HC Deb 22 December 1971 vol 828 cc1595-608

4.18 p.m.

Mr. Laurance Reed (Bolton, East)

When the House resumes after Christmas we shall be in the year chosen by the United Nations for their conference on the human environment. The conference will be held at Stockholm in June and it has four principal objectives: to alert public opinion to the importance and urgency of environmental problems; to determine what problems can be solved, in whole or in part, through international co-operation; to develop more efficient working methods on national and international levels; and to urge international bodies and organisations to take a greater part in the fight against pollution. In short, the conference aims to make an evaluation of the present state of the world environment and, hopefully, to spawn new international agreements to curb pollution of the atmosphere and the oceans.

The world, of course, will not suddenly become a brighter and whiter place as a result of this conference. As one commentator has said, Stockholm is not a magic new detergent for all environmental messes, but it can provide a framework and a structure in which the Government can assess some of the main problems which they face and decide how to set about solving them. Indeed, it is perhaps not unfair to claim that Stockholm has already succeeded in its first objective of alerting public opinion to the environmental crisis, since it has given much on-going activity in this field a point and urgency which it might otherwise have lacked.

Britain has played a leading part in the preparatory committee for the conference and also in the various inter-Governmental working groups that have been established. In their preparations the Government have sought to benefit from a wide dialogue by encouraging private individuals and voluntary organisations to submit their views and opinions, and at the beginning of this year my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment set up four working parties to assist him in his deliberations.

One of those, led by Lady Dartmouth, was on the human habitat; another, under the leadership of Sir Eric Ashby, was on pollution control; a third was on resources management, chaired by Ralph Verney; and a fourth on the rôle of young people in improving the environment was under Dennis Stevenson. I understand that the reports of those working parties will be ready for submission early in the new year, and that their findings will be published in good time for the conference.

In this country there is a growing awareness that more attention must be given to the qualitative, and less to the quantitative, aspects of technological change, and that when planning for the future we must take into account the social costs of damage to the environment and integrate ecological factors with economic programmes and decisions. The environment is coming to be seen as a datum indissoluble from the organisation and promotion of progress itself.

Anybody who studies pollution of the environment is quickly made aware that the problems exceed the traditional political and economic framework. Pollution has no respect for political frontiers, and anti-pollution measures necessarily have an important economic and commercial significance. Measures taken by one country are liable to penalise certain sectors or industries of that country vis-à-vis competitors who may pay less attention to the adverse effects of pollution or who may have very different ideas about the way in which the costs of combating pollution should be met.

The fear of distorting competition and investment then becomes a brake on progress in fighting pollution, and at the same time disparities between the laws, regulations and administrative provisions relating to standards and procedures can create technical obstacles to trade.

For those reasons a policy for the protection of the environment must necessarily transcend the national framework and the subject is par excellence a field for decision at the international level.

There is, of course, a considerable amount of work already in progress on an international basis—the Economic Commission for Europe. The Food and Agriculture Organisation, the Inter-Governmental Maritime Consultative Organisation, U.N.E.S.C.O., N.A.T.O., the World Health Organisation, the World Meteorological Organisation, O.E.C.D. and the Council of Europe all have some responsibilities in this sphere.

One of the things which Stockholm will have to sort out is how far the existing network of international organisations is adequate, and whether any new organisational arrangements are required. Before that can be decided there must be some agreement about what needs to be done internationally.

I wish to suggest five main spheres for action. First, scientific research. We must be careful to avoid wasting limited technical resources. The research work of the major international organisations should be co-ordinated so as to avoid all unnecessary duplication of effort. There is also a good case for initiating a common programme of research methods and techniques for measuring pollution.

Second, resources management. Where a defined environment or resource is owned or used in common by several nations, it is important that provision should be made for joint management and conservation. I have in mind single river systems, major deltas, tropical rain forests, enclosed seas and so on.

Third, standards setting. If we are to avoid any disruption or distortion of trade, it is essential to align quality standards and maximum permissible limits, whether these are for incorporation in purely national legislation or under international agreements.

Fourth, inspection and enforcement. If rules and standards laid down internationally are to be meaningful, there must be some machinery for ensuring that they are being properly applied, along with machinery for settling disputes that may arise in relation to the interpretation of agreements.

Fifth, data storage and retrieval. It will be impossible to say how rapidly or in what form the environment is either improving or deteriorating unless it is carefully monitored and statistics are collected. Nor can proper standards be set without accurate data.

The consensus has emerged that all of this can be effectively dealt with principally on a regional basis and without the need to create a new super agency for the environment.

I am sure that that is right, and I accept the view, that the work of the individual agencies of the United Nations can be effectively co-ordinated by creating a small policy evaluation and review unit which can become the centre or brain of the environmental network.

