HC Deb 16 February 1972 vol 831 cc401-3
17. Mr. Pardoe

asked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will make a statement about the source and content of metal pollution in the Bristol Channel.

Mr. Peter Walker

Pollution by metals in the Bristol Channel is attributable to many sources, including natural causes. Monitoring of metals in fish and shellfish is now being carried out by my right hon. Friend the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. Reports on the results will be published in due course, but my right hon. Friend is advised that no evidence of any risk to health has at present been found.

Mr. Pardoe

Is the right hon. Gentleman aware that two teams of researchers, one from Bristol University and the other drawn jointly from Liverpool and the Anglesey Marine Laboratory, have shown that the level of heavy metals, particularly cadmium, in the Bristol Channel is dangerously high: that the content in limpets is 550 parts per million while only two parts per million is the level allowed by United States health authorities? Will the inquiry which has been set up into the Avonmouth project by the Department of Employment cover this content in the Bristol Channel?

Mr. Walker

We have contacted those concerned and asked them to submit any evidence that they may have to the working party which is working there jointly with the local authority. They have undertaken to do this and to report later this week. Constant tests are made by the river authority and I assure the hon. Gentleman that any further information that is made available will be welcome.

Mr. Tom King

Will the Secretary of State arrange for a notice to be placed at each end of the Bristol Channel saying, "This is not a refuse dump"? Is he aware that on the one hand I.C.I. is proposing to dump arsenic waste off I[...]fracombe while at the north end, the British Steel Corporation wants to dump its coke oven effluent? Will he take every opportunity to deny the view which is held by some people that the fast action of the Bristol Channel tide makes this waterway suitable to be treated as an industrial lavatory?

Mr. Walker

Certainly, and I am as anxious, as are all the authorities concerned, to see that improvements are made not only to the Bristol Channel but to all our waterways.

Mr. Crosland

Does the right hon. Gentleman recall that the last time he made a reassuring statement about pollution in relation to the R.T.Z. works at Avonmouth, within 24 hours his right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment had set up a court of inquiry, so urgent had his right hon. Friend discovered the matter to be? May I suggest to the right hon. Gentleman that his statements on the subject of pollution reveal a disturbing air of complacency which does not appear to be shared even by his Ministerial colleagues?

Mr. Walker

The right hon. Gentleman's statements have a remarkable air of inaccuracy about them, because if he had looked at the statement made by my right hon. Friend he would have seen that it had nothing to do with the statement I made. My right hon. Friend's statement was concerned purely with the effects inside the factory, for which the Factory Inspectorate is responsible, whereas my statement was concerned with the effects outside it. I suggest that before the right hon. Gentleman makes statements of that kind, he checks his facts.