| Pollution Prevention And Control Bill [H.L.] [H.L.] - continued | House of Lords |
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FINANCIAL EFFECTS OF THE BILL21. Costs will arise under the regulations. These arise from the need for inspectors in the regulatory authorities to operate the permit system which will be established. It is not possible at present to estimate the scale of these costs, but the Government intends that they should be recovered from operators under the "polluter pays "principle. Such recovery will take place under charging schemes made under the Regulations or under section 41 of the Environment Act 1995.
EFFECTS OF THE BILL ON PUBLIC SERVICE MANPOWER22. The Directive requires the UK to regulate through a system of permits some 2,600 installations which are not currently regulated in this way. This will require increases in Environment Agency, Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and perhaps local authority staffing. It is not possible at this stage to estimate the scale of these, although currently some 90 inspectors regulate some 2000 installations. The extra manpower needed for the regulation of the additional 2600 installations is expected to be considerably less than a pro rata increase owing to the fact that the installations concerned are not among the most complex, and are expected to be amenable to a less manpower-intensive regulatory regime focused in many cases around general rules. The Bill provides a framework for establishing a single, coherent regime for pollution control to replace integrated Pollution Control and Local Air Pollution Control, whilst implementing the Directive. This will enable some offsetting savings to be made compared to the position if the Directive were to be implemented without primary legislation.
SUMMARY OF THE REGULATORY APPRAISAL23. The Bill itself imposes no regulatory costs. The Government intends to use the powers in the Bill to make regulatory improvements in pollution control compared with the existing regimes under Part 1 of the 1990 Act. The Regulations setting up the new pollution control regime will themselves be subject to further regulatory appraisal in the normal way.
COMMENCEMENT DATE24. The power in the Bill to make regulations will come into force on Royal Assent. The consequential amendments and repeals will be brought into force by commencement order.
EUROPEAN CONVENTION ON HUMAN RIGHTS25. Section 19 of the Human Rights Act 1998 requires the Minister in charge of a Bill in either House of Parliament to make a statement about the compatibility of the provisions of the Bill with the Convention rights (as defined by section 1 of that Act). The statement has to be made before second reading. On 25th November 1998 Lord Whitty, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State, Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, made the following statement:
In my view the provisions of the Pollution Prevention and Control Bill are compatible with the Convention rights.
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| © Parliamentary copyright 1998 | Prepared: 27 november 1998 |