The one exception that I would make to this is data storage and retrieval. To my mind there is an unanswerable case for setting up a single global centre for collecting, processing and disseminating data to provide real time information about the state of our environment. I suppose that it will be called the Doomwatch Agency. As I see it, a global observation network should be set up, based on the existing monitoring systems, at the national level, with information inputs from member countries and from international organisations being fed into the centre.

If the system is to be effective as regards coverage and reliability, speed, accuracy and so on, then there will have to be some harmonisation on the methods of measurement and interpretation. If a single surveillance agency finds favour at Stockholm, I hope that the British Government will put in a strong bid to have it located here. Britain is the home of very few international organisations, yet we are at the centre of the world's telecommunication system and I can think of no better home for it.

The economic problems of pollution will also figure prominently at Stockholm, for the obstacles to a clean environment are more economic than technical in nature. The costs of pollution suppression can be astronomical, and the higher we set our standards the more steeply the costs will rise.

But the problem is not whether pollution should be stopped altogether, as is the view of some people. It is really a question of how far it can be or should be reduced. After all, the more money and brains we expend on suppressing pollution the less resources there will be for other desirable expenditure. The question is how much prosperity should be sacrificed for how much environmental purity.

According to the Royal Commission, the benefit should equal the cost, but at Stockholm there will not be any agreement on that because this necessarily involves a "value judgment", and I suspect that the judgment of the developing nations will be very different from the judgment of the industrialised nations.

It is important that we try to reach an agreement at Stockholm about who should pay for the costs, otherwise we may find that we shall disrupt international trade or slow down our attempts to improve our environment for fear of disrupting international trade.

In Britain we take the view that the polluter should pay. This is usually interpreted as meaning that the polluter must pay for the costs of complying with the higher standards set by legislation; of paying for the clean-up costs or the damage done to victims and property, or simply paying the penalty for violating the law. But the plain fact is that many costs resulting from pollution are not always borne by those who cause the pol- lution or even by the purchasers of their products. It is still true today that for the most part the community at large bears this cost. When the polluter does not pay, the external costs are not fully taken into account by industry and expenditure on reducing pollution remains below the level which the social costs would truly warrant.

Most countries like Britain—Britain perhaps led the way in this—have laid down quality standards to safeguard the environment, which are enforced by regulatory authorities, such as our river authorities or the Alkali Inspectorate. These standards tend to be fixed, however, at a level governed by economic criteria and not so much at a level that is environmentally desirable. At the same time, economic factors tend to dictate the pace at which the standards are applied and enforced. We have seen that in relation, for instance, to the Alkali Acts, where we all know that progress has not always been as rapid as we would have wished.

I believe, therefore, that in addition to legislation on minimum standards we should seek at Stockholm some kind of economic incentive, some kind of mechanism, as a result of which it will pay the polluter to cut down on his waste and improve on the legislated-for standards.

There are only two ways in which we could achieve this. We could impose a tax penalty on pollution-generating activities and, equally, give a tax reward for pollution-free processes or products. Alternatively—this would be a revolutionary step—we could stop allowing the environment to be exploited as a free resource for waste disposal purposes, establish property rights in it and charge the polluter for the right to discharge or emit waste there.

By these means I believe that we can provide a stimulus to industry to reduce pollution and cut down waste. All pollution, whether it is up the chimney or down the drain, is waste. If the defilement of our environment is a crime, so too is waste in a world faced with rapid depletion of its natural resources.

4.34 p.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Eldon Griffiths)

I am extremely pleased that my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, East (Mr. Laurance Reed) has raised the important subject of the Stockholm Conference, in which he has taken a deep personal interest. I congratulate him on the considerable research and reading he has done, and even more on the deep and original thought he has put into it and into his speech today.

The United Nations Conference on the Human Environment is a unique and important occasion, because for the first time it brings together virtually all the nations of the world to discuss the environment which we all share. There is no longer any such thing as a purely national environment. Today we are all coming to realise that the oceans, the atmosphere and the ecological systems of the world are interconnected; that they affect all mankind and must therefore be looked on as genuinely international questions. For example, the discharge of pollution by the River Rhine when it enters the North Sea is as much our affair as it is Germany's, for it could harm the breeding grounds of fish around our own coasts. Similarly, we depend on oil to support our economy, but the international traffic in oil is a potential hazard to the shores of all the nations past which our tankers sail.

For these and other reasons, the Government warmly welcome and support the United Nations Conference on the Environment. We are playing a leading and influential part in the work of the Preparatory Committee and of the intergovernmental Working Groups. This is as it should be, because Britain has a great deal to contribute. We started with the handicap of being the first heavily industrialised nation. We have a very large population in a very small island. But despite—or perhaps because of—the stress of these circumstances we have been one of the first nations to take effective steps to manage our environment and control pollution. We have a framework of law and an executive apparatus for protecting and improving the environment which is the envy of many nations which will be represented at Stockholm. We have, for example, an integrated planning system controlling land-use and with it the location of public works, housing and industry. The prevention of pollution is one of the chief objectives of that planning system.

