House of Commons Hansard Debates for 30 Oct 1990

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wide-ranging, and draws from people with incredible expertise in this complicated area. I have had the pleasure and the privilege of meeting all of them. I can give the hon. Gentleman the assurance that he seeks, but I ask him seriously to consider withdrawing the amendment because as it stands, it gives the power to the committee to take powers unto itself with regard to part V of the Bill and, in my wildest dreams, I cannot believe that that is what he intended. I believe that he would wish the Secretary of State of the day, in whichever Government, to have that responsibility. If not, I do not know how on earth he can square it with the comments that he made five minutes ago.

Mr. Morley : I respect the Minister's statements. I also take as a compliment the fact that he said that there may well be another Secretary of State. Perhaps the Opposition have not peaked quite as early as the Minister said we had at the weekend. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.

Amendment to the Lords amendment, by leave, withdrawn.

Main Question put and agreed to.

Clause 118

Creation and constitution of new Councils

Lords amendment : No. 254, in page 123, line 31, at end insert-- ("(3A) The Councils shall establish a committee to be called the Joint Nature Conservation Committee (in this Part referred to as "the joint committee)".")

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House doth agree with the Lords in the said amendment.-- [Mr. Trippier.]

Mr. Deputy Speaker : With this it will be convenient to discuss the following amendments : amendment (a) to Lords amendment No. 254 ; Lords amendments Nos. 255 to 258, 264, 268 to 270 ; Lords amendment No. 271 and amendments (a) and (b) thereto ; Lords amendments Nos. 272, 274 to 280 ; Lords amendment No. 353 and amendment (a) thereto ; Lords amendments Nos. 382, 383, 402, 403 ; Lords amendment No. 404 and Government amendment (a) thereto and 405.

Mr. Bryan Gould (Dagenham) : I beg to move amendment (a) to the Lords amendment, in line 2, after shall' insert

within one month of the date of the Order coming into effect on or after 1st April 1992 made by the Secretary of State under Section 147(3) below in respect of this section'.

Mr. Gould : It is 15 months or thereabouts since the decision to dismember the Nature Conservancy Council was taken or announced. Few would defend the way in which the matter was handled. Baroness Blatch virtually conceded as much in another place. It was clearly done without consultation, it was a hole-in-the-corner exercise and was a virtual bombshell, which exploded to the great consternation of the NCC, its staff and the entire conservation world.

I suppose that one could say that the decision was another of those poisoned chalices that the current Secretary of State's predecessor bequeathed to him. The list extends from opposition to dog registration, to the poll tax, to dismemberment of the NCC. I find it surprising that the Secretary of State somehow manages to convey that he has no sympathy with so much that is central to the

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Department's policy, including those issues, as well as targets on carbon dioxide emissions. Nor can it be said that the passage of 15 months has done much to improve the welcome that those proposals have received.

The Government's decision is still condemned by the overwhelming majority of conservation organisations. I shall select one example--not entirely at random--but simply because it is a representative voice of the conservation world. In a briefing issued this morning, the Council for the Protection of Rural England said that it

"remains of the opinion that these proposals for reform have been mismanaged from start to finish."

It reiterated its view that

"the best way forward would have been for Part VII to have been deleted from the Bill and reorganisation addressed as a central part of the White Paper".

We understand that, unfortunately, that option is no longer open to us. We regret that, but it is worth noting that that remains the view of the CPRE, and of so many of the other major conservation organisations.

The concern expressed by the staff of the Nature Conservancy Council has not diminished during those 15 months. If anything, it has increased. Earlier this year a ballot of NCC staff revealed that only one person supported the Government's proposals for every 10 people who were opposed to them. In a recent ballot this month we discovered that that ratio has moved substantially against the Government. It is now 17 : 1.

That is not because, as Ministers have on occasion offensively suggested, the staff have voted solely in their self-interest. As the staff pointed out, they are well acquainted with the fact, and welcome it, that their jobs are not threatened. No job is threatened and few members of the staff will have to move. Furthermore, it is expected that the number of jobs will increase. When, however, they were asked whether they believed that the proposals would benefit nature conservation, only 39 of the 1,332 staff employed by the Nature Conservancy Council could bring themselves to say yes. The Government ought to accept that that was a principled statement by the staff, entirely divorced from their own self-interest, as to how they see nature conservancy being served by the Government's policies.

