House of Commons Hansard Debates for 8 Nov 1991

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special protection of wild birds. We could then say that we would put a ring fence round the district, which we would not submit for SPA status, even though the Nature Conservancy Council proposed to do so. That leaves us with the question : why bark and keep a dog? Why do the Government collect taxes to pay the salaries of those in the Countryside Council for Wales but not take its advice? The Nature Conservancy Council has assessed the district as being of higher nature conservation interest than the other parts of the Severn estuary mud flats that are being submitted for SPA protection. Therefore, the district with the higher nature conservation importance is being excluded from SPA protection, while districts with lower nature conservation importance are included.

The Secretary of State has taken upon himself the power to override his own nature conservation experts, who are up in arms. As from last Friday they feel that they have been stabbed in the back, betrayed and made to look foolish because the Government have used the blatant and perverse device of excluding the most important district on the Welsh side from nature conservation.

Where does that leave the Government's proud desire to register more sites at Brussels for SPA purposes? It leaves the Government's reputation in tatters because it simply means that the Government are interested in nature conservation only when it is in their interest and when they feel like it. That is not the spirit in which the European directive on wild birds should be interpreted. Nature conservation sites are supposed to be designated according to their importance to nature conservation, not according to how convenient they are in relation to man-made proposals for economic or leisure development. The criteria should not be whether the Government feel like having the protection sites, but whether those sites are important for nature conservation.

The Government's decision to exclude the site has blown to smithereens any reputation that they may have had for being interested in green issues. It was an embarrassing decision for the Government to make. During the Prime Minister's recent visit to Cardiff he was told--as Conservative party managers are always told--that it would be a great moral boost if he visited the people running the Cardiff Bay development corporation and looked at the proposed site of the lake that was being impounded behind the barrage. The Prime Minister went to visit the Cardiff bay district, and was taken for a walk down by the pier head along the newly constructed boardwalk intended to attract visitors to the district. He was surrounded by a large number of security men. Those who were there, including reporters from the South Wales Echo, said that there was a peculiar, foul smell due to the fact that during construction of the boardwalk two years ago, the Cardiff Bay development corporation fractured Bute Town's main foul sewer which runs directly underneath the boardwalk. When they were sinking the boardwalk piles they did not know exactly where the old sewer was and went right through the middle of it. That has resulted in a steady trickle, which I shall not describe, running out from underneath the boardwalk to the mudlfats. There was the Prime Minister, surrounded by security men, journalists and television crews, trying to avoid breathing in the smell. Two opponents of the Cardiff bay barrage, Stan Perkins and Les Baxter from the docks

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area of Cardiff, managed, in their baseball caps and anoraks, to get through the security cordon surrounding the Prime Minister and went up to him, at which point Stan Perkins uttered the immortal words, "Get a whiff of that."

Earlier this week I asked the Prime Minister what consultations he had had concerning the Bute Town main sewer and the foul odours emanating from it underneath the boardwalk at the pier head in Cardiff. In classic Majorese, he replied that he would write to me shortly. Such an embarrassment would not occur if the Government adopted a comprehensive, integrated and committed approach to improving the environment. Instead they regard the issue as a convenience, to be used only when they feel like it, and regard it as an inconvenience when it conflicts with other Government objectives. 1.31 pm

Mr. Neil Thorne (Ilford, South) : I am delighted to be able to participate in the debate. I listened carefully to what the hon. Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) said about his constituency, in particular about nature conservation. I have many happy memories of south Wales. Some of my relations live in the Porthcawl area. I have spent many happy holidays in that part of the country. I can well understand his constituents' annoyance at the fracture of the sewer pipe. The Government are, however, listening. What the hon. Gentleman said will not fall on stony ground. The Government are firmly committed to improving the environment. Many issues that have been a source of considerable annoyance to me and others in recent years are coming to the top of the agenda and will, I hope, be taken seriously.

I hope, too, that the general public will recognise their importance and will want considerable improvements to be made so that infringements of what we all consider to be our right to enjoy the environment to the full are dealt with properly. We do not want the environment to be desecrated by thoughtless and mindless individuals and corporations. That is at the root of the problem.

People are thoughtless on many occasions and cause environmental pollution for others. We must educate people. I refer to parents as well as to children. Parents have an important role to play. They must teach their children to look after the environment and not throw tin cans and litter about. People must be taught that it is not environmentally acceptable to wind down the windows of their cars and throw out used cigarette packets. It causes much annoyance and offence to others. We must educate the population to clean up the environment.

