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Mr. Simon Thomas (Ceredigion): I certainly want to speak about fluoridation, but first I shall deal with the central principles of the Bill, which tries to address the country's needs but falls short of doing so.
Surprising as it may seem, my county of Ceredigion has a water shortage. Wet Wales is short of water. Because we store only 2 per cent. of rainfall, we do not have a great ability to deal with periods of drought or climate change. As a result, the south of the county has a severe water shortage of about 1.7 million litres a day, which is equivalent to the usage of 2,800 households. By 2005, with the expected growth in the county which reflects that in south-east England—we have a similarly contentious housing plan, albeit on a smaller scale—we could have a shortage of 3.5 million litres a day. That, as I said, is in what is generally thought of as a wet country and a wet county.
I therefore welcome the Bill's underlying principles, which are that the abstraction and use of water need to be reconsidered in light of sustainable development, that we need to reform the licensing system and that we need to try to establish a level playing field for different users, rather than favouring one type of user over another. However, I feel that the Bill will not achieve those aims.
Wales has also experienced severe effects on special conservation areas similar to those mentioned by the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Ms Atherton), who referred to the effects on sites of special scientific interest. Extraction from an important river, the Afon Teifi, is affecting a habitat that Europe recognises as a candidate for special conservation area status. Conservation, water preservation and water use cannot be taken for granted. It is essential that the Bill gets things right for the long term, so that there can be investment to build a proper water industry and ensure affordability.
On a related issue, we must ask whether the Bill takes the right approach to the whole industry. It will penalise some water users more than others. Let us look at the bottled water industry in Wales, which is tremendously important. The House sells Brecon Carreg water, and Ty Nant, in my constituency, is the source of one of the most famous mineral waters in Wales. It comes in the famous blue bottle, and the company employs 35 staff. Like many other industries in Wales, the water industry cannot be moved abroad—companies depend on the water from the area. Although many of them are no longer locally owned, they provide local employment.
I shall use Ty Nant as an example of how companies may be affected by the Bill. The company recently increased its turnover by 20 per cent., thanks to the introduction of a new bottled water in a fully recyclable plastic bottle. It expects 50 per cent. growth next year, but that is the result of a one-off investment equivalent to 70 per cent. of its annual turnover. The company posed me a question that I want to ask the Minister: if a water bottling company has to invest 70 per cent. of its annual turnover over a 10 to 15-year pay-back period, how can a six or 12-year licensing framework give it, and the banks and the backers, the assurance that it needs to continue with that investment and employment?
We have to bear it in mind that the annual production of the whole of the UK bottled water industry is equivalent to the amount lost from mains leakage in
nine hours. If we are trying to establish a level playing field, we must be careful not to break the back of some companies when the faults lie elsewhere. Treating bottled water companies the same as those that perform mains extraction would be like imposing the climate change levy on a scooter and lifting it from a power station.Another issue that I want to tackle is private sewerage. I hope that there will be an opportunity to consider the matter in the Standing Committee, of which I hope to be lucky enough to be a member. The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) made the important point that the Bill represents a missed opportunity to deal with private sewerage. I recognise that, as the Minister said in an intervention, there is some redress in the Bill for new private sewerage. However, in many estates in rural areas that were built in the 1970s, the 1980s and even the 1990s, sewerage has been installed to the minimum building standards. That is not good enough for adoption by water companies—they will not touch it. Only a couple of weeks ago, I visited Gelliwen in Llechryd in my constituency—a large estate that was built in the 1970s and has pitch pipes, which are not now suitable for adoption.
The question that the Bill must answer is whether it will be feasible or possible in future to build private housing estates with sewerage pipes that are not suitable for adoption. It would be ridiculous to pass an Act that allowed that situation to continue, and we would miss an opportunity to ensure that every sewerage pipe put in the ground after the Act was passed was of an adoptable standard and would be adopted straight away. If we do not take that opportunity, we will store up huge ecological, environmental and social problems for the future. Clauses 97 and 98 are not adequate, so I hope that we will have an opportunity to investigate the matter further in Committee.
Finally I turn to the contentious issue of fluoridation. I think that the measure is in the Bill because of the Prime Minister's words at the 1999 Labour party conference, when he said that everyone will have access to an NHS dentist. The Government's utter failure to ensure that that happens has allowed compulsory fluoridation to raise its ugly head again. I am opposed full stop to compulsory medication. I am opposed to putting folic acid in flour and to putting iodine in salt. If one goes to France, one can buy salt without iodine, and the French do not seem to be much more ill than we are; in fact, they live longer.