Mr. Dalyell : Will my hon. Friend allow me to give him the figures for Scotland? The Scots were supposed to be in favour of this nonsense. The fact is that 21 people were in favour of it, whereas 112 were against it. From my personal knowledge I know that the 112 include many of those who care most and know most. There were 26 "don't knows". Those are the Scottish figures.

Mr. Gould : I am grateful to my hon. Friend. He has removed a sedulously fostered myth. While the ratio of opposition is not quite so high in Scotland as in the rest of the United Kingdom, it is still--at 5 : 1--absolutely overwhelming.

Mr. Robert Maclennan (Caithness and Sutherland) : It is strange to extrapolate from the figures produced by the hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) the belief that the Scots are enthusiastic about the proposition that the hon. Gentleman advocates. No part of the country has been rendered more desolate than Caithness and Sutherland by the malign influence of the Nature Conservancy Council. I believe, therefore, that the

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Government have got this absolutely right and that the Scots are behind them. I hope that the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) will make it absolutely clear from the Opposition Front Bench that if the Labour party wins the next election it will not seek to reverse the Government's sensible decision.

Mr. Gould : The hon. Gentleman's somewhat intemperate attitude and language are pointed up by his total failure to understand what my hon. Friend the Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) said. The hon. Gentleman is wrong to say that my hon. Friend advanced evidence in support of some proposition. It is the Government who have advanced a proposition. My hon. Friend advanced evidence to show to what extent that proposition is opposed by those who are most directly and expertly informed about the matter.

Far from the Labour party believing that the Government have got it right, I want to say straight away that although we well understand the need to devolve and decentralise many of the Nature Conservancy Council's functions, which the NCC also recognises, we have also made it clear that it is neither a necessary nor an acceptable part of that exercise to do unnecessary and violent damage to the cause of nature conservation throughout the country.

Mr. Peter Hardy (Wentworth) : Since the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) may unwittingly be interpreted as having criticised the work of the Nature Conservancy Council in Scotland, may I point out that I visited his constituency earlier this year and discussed with one of his constituents the splendid work that the NCC has carried out on a friend's farm in the Caithness area? Its record of service in protecting that farm, in co-operation with a highly responsible farmer, does not suggest that the hon. Gentleman's criticisms should be quite so bitter as they may appear in the Official Report.

Mr. Gould : My hon. Friend may have been misled into thinking that the hon. Gentleman's criticism of the NCC was unwitting. I understand that, because so often what the hon. Gentleman says does sound unwitting. On this occasion, however, I feel that one has to concede that it was witting, whatever that may mean.

The Government do not carry public opinion with them because they have failed to satisfy the concern about the gap that has been left by the demise of the Nature Conservancy Council, a point that the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland obtusely refuses to acknowledge. We have repeatedly made it clear that we accept the case for decentralisation, but we do not accept that it is right to carve that great hole in the nature conservation effort throughout the United Kingdom.

It is also clear that many functions of both a national and an international character can be carried out only by a national body. There is no dispute between the Government and ourselves on the point. The Government recognise it. Why else would they have recognised the need to create, by amendments even at this late stage and by means, I imagine, of more provisions still to come, the Joint Nature Conservation Committee? Why else would they have gone to such great lengths to create that body if if were not designed to fulfil those national and international functions that are left unfulfilled after the demise of the NCC?

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Although there will be a dispute, in which I intend to participate, about the precise functions of the JNCC and its staffing, relations with other bodies, funding and location, it is impossible to say--except as between the rest of the House and the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland--that there is any dispute about the fact that there is a gap to be filled. The JNCC is the Government's response to the need to fill that gap. Having acknowledged that such a gap must be filled, the Government have failed to use the time at their disposal to prepare the JNNC properly for its new responsibilities. It is that which is now giving cause for concern. The question is no longer-- perhaps regrettably from our viewpoint--whether the Government were right or wrong in principle. The question now is whether they were competent in practice in preparing that body for its new role. It is in that area that the real concerns persist. It is for that precise reason that there was such uproar in another place when Lady Blatch mishandled--one has to say, with all kindness--the explanation to their Lordships of the Government's proposal. It is because those concerns persist that we have tabled the amendment and wish to press it.

The competence of the new body is a cause for concern. It was that question that caused such embarrassment to the Minister of State's junior ministerial colleague. I cannot recall any other Committee in which a Minister has wriggled for so long on a hook of his own creation and found it so difficult to get off it. Fair-minded Members on both sides of the House who sat on the Committee will recognise that that is a fair description of what happened.

