Memorandum submitted by Alan S Monckton
I have been informed that you are the MPs selected
to consider a request from Defra to approve their proposal to
extend NVZs, subsequent to a public consultation. Please vote
against this for the following reasons:
1. Defra are seeking to act under Nitrate
Directive 1991, when the correct Directive is Water Framework
Directive 2000.
2. Water Framework Directive 2000 includes
Nitrate Directive 1991, and has changed or cancelled many of its
relevant terms. Any consultation should have been under what is
now the law.
3. Defra seek to extend their bureaucratic
empire, without relating the relevant facts to any of the new
land. Defra have no idea which land should or should not qualify
under Water Framework Directive 2000.
4. Defra know that any public consultation
under WFD 2000 would highlight the incompetent way in which they
have administered NVZ areas. By pretending that ND 1991 should
be used, the relevant terms of WFD 2000 do not form part of the
sham consultation.
5. One example, of several, of Defra's incompetence,
which would be highlighted in a consultation on WFD 2000 is that
Defra have failed to remove huge areas from NVZs which have no
technical reason to be in them. These areas are of light, often
sandy land, where nitrate and rainfall seep by gravity into the
subsoil, and do not run into rivers; after which any nitrate is
harmless both to health and to the Environment.
6. Defra hid from the consultation one key
matter—but are slyly using it in discussions behind the
scenes. They pretend that unless we act soon to increase NVZ areas
under ND 1991 the EU will sue us for damages (as they did in the
1990's). This is not true, because the EU could not/would not
sue us under a Directive which does not now exist, nor under those
parts of it which remain unamended in WFD 2000. Any lawcase under
WFD 2000 would be unlikely to proceed, because it gives us the
power to change NVZ areas on a factual and scientific basis, not
on a bureaucratic box-ticking basis.
7. The 1990s case was lost by us. Why? Because
Defra forgot (or "omitted") to enter a defence. Sheer
incompetence, and what is the betting that if a new case were
started, they would be equally useless?
8. So please vote against extending Defra's
bureaucratic empire, solely to provide more "jobs for the
boys" without any benefit to anyone else; and tell them that
if they want to extend their red tape they should start by public
consultation under the correct law which is WFD 2000.
9. If you are interested in reading the
background facts on why Nitrate was wrongly treated like a poison,
read the Royal Agricultural Society of England Journal, Volume
163, 2002, pp 45-51. Defra have known these technical facts since
2000, they put them on their website then.
SUMMARY
Defra should not be allowed to use the wrong
EU Directive (ND 1991) to increase red tape areas and costs, without
public consultation on the correct EU Directive, which would permit
consideration of matters outside the ambit of any parts of ND
1991 which remain unchanged by Water Framework Directive 2000.
January 2008
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