Some people will begin to understand its importance only if they are fined severely. We must ensure that the law is implemented. I realise that the police have many other duties to perform. When laws are passed they say that they will do their best to implement them within the resources available. I accept that murder, rape and other extremely important issues are right at the top of their agenda. Nevertheless, the standard of our lives depends considerably on the way in which other people abuse the system by scattering litter, which is extremely expensive to clear up.

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The Scandinavian countries recently conducted an experiment whereby each housewife tried to divide the household refuse so that it could be collected and recycled. That is a major step forward. Wastepaper is not readily marketable. For many years, I had the pleasure of saving all my newspapers for the scouts, who collected it, sold it and used the proceeds for their own purposes. It is not worth their while doing so any more because there is too much paper. People do not appreciate that many soft-wood trees grow much faster than they can be used, so there is little pressure for recycling. It is more expensive to recycle paper than to start from scratch with wood pulp. We therefore pay a premium for wastepaper to be recycled. We must seriously consider whether it is not worth having wastepaper recycled and suffering the premium to ensure that we do not have so much litter on our streets and general environment. Glass recycling is now well established and I know of many points in my constituency where it is collected in brown, green and white canisters. That makes a valuable contribution to reducing the amount of glass that is thrown around. When people visit supermarkets, they are careful to take along their used glass.

Cans and plastic, which is so difficult to break down through natural processes, need to be collected separately. The Scandinavians divide waste into metal cans, glass, paper and plastic. That is a good idea and I hope that it catches on throughout the western world so that those items can be reused.

The situation is quite different in the Indian sub-continent. When I go trekking, I find that everything is collected. Porters take home plastic bottles because they are valuable in villages. They are pleased to be able to reuse them.

We certainly have become a throw-away society and we must become more disciplined than in the past. When I was a boy, the majority of bottles had to be reused. I remember that immediately after the war if one did not have a bottle one could not buy a new bottle of whisky. One had to take an empty bottle to the off-licence to buy another one. In some respects, the container was more important than its contents. The situation has changed considerably, but we must train ourselves to be much more conscious of the environment. There is a good argument for introducing a tax on packaging. Sometimes, the packaging is disgraceful. It is important to have packaging that presents goods to the best possible advantage, but there can be no excuse for having three or four different layers around a product. That aspect must be considered. If people have that much money to waste on packaging, perhaps they are not paying enough tax.

As I said, the way in which people behave in the environment needs to be considered. In recent experiments in the United States, the authorities tried to make the punishment fit the crime. I should very much like to see that in operation in parts of this country. People who paint graffiti should be made to spend a certain number of hours cleaning up the mess. I can think of no better way of ensuring that they stop committing that offence against society. Sometimes for example, people paint graffiti on the supports of the elevated sections of motorways. There is no earthly reason why that should be allowed to continue.

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I wish to mention a local issue. The north circular road includes a section which now passes through my constituency known as the South Woodford to Barking relief road. That road was opened three or four years ago and trees were planted, but I am sad to see that a number of them have died. I hope that the Department of Transport will take an early opportunity to replant. As we now have a replanting system, I hope that, as the Department's contribution to improving the environment, it will replace the trees that have died. I hope also that strenuous efforts will be made to clean up the horrible rubbish which was thrown out of cars and has collected on the roadside. Both measures would bring a considerable environmental improvement locally.

As I said, we should pay much more attention to education. That responsibility lies not only with schools but with parents. Parents have a major role to play in showing their children how to behave, in telling them to collect rubbish in the countryside and not to throw rubbish out of the car window. Parents have a responsibility to show by good example how responsible citizens behave. There is no reason why the rest of us should pay enormous sums of money to have other people's litter picked up. If that approach does not work on a voluntary basis, we must introduce an effective system of fining and persuade the police to take this aspect of the environment seriously.

1.42 pm

Mr. Dennis Skinner (Bolsover) : This has been an important debate. The two Front-Bench spokesmen talked about the environment in terms of this country and abroad. One morning recently, I listened to "Farming Today", as I do quite frequently. I am waiting for a general election to be called and I expect the announcement to be made on "Farming Today". The election was called off last time and not everyone was told.

While I was listening to "Farming Today", I heard some startling news about the environment and the ozone layer which should make us all feel startled about what is happening. Sheep in Patagonia in Chile, rabbits and fish had gone blind because of the enormous hole in the ozone layer. That aspect of the chain of life should concern us all. It makes us stop and think about what is happening and about what we in this country can do.

