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Mr. Gray: Is my hon. Friend aware that, if associates at Salomon Brothers are to be believed, up to 1.2 million houses may be affected by an increase in insurance premiums of about 60 per cent.? Does he agree that the pitiful £51 million promised for flood defences in the statement of the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions, which works out at £13 million a year, is a tiny drop in the ocean and wildly inadequate to cover the sort of damage that those households face?
Mr. Rowe: I agree. When the final bills come in, they will be colossal. Not only must there be far greater expenditure on flood protection once we have analysed what has happened--a job for the Environment Agency if ever there was one--but a way must be found to ensure that those unfortunate people are not stripped of the value of their asset. Although I am wholly in favour of making it easier for potential purchasers to discover whether a risk of flooding is associated with the house they intend to buy, we must also give consideration to those whose assets have been destroyed by the recent phenomenon of flooding.
Mr. Gummer: I hope that my hon. Friend does not focus solely on inland areas that are affected by flooding.
There are 74 miles of coast line in my constituency; severe cutbacks in MAFF support for sea defence, which have featured strongly in the past three years, have resulted in many of my constituents being threatened by the sea in a way that they were not previously threatened. I hope that my hon. Friend will join me in urging the Government to restore the former rates of support and to increase them in local authority areas that are so threatened.
Mr. Rowe: I am grateful for that intervention. The Government face a major and difficult issue. In truth, there is something wasteful about putting one's finger in a dyke that is bound, ultimately, to give way and I understand the argument that, in respect of some parts of the coast, the only thing to do is give up. However, I have for many years been a proponent of changes being made to the law on blight--I founded the all-party blight group, which has had some effect on Government policy--and I believe that the problem to which my right hon. Friend refers is a new form of blight.
Mr. Morley: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for giving way, because I understand that the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) will have to leave the debate and I should not like him to miss what I have to say. There has been no Government reduction in coastal defence spending. There may well be regional differences, because regional flood defence committees propose different programmes in different years, but, under the Labour Government, the overall national spend has increased year on year. The only reduction in the national spend in the past decade occurred between 1994 and 1995.
Mr. Rowe: My specialist knowledge of the subject is nil, so perhaps I should leave this cliffhanger of a debate to others.
Mr. Gummer: It matters little if a place elsewhere in the country gets more money if there is an increasing problem of rising tides in one's own area and the Government reduce the proportion of the money that they provide. The point is that the local authority has to raise more money than it once had to because of the decrease in the sums coming from central Government. It is no good quoting the total, without mentioning the fact that my constituents have to find more money because the Government have handed out their money to a place somewhere in the north.
Mr. Rowe: I take my right hon. Friend's point, but cannot elaborate on it, save to say that, given how great a thorn in the Government's flesh he is, I can well understand their desire to erode his constituency altogether.
On river protection, I have personal experience of what I consider to be well-intentioned feebleness on the part of the Environment Agency. I declare an interest. I fish in the Kentish Stour, which the last significant chalk stream in Kent. It passes under the pavilion in which Jane Austen wrote one of her novels, and has been almost unchanged for centuries. It is extraordinarily beautiful to look at and is extraordinarily important as a habitat for wildlife.
The river has been systematically undermined by abstraction carried out by the water companies. I held a meeting in this place with a number of the agencies concerned, planning authorities and so on. The Environment Agency had already confirmed that the Stour was under enormous threat. We must remember that the River Darenth in Kent had completely dried up and that, although it has been artificially restored in response to huge public pressure, it remains vulnerable.
When the Environment Agency stated that the Stour was at huge risk, just as the Darenth had been, the representative of one of the water companies present said, "If I had to choose between a man washing his car in Ashford and the protection of a river, I know which I would choose." He was quite clear that, in his view, the man washing his car had preference over some weird group of people--self-interested fishermen and others--who wanted to keep the river. The representatives of the Environment Agency looked despairing, and when I asked them afterwards about the prospects, they said that very little could be done.
The river is under enormous threat and will eventually disappear, because Kent has little water supply. It seems ironic that for four consecutive years, we were so dry that the water companies produced a model garden of plants that did not require any water, such as lavender. Now, no doubt because of the same circumstances of global warming, we have amazing floods.
The Environment Agency's power and confidence in its ability to influence the relevant decisions are too weak. We must protect the rivers.
Mr. Bennett: Clearly, one of the problems is the archaic system of abstraction licences. The draft legislation that is to come before the House on the water industry contains provisions to sort out that system.
Mr. Rowe: I wish I were confident that sorting out the system would mean that less water was abstracted from the rivers. I have my doubts. In recent years the state of the water industry has often been used as an excuse for not building any houses at all, so the influence of the Environment Agency on plans to build houses has been greatly reduced.
I am not entirely sure that I have got this right, but I understand that the Environment Agency is now back as a consultee, its predecessor having been deprived of that position for a while. However, it is a nominal consultee, and its opinions do not carry great weight. If we in Kent must accept the number of houses that the Government tell us we need, it is not clear where the necessary water will come from. The Environment Agency should be much more proactive in that debate.