I am particularly opposed to compulsory medication in respect of which we cannot control the dosage. We cannot control how much water people drink from the tap or the way in which they use that water. We cannot control the dosage where naturally fluoridated water then has fluoride added. This is an excuse for a dental health policy, and this Bill is the wrong vehicle for it. Fluoridation is a cop-out and a tacit acknowledgement that our NHS dental provision is failing those who need it most.
The fluorides used are silicofluorides, which are not recognised by the Medicines Control Agency, which refused to classify them as a medicine product. We cannot buy them over the counter, but we are prepared
to put them in our water. That is a crazy and unacceptable situation, and I very much hope that, on a free vote, the House will turn it down.7.37 pm
Mr. David Crausby (Bolton, North-East): I am grateful for the opportunity to contribute to this debate, especially on the question of water fluoridation. The most significant question is who should decide what our water supply contains, because therein lie extremely important issues about the addition of fluoride or indeed anything else that science might consider to be in the best interests of our health. For me, this is one of the most significant questions concerning freedom of choice.
At this point I am not concerned with whether fluoride is good for the health of the nation. It is not for me to prove that it is unsafe; it is for those who advocate its addition to demonstrate its safety absolutely beyond doubt. They have not done so, and in those circumstances the public are reluctant to put themselves in the hands of scientists and those who refer to themselves as medical professionals. The public are right, because to do so would be foolish in the extreme.
Richard Burden (Birmingham, Northfield): Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Crausby: I shall not give way because there is not enough time.
The public should resist those who assume that they know what is good for us. Telling people, "This is in the public interest" is the starting point for every tin-pot dictator. Whether fluoride is good or bad for the health of our teeth is irrelevant. What is pertinent is that we should all be able to choose what we swallow. It is too easy to utilise the supply of what we drink to manage the population.
In Britain we take our water for granted—we just turn on the tap and it rushes out. Elsewhere in the world, water is life and death.
The public should therefore decide what may be artificially added to this vital resource, and every one of them should have their say.
I acknowledge that there are scientific arguments both for and against the benefits of fluoride. What I do not accept is that those in favour of fluoridation have a monopoly of scientific wisdom—nor do I accept that as soon as anyone mentions the health of poor children's teeth, we must all jump into line and support whatever the so-called experts tell us.
I know about poor children's teeth. I was a poor child, yet I still have a mouthful of my own teeth. That is not because I was forced to consume fluoride but because, although both of my parents worked extremely hard, we were still sufficiently poor not to be able to binge on sweets, chocolates and soft drinks at every opportunity.
I went to school after the second world war. The fact that sweets were still rationed may also have helped. However, I do not hear a cry from any hon. Member to the effect that we should bring back ration coupons for confectionery in the interests of children's teeth. I am irritated when I hear sanctimonious talk from members of the dental profession about the dental health of the
poor. It makes me even more suspicious about fluoride. Dentists are not exactly known for their generosity. Too many of them are falling over themselves to get out of national health service dentistry in pursuit of wealthy private patients for them to be taken too seriously.I believe that the people should decide. I mean that they should actually decide. They should not be consulted, listened to and then completely ignored because those who have the power to make a decision think they know better. The British people must be able to choose what their children drink. The prime responsibility for children's health lies with parents, and that includes poor parents—or to use a more politically correct description, the socially deprived. To treat the poor differently is patronising.
For a long time, the public have been kept on the edge of this debate. They have not had an opportunity to take a real part in it. As long as the decision whether to fluoridate is kept out of the public decision-making arena, the debate will rightly continue to be condemned as one conducted by powerful lobbies such as dentists, the British Medical Association, health authorities, water authorities, social workers, councillors and local government officers—everyone except those who write to me to say that they do not want fluoride in their water.
The only democratic way to come close to achieving a fair representation of public approval or disapproval on this issue must be by way of a referendum, and that itself is incredibly imperfect. However, if it is right that we need a referendum to decide what currency we have and on what money we spend, it must be equally right that the question of what we drink should be decided in a similar way.
To its credit, Bolton borough council made arrangements for just such a referendum in 1968. It was held on the question of adding fluoride to water supplies after the council had made a decision. When the results were announced, it was found that 27 per cent. had voted for fluoridation and 73 per cent. had voted against. Eighty-two per cent. of the electorate voted. There were 402 spoiled ballot papers. More than 100, 000 people took part in that referendum. Since I was elected in 1997, my mailbag has increased every time the issue has been raised. I have received hundreds of letters about fluoridation from my constituents over the years and only two letters in favour of it.
One of my constituents, a dentist, recently wrote to me making the point that children hardly ever drink tap water these days, and that there are other means such as the administration of a controlled amount of fluoride in tablet form as part of their diet, or added to appropriately labelled milk or other soft drinks, that would be much more effective. I believe that he is right. Compulsory medication—that is what this is—is bound to be controversial and emotive in any democratic society. It is—
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