People tell me that socialism is off the agenda. When I think about the need to save the environment, I know that it cannot be saved by market forces, as I had to tell the former Prime Minister before she left office. I said, "You will not patch up that hole in the ozone layer with a man, a bike, a ladder and an enterprise allowance." The only way to save the planet is not through nation states but through states getting together.

I want to put on record a few problems on the micro level in my constituency because it is important that the Minister who replies to the debate should be fully aware of the problems emanating from north Derbyshire. Dioxin has contaminated milk on three farms. That is alarming, not merely because there is dioxin in the milk, which is bad enough, but because it is only in the past few days that any Department has even acknowledged that there was a problem. There was an admission the other day with regard to Bolsover Coalite which claims not to have much to do with the dioxin, although most people do not believe that. Bolsover Coalite has to install a new incinerator at the end

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of November which I hope will clear up the issue, but there is still a long way to go. The River Doe Lea, which is little more than a stream where it runs past that plant, several other chemical plants and industrial firms, has, according to a recent statement by Friends of the Earth, pollution levels more than 1,000 times the accepted safety level. Even if that figure has been embellished, it is still bad news.

There are also problems for the farmers. Since June, two of the farmers have lost their livelihood, which was to produce milk, but the Government refuse to pay compensation. If someone has a roof missing from his flat or house, the local authority can have the repairs done if the landlord will not do them and can then charge the landlord. However, when I question the Government, they say that the polluter must pay. It will take a long time to discover who the polluter is, although we all have ideas which are not a million miles away from Bolsover Coalite in Buttermill lane.

If a civil action to claim compensation is necessary, it could take years and in the meantime the farmers are losing their livelihood. In view of the Government's talk about "greenery" and citizens charters and everything else, they should adopt the system that operates in Holland whereby, if dioxin is found while the case is being contested to discovered who is the polluter and to force him to pay, the Government will ensure that payments are made and will then secure the money from the polluter. That means that in the meantime the people affected do not lose out.

In October, pollution was discovered in a third farm in Bolsover. It is apparently one of the worst recorded instances of dioxin, which is one of the most deadly toxins known to man, or to woman. The pollution is so bad that the farmer has had to stop operating his suckle herd, and he is clearly losing money as a result. Thousands of people in my area are very concerned.

The other day I heard it said on television that a cluster of breast cancers had been discovered in an area adjacent to the plant and close to the farms. The occurrence is 50 per cent. higher than in other parts of north Derbyshire. The programme made comparisons not with leafy Surrey, but with parts of north Derbyshire where there have long been industrial firms and pits. We need more action. The other day the Secretary of State for the Environment went trotting off to the Confederation of British Industry. I am told that he made a better speech than the bloke whose name no one remembers--I think that he is from the Department of Trade and Industry. I do not remember his name, but apparently he went and was followed by the Secretary of State for the Environment, who made a great speech. He said that there was a correlation between the environment and British industry. Those of us who live in mining areas know that there has always been a need to strike a balance between producing coal--in this case producing coke from coal--and causing minimum damage to the environment and to the people who work and live in the vicinity. Coalite must be told to find that balance. I hope that the Government will press for that and will pay the compensation that is so badly needed in the area.

When the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food found that the milk in the area was contaminated, he decided to send it to the west midlands to be incinerated.

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It is typical of the Government that they sent it to a firm that did not have the equipment to burn it. Dioxin must be burnt at no less than 1,200 deg. C. It could not be properly burnt at the incinerator to which it was sent and as a result goodness knows how many square miles of the west midlands were polluted with dioxin. Some of us found out about that and said to the Government, "Do you know what you are doing?" Apparently they have now sent it somewhere else to be incinerated.

Throughout this episode I have demanded compensation for the farmers and a public inquiry. That is not asking a great deal. Three farms have dioxin- contaminated milk and a river in the area is polluted 1,000 times more than it should be. There are other pieces of evidence, such as an incinerator that is not working properly and cases of breast cancer.

In the run-up to the general election, when the Government are scouring for votes anywhere, one would think that they would announce a public inquiry to enable the people of Bolsover to say exactly what they want and have it placed on record. It would also enable the people who work in the industrial plants, including Coalite, to present statements that are not influenced by people being victimised or witch-hunted. A public inquiry would allay many fears. The Minister should discuss the matter with the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and with anyone else in Departments that are affected. They should discuss paying compensation and announce a public inquiry so that we can get to the truth of the matter about how dioxin has found its way into the milk, who is responsible, and who should pay. That should be done quickly. 1.52 pm

Mr. Win Griffiths (Bridgend) : I hope that the House will forgive me for referring first to the speech and the impassioned plea by my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner). He has tried to raise this issue many times in the past few months. If the Government have not acted by the time of the general election, a Labour Government will definitely hold a public inquiry, because my hon. Friend has made a most convincing case for one.