If we take the nub of the matter--who decides what is and what is not a Great Britain responsibility--the problem is that the JNCC does not have the power to resolve it. That is one reason why very great and fundamental concerns persist about the JNCC's role. I do not want to be too critical of Professor Holliday, but the confusion was not helped by an exchange that took place at a meeting on 26 September. I have a verbatim record of what was said. It was put to him in the following terms : "It doesn't seem very likely to me in view of this that the Committee"--

that is, the JNCC--

"is going to survive for very long at all. It will simply wither away to a core which will consist of international matters because everything else in say five years will be drawn back by the country agencies."

That is a reference to this precise jurisdictional point. Professor Holliday responded to the suggestion that the JNCC might wither away by saying :

"Yes. Well, you may be right. I hope you're not."

We all know the difficulty of responding to points such as that in a meeting and I should not wish to hold Professor Holliday to that response. It did not help. It left the well-founded worry about the control of the JNCC over its own functions and the apparent endorsement--I put it no higher than that--of the suggestion that it might wither away because the country bodies would draw back from it the powers claimed. That apparent endorsement was unhelpful to the concerns expressed on that point.

Mr. Trippier : I am following the hon. Gentleman's speech closely and I do not think that he will have any difficulty in answering the question that I wish to put to him. It is an extension of what was said by the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan).

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The House must understand what the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) is saying. Is he saying that, in the unlikely event of a Labour Government taking power, the JNCC would become a quango and have authoritative power, or would he leave it with the scientific responsibility that is proposed in the United Kingdom or what? I think that that requires only a couple of sentences.

6 pm

Mr. Gould : Let me preface what I say by acknowledging the Minister's recognition of the possibility of a Labour Government. That is a welcome advance.

The choice offered by the Minister is misleading and that is why the Government have got into trouble. Before the JNCC can exercise what the Minister described as its "scientific responsibility", it has to know over what areas and over what issues it has the power to exercise those functions. That is where the problem arises It has no power to make that decision. If for any reason the country bodies decide that a particular issue, however much it may seem common sense, is not a Great Britain issue, the JNCC is left powerless.

Mr. Dalyell : Professor Holliday has been a friend of mine ever since his Stirling days. He is an extremely candid, frank and realistic man. He has stated the facts. I understand that the Government have not given him a chief officer in the JNCC. Heaven knows how it expects to be ready by April.

Mr. Gould : As always, the problem is that points come thick and fast. My hon. Friend is right on all that he said. In the exchange from which I quoted, Professor Holliday described what had been perpetrated as a "camel", and one understands what he meant by that analogy.

In answer to the Minister's question, there should be rules to resolve this point. My view is that the JNCC should be able to decide what is and what is not a Great Britain issue. It is plainly unsatisfactory to leave the JNCC in its present circumstances without any such power and with the possibility always that its budget and the definitions of what it can do are not within its control and can be retrieved. That is why Professor Holliday was tempted, if I may put it that way, to make the concession that he did in the passage that I have just read out.

The next concern is the dispute that has arisen about whether the JNCC should also be able to deal with countryside matters. The answer seems to be that it should not. However, the waters have been muddied by the Government's equivocation in their White Paper and on other occasions over the possible need for further legislation--I cannot imagine why we should have to wait for further legislation--to amalgamate the functions of the JNCC and the Countryside Commission in England. If it is a good idea-- apparently it has been decided that it is in Scotland and Wales--why not in England? Why cannot the Government make up their mind? It is hard to follow the Government's logic.

There are also the more fundamental disputes about the costs of reorganisation and the increase in the budget that will be needed to fund adequately the new arrangements, bearing it in mind that the JNCC has no control over its budget. Sir William Wilkinson, the chairman of the NCC, has been repeatedly--and I believe

unfairly--criticised by Ministers for claims that he has made about the costs involved. It is now clear that Sir William Wilkinson was

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right. He could not defend himself because he was relying on the Inbucon report, commissioned by the Department of the Environment, to which he had access. He knew that the figures that he was quoting were offered and confirmed by that report. Because at that time Ministers had decided that the report was not available for publication, Sir William Wilkinson was left defenceless against the charge made by Ministers that he was inventing the figures.

Mr. Maclennan : Sir William Wilkinson has admitted to me and stated publicly that he exaggerated the figures by a factor of three. He spoke about £30 million when the reality of the Government's proposals was £10 million.

