| Previous Section | Index | Home Page |
3 Apr 2003 : Column 1131—continued
Bob Spink: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for allowing me to intervene again. Does he agree that the Government could give tremendous help to all his constituents and old people around the country if they withdrew their pernicious advance corporation tax burden on pensions, which is costing pensions £5 billion a year every year? That is a major factor in the problem that he describes.
Mr. Amess: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.
My final point relates to the death of one of my relatives. I do not remember whether the Minister had his present job when I raised the matter before. Members of Parliament continually—although, we hope, not too often—receive complaints from constituents when a relative or a loved one dies. Their reaction may be that perhaps it was not the fault of the doctors or the hospital, as the care was wonderful. They have to go through the grieving process, and we have to give them reassurance and go through the Government's requirements for dealing with complaints. I am not making any complaints about the way in which such matters are dealt with in Southend.
The issue that I wish to raise concerns an aunt, Miss Kitty Martin. Although she has been dead for what must be almost three years, I am still trying to get some justice. I speak as a Member of Parliament who was involved in her health care from start to finish, via the hospital in Redbridge. The treatment was completely inadequate and the situation was disgraceful. She was in a mixed ward and was given electric shock treatment and prescribed drugs without permission. When I saw at a conference one of the consultants involved, he said "Just wait until tomorrow, because the final test is going to be done and we'll hopefully know what is wrong." I found out later that the tests had already been done and that he had not even been briefed. The situation was a complete shambles.
I want to share with the Parliamentary Secretary—I have to say that airing the issue publicly has not got me anywhere so far—the fact that I am now dealing with people who are new to their jobs, as others have left, so it continually seems that I am starting again. I am always sent back to the starting point, which is that I must have a round robin discussion with people who were involved in the care. Those people have now left the national health service or moved on, but at the end of the day, once we have had the discussion, I shall still refer the matter to the ombudsman. That is the issue now. At the moment—the case has gone on for almost three years—bits of paper are merely being pushed backwards and forwards. I have no complaint about the way in which Southend deals with problems, but I have a very big complaint about the way in which Redbridge health authority is dealing with this problem, and I would be very grateful if the Parliamentary Secretary would try to assist me in dealing with it.
4.21 pm
Mr. Colin Breed (South-East Cornwall): I do not want to detain the House for too long, but I wish to raise a very important constituency issue which has been of concern for some time and which has certainly been given a timely twist in the past day or so.
Some years ago, when Devonport dockyard secured the contract for the refitting of the Trident submarines, there was great joy and celebration about the fact that such a valuable contract was coming to Plymouth and about the significant economic benefit that it would provide. Of course, some people were very concerned about having nuclear submarines in the Plymouth dockyard, which is very close to the city. Inevitably, over a period, the dockyard had to undergo considerable improvement. A new dock was created and many things had to be put in place to ensure that issues would be settled when the first Trident submarine arrived.
One of the relatively minor issues—it seemed minor in the initial stages, but grew in importance over time—was the discharge of radioactive waste, especially in association with the submarine's cooling systems. Although there are vast amounts of technical information, I shall speak in layman's terms for the benefit of the House. The issue relates to the water coolant around the nuclear power plant, which becomes radioactive over a period because of its proximity to that power plant. In older type submarines, the tritium—the radioactive substance—is relatively dilute in the water-cooling systems. The new Trident systems have a sealed unit, so the water coolant remains close to the power plant for much longer and therefore becomes much more radioactive.
Devonport Management Ltd. quite properly sought for the licence arrangements to be altered to ensure that the more highly radioactive discharges could be made in the same way as in the refitting of other submarines. That meant that there was an increase of about 700 per cent. in the radioactivity of such liquid discharges, which clearly concerned a number of people not only in my constituency but in other hon. Members' constituencies close to the River Tamar and throughout the country. Some people became anxious about significantly increasing radioactive discharges directly into the river.
I have raised the issue on several occasions in an Adjournment debate and through questions. I have held a lengthy correspondence with the Environment Agency. It is disappointing that the first Trident submarine has been in dock for more than a year and that the matter has not been finalised, given that the problem is a likely consequence of refitting the submarine in Plymouth and that that was probably known some years ago.