The debate has been wide-ranging and of a high standard. It has covered global issues, such as the depletion of the ozone layer, and has ranged down to the most micro of micro issues, street parking in one of my old haunts in Cardiff. We are debating extremely important issues.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) joined the hon. Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Jones) in speaking about the issue of the dangers of hospital incineration. A short time ago the Select Committee on Welsh Affairs investigated hospital incineration in Wales and found that the old standards, let alone the new far higher standards, were invariably not being met. There is no doubt that we need higher and more stringent standards, and inspections not only of hospital incinerators but of all incinerators.

My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting referred to the need to help the emerging democracies and developing countries with the implementation of clean technologies. They definitely need our help, and I hope that the United Nations conference to be held in the not-too-distant future

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will reach some positive agreement on such matters. I, too, should be interested to hear the Government's views on the EC's fourth action programme on the environment, backed by the Council of Europe. My hon. Friend the Member for Tooting told us from his own experience that that programme was being heavily criticised by Conservative members of the Council of Europe, and it would be interesting to know whether the Government uphold that criticism or whether they are wholehearted partners in the action programme.

My hon. Friend the Member for Carmarthen (Mr. Williams) spoke widely and with much knowledge about the deterioration of water quality, the dangers of incineration, the difficulties under which Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution operates and the fact that, although we have known for many years about the problems of acid rain, not one power station has yet been fitted with flue-gas desulphurisation equipment while other countries are moving further and further ahead of us.

My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, West (Mr. Morgan) and a number of other hon. Members referred to environmental impact assessments and the way in which the Government seem to be trying to traduce the whole legal process and divert it into an attack on the Commissioner for the Environment, for political purposes connected with the Maastricht summit. The fears about our failure to implement the directive properly are well founded, but we should not lay our criticisms entirely at the Government's feet, because we are talking about a new procedure with which other countries are also having difficulties. We ask that the operation of the directive should be properly reviewed. The Commission is obviously very unhappy about the matter and--as the Minister knows, because he and I both spoke at the conference organised by the Institute of Environmental Assessment--the expertise is now available to improve our environmental assessment procedures. In particular, we need to open those procedures to the public gaze.

The Minister sought to impress us with the Government's commitment to the environment. Unfortunately, however, as we cast around and seek the opinions of those who work in the field, we find a quite different hue of green from the bright green that the Government would wish us to believe they wear. The Government's green credentials are like the autumn leaves-- yellowing at the edges. Let us take an example. The Council for the Protection of Rural England looked at "This Common Inheritance" and at the Government's record and drew up a list of credits and debits. It examined thoroughly a number of matters, including planning for the environment, environmental assessment, agriculture, transport, mineral extraction and coal, energy policy, water resources, protecting the countryside, forestry and institutions, and came up with 28 credits, some with caveats attached, and 48 debits. That sums up the way in which the Government operate. After all, the Conservatives are the party of free enterprise and, as my hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover said, free enterprise is not naturally concerned with protecting and enhancing the environment. Its natural concern is to make profits. Only if the Government regulate the environment in which businesses operate will we provide a framework in which business rises to the challenge.

The Government's green credentials are hesitant, half-hearted and, at the end of the day, unconvincing. The

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Government's brief sets a target of stabilising Britain's carbon dioxide emissions at 1990 levels by the year 2005. However, they include the caveat that they will do that only if other countries play their part. We should not say that. The issue is so important that we should play our part and try to convince other countries to come in as well. To stand on the sidelines because other countries will not play ball demeans the fight to protect and enhance our environment.

My hon. Friend the Member for Bolsover said that the Secretary of State for the Environment was at the CBI conference this week exhorting business and industry to accept the challenge of clean technologies and greenery. The Secretary of State said that a British Institute of Management survey showed that half the member companies did not have an environment policy statement : one third did not have someone responsible for environmental issues and fewer than one quarter carried out environmental audits. No wonder companies are not responding. The Government had an opportunity in the Companies Act 1989 to accept an Opposition amendment to introduce environmental audits, but they turned it down. The Government's failure to give a lead is critical in that area.