Mr. Gould : I do not know whether it is fair to ask the hon. Gentleman whether he has read the Inbucon report. Before he again expresses himself so intemperately, particularly against somebody who is not here to defend himself, he should read that report. He will see why Sir William Wilkinson used the figure of £30 million. It is not his figure, but is contained in the Inbucon report. We now have the advantage of knowing what is in the report. In an amazing volte face in another place, Baroness Blatch suddenly announced that it was the Department's view that the report was now the property of the NCC and that it was up the NCC to decide whether to publish it. It has now done so. Therefore, for the first time, we and everybody else are able to decide whether Sir William Wilkinson was justified in basing his arguments on those figures. There they are in the report. Because it became clear that the report would be published, the Government have now confirmed that the direct administrative costs of the reorganisation that they have proposed will be £9.18 million and that an additional 254 staff will be required. I observe--as has been observed in another place and on other occasions--that if the Labour party had been in Government and had brought forward proposals costing that amount and requiring such a large number of additional staff for no advantage but purely as an administrative rearrangement, we should have been criticised and there would have been a tremendous outcry.

Mr. Trippier : I am trying desperately to be fair and patient with the hon. Gentleman. Surely he is not asking the House to stretch its credulity to such an extent as to believe that there will be no advantage when so many hon. Members, including some of his hon. Friends, have acknowledged that the purpose of the Government's legislation is to bring about nature conservation and make it more effective at community level.

Mr. Gould : No doubt the Minister has been saying that for the past 15 months. I simply refer him to the point that I made earlier, which is that he has failed to convince anyone of any reputation in the conservation world. I thought that I was being kind to him when I said that there was no obvious advantage to be gained from the expenditure. The truth is, as everybody interested in nature conservation agrees, that there is considerable disadvantage. It is clear from perusal of the Inbucon report why Sir William Wilkinson constantly referred to a figure of £10

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million as the administrative cost and a total cost of between £20 million and £30 million. The Inbucon report says that £20 million is "the minimum necessary to ensure that the new agencies can carry out their statutory obligations."

It goes on to say that £30 million is required to deliver the "enhanced conservation believed essential to tackle issues in the decade to come."

I have already had a hasty and ill-thought-out reply from the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan), but I want to know from the Minister whether he accepts the assessments and the figures produced by the Inbucon report. We need to know whether, if they are accepted, the Government now commit themselves to funding those increased sums.

The most urgent concern is about the preparedness of the new agencies. That is the issue to which our amendment is directed. We are concerned particularly about staffing. The latest figures on vacancies are extremely worrying. I have been provided with the most up-to-date table. The figures show, for example, that the percentage of posts filled at the headquarters of the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland is only 44 per cent.--56 per cent. vacancies. We have heard that only 46 per cent. of posts at the headquarters of the Countryside Council for Wales have been filled--54 per cent. vacancies. Only at the Nature Conservancy Council headquarters in England is the percentage of posts filled more than 70 per cent. That is desperate. We simply cannot expect those bodies to be ready by 1 April when they are still suffering such immense staff shortages. Naturally, we should like to press the Government to give us an assurance that those vacancies will be filled. I fear that that is now a forlorn hope ; that there is no prospect of filling all those vacancies in time for 2 April 1991. Let us again be kind to the Minister : can he give an assurance that in every case where the target is not met, at least 70 per cent.--that is a pretty limited target--of vacancies will have been filled by 2 April 1991? If he cannot give that assurance--I shall listen carefully to his reply to see whether he can--how does he expect the new agencies to operate? Is it not the case that total confusion reigns in the preparations that have been made ; that the Countryside Council for Wales is so short staffed that its finances will continue to be run from Peterborough for at least the first year ; that the two Scottish bodies, the NCC and the Countryside Commission, will remain in their separate offices in Edinburgh and Perth for at least the foreseeable future ; that Mr. Ian Mercer has still not accepted the job of chief executive of the Countryside Commission of Wales, although that offer was made some months ago ; and that no decision has been taken on where the JNCC will be located and no chief officer has yet been appointed?

The charge is not so much that the Government have got it wrong--that they have damaged nature conservation unnecessarily--but that they cannot even retrieve the position that they have created because of hopeless confusion and unpreparedness. As Melanie Griffiths said in The Guardian recently,

"Malice has now been superseded by incompetence."

In protest against that incompetence and the cavalier disregard of nature conservation, we shall press our amendment.

