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Mr. David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire): My constituency, too, contains numerous sizeable quarries. One company expressed to me its concerns about applications being wholly determined by an officer of the Environment Agency with no rights of appeal, no transparency and probably no compensation in the event of a refusal. Does the hon. Gentleman believe that the Bill can be amended to deal with those problems?
Mr. Atkinson: I certainly hope so and I urge the Minister to clarify the position and sort out the problem, which is important for the economies of many constituencies.
Clause 35 poses another intriguing issue. It is an obscure little clause, which deals with the rights to extract water that are given to armed forces visiting this country. It does not explain why the Government have taken Crown immunity away from British forces, which is implied in the clause. Nothing else in the Bill clarifies it, but it could have an effect on my constituency—for example, in respect of military training in the Otterburn or other training areas when the armed forces, particularly the RAF, need to extract water. They will now have to go through a licensing system in order to continue to do so.
I said that I would be brief, but the Bill is long and complicated, raising many difficult questions that will need to be debated at later stages. Yet there are no later stages, save for two weeks in Committee. I understand that the Bill will not have its Committee stage until next Tuesday—a week tomorrow—providing just four days and eight sittings for us to consider the whole Bill before the conference recess, after which a bit more time will be provided. That is a wholly inadequate time for debating the Bill. It is not particularly controversial, but it touches on all sorts of key issues, not least fluoridation. It is wrong to allot the Bill such a paltry time in Committee. Doing so adds to the Government's reputation for forcing through ill-considered and badly debated legislation.
7.6 pm
Mr. Alan Williams (Swansea, West): First, I welcome the announcement of a free vote on fluoridation. Before that announcement, there were frankly ominous signs that Parliament was about to be bounced. The fluoridation proposal was not in the draft Bill put before the pre-legislative scrutiny Committee where expert witnesses could have examined it. A long time afterwards, the proposal was not in the Bill presented to the House of Lords for Second Reading. It was not in the Bill in Committee or even on Report in the other
place. Rather, it went into the Bill through a special procedure of recommittal to Committee, coupled with a Third Reading. It was then bounced on the House of Lords, which had little or no time to consider it. One is bound to ask what on earth changed so dramatically that it became essential to dragoon the proposal before Parliament just five sitting days before we rose for the summer recess.The Minister says that it is a public health issue. Yes, but that is to demean it, because it is not only a public health issue. More importantly, it is a matter of the fundamental individual rights of the citizen, and the House exists to protect those rights. It does not matter if the rights of only one citizen are being abused by the Executive; we are here to defend those rights. In this particular case, however, millions—not dozens or thousands—of people will be denied their right to refuse compulsory medication. They are going to be force-fed fluoride. Entire local populations will be compelled to take it irrespective of whether they want it or need it.
Mr. Simon Thomas: Does the right hon. Gentleman share my concern that in the Welsh context it is not just local populations that are affected? It is a decision for the National Assembly for Wales and a whole country will be either fluoridated or not fluoridated on the basis perhaps of a narrow vote, a 2 per cent. turnout in a referendum or whatever. Does he agree that that flies in the face of any democratic control over the health and medication of a population?
Mr. Williams: The hon. Gentleman wanted the Assembly and now he has it.
Mr. Thomas: No, the right hon. Gentleman wanted an Assembly, I wanted a Parliament.
Mr. Williams: Would it have been any different if it were a Parliament? The same issue would have arisen.
What is so appalling is not only that it is being done by edict—the edict of Parliament is bad enough—but in a way that no individual can possibly avoid. It is being done through the water system. One cannot live or survive without water, or are Marie Antoinettes on either side of the House going to stand up to say, "Let them drink Perrier"? When something is in the water system, everyone has to take it whether they want to or not.
The justifications put forward for that are spurious, and I have heard some of them today. The British Medical Association, for example, likened fluoride to iron and calcium and said that we see fit to make up for deficiencies in iron and calcium, so fluoride should be treated in the same way. However, need for iron and calcium is decided by the individual doctor for the individual patient; iron and calcium are not pushed through the water system so that everyone has to take them whether they want to or not.
We have also been given the spurious example of chlorine. The Minister in the other House cited that example, but then he destroyed his case by saying that although chlorine was toxic, it was put in to disinfect the water. That is the important point. Chlorine is there to
make the water drinkable and to remove a risk, not to add a possible risk that need never be there. That is the fact that my colleagues have to face.
Dr. Stoate : Will my right hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Williams: I am sorry, but if I did I would be denying other people their opportunity to take part in the debate.
We are devolving to a quango the duty to carry out consultation—what the Minister in the House of Lords described as a consultation of the whole population within an area. When he was asked how that could be done, he could not tell us—but what he did say for certain was:
- "The word 'referendum' never passed my lips".—[Official Report, House of Lords, 9 July 2003; Vol. 408, c. 651.]
In this consultation, is there any guarantee of a level playing field in the presentation of a case? Perhaps the Minister will answer that question in his concluding speech. The Minister in the House of Lords admitted that public funds intended for the health service could be used by the health authority to conduct its campaign in favour of fluoridation. Money could be taken from a proper legitimate medical use and used improperly. Will similar moneys be available for those who oppose the idea? I very much doubt it.
On spurious grounds of interpretation of evidence—from the York committee, for example—the idea has been put forward that fluoridation is necessary and is no danger. That claim so infuriated Professor Trevor Sheldon, who was the chair of the advisory group for the review that he wrote:
- "It is particularly worrying then that statements which mislead the public about the review's findings have been made in press releases and in briefings by the British Dental Association, British Medical Association, the National Alliance for Equity in Dental Health and the British Fluoridation Society."
- "there is a dearth of reliable evidence with which to inform policy. Until high quality studies are undertaken providing more definitive evidence, there will continue to be legitimate scientific controversy over the likely effects and costs of water fluoridation."
7.13 pm
Mr. Peter Ainsworth (East Surrey): I wholeheartedly agree with the sentiments expressed on the vexed subject of fluoridation by the right hon. Member for Swansea, West (Mr. Williams) and by my hon. Friend the Member for Aylesbury (Mr. Lidington). It seems to me that in the 21st century there has to be a more civilised way of dealing with the acknowledged problem of tooth decay in children than in force-feeding the many for the sake of the few. Some of the spin put on the issue both by the Department of Health and the British Dental Association has been deplorable. It is nonsense to claim that the York review conclusively proves that fluoridation is a good thing.
I would also like to add a word about something that I do not think that the Minister has looked into—but perhaps we shall hear about that later. We know that
there is a huge debate about the impact of fluoridation on human health, but more work needs to be done on the effect on aquatic ecology of putting a registered poison into our water systems. No work has been done on that, and we are entitled to an impact assessment before any decisions are taken. To go ahead without that assessment would amount to negligence.
Dr. Starkey: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that toxicity is a factor not only of the substance itself but of the level? To suggest that a substance is a poison and so would be poisonous at any level is a gross distortion of reality.
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