Let us consider what has happened in the United States. In 1986, a law was passed, overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency, under which companies had to publish the annual output of 307 hazardous chemicals. Monsanto decided to accept that challenge. It considered the legal requirement and decided that it would achieve a 90 per cent. reduction of its release of harmful chemical emissions into the atmosphere by 1992 and work for a goal of zero. It is on track to achieve that goal, but it has operated within a legal framework and it has been successful.

Early in December B and Q will be launching a green initiative in this country. It has stopped buying peat from sites of special scientific interest. It no longer buys tropical hardwoods where it can establish that they have been harvested in an unsustainable fashion. The company is asking its suppliers to tell it what they do in terms of environmental audit and I hope that B and Q succeeds. However, it could do much better if it were to operate within a legal framework.

Mr. Summerson : Earlier, the hon. Gentleman said that private enterprise was incompatible with environmental friendliness, but he is now giving examples of private enterprise being very environmentally sound.

Mr. Griffiths : The hon. Gentleman either misunderstood or misheard me. I said that private enterprise, left to its own devices, does not by and large place a premium on the protection of the environment. Only if a legal framework is provided will it respond well to the challenge. The challenge must be placed before private enterprise ; exhortation is not enough.

I am glad that GATT has revived its working group on the environment. I hope that, as a result of that, further pressures will build up to force the Government to act. The story of this Government is that they have been reluctant to act. They have often ignored problems until the weight of evidence has been so overwhelming that they have had to act at last.

To see the way in which business can fail in that respect, we have only to look at the huge profits that the Tory party's treasurer, Lord Beaverbrook, made out of the

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tropical rain forests of Guyana. One cannot say for certain, but it appears that there will be a profit of about £10 million a year for five years for no actual investment. It is quite likely that there will be unsustainable harvesting of tropical forests.

The Government are proud that they introduced integrated pollution control. They have made progress, but they are not prepared to accept the logic of their own position and provide real resources to enable it to work effectively. At the conference, the CBI environment committee chairman, Chris Hampson, said that companies still lacked important details about the Government's plans to introduce integrated pollution control covering more than 8,000 processes in the next five years. An environmental protection agency is wanted. The Government have promised one, but it would require a volte face to provide one. A year ago they totally opposed it.

Mr. Trippier : I do not think that the hon. Gentleman really means what he has just said. If he looks a little more carefully at the White Paper that was published last September, he will see that we made it clear that we have not ruled it out and that, in fact, we would look positively at it. Perhaps the hon. Gentleman will withdraw his remark.

Mr. Griffiths : Unfortunately, I cannot withdraw my remark, because the Government had the opportunity to vote for the creation of an environmental protection agency, but they refused. The fact that they have now accepted it shows a complete change of attitude from that of a year ago. Despite an environmental protection agency being promised in "This Common Inheritance", they still voted against it. They voted against our amendment to fulfil a promise that was made in "This Common Inheritance".

Many companies ignore green laws and are failing to register under the Environmental Protection Act 1990 processes which should be registered. Why is that? The director of pollution control has pointed out that more resources are desperately needed to monitor pollution. A National Audit Office report has pointed out that the pollution inspectorate is probably more than 100 inspectors understaffed. In 1990-91, the number of inspections fell from almost 8,000 to just under 4,000. A report published yesterday by the National Audit Office on chemical and oil pollution stated that inspections in the North sea and in the seas off this island are so infrequent that it is virtually impossible to catch the polluters. Against that background of failure, we must say that the Government are simply not doing enough. We know the dangers that global warming presents, but still the Government are hesitant. At one time, they even reduced the amount of money available to the Energy Efficiency Office, although I am pleased to see that in the public spending round there will be a 40 per cent. increase in the coming year. The amount of money that the Government are providing-- £59 million next year--is peanuts. The Dutch spend about 13 times as much as we do on energy efficiency and conservation.

Let us consider the profits. We do not need to talk about the need for carbon taxes. All we need to do is to look at the profits of companies such as British Gas. It

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made £65 profit per customer this year- -nearly £1 billion in profits. If we creamed off the super-profit aspect, which is far above the amounts that were set aside in the Bill before privatisation, and used it in respect of all the power producers, we would have four or five times the amount currently readily available for conservation measures to be introduced.

Our private utilities could follow American examples. The Americans provide low-cost or no-cost energy efficient bulbs and even pay customers $50 if they install an environmentally friendly fridge in their home. They do that to reduce energy consumption and because that, in turn, means that there is less need for new power stations and thus costs generally can be cut.