Sir Hector Monro (Dumfries) : It is astonishing to listen to the hon. Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould) trying to

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find a difficulty for every solution and moaning and carping about the excellent progress that has been made towards the implementation of the Bill on 1 April 1991.

I was at an NCC meeting this morning, where there was no panic or long drawn faces that the target that has been set for Scotland and Wales cannot be achieved. Nobody appreciates more than the council that its staff must be helped into the right places at the right time. The vast majority of the staff at Peterborough and at the NCC in England will be staying in post. Some are volunteering to go to Wales, some are volunteering to go to Scotland, some are volunteering to return to another civil service post and others are taking early retirement.

There is not the difficulty with staff that the hon. Gentleman suggested. Until it has resolved who should go to which post, the figures that the hon. Gentleman gave for shortages in Wales and Scotland will be true, but there is no question but that we shall have adequate staff in place in Wales and Scotland by next spring.

Mr. Gould : I am interested in what the hon. Gentleman is saying. If I understand him correctly, he may be taking it on himself to offer an assurance that staff will be available and that the vacancies that I mentioned will be filled. Would he care to put a figure on it, and should we accept his assurance as being as valuable as that of the Government?

Sir Hector Monro : I cannot give an assurance that is more important than the Government's ; I am only a member of the council. I said that there is no panic in Peterborough about resolving problems. After all, there is still a considerable number of months to go until 1 April. Much work is being done and, there is confidence that it will be carried out for 1 April.

Mr. Dalyell : As the hon. Gentleman is responsible, possibly more than anybody else, for bringing the tartan curtain down, why did 184 of his staff at Peterborough vote against him and only three vote for him? How could that be?

6.15 pm

Sir Hector Monro : When one has been a member of the council for as long as I have, one realises that there is much advantage in the devolution proposed. For heaven's sake, if I thought that nature conservation in Scotland was 100 per cent., I would not support the Bill, but I do not think it is. There is much to do in Scotland, England and Wales. It is very much better that each country looks after its own responsibility. The hon. Gentleman is flogging a horse that was never even a runner.

Two or three years ago, I thought, "Goodness me, couldn't we look after the problems of Caithness much better from Edinburgh than we do from Peterborough? Would it not be much better if our chief scientist was in Edinburgh instead of Peterborough? Would it not be better if we were able to look after our own affairs?" It is important that nature conservation problems are tackled locally. It is much easier to do that in Scotland if one is based in Edinburgh and has staff in regional offices throughout Scotland.

I accept that that will cost more money, but I want it to cost more money, because that is the only way that we shall achieve better results. The NCC for Scotland must have additional regional offices and sub-offices so that more of its officials are spread across Scotland, and that

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can be equated to Wales and England. We are spread far too thinly on the ground ; we are losing the community touch, which is so important. Local thought must go into nature conservation. The hon. Member for Linlithgow (Mr. Dalyell) has been so strongly in favour of nature conservation over the years and was very much to the forefront during proceedings on the Wildlife and Countryside Bill. I cannot understand why he cannot see the advantages of running this operation from Edinburgh or from wherever we decide to run it. I accept the possibility of an alternative location, but Edinburgh is more likely to be the office that will deal with our national heritage.

The hon. Member for Dagenham did not begin to make a case for splitting the NCC again. I accept his comments about our proposal costing money, but it is unreasonable for the Opposition to press the Government, before the Bill is passed, on how much money will be available. Ministers for Scotland, England and Wales have always said that sufficient money will be available to fulfil the

responsibilities that we are asking the devolved councils to carry out.

Lords amendment No. 254 establishes the JNCC and states what its responsibilities and composition will be. Over the past six months, we have known that Sir Frederick Holliday would be chairman and we know that Lord Cranbrook, Magnus Magnusson and Mr. Michael Griffiths from Wales will run the respective councils. One cannot accept that those four gentlemen, who are of the highest calibre in conservation in the United Kingdom, would put their names to the whole operation if they did not think that it would be successful.

Mr. Trippier : I am hugely enjoying my hon. Friend's words, and I am grateful for his support for this legislation. I want to continue with his point. Could anyone seriously expect the four individuals whom my hon. Friend has catalogued for the benefit of the House to fail to ensure that the number of staff required were in place at the appropriate moment?

Sir Hector Monro : I should be very surprised if those four men were not determined to have the staff in place. The chief officials, the designated chief officials and the current permanent staff are also determined on that. Everything is working smoothly. Of course, no one says that it will be easy to get the calibre of staff that we require, but there is a determination to achieve that and to have everything running by next summer.