A few months ago, I received lengthy and complex reports examining the feasibility of creating a pipeline to discharge the treated radioactive effluent further out into the sea. The research was conducted under the auspices of the best practicable environmental option study. A further study—a radiological assessment of the discharges—has also been conducted. The reports are detailed and identify 11 options for dealing with liquid radioactive discharge.
The options include: discharge into the river, using the existing pipeline; discharge from an extended pipeline; routing liquid effluent via a sewage works
outfall; disposal of liquid effluent by barge in national waters—I particularly favoured that option—and on-site and off-site cementation. No one could suggest that the feasibility study did not examine all the ins and outs of the process. However, it is interesting to note that although DML, the contractors, were extremely keen to maintain the existing system, the radiological assessment of the discharges states that, to stay where we are and bearing in mind that the figures are for comparative purposes, the discharge from the current location of the estimated annual dose of the critical group member is 0.59—I shall not go into detail about what that means—compared with discharge into national waters of 0.00096. In anybody's language, that means that people would be exposed to much less radioactivity if we chose the option of discharge by barge into national waters.When we examined the matter further, it became clear that there were anomalies in DML's consideration of the option. I therefore wrote to the Environment Agency to suggest that it re-examined the matter because some of the DML's reasons were contradictory. It kindly wrote back and said that it agreed with me. In its rejection of the option, DML stated:
- "Disposal of liquid effluent by barge in national waters . . . is against DEFRA policy"
It became apparent this week that the European Union has decided that the Government will be threatened with legal action by the European Commission for breaching EU rules on the disposal of nuclear waste. In fact, the Commission says that the UK failed to comply with "major requirements" under EU law, when it authorised nuclear waste disposals last year from Devonport dockyard nuclear plant. The EU health assessment and radiation protection safeguards were ignored, according to the Commission statement.
The current Euratom treaty obliges all European Union Governments to notify any nuclear disposal plans, so that the Commission can assess the potential health impact on other EU countries. It is only right and fair that it should be given that opportunity before any permissions are given. The Commission then has six months to give its views on these transboundary effects. The treaty also includes a justification principle, under which the benefits of a specific nuclear waste plan must be shown to outweigh any of the detrimental effects. Again, that is easily understood.
The Commission was informed in January 2002 that the UK Environment Agency was about to authorise nuclear waste disposal from Devonport dockyard, following the refitting and refuelling of the nuclear submarines there. The statement that was made the day before yesterday said that that move was made without taking account of the Commission's job of assessing the plan, and without applying the justification principle, which
- "constitutes a major principle of the radiation protection system".
The current Trident submarine is in dock, undergoing its refit. I do not know whether any discharge of tritium-affected water has yet taken place, or whether the liquid is still being kept on the submarine. Before any discharge takes place, however, the Environment Agency should surely be fully conversant with all the regulations that need to be complied with before any licence is granted. This subject has caused considerable concern for many people. Some scientists believe that tritium is nowhere near as dangerous as many people pretend it to be, while others provide equally expert opinion stating that tritium is a dangerous radioactive material that should be handled very carefully. I do not have a scientific background, and being bombarded by arguments from both sides is sometimes unhelpful. It is also unhelpful for members of the public who are trying to grapple with the issue.
Many of us believe that the precautionary principle should surround this whole question, and that, as a minimum, we should look into the proper regulation of any discharges and that the Environment Agency should take into account not only domestic DEFRA policy and current UK law but all European Union regulations. This issue has become critical. These matters should have been settled years ago, before the first submarine even came in. We are at a very late stage now. The Commission is clearly unhappy, as are many of my constituents. I think that even the Environment Agency is now beginning to feel that its position is not as solid as it has suggested in the past. It is time for the Minister to advise his colleagues that this issue has to be grasped. It is not going to go away, and a proper policy needs to be developed to deal with it, so that the public know that there is real protection for them.
It is clear to me that, on a precautionary basis, we should not discharge any radioactive liquid into the River Tamar. At the very minimum, we should be taking it well beyond our coastal waters, although keeping it in our national waters. But surely the best thing to do would be to retain it. We are not talking about huge amounts— not millions of gallons but a few thousand gallons of material that could easily be stored until we had a clear understanding of what we were going to do with it. There is a certain confusion, so if we allow discharges, perhaps under a licence that is not as solid as I believe it should be, we will do a great deal of unnecessary harm and cause alarm for my constituents and many others who live on and around the River Tamar.
| Next Section
| Index | Home Page |