By reducing energy consumption, we can significantly reduce carbon dioxide emissions. The Government's year-on statement does not refer to any measures against transport polluters. I am, however, glad that the Secretary of State for Transport has suggested that the Government will introduce regulations governing the amount of pollution that cars are allowed to cause. That is all to the good. However, the Government's record is one of hesitancy and halfheartedness and reveals their lack of commitment to the concept of planning or to regulations that would allow industry to get on with its job and to respond. Whenever the election is called next year and Labour comes to power, we will provide that lead and that framework. Many industrialists will breathe a sigh of relief, knowing that they will get a proper lead from a Labour Government. 2.10 pm

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Tony Baldry) : This has been a wide-ranging and interesting debate. We welcome the opportunity of a full day's debate on our environmental stewardship. It has provided us with the opportunity of trumpeting to the world all that we have achieved and of promoting the first-year report on our White Paper "This Common Inheritance". The hon. Member for Dewsbury (Mrs. Taylor) was charitable enough to say that the first-year report and its approach are unprecedented--as they are. The report is thorough, open and accountable and demonstrates that of the 350 commitments that we made in last year's White Paper, 200 have already been fulfilled. Not only does the report list the measures that we have already taken, but it identifies those that we intend to take. It sets targets. We do not need great chunks in the Queen's Speech to demonstrate our commitment to environmental stewardship because it is clear to anyone who cares to look. Not only have we set out what we intend to do, but we have set out the date by which we intend to do it. We have continuing priorities for action and intend that our environmental stewardship should be accountable and open. That is why we have put green issues at the heart of the machinery of government, with ministerial committees that are chaired by my right hon. Friends the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for the Environment.

We are seeking an environmental dialogue with the whole community--with businesses, local authorities and the voluntary sector. There is now a general recognition that everyone has an interest in enhancing the

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environment. As my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment said in his excellent speech to the Confederation of British Industry conference,

"the market is demanding. The market set by our own advanced environmental legislation ; the market set by European Community legislation ; above all, the market set by the consumer--increasingly the green consumer. The single market will be a green market." I have absolutely no doubt that that will be the case and that is why we are determined to have higher environmental standards. I am therefore pleased that the United Kingdom is one of the top four European Community countries in complying with environmental directives.

It is our intention always to promote accountability and access to environmental information. The White Paper and the first-year report are part of that exercise, as is the report of the drinking water inspectorate. I am glad that it has shown that in 99 per cent. of the tests, our water is meeting European Community standards--

Mrs. Ann Taylor : What about prosecutions for drinking water failures?

Mr. Baldry : The hon. Lady is keen to have prosecutions [Interruption.] Part of establishing high environmental standards is ensuring that those who do not meet the standards are prosecuted. She will be interested to know that in its second year--after September 1991--the NRA trebled its original number of successful prosecutions. We wish to see not only high environmental standards but an increase in investment. We wish to see not only investment such as has been made possible by water privatisation--£28 billion has been invested in enhancing water standards. That is some £5,000 for each and every minute between now and the end of the century. We also want to see increasing investment in the staff of HMIP for example. My hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and Countryside announced an increase in its staff today. We also wish to see organisations such as the NRA enhance their standards with water quality objectives.

There may have been a misunderstanding about what the National Audit Office said about HMIP. It said :

"it is not feasible to double a specialist professional organisation at a step. the pool of people with the qualifications and experience to become pollution inspectors is relatively small and thus constrains the achievable pace of recruitment."

Thus HMIP is seeking to proceed by continuous expansion. My hon. Friend's announcement earlier today is the proof of that continuous expansion. Indeed, HMIP intends to continue to recruit more inspectors over the next four years to maintain higher standards. The determination to maintain high standards is reinforced by clear public spending commitments, as was made clear by my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer in the autumn statement earlier this week. He announced investment in the environment, and more investment in public transport and environmentally friendly farming.

There was a misunderstanding on the part of the hon. Members for Dewsbury and for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) about the other environmental services line from the autumn statement. It included several headings which are not green in the accepted sense. I am not sure that the hon. Members appreciated that it

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included such matters as property holdings. So when my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and Countryside next week announces the detailed breakdown of those figures and the figures are published, it will be seen that when one concentrates on what we would all perceive as the green environmental issues, that investment has done well. We are determined that there should be higher standards, more investment and a partnership between the Government and the people to ensure the highest possible environmental standards.