I see no reason why we should fall down on any of our statutory duties, such as the notification and renotification of sites of special scientific interest or the implementation of management agreements. As the hon. Member for Caithness and Sutherland (Mr. Maclennan) said, the new bodies will be able to keep a closer eye on the problems of the flow country, which he has so rightly highlighted in the House for many years.

We should welcome this group of Lords amendments. I know that we shall keep an eye on the common standards of designation of SSSIs, and it will be the overall duty of the joint committee to keep standards in each country as high as they are at present. All that is good for the establishment of the joint committee, which will have functions in Great Britain and internationally. The Government are right to accept the Lords amendments, and I give them my full support.

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Mr. Andrew Welsh (Angus, East) : I will address my remarks to amendment (b) to Lords amendment No. 271, which is also supported by Liberal Democrat Members. The amendment is a probing amendment, as we want the Government to explain their attitude to the dumping of nuclear waste. The amendment would allow the Nature Conservancy Council to make recommendations to local authorities about the effects of the dumping of nuclear waste on nature conservation in their areas. I should like the Government to explain their attitude to the important question of nuclear dumping, and especially its effects on nature conservancy. How will nuclear dumping relate to the work of the Nature Conservancy Council for Scotland or of the Joint Nature Conservancy Committee, if the Lords amendment is agreed to? During the passage of the Bill, the Government have said nothing about this important issue.

It seems incredible that a Bill concerned with the environment does not mention nuclear dumping, which is the major issue in Scotland. The Government may have thought that they were in trouble over the poll tax, in view of the reaction of the Scottish people, but I assure them that that will be as nothing compared with the massive outcry and anger throughout Scotland if a decision is taken to carry out nuclear dumping in our country.

What is the relationship between the Nature Conservancy Council and local government? Amendment (b) allows for contact with local government, which means contact with democracy in Scotland, through democratically elected councils which can speak on behalf of local people. In northern Scotland, the councils have already spoken out strongly against nuclear dumping. They have held plebiscites and have taken soundings of opinion.

Local authorities also have responsibility for industry. Nuclear dumping would strongly affect employment and industry, especially tourism, farming and fishing. Surely any nature conservancy body should have something to say on this and should be in contact with local government to describe the problems, difficulties and consequences of plans to dump nuclear waste.

Dumping sites are being proposed for Dounreay, but they could appear elsewhere. The problem affects the whole of Scotland, especially with the transportation of nuclear waste, which will affect land, sea and, possibly, air. Any nature conservancy body worth its salt should be able to be in contact with local authorities, which will be left with many of the practical problems.

It is hard to envisage that any conservation body would have recommended that Nirex be given planning permission to test bore at Dounreay or anywhere else in Scotland. The consequences of waste dumping for nature conservation could be serious, given the danger and problems associated with deep level storage and the transportation of nuclear waste.

Mr. Eric Martlew (Carlisle) : Would the hon. Gentleman suggest that nuclear waste from Chapelcross near Annan in Scotland should be dumped in England?

Mr. Welsh : If the hon. Gentleman cares to study my party's policy, he will find the answer to that question and to others affecting nuclear dumping. The important point is that any Government worth their salt would ensure that nuclear garbage was not created because it exacerbates the problems. The hon. Gentleman's own party should look carefully at its policies, which would create extra waste to

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be disposed of. We have to take care of the problem that has already been created, and my party has answers to that. We are especially concerned not to increase the problem, because one should never accelerate into a position where there could be an accident. Nuclear waste affects the environment of the whole country due to the transportation of such environmentally dangerous products by land, by sea and, perhaps, by air. I have heard of bad neighbours but, in planning terms, the combination of nuclear waste and environmental protection is ridiculous.

Amendment (b) would offer the opportunity for a dialogue between the new conservancy body and the local authorities. That is especially relevant when one considers the economic impact of nuclear dumping on the economy of the rural areas, whose basic industries of fishing, farming and tourism depend on the public perception of a clean environment. That is very much to the fore in the work of the Nature Conservancy Council.