We can also point to remarkable progress. Over the past 10 years the air of our great cities, notably London, has been made as clean as or cleaner than that of any other great industrial city in the world. Despite our great population density we have a large and increasing proportion of our country devoted to green belts and national parks. We also have, and must cherish, wide areas of unspoiled yet productive countryside.

Our rivers, too, are not dirtier but cleaner than they were a century ago—and progressively they are getting cleaner. With the huge new investment which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment announced earlier this year and the reorganisation of the water and sewerage industry which he is proposing next year, we can be confident that our fresh waters will not only meet our rising demands but will increasingly provide recreational amenities, offering a water lung for our people and quiet havens of retreat for wildlife and flowers.

Our first priority, however, in this country as in our presentation at Stockholm, is not only to protect the amenities of those who already have many to enjoy but rather, through derelict land clearance, home improvements and urban renewal, to provide a better environment for those whose surroundings are at present unedifying and indeed squalid. This is the special concern of my right hon. Friend. I am confident that at Stockholm all present will be intensely interested to hear from him about the organisation of the world's first integrated Department of the Environment which, unlike all others, not only has responsibilities across the whole subject of land, water and transport but also has executive powers and the means to carry through its policies.

My right hon. Friend's approach to the Stockholm Conference can be stated simply. We welcome the Conference's objectives as a whole, and we intend to make a positive contribution to its success. However, we are pursuing a selective and pragmatic approach, for our concern, like that of my hon. Friend, is not with talk but with action. That is why we believe very strongly that the conference would do best to concentrate on issues that are truly international, urgent and above all capable of solution at present. No conference, however grand, can posibly cure all the world's problems in one meeting, and if we try to attempt too much the outcome may well be the production of rather more rhetoric than results.

Therefore, problems which fall entirely within the competence and responsibility of individual countries—for example, the disposal of toxic wastes on land—in our view are best left to national Governments to handle, although, of course, we should want to exchange information about experiences with other countries and help one another in visits, technical committees and training. We strongly believe, too, in the value of the regional approach. I take just one example. A final text for a convention to regulate the pollution of the sea by dumping in the North-East Atlantic is nearly finished and will soon be considered by Ministers. We also expect within the E.E.C. to join in the working out of common regional policies for the environment wherever these are appropriate. The regulation of emissions from motor vehicles is perhaps one good example of where we may start.

At the wider international level, we are very conscious now of the six points made by my hon. Friend, five of which, as he may well know, are already on the Stockholm agenda. The Government intend to lay particular stress on three areas where Britain has much to offer and, I believe, much to gain—marine pollution, monitoring and international organisations. All of these, I believe, are genuinely global matters. I believe also that in all of them rapid progress is capable of being made.

The Government have already contributed heavily to preparatory discussions on these subjects and I am glad to tell the House that the active rôle played by our officials has been warmly welcomed by the Secretary-General of the conference, Mr. Maurice Strong. Our rôle, too, has often been influential on important occasions.

Our general approach to the Stockholm Conference can therefore be summarised as proceeding along the following major guide lines. The first is to support the broad aim of the conference so as to focus world attention on environmental problems as a whole. The second is to maintain a pragmatic and selective and above all constructive approach, giving priority to those proposals which are timely, feasible and of genuine international concern.

Thirdly, we shall press for the better ordering of international organisations so that the appropriate agency or body should handle proposals for which it is competent. At the moment, there is a great deal of duplication and overlapping among the international agencies and our broad view is that the creation of still more new and expensive international organisations is undesirable. The important thing is to make better use of existing organisations and to achieve better co-ordination among them.

I take note of what my hon. Friend suggested about the need for a small review body to report from time to time on progress being achieved along the lines that might be agreed at the Stockholm Conference, and I was interested in what he said about an information retrieval centre with real time computers able to provide the necessary information. I can tell him that there has been discussion on a world centre of environmental information but that this has gained little support so far. The feeling is that a "global brain"—if I may put it that way—is not the urgent need. It could, of course, cover a mass of data but not all the data would necessarily be useful and much could be quickly out of date. Not all of the data would necessarily fall within the specialised knowledge of the small central staff that might run the system.

We nevertheless do favour a referral system, as it were a switchboard, putting a person or Government who needs some specialist knowledge in touch with the Government or agency which already has it. As a first step the switchboard or direct system would almost certainly gain endorsement from many of the countries to be represented at Stockholm.

