh affairs goes on outside the Chamber, because all of them at one time or another have been members of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs.

I declare my interest as parliamentary adviser to Welsh Water plc. I was a member of the Standing Committee on the Water Bill. The Bill provided a much tougher regulatory framework than was hitherto in place. When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was speaking, the hon. Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell) asked him to ensure that the National Rivers Authority brought far more prosecutions against those who break the law than the water authorities did. In doing so, he acknowledged what we did in the Bill. That acknowledgement was confirmed by the moderate and basically sensible speech of the hon. Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy).

We recognised that the water authorities were both poachers and gamekeepers --both dischargers of sewage and monitors of sewage disposal. The hon. Member for Gower, who is Chairman of the Select Committee, is particularly aware of that, as the Committee undertook an

Column 58

inquiry into the coastal sewage pollution in Wales. The separation of those powers is one of the great provisions of the Water Act 1989. We now have a much tougher regulatory framework than we had before. Even my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench may acknowledge that the Government learned from previous privatisations and regulatory frameworks which might have been better than they were. As we progressed with privatisations, our approach to regulatory frameworks became more professional, more specific and more effective.

I am glad that the hon. Member for Torfaen acknowledged that by saying that the Labour party would keep the NRA. I know that he did not serve on the Standing Committee, but his colleagues on it also said that. The hon. Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Mr. Michael), who was the Opposition Front Bench spokesman from Wales on the Bill, will confirm that.

Apparently a Labour Government would subsume the National Rivers Authority and the drinking water inspectorate in an environmental protection agency, but Labour always wants to subsume things in huge bureaucatic agencies. Why cannot Labour leave something in embryo--I do not want to get into an abortion debate or a debate on embryo experimentation, so I shall say instead, something which has just been born--to develop and get on with its job, instead of planning to reorganise it, should the nightmare occur and a Labour Government take power? They should leave it to get on with its job effectively. I am glad that Labour Members have at least acknowledged that we have done the right thing. Obviously, they themselves had the opportunity to do what we have done in the past, but they did not take it. At least they have graciously conceded that we have done the right thing.

When my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State referred in passing to pollution in eastern Europe, he was his usual generous, gentle self. He did not labour the point, although it could be laboured. In the past year, I have travelled to Czechoslovakia, East Germany and Hungary. Anybody who drives through what were the great and glorious forests of Bohemia and Moravia will see instantly the damage wreaked by acid rain. Anybody who goes to East Berlin will see the pall of smoke hanging over that once great city--hopefully soon to be reunited with West Berlin as a great city again- -as soon as they step off the train. The appalling pollution there comes largely from those ghastly Trabant cars--amazing plastic vehicles which do not seem to go anywhere very fast, yet create a huge amount of pollution in the process.

The same is true of Budapest. The two-and-a-half hour train journey from Vienna to Budapest takes one from one of the cleanest urban environments in western Europe to one of the dirtiest and most polluted in eastern Europe. State control and state socialism are no guarantors of a clean environment. The Opposition have evidence of that before their very eyes.

I have alluded to the inquiry into coastal sewage pollution in Wales. I was already a member of the Select Committee when it undertook that inquiry in 1985. One of the points that came out of it was the large number of sea and coastal outfalls in Wales. We have a quarter of the total for the whole of England and the Principality put together.

Mr. Wigley indicated assent.

Column 59

Mr. Raffan : I see the hon. Gentleman nodding vigorously. He sat next to me during many of our evidence sessions. He will remember as well as I do the damning statistics that emerged. Only 6 per cent. of the sea outfalls in 1985 were less than 10 years old, 75 per cent. were over 20 years old and 40 per cent. were over 40 years old. I well remember the hon. Gentleman intervening, rightly, to ask the chairman of the Welsh water authority, Mr. John Elfed Jones, about the size of his capital programme-- and the time scale of it--to remedy this appalling situation. The hon. Gentleman was told that £75 million would be spent over 15 years. I subsequently asked the chairman :

"Perhaps you would rather be in the position of a private company so that you would then be able to borrow according to your needs" and accelerate that capital programme. Mr. Jones replied : "The proposition has immediate appeal."

That is precisely what has happened. The £75 million over 15 years has been replaced by a capital programme for Welsh Water of £500,000 every day every year for the next 10 years. That is a massive capital programme. Would that capital programme have taken place under nationalisation, under Welsh Water in the public sector? That is the crucial question.