One or two themes have run through the debate. There has been much to-ing and fro-ing about the environmental agency. I make it clear that our aim is to create a powerful, independent agency which will provide consistent and coherent controls on discharges to air, land and water. It will be a fully integrated, multi-media approach to pollution control. If one intends to take that step, it is essential to have full consultation.

It was somewhat disingenuous of the hon. Member for Dewsbury to suggest that legislation for an environmental agency could have been passed during this parliamentary Session. She was challenged by my hon. Friend the Minister to comment on her party's attitude to the waste disposal regulatory functions. He response was that that would be a matter for a regional tier of local government. We do not have a regional tier of local government. A condition of creating an agency would be to legislate to introduce a regional tier of local government. It is disingenuous to say that we could have introduced a Bill to set up an environmental agency during the lifetime of this Parliament.

We want to ensure that there is a full opportunity for consultation on the proposal to set up an environmental protection agency. That consultation will continue until 31 January next year. We want to work with the NRA and local government in paving the way for the agency. Our timing is to reach final decisions early next year and introduce a Bill early in the new Parliament once we have won. Of course, part of our achievement in enhancing standards is the concept of integrated pollution control. Chris Hampson, the chairman of the Confederation of British Industry's environment committee at the CBI conference last week, said :

"when it is fully up and running, Integrated Pollution Control will give Britain the highest standards in Europe."

Anxieties were expressed that some processes and factories had not yet applied for IPC under air quality regulations. Of course, that is a serious matter, but it must be a matter for the judgment of local authorities about individual firms. Local authorities have a wide range of options, including the opportunity to prosecute if companies do not comply. They have the statutory duty and the initiative for action must lie firmly with them and with the firms involved. We heard a fair amount from the hon. Members for Dewsbury and for Carmarthen (Mr. Williams) and others about river quality. It is well to remind the House that river quality is high in the United Kingdom in comparison with the quality in the European Community. In the 1985 survey figures 95 per cent. of United Kingdom rivers were of good or fair quality, compared with an average of 75 per cent. of river length in Europe.

To link leaked or reported changes in water quality in 1990 to privatisation is daft. Everyone knows that it can take years for changes in water industry investment to feed

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through to river quality. What happened in the year before and after privatisation would have had no impact. What is certain is that privatisation has opened the door to an unprecedented scale of investment in improvements by the water industry. The industry is spending £28 billion in the 10 years to the turn of the century to meet higher standards and it plans to spend £3 billion in 1991-92--a 20 per cent. increase on last year, which was a 40 per cent. increase on the previous year.

The performance of sewage treatment works is steadily improving and information provided by the NRA shows that non-compliance with long-term conditions is substantially down. So, we are witnessing a substantial and continuing improvement in the water industry. May I try to make clear, once and for all, the position with regard to a letter sent by Mr. Ripa di Meana. Despite the best efforts of my hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment and Countryside to put everyone straight, the Opposition are determined to misunderstand. Our quarrel is not with the Commission's right to ask questions about the implementation of the directive. There is no argument about that. We are used to complaints being made and for the most part, on proper consideration, they are not found to be worth pursuing. We are among the top four European Community nations when it comes to compliance with Community directives and I am confident that that will be the case with this issue. A genuine disagreement about the interpretation of the directive lies at the heart of the matter, especially in regard to the transitional arrangements to cover the period when the directive is coming into force. That is the legal issue.

Our dispute with the Commission is not concerned with the legal issue, which I am sure can be resolved. Our dispute is simply a straightforward matter of good manners. Having sent what was purportedly a personal letter to the Secretary of State for Transport, the Commissioner leaked it to the press and to various environmental groups before the Secretary of State knew that it was coming. It is as if I wrote a letter to the hon. Member for Dewsbury and, before telling her to expect it, sent a copy to her local newspaper. I think that she would feel that that was simply bad manners. Our complaint is a simple one about bad manners.

There is an accepted convention that communications between the Commission and member states are confidential. The Commissioner breached that convention by issuing a press notice when he sent the letter, and by making public the contents of a private letter to the Secretary of State for Transport. That is what the row is about. The Prime Minister was right to take the action that he did and the Government were right to be aggrieved at the manner in which Mr. Ripa di Meana handled the matter. I am glad to say that the Government have received a satisfactory reply from Mr. Delors.

As to the substance of the technical dispute on transitional arrangements to cover the directive, I have no doubt that it will be possible to come to a satisfactory arrangement and agreement with the Commission in due course.