The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish--I believe it was he--said that it was a great shame that there was no way of storing the rainwater that ran off. When I did my national service in the Navy, I remember being very impressed by the way in which Gibraltar manages to secure much of its water, using concrete cliffs to catch the rain as it fell and store it in huge underground reservoirs.
Some of the water that runs off at great speed should be channelled into reservoirs, from which it could be taken and purified. That would be a great deal better than simply letting it flood people's houses and disappear to no purpose, especially in counties such as Kent, where water is in such short supply.
I end on a subject on which I have no specialist knowledge. I have a prejudice which leads me to think that compared to activity on the surface of the sun, human efforts to influence climate are pretty puny. We may well be hubristic in our idea that the best way to prevent global warming is through pollution control measures. I remember when Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines blew up, it was said to have put more muck into the atmosphere in 24 hours than the whole of human pollution for the previous 10 years.
Natural forces are colossal, and we may be exaggerating the effects of global warming, but if we are not over-estimating the effects of pollution on global warming, what on earth are we doing about the aviation industry? What relationship does the Environment Agency have with that industry? I do not know whether it is because Prime Ministers and presidents prefer flying to any other mode of transport, but for every airport in this country, a massive growth in air travel is envisaged over the next 25 years.
Nobody can tell me that that does not mean a lot more aeroplanes jettisoning fuel in order to land somewhere other than originally intended. Huge quantities of emissions will be released into the atmosphere at a level that I would have thought was even more dangerous than the level to which our normal pollution extends. If we are serious about human efforts to control global pollution, should we not think carefully about how fast and how large an increase in air travel we want? What is the role of the Environment Agency in that?
11.47 am
Mr. Bill O'Brien (Normanton): I am pleased to be able to take part in the debate on the sixth report published by the Select Committee on the Environment, Transport and Regional Affairs and the response from the Environment Agency. I am also pleased to be a signatory to the report as a member of the Select Committee. I consider that the work of the Environment Agency is important to the House and to the nation. As I mentioned earlier, I was a member of the Standing Committee that dealt with the Bill under which the Environment Agency was established.
I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent (Mr. Rowe) who at one time I thought was the meat in the sandwich between my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary and the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer) when they argued about the money spent on coastal defences.
I believe what my hon. Friend said. The right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal revealed today that he accepts that, when he was Secretary of State for the Environment, he made a great number of mistakes in the Bill establishing the Environment Agency. It is pleasing to note that the right hon. Gentleman acknowledges his shortcomings but, unfortunately, many people have suffered as a result of those mistakes.
The hon. Member for Faversham and Mid-Kent mention some of those with regard to property planning, especially in flood plain areas. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brighton, Kemptown (Dr. Turner) pointed out, however, the matter does not rest there. Other areas create problems for properties because of excess water. Normanton is not designated as a flood plain, but our open drains are surcharged because of the number of properties
that are being built in the area adjacent to the surface drains and because proper attention is not given to the need to consider planning applications comprehensively.As my hon. Friend the Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) pointed out, the Select Committee took evidence last Wednesday from the Environment Agency and from the Minister for Housing and Planning on proposals for future housing development, especially on flood plains. We were told that the Environment Agency had warned planning authorities that some planning applications did not accord with good practice. It advised some authorities that the design of properties meant that they would flood and that the people who owned them would suffer from such planning.
The Committee was surprised to learn that the Environment Agency has no powers on planning advice and applications. We were encouraged, however, when the Minister for Housing and Planning said that a new planning regulation guide was to be introduced, whereby the Environment Agency would have more influence on planning applications for the development of properties on flood plains by supplying advice and information on their value. That is encouraging, as it shows that the Government are listening and considering how to prevent the problems that we have witnessed in recent months.
The issue was highlighted because planning policy guidance note 25, which was issued recently, sought to address the flooding that occurred the previous year, especially in Yorkshire. That showed that the Government were working to guide planning authorities on planning matters regarding flooding. A great deal of work is being initiated by the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions to ensure that the flooding that we have witnessed during the past few months does not recur. I look forward to further discussions with the Environment Agency and the Minister about progress on trying to prevent such flooding.
I witnessed flooding in my area. Water was not in the properties, but very nearby. The flooding occurred over the general area because its housing estates were developed with little thought to drainage. That created problems for some of my constituents, so I look forward to further debates on planning.
A great deal has been said about landfill sites, which are a serious matter. My constituency contains a large landfill area called Welbeck, which has been with us for the past 20 years. The site is a problem. The landfill process is reclaiming an area from which clay was removed for brickworks, which contains spoil from colliery waste and which suffers general dereliction. A decision has been made to reclaim the land by landfill. I have no objection to that, as I believe that we should reclaim areas that can be improved for the environment and the general good of the community.
The management of landfill sites creates problems for the local people. Two miles of the River Calder run through the Welbeck site--a fact that shows the size of the landfill area. It is important to safeguard the river and ensure that it is not polluted, but we must also ensure that no pollution goes into local communities.