The fourth guideline of our policy will be to use our best offices to provide coherent, sensible and well co-ordinated schemes for international monitoring, especially of background air pollution in relation to human health. In particular we shall support moves towards agreement on the control of marine pollution.

Fifthly, within a rising programme of aid to developing countries we see a need to ensure that all the various facets including its impact on the environment of those countries are properly balanced. To put it over-simply, it is no good providing aid to under-developed countries if in the process we pollute and damage their environment.

I turn to the specific arrangements being made—

Mr. Gilbert Longden (Hertfordshire, South-West)

Are the Government to say nothing at Stockholm about what is popularly known as the population explosion which in my view is the greatest threat to our environment?

Mr. Griffiths

I can assure my hon. Friend that we shall, but I think he will accept that in the context of the selective and pragmatic approach it is better to concentrate on those areas where we believe we have something special to offer, where we believe we can achieve definite progress in a short time. I accept what my hon. Friend says; this is certainly one of the main sources of environmental pollution.

Dealing with the specific arrangements, we have already contributed several major documents to the conference secretariat. The first of these is a report containing detailed information about our experience and achievements in the management of the environment and the controlling of pollution. Our other contributions so far include a paper on monitoring, a paper on marine pollution, a paper on international standards and their appropriateness. I bear in mind what my hon. Friend said about air standard settings. There is also a paper on the United Kingdom approach to the inclusion of environmental considerations in our aid for developing countries. These papers will be printed and distributed to all participating in the conference and will be available in this country too.

In addition my right hon. Friend has been at pains to associate the public generally with the Government's contribution to the conference. To that end he set up the four working parties to consider and report to my Department on public attitudes to the main subjects to be discussed at the conference. Recently, I am sorry to say, these working parties have attracted some ill-informed and rather silly criticism. Their work, which is well advanced, will be of the greatest value to the Government in their preparations.

All the working parties have worked extremely hard, interviewing large numbers of people and making useful visits to all parts of the country. I do not know of any other nation which has set up such thorough means of carrying out the important task of testing what the public thinks about the environmental problems which will concern us at Stockholm. My right hon. Friend expects to receive the reports of the working parties in the next month or so. He has already had an advance copy of the first. Apart from their valuable work in preparing for Stockholm they will be of considerable general interest to the public and will be published.

Turning to the structure of the conference, this is necessarily complex, as is the case with most international conferences. Broadly speaking, it is to be arranged in six functional areas: human settlements and their problems; the management of natural resources; pollution of the environment; social and educational problems; the problems of less developed countries; and organisation. Each area of discussions is being considered in the preparatory meetings with a view to placing it on the agenda, taking account of the possibilities of action.

Broadly, I can see three main possibilities of action. First, those areas where precise international agreements might be reached at the conference; secondly, those areas where, if action cannot be agreed upon at the conference, at least the foundations for such international action can be laid so as to follow on from Stockholm; thirdly, that group of subjects where action at present, however much we talk about it, can go no further than an exchange of views.

My hon. Friend the Member for Hertfordshire, South-West (Mr. Longden), who has attended many international conferences, will know that it is important to place some of the innumerable subjects on the agenda on one side so that there might be concentration on subjects in respect of which action is needed and possible. It will fall to the conference secretariat and to the Secretary-General, Mr. Maurice Strong, to organise this massive documentation, and representatives of Governments, including our own, have been invited to comment on and help improve the draft documents, which we are already doing.

We have already received many enquiries concerning the composition of the British delegation. I am sorry that at this time I cannot be very specific about this matter. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment will lead the delegation. There could be no better demonstration of the Government's commitment to the success of the Stockholm Conference than my right hon. Friend's personal decision to lead our delegation. Clearly he will need strong official and technical support which the Department of the Environment is uniquely fitted to provide.

I understand that, for practical reasons, there will have to be a limitation on the size of national delegations and perhaps even on the length of speeches, but I hope that within those constraints there will be a broadly-based representation from this country and that our contributions to the conference will be constructive, practical and achievable.

This, then, is no more than a progress report in response to the very well informed speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton, East. I am not, unfortunately, in a position to forecast exactly what will happen at Stockholm, but the most active preparations are continuing and suggestions such as those made in the House today will help us to prepare our position papers. These are likely to take firm shape before long. The arrangements for the conference will be consolidated, I trust, at the next meeting of the preparatory committee scheduled for March. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and the Government will continue to exercise a powerful influence on the preparations for Stockholm, and I am confident that, under the leadership of my right hon. Friend, our delegation will do all in its power to ensure the success of the conference and, in so doing, to assist in improving the environment of mankind.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at seven minutes to Five o'clock, till Monday 17th January, pursuant to the Resolution of the House of 15th December.