A number of hon. Members mentioned detailed matters during the debate. My hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North (Mr. Jones), who is an assiduous champion

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of his constituents' interests, mentioned a number of environmental concerns in his area and he made it clear to the House that he had drawn them directly to the attention of our right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Wales. I have no doubt that the Secretary of State will take such action as he considers appropriate.

One of the worries of my hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, North was similar to that of the hon. Member for Tooting (Mr. Cox) and involved hospital incinerators. Tougher air quality controls must be a matter for local authorities to enforce. Under part III of the Environmental Protection Act, local authorities are under a duty to investigate complaints about statutory nuisance, and under part I of the Act hospital incinerator operators were required to apply for authorisation by 30 September or be liable to prosecution. Tougher standards should lead to cleaner emissions. If the hon. Member for Tooting wishes to pursue a specific point he should write to me and I shall be happy to look into it.

The hon. Member for Tooting rightly said that many people were worried about the quality of their local environment. That is why, under the Environmental Protection Act, we have taken action on litter, dogs and noise. The hon. Gentleman's concerns were echoed by my hon. Friends the Members for Walthamstow (Mr. Summerson) and for Ilford, South (Mr. Thorne). Due to those fears we have substantially increased the penalties for actions such as littering--enhancing the quality of the local environment is important.

The issue of eastern Europe was also raised and many environmental concerns cross boundaries. That is why we have made available money for eastern Europe over a three-year period to encourage the transfer of all types of expertise. In addition to the money that central Government are making available, many British companies, including water companies, are seeking to make their expertise available to eastern Europe to help them with the challenge of cleaning up their environment after 40 years of state socialism.

Unfortunately, my hon. Friend the Member for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman) is no longer here. It is a great pity that she did not hear the speech by the hon. Member for Bolsover (Mr. Skinner) and that he did not hear hers. We must get those two Members together because they make interesting speeches.

We shall always promote best science. The United Kingdom hosted the second meeting of the parties to the Montreal protocol. I am glad that in March this year the European Community agreed to phase out supplies of CFCs within the European Community by July 1997--two and a half years earlier than required by the Montreal protocol. That is all good news and demonstrates our commitment to enhancing standards, and tackling global and environmental problems.

The hon. Members for Carmarthen and for Bolsover expressed concern about dioxins--the hon. Member for Carmarthen in a general way, the hon. Member for Bolsover more specifically. The Government have been taking tougher action to control potential sources of dioxins, including higher controls on the contamination of chemicals and waste, chemical incineration and the phasing out of leaded petrol. They are prompting the highest practical standards for incineration through integrated pollution control.

The hon. Member for Bolsover knows--because I made it clear to him on Wednesday--that a host of

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agencies are carrying out expensive studies into the problem that he raised, which calls for a public inquiry. Those organisations include the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, the National Rivers Authority and Her Majesty's inspectorate of pollution. It will be some time before the full results of those investigations are available, but they will be published. Once they are made available, they will assist the farmers in any action that they may wish to pursue.

The BBC "Close Up North" programme yesterday suggested that there had been an increase in the incidence of breast cancer locally. I understand that the advice from the North Derbyshire health authority is

"there is currently no reason to suppose that cancer in Bolsover is a bigger problem than cancer elsewhere".

I am not sure of the basis on which the BBC allegation was made, but medical advisers in the Department of Health will be looking into this further. The BBC said that it was difficult to draw any significant conclusions from the cancer incidence data. Therefore, it would be sensible to consider the nature of that evidence before seeking to extrapolate too much from it. The hon. Member for Carmarthen referred to acid rain. However, it is worth reminding the House that United Kingdom SO2 emissions have fallen by approximately 40 per cent. since 1970.

In a debate such as this I am always conscious that it is never possible within the time available to the Front Bench spokesmen who wind up to do justice to all the points that have been made. I am afraid that that is the position today. However, what we have demonstrated both in the debate and in the first year report is that the Government have made substantial progress. We believe, however, that the protection of the environment is a management task on a huge scale, comparable in long-term importance with the management of the economy and the defence of the realm. The Government's stewardship of the environment--

It being half-past Two o'clock, the motion for the Adjournment of the House lapsed, without Question put.

FINANCE AND SERVICES COMMITTEE

Ordered,

That Standing Order No. 125A (Finance and Services Committee), agreed to on 18th July in the last Session of Parliament, be amended, in paragraph (2), by leaving out the words eight Members' and inserting the words nine Members'.-- [Mr. Boswell.]

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Channel Tunnel Rail Link

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.-- [Mr. Boswell.]

2.30 pm

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