As Member of Parliament for Normanton, I must try to ensure that my constituents, and also those in neighbouring areas, are safeguarded in respect of the planning and organisation of the landfill site. There are tremendous concerns about the issue. Although the
Environment Agency has been established and took into consideration the views of three organisations that were acting as environment agencies before the Environment Act 1995 took effect, questions remain about where some responsibilities lie, as local authorities still have responsibilities for environmental matters.The responsibilities set out in the Animal By-Products Order 1999 are among those that still belong to local authorities, but the Environment Agency is the major organisation for the care and safeguarding of the environment. There are differences on where responsibility starts and where it ends. I should like to give my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Secretary an example of which I believe he should take note and which will help him in trying to resolve the problem. In April and May of last year, 68 tonnes of untreated meat were disposed of in the Welbeck site. That should not have been allowed, and it caused a great deal of anxiety in the area.
I approached the Environment Agency to ask what action would be taken against the people who had breached the regulations, as they were responsible for polluting the area. I agree with the theory that the polluter should pay and I asked who would take action. The Environment Agency said that it was for the local authority to do so under the Animal By-Products Order. I took up the matter with the local authority, which said that it was for the Environment Agency to sort out. I then had to ask the relevant Minister to judge who should be responsible for taking action on the breach of law. The problem has not yet been resolved, although it arose 18 months ago.
The local authority, which is responsible for the environment in which the community lives, sent a warning letter to the landfill operator, the Waste Recycling Group, advising that such disposal should not happen again, but that is not on. People who cause such pollution should not be dismissed with merely a slap on the wrist. So much that took place demonstrated, beyond any shadow of doubt, that there was a weakness in the management of the landfill site. There should be a more rigorous investigation. An operator of a landfill site incorrectly disposed of 17 lorry loads of meat and received a warning. However, aged constituents who are five or seven days late in paying their council tax are summonsed. Fairness must be applied, and the polluter should pay.
In February 1999, reference was made to the health hazards that could develop around a landfill site such as the Welbeck site. In a report in the local newspaper, the Wakefield Express, on 26 February 1999, the public were advised
- Health checks on people living nearby will now be fully assessed, after medical evidence suggested the public--in particular pregnant women--could be affected by so-called "special" waste.
I took up the matter with the Environment Agency. I wanted to know who was responsible for organising the health checks. I received a letter from the regional director. I have a good relationship with the agency in the Yorkshire and Humber region. It is always willing to help and there is full co-operation. However, where does its responsibility start and end? That is one of the problems that we are trying to resolve.
I was advised on 31 March 1999 by the agency that health checks were not its responsibility. I was told that it was a matter for the local authority. The health effects on people living near to landfill sites are to be assessed. I refer to the small area health statistics unit study, which has been commissioned by the Government. However, no one has accepted responsibility for the advice and information that was given by the Wakefield Express on 26 February. That is not good enough. If people are informed about the possibility of health hazards arising from landfill sites, that process should be followed through.
A few weeks ago, a person living near the landfill site was granted £1,000 in compensation by the local ombudsman because he had not been given information about the site when he moved into the area. That information should have been provided by the local authority. We must do a great deal more to safeguard the interests of those who live and work near to landfill sites.
Recently, I received a report from a constituent, who advised me that one of the employees on the site is responsible for monitoring dust, noise, water and toxic waste. Another employee is responsible for deciding what is special waste and what waste should go into the cells on the site. Surely that is a responsibility of the Environment Agency. The agency should be monitoring pollution, be it from dust, toxic waste, water or noise. It should not be for an employee to register whether there is a breach of pollution regulations. The decision on what waste should be deposited in the site and the recording of it should not be the responsibility of the employee who drives the dumper truck and puts the waste into the cell. Responsibility for activities in landfill sites should be more precisely clarified.
As I have said, I wrote to the Minister for the Environment. I received a reply from Baroness Hayman, Minister of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. She advised me that the matter is covered by the Animal By-Products Order 1999, which
- places the obligation to comply with the Order on any person who has animal by-products in his possession or under his control. We take the view that this means that the originator of the waste, the collector and the person who disposes of it (eg the landfill operator) would each be responsible for ensuring that it was disposed of in a legitimate manner.
The Environment Agency should pay more attention to the supervision of landfill sites, especially the larger ones. As I said in an intervention in the speech of the right hon. Member for Suffolk, Coastal, I suggested when he set up the Environment Agency that it would have insufficient resources and insufficient manpower. He outlined what he considered would have happened if the Conservative Government had continued to have responsibility for landfill operators and the agency.
The right hon. Gentleman said that the idea was to privatise many of the Environment Agency's functions, and that the number of agency employees has increased from 9,000 when he had responsibility for the agency to 11,150. I believe that the staff number has increased because--as we pointed out in Standing Committee--the agency was understaffed initially.
God forbid that some of the agency's functions should be privatised. We know what happened when the previous Government brought in private operators to run the railways, the state earnings-related pension scheme, housing and health. If some of the Environment Agency's functions had been privatised, we would be in a terrible mess.
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