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Written Ministerial Statements

Thursday 25 March 2004

ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS

Chemical, Biological, Radiological and Nuclear Decontamination

The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): The strategic national guidance for the decontamination of the open environment exposed to chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear substances or material has today been published on the DEFRA website www.defra.gov.uk and the UK resilience website www.ukresilience.info. The guidance may be downloaded from those sites and I am also placing a copy in the Library of the House.

This guidance is designed to help local authorities, and others with responsibilities for protection of the public, to develop practical strategies for cleaning up the open environment in the event of the release of chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) substances or materials. It also provides an agreed set of basic recovery principles and a shared understanding of the key issues that may need to be addressed. The guidance was recently finalised and is not a response to any new or recent threat of an incident. It is sensible contingency planning and does not mean there is a further threat from CBRN terrorism. Up till now, guidance to local authorities was published in October 2001 and a revised version in August last year. Strategic national guidance on the decontamination of people was published in February 2003.

The guidance is part of a suite of CBRN documents developed under the CBRN resilience programme and led by the Home Office. It also refers to the Government's active consideration of establishment of a new service to be ready to provide advice and assistance in decontamination and clean-up after a CBRN incident. Further details will be given as soon as practicable.

This guidance will be updated periodically and updates will be available on the DEFRA and UK resilience websites. We welcome feedback on the guidance, which can be sent to [e-mail].

Fisheries

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): The Prime Minister's Strategy Unit report "Net Benefits: A Sustainable and Profitable Future for UK Fishing" is published today.

The report concludes that the UK fishing industry can be profitable and sustainable in the long term, provided that it modernises to meet global competition.

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The report offers an extremely valuable and detached analysis of the situation in British fishing, which we believe offers the Government, the industry and everyone else with an interest the catalyst for moving forward. The report's broad conclusions are:

The Government should clearly define its economic, social, environmental and safety goals for the fishing industry and fishing communities.

The aim should be to foster and support a competitive, profitable and sustainable UK fleet.

Compliance with the rules by the UK fishing industry and other member states should be improved.

UK fisheries management should be further modernised and be more decentralised and flexible.

The fishing industry must be more fully incorporated into the broader marine management process, with a balanced set of rights and responsibilities.

We should actively encourage and support progressive regionalisation of EU management under the CFP.

Government policies should recognise and support vulnerable fishing dependent communities.

Fisheries management should play a full and equal role in wider systems of managing the marine environment.

These are underpinned by a large number of more specific recommendations. They all demand a more developed partnership approach with the industry if implementation is to be successful.

The Government welcome publication of the report, supports all the report's broad conclusions and will now explore and discuss the report in depth. It is important that this is a fully inclusive process. Our aim is for the fisheries departments in the UK to work closely in partnership with each other, and in collaboration with the industry and other stakeholders, to work up practicable and deliverable solutions, building on the proposals and recommendations in the report. Defra have already set up a team to take this process forward, which will be consulting actively with stakeholders over the coming months. A strategy, and a timetable for delivering it, will be agreed by the end of 2004.

Landfill

The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): The landfill directive represents an important step change in the way we dispose of waste. It will encourage waste minimisation and increased levels of recycling and recovery.

The council decision on waste acceptance criteria (WAC), agreed in Council in December 2002, sets out the standards that waste must meet to be accepted at one of the three classes of landfill—hazardous, non-hazardous or inert—prescribed by the landfill directive. It introduces criteria and sets limit values for a number of contaminants, so harmonising another aspect of landfill regulation across Europe. A consultation on how the WAC was to be implemented began on 24 September and closed on 17 December.

Following consultation we have decided that the implementation date for the WAC will be 16 July 2005 with the "interim year" between July 2004–July 2005 being managed using a site specific approach based on loading rates of new wastes, the types of new waste and the types of waste already in the landfill. This site-specific approach will continue post-2005. The option of

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opening separate cells in hazardous sites for waste deposited after July 2005, which has been subject to the full WAC, will not be pursued.

The limit values for cadmium and mercury will remain those contained in the Council decision. However, this position will be reviewed two years after implementation following discussions between DEFRA and the Environment Agency to determine whether compliance with the groundwater directive requires adoption of limit values lower than those required by the landfill directive. Furthermore, the Government have decided to extend the ban on disposing gypsum-based wastes with biodegradable wastes to include any high sulphate wastes.

The risk assessment option will be adopted but given the difficulties for the agency in its regulation, the potential for greater environmental risk and the resultant risk of having to store hazardous waste pending agency checks, Government will restrict the option to only individual waste streams destined for specific mono-fill sites. While there will be no initial time limit to this approach, Government reserve the right to re-visit the issue within two years of implementation.

The consultation outcome is available in full on

http://www.defra.gov.uk/corporate/consult/landfill-regs/index.htm

The Landfill (England and Wales) (Amendment) Regulations to implement these decisions will be laid before Parliament in April. In addition, we expect the landfill directive interpretive guidance to be available to operators also in April.

The Government recognise that implementation of the landfill directive will have a significant impact on the disposal of hazardous waste. They continue to work with the Environment Agency, waste producers and waste managers to ensure that the transition period is as smooth as possible and that the environment and human health are fully protected.

Albatrosses and Petrels

The Minister for the Environment (Mr. Elliot Morley): The agreement on the conservation of albatrosses and petrels (ACAP) is the key international treaty, concluded under the convention on migratory species, which deals with the conservation of albatrosses and petrels in the southern hemisphere. The UK played a leading role in drawing up the agreement and was amongst the first to sign it, in June 2001. The agreement entered into force on 1 February as a result of ratification by the fifth party, South Africa, in November 2003.

In May 2003 I laid an explanatory memorandum before both Houses of Parliament relating to the ratification of ACAP (Command Paper no 5826) in respect of the UK and the British Antarctic territory.

Some of the legal issues raised by the treaty have required further consideration and analysis and the Government did not in fact proceed to ratification last year. In the meantime I am pleased to say that more UK Overseas territories in the range of the species covered by the Agreement have indicated their wish to be included in the UK's ratification and have ensured that their 1egislation can meet the agreement's requirements.

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The Government recognises the urgent need to ratify this agreement as quickly as possible. We have long indicated our strong commitment to the conservation of these species, which are at serious risk from a range of human influences, and wish to play our full part in international efforts.

I am therefore tabling a revised explanatory memorandum today indicating that we propose to ratify the Agreement, without reservations and without further delay, for the UK and the British Antarctic territory, the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands. I intend that the instrument of ratification shall be deposited with the Australian Government on 2 April.

As the Government takes these urgent steps, we are conscious that Parliament will have less time than convention normally allows to consider the revised memorandum. However, we believe this to be a special case on the grounds that the agreement itself has been available to both Houses since May 2003. In fact a number of hon. Members have urged the Government recently to take urgent steps to ratify the agreement in the light of the serious conservation issues it addresses. In these circumstances the Government considers that a shortening of the normal scrutiny period is reasonable.

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