The new conservation body should have the power to investigate the impact of nuclear dumping on all the possible sites in Scotland. Nirex has 12 sites in reserve, although it has so far declined to disclose them. Wherever the problem occurs, contact should be possible so that the effects are clearly made known to the local authorities. The Nature Conservancy Council cannot ignore the effect of nuclear dumping, although the Bill tries to do so. What is the point of cleaning up the environment in Scotland only to have Scotland turned into the world's nuclear dustbin? That must not happen. We do not need or want this stuff. Scotland must not be treated in this fashion.

Will the Minister tell us what is the role of the Nature Conservancy Council in the nuclear dumping debate? How can it intervene and what is its relationship with the local authorities which are the planning and economic authorities in Scotland? What advice can the council give on these important issues? We have tabled the amendment to elicit comment from the Government about the role and powers of the Nature Conservancy Council when faced with one of the most important environmental issues.

Mr. Trippier : I should not like the hon. Gentleman to sit down without getting it off his chest that he was a strong supporter of part VII of the Bill, notwithstanding his questions, which I hope to address later.

Mr. Welsh : The Minister knows that I favour maximum devolved power to Scotland and that I want to see a vastly increased and better resourced nature conservancy body in Scotland, because the Scottish environment deserves that. The Minister is well aware of that, because I made it clear in Committee.

The amendment has been tabled to enable us to ask the Minister about the relationship between the Nature Conservancy Council and the local authorities on the important question of nuclear dumping. That issue will be very much to the fore in Scottish politics--it will be the hottest issue around. The Scottish people will rise up in anger against any plans for nuclear dumping in our country. If the Government do not know that already, they will certainly find it out. Will the Minister explain the relationship and explain what powers the body will have and what it will do on this, the most important of issues in Scotland?

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6.30 pm

Mr. Hardy : On Second Reading, I kept my promise to make a reasonably short speech. My speech today will be even shorter. On Second Reading, I had to devote most of the time available to me to the pernicious and continuing problem of toxic waste in my constituency. I do not propose to refer to that matter now, but on that occasion it meant that I could say only one or two words about the future of the Nature Conservancy Council. Had I had the opportunity then, I should have liked to support the arguments advanced by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham (Mr. Gould)--a relevant aspiration on this occasion--and to ask the House to consider the following proposition. It is only three or four years since the NCC's headquarters in Peterborough were officially opened--it is not as though, before the Government's proposal, the NCC had been languishing in incompetent idleness for decades. The people there, who are dedicated and competent people, had been operating in Peterborough for only a short time.

I had the privilege to speak at the opening ceremony. I recall that the three people on the platform then were the then Secretary of State for the Environment, now Lord Jenkin, Sir William Wilkinson, and myself. I remember vividly that the then Secretary of State made the sort of preposterous claim that some of the Minister's colleagues may shortly be making as we approach the general election--indeed, the Minister may not be able to resist the temptation to make them himself. Lord Jenkin suggested at that gathering that only the Conservative party and the Conservative Government were interested in the environment. He actually claimed that every environmental Bill that had gone through Parliament in the previous 40 years had come from a Conservative Government. That claim was regarded as preposterous by most of the distinguished members of the gathering. I suspect that if that distinguished gathering were asked now whether it approved of the Government's approach on this matter, a response similar to that presented by my hon. Friend the Member for Dagenham would be forthcoming.

I fear that this whole development is an exercise in the divide-and-rule principle. In my view, there is an urgent need for an increase in the resources available for nature conservation. Instead we are to have, at the very least a hiccup in the council's commitment and activities. Only last year, the conservation bodies of Britain, led by the Royal Society for Nature Conservation, published a document called "Losing Ground". I hope that the Minister has read it. It is a stark and serious representation of the damage being done to our environment, not least to our SSSIs sites of special scientific interest. It seems to me to be singularly unfortunate that the Government should be inflicting major changes on our official conservation structures at a time when the environment is in retreat.

I shall not criticise people such as the chairman of the English conservancy council. Lord Cranbrook, like his father, has a substantial record and that body will undoubtedly seek to make the best of a bad job. The Minister should bear in mind, however, that it is not all that long since Lord Rayner was set upon the Nature Conservancy Council as part of the Marks and Spencer exercise to detect inefficiency in the public service. Lord Rayner may have been able to detect inefficiencies in certain parts of the Government, but I think that the

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Minister will confirm that the principal conclusion reached in respect of the NCC was that it did not have sufficient resources. The most sensible approach that the Government could have adopted would have been to ensure that the resources were available and certainly not to take part in an exercise that will delay the defence of our environmental and ecological inheritance, which is under continuing threat and has not been helped by the Government's proposals.

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