Welsh Water plc is no longer subject to external financing limits. It can go to the City, borrow more money more cheaply and accelerate its capital programme--something that all hon. Members are united in wanting. It can bring forward the day when the 40 per cent. of sea outfalls which are over 40 years old, can be replaced. The basic achievement of privatisation is that Welsh Water can now undertake such a massive capital programme.

Welsh Water is no longer subject to external financing limits. If the Labour party were to have its way and return the company to public ownership--should the nightmare occur and it returns to office--the water industry would once again have to compete with housing, education and social services for its share of resources.

Mr. Wigley : I am following the hon. Gentleman's argument with considerable interest. If the borrowing level is taken up by Welsh Water to the extent that he suggests--a level of £150 million to £200 million a year--the interest paid by the authority will have a considerable impact on the Welsh Water ratepayer--hence the £200 per household that they are now being billed. That is the bottom line of the policy advocated by the hon. Gentleman.

Mr. Raffan : The hon. Gentleman ignores the fact that Welsh Water is now a commercial company. He will know as well as I what it has achieved in the past six to nine months. It has embarked upon a massive capital programme ; it has taken over Wallace Evans, the biggest civil engineering firm in Wales, so that it can commercially exploit its unique expertise, not just in this country but in many countries around the world. I think that Wallace Evans has 50 offices worldwide. Together with the French water company SAUR, Welsh Water has set up a subsidiary, Cambrian Water, of which it owns 50 per cent.--yet another commercial waste disposal venture. Welsh Water is already becoming a much more commercially orientated company. The cost of the capital expenditure to which I referred will not fall soley on the ratepayer--far from it. I do not want to compound the embarrassment of the Opposition, particularly the Labour party, about privatisation by

Column 60

alluding to Welsh Water's results last week, but the hon. Member for Caernarfon (Mr. Wigley) will be aware, as I am, that they have been extremely well received in the financial press and elsewhere, and have met with a long silence from the Opposition. I am grateful to the hon. Member for Caernarfon for giving me the opportunity to make those additional points about the benefits of privatisation. It is a great tribute to Welsh Water that it has adapted so swiftly and effectively to the new commercial environment in which it operates. The hon. Member for Torfaen was gracious enough tonight to concede the importance and effectiveness of the National Rivers Authority and the drinking water inspectorate, saying that they would be retained by the Labour party, albeit subsumed in an environmental protection agency. Will the Opposition give a public commitment in the House that, should the nightmare occur--I do not believe that it will, but perhaps we can ask this as a hypothetical exercise--and the Labour party were to return to power in a year or two, Labour will ensure that, if Welsh Water is brought back into the public sector, its capital programme will not be curtailed?

Can a commitment be given that a Labour Government would not indulge in the sort of cuts they indulged in pre-1979, when, as my hon. Friend the Member for Langbaurgh (Mr. Holt) said, they slashed capital expenditure on sewage and water works by a massive 50 per cent.? If Welsh Water is brought back into the public sector, a Government would be able to do just that. I hope that the Opposition will be able to give that commitment, because it will be of great interest to the House and of great importance to the people of Wales.

It is always interesting to see the Labour party turn green. I am not sure that its members have not turned green with envy at the Government's environmental record and the fact that we have, through the success of our economic policies which have all owed vastly increased capital expenditure in the water and sewage industries, begun to undo the damage that the Labour party wrought when it was in office. I think that Labour Members may also be slightly sickly green as they contemplate the, albeit remote, possibility of their party returning to office. They must be understandably nervous about how they would begin to compete with, let alone match, our record. I assure Labour Members that that event will not occur ; we will save them from first night nerves, because their first night will never come--the election victory will be ours, and we shall continue the excellent programme that we have carried out so far. Privatisation has accelerated the water industry's capital programmes, our environment cleaner day by day. A capital programme spending £500,000 a day for the next 10 years in Wales is ensuring that the Principality has a much better environment than ever before. 6.24 pm

Mr. Donald Anderson (Swansea, East) : The hon. Member for Delyn (Mr. Raffan) spoke of our being green with envy and embarrassment. If there is a clash of interest between the Welsh water authority, for which he gave a great hymn of praise and the interests of his constituents in terms of the £200 poll tax being imposed on them, will he speak for Welsh Water or his people and the people of Wales as a whole? We deserve an answer to such questions.

Column 61

I wholly agreed with what my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberavon (Mr. Morris) said about the smugness of the Government amendment. We do not perceive in that amendment the Government who are seen in Brussels as the dirty old man of Europe. We do not perceive in it the reductions in Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution and its low morale, evidenced by the number of resignations.

