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Dr. Turner: I do not disagree. Certainly, if one builds in an obvious flood plain, that would seem a sensible precaution for the future. However, I refer not to houses built on flood plains but to those built nowhere near a flood plain. The advice and expertise of the Environment Agency should be made available more strongly to planning authorities. Indeed, more than its advice may be needed--we may need to examine the interaction of the Environment Agency with planning authorities, and, in certain circumstances, give the agency a virtual veto over planning applications in environmentally suspect locations, unless the planning authority, and the applications, satisfy the agency that environmental objections can be met. That would ensure that developments in such sensitive areas proceeded knowingly. If the relevant objections cannot be overcome, planning permission should not be given to construct dwellings or other buildings.
Agricultural practice is critical, primarily because most of the risk in this context can be removed by changing that practice, ideally by going back to pasture--
preferably, proper downland pasture and not intensively fertilised pasture--or, as a second best, to spring cereal cultivation, because stubble fields do not cause anything like as much run-off as freshly cultivated winter cereals do. Policy changes could largely prevent such occurrences. That idea needs to be examined in a wider context, because development pressures mean that increasing numbers of such sites will be considered for development.That issue shows that the Environment Agency needs to be involved, and needs greater powers to control agricultural practices. That would secure sustainable agricultural practice, which would preserve the quality of our environment. Currently, the Environment Agency knows full well what is going on, but it cannot do much about it. In this context, it could--I hope that it will--ensure that knowledge is spread. All the information is detailed in a very good publication from 1995, the "Journal of Geography", but no one knew about it. Professor Boardman of Oxford university studied and analysed those events, and all his findings are available. However, no one had read his paper--certainly not the farmer who increased his area of ploughing so that it went down a slope to people's back gardens. When half his field went into those back gardens, the residents were not happy bunnies.
Another example from my constituency involves a site called Portobello, which is right on the foreshore and on the edge of an area of outstanding natural beauty. Southern Water applied to build a massive sewerage plant in that exposed coastal location, but although, I am glad to say, permission has been refused by the county council, the matter is the subject of a planning inquiry. I do not expect the Minister to make any comment on the detailed planning issue because we are awaiting the announcement of the result of the public inquiry, so it is clearly sub judice.
The Environment Agency's role and its relation with the planning process was open to criticism. That is not the fault of the agency but a question of its terms of reference, which were not really right. In the context of a sewerage works, the role of the agency is to grant discharge consents. It is solely concerned with the quality of the water discharged into the sea. For the purpose of satisfying the requirements for a discharge consent, the primary data concern nutrients. Fine--that is important--but the microbial content of the outfall is of much greater importance to the public. However, that was not really an issue. The quality of the water being pumped into the sea is not an issue at all in the planning process, which is a very curious oversight.
We have a planning system and a discharge system that do not take into account the very things that the public are worried about, and a role for the Environment Agency that does not give it any input concerning the wider environmental implications of applications such as the one that I have described. Most of my constituents and I await with bated breath and fingers crossed---we have also crossed everything else that can be crossed--the outcome of this application, which has exposed an unfortunate shortcoming in the relationship between the planning system and the Environment Agency. That shortcoming should be addressed.
I want to discuss a further issue affecting my constituents and those of the hon. Member for Lewes (Mr. Baker), who is looking anxious. I am sure that he
knows exactly what I am about to discuss--waste treatment. Government planning policy guidance PPG10 implies that because of the lack of landfill sites, there is considerable reliance on incineration to get rid of the residuum of the waste stream that is not recycled. The favoured option that is being considered and encouraged around the country is to obtain energy from waste. That, too, is of great public concern.A major criticism of guidance from the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions and of PPG10 is that, although the listed planning considerations for waste disposal facilities mention various factors--they range from a. to o.--not one of them refers to public health. The fact that public health implications are not a planning consideration is a major oversight. In that regard, the role of the Environment Agency is, once again, critical, because it is responsible for pollution monitoring.
Incinerators, as everyone knows, have a reputation for being a grave health risk because of dioxin emissions. Unless organic materials are burned at a very high temperature, dioxin emissions will result. I am not much of a thermodynamicist--it was always my weakest subject--but I understand enough to know that it is difficult to maintain a combustion temperature of 1,200 deg C. If one takes further heat from that system to generate electricity, the task becomes that much more difficult, and if one uses such a poor quality fuel as domestic rubbish, one has a big challenge to convince people that one can continue the process safely and consistently without producing dioxins, which are carcinogens. People are genuinely worried, and the history of the first-generation rubbish incinerators illustrates why. Those incinerators produced massive quantities of dioxins, and, I am happy to say, have all been closed down by the Environment Agency.
We are told that the new generation of incinerators will not do that. Those installations rely on modern combustion technology to produce energy from waste. However, hon. Members will probably have seen press reports about papers that warn of expectations that deaths will be caused by the pollution produced by such installations. The Minister told me that the data overstated the consequences 65-fold. I have tried to obtain the original material to discover the exact truth, but so far, despite the best efforts of the Minister's office, the Library, and even the Environment Agency, I have not been able to get hold of the actual data on which the prognostications were made.
Meanwhile, the hon. Member for Lewes has many constituents who are desperately anxious about the consequences of having an installation in their area. Thousands of my constituents whose homes border his constituency are equally worried about that prospect, and there is the remote possibility that the installation might be in Brighton and Hove, in which case 250,000 people will be extremely anxious about pollution. It is vital that the truth, as it is best known at the moment, is made clear to the public.
Mr. Loughton: I have been listening with great interest and agree with much of what the hon. Gentleman says, but it is not just 250,000 people who might be affected, but an additional 70,000 people in my constituency, which neighbours Brighton and Hove. In view of everything that he has says, it puzzles me why he has not been more vociferous in his criticism of the Labour council in
Brighton and Hove, which has the worst recycling record of any council in Sussex, and has been attempting to impose an incinerator on the borders of my constituency without consulting my constituents. Why has he not been more critical of his Government, whose policies will lead to at least 100 major incinerators being installed throughout the country?
Dr. Turner: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his comments. Let me make one thing clear. Brighton and Hove council has most emphatically not been trying to impose an incinerator on the borders of his constituency. It has made clear its intention not to permit an installation at Shoreham.
Mr. Loughton indicated dissent.
Dr. Turner: I am sorry, but that is the truth. The council is also aware of my views on the topic, and knows that I am not impressed by its recycling targets or its recycling performance. I have made no secret of that. I hear the hon. Gentleman's criticism and note that Adur council in his constituency led the country in recycling--I hasten to add that it was not, of course, under Conservative control at the time, so he should not take too much credit for that. None the less, Adur council had a good recycling record. There is no question about it, and I wish that Brighton and Hove council's record was as good. My colleagues in the council are aware of my thoughts on that matter.
As for the involvement of the Environment Agency with incinerators and their emissions, I want it to make a very clear public statement that sets out in the public domain all the information that is available, so that people--not just in my constituency or in that of the hon. Member for Lewes, but all over the country--can make a considered judgment about the safety of those installations for the future.
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