I wholly concur with the spirit of the speech made by the hon. Member for Meirionnyd Nant Conwy (Dr. Thomas). I congratulate him and fully accept what he said about the need for much greater research funding on pollution from the Welsh Office. I welcome the fact that we in Wales give much greater priority to pollution. When I first came on the political scene, the emphasis was on jobs at all costs. I saw that when Carbon Black polluted my constituency--jobs were then the high point of the agenda. I welcome the change, whether it be that Carbon Black no longer exists or the fact that people revolted against opencast mining, which their predecessors had been prepared to accept.

I accept what the Secretary of State said about the improvements in Wales. That can be seen in the greening of our valleys post-Aberfan, as my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Aberavon, a former Secretary of State, said. We can also see that improvement in the greening of corners of our cities. I congratulate my own city council of Swansea on the tree planting programme that has so transformed the city. The lower Swansea valley was once the most concentrated area of industrial dereliction in the United Kingdom, but improvements have been made.

However, who can doubt that, in many respects, the pollution is much worse? Most people are not worried about the great subjects of the ozone layer and the greenhouse effect, but local issues. In Swansea, the issue under discussion is the Cwmrhdyceirw quarry already mentioned by my hon. Friend the Member for Torfaen (Mr. Murphy), and the pollution in Swansea bay, mentioned in the report of the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs, presided over by my hon. Friend the Member for Gower (Mr. Wardell).

As a boy, I spent most of my summer bathing on the beach at Swansea bay, and used to collect cockles there with my family. Now, no one would dare eat them, even if they were to be found. On the only occasion last year when I ventured on to that beach from my house, which adjoins it, my throat was immediately affected, which is evidence of the bay's deterioration. We accept that Welsh Water and the Government have plans, largely thrust on them by the European Commission. Only one beach in Wales, Pembrey, has been given the European Community's blue flag, and we wish to know more about the timetable for the others.

The Cwmrhydyceirw quarry poses an environmental nuisance, and I agree wholly with what my hon. Friend the Member for Gower and his colleagues said in the Select Committee report, at paragraph 41. For reasons of time I will not go into the report in detail, but it is clear that Welsh Water expressed anxiety about its lack of powers in this area. It is also clear that the quarry has not been and is not being properly managed, and that the local authority has insufficient powers. I am glad that, under the Environmental Protection Bill, licences can be revoked or refused if the licensee is deemed not to be a fit and proper person. I also welcome potential regulations under the Bill

Column 62

on the import of direct landfill substances. I hope that the Government will respond speedily when the Bill becomes an Act. It is bizarre that imported heat-treated dried sludge from Switzerland --not, I hasten to add for the benefit of the hon. Member for Pembroke (Mr. Bennett), from a third-world country--has been imported and sold to farmers as soil conditioner--at a time when sewage sludge from Mumbles is sprayed on land and when such sludge from other local works is dumped in the Bristol channel. Why the difference? Is it because of inadequate resources, or do we lack the technology that must be available in Switzerland?

For most of our people, the environment means whatever has the most immediate impact on them. That puts me in mind of Dylan Thomas's "Return Journey" in which he said that in the first world war people talked about casualties at the front, but the only front that he knew was just in front of his house. The same applies to most of my constituents, who are not concerned with the rather grand subjects of the ozone layer, although they may be worried about Swansea bay. What concerns them more are areas such as Penlan, where motor cycle scrambling makes so much noise that it is hell for the residents. I hope that the Government will put a curb on some of these activities ; certainly the police have not given enough priority to tackling this sort of nuisance.

For many people in Portmead and Blaen-y-Maes the immediate environment is menaced most of all by stray dogs and horses. I ask the Government to accept the Lords amendment in respect of dog registration, because of the health hazards of dogs fouling the environment. Environmental health officers in my local authority do not know how many dogs there are or hence how to plan their resources or allocate money for wardens. Horses tend to congregate near schools because of the green areas nearby which provide cheap feed, but they are an immense danger to children : they can stampede, for instance. At present, the local authority can charge only for the bare cost of feed and for vets even when the horses are in a compound. The authority should be given penal powers to cover its full and real costs.

I am delighted that we in Wales are giving environmental matters a higher place on the national agenda, and we shall help to keep them there. We shall press for the resources and equipment which we believe have not yet been fully forthcoming.

6.34 pm

Next Section

Home Page