HC Deb 30 April 1990 vol 171 cc826-30

'(1) The Secretary of State shall establish, within 12 months of the coming into operation of this Act, a Product Audit Agency.

(2) The Agency's duty will be to review any product referred to it to see if the product is produced in the most environmentally friendly way, whether alternative products could be substituted which are more environmentally friendly and to publish reports on such reviews.

(3) Any government Minister or local authority may refer products to the agency.'.—[Mr. Andrew F. Bennett.]

Brought up, and read the First time.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

I beg to move, That the clause be read a Second time.

Madam Deputy Speaker

With this we may take new clause 2—Import Controls— 'It shall be an offence to import into the United Kingdom any product produced anywhere else in the world, if that product is produced in conditions which would be in contradiction of any provision of this Act were that production to have taken place in the United Kingdom.'.

Mr. Bennett

I shall not detain the House for long, but we need to get some information from the Government on the progress that they are making in relation to one or two subjects that came up in Committee. Tabling the idea of a product audit agency gives us the opportunity to probe the Government on what point they have reached on green labelling, whereas new clause 2, dealing with import controls, was tabled to enable us to ascertain whether the Government propose to consider skeleton labels to warn people. We should then have labels to tell people that a product was genuinely environmentally friendly and a system to protect people from certain products or warn them that they are produced in other countries by methods that would not be allowed in Britain because of the dangers that they would cause.

Mr. Pike

Is my hon. Friend aware that last Thursday the Chairman of the Select Committee on the Environment drew attention to a propellant whose label indicated that the container was environmentally friendly but failed to mention the fact that the substance that it was designed to propel was not environmentally friendly? Such cases must be a matter of concern.

Mr. Bennett

I accept that point. It is worrying that people are making claims that products containing CFCs or alternatives to them are environmentally friendly when they are not. If consumers have a choice of product, they are often willing to choose one that is environmentally friendly. Clearly there is a great deal of misleading information.

In Committee the Minister said that the Government were seriously considering green labels to make it clear which product is environmentally friendly and which is not. I hope that the Government can tell us today how far they have progressed with green labelling and will not tell us again that we must await for the Tory party conference and the White Paper, which looks increasingly more like the Tory party manifesto than something important for the country that is to be unveiled.

To give some illustrations of the problems that people face, if one goes to the supermarket looking for detergents or soap powders one finds a whole range that claim to be environmentally friendly and have "green" somewhere in their packaging and often in their title. However, as far as I can make out, it is necessary to look carefully at each one, what they claim to do and what is in them. One has to make a sophisticated judgment about which is environmentally friendly and which is not.

From the amount of space that toilet rolls made from recycled paper take up on supermarket shelves, it seems that companies manufacturing them have had considerable success in taking part of the market share. However, I understand that most toilet rolls made from recycled paper are made from high grade recycled paper. That is not particularly useful to the environment. It would have a much better environmental impact if they were made from the poorest grade of recycled paper.

I am curious about another point to which no one will give me an answer. Many people who sell kitchen furniture push the advantages of having a pulveriser in the kitchen sink. I can see the attraction of getting rid of some of the kitchen waste down the sink rather than via the dustbin. However, I am not sure whether that is environmentally friendly or not. It might simply increase the problems of the sewage authorities and reduce those of waste disposal authorities.

There are many other problems. In Committee we made great play of the problem of plastic sacks which increasingly litter the countryside. I hope that the Government will soon suggest ways in which we can eradicate the problem, perhaps by making plastic sacks returnable. Certainly we should look for an environmentally friendly solution.

The last point that I wish to raise is that of bottled water. Ten years ago one had a choice of tap water or perhaps soda water on the bar. It is amazing how the amount of bottled water sold over the past 10 years has increased. Clearly people have their own view about taste, but I should have thought that the Government could provide guidance about which bottles were environmentally friendly. Is it glass bottles, plastic bottles or plastic ones with metal tops? It is disturbing to see bottles bobbing about on beaches and on river banks.

It is time that we began to check out the environmental claims made for all sorts of products. If the Government intend to introduce green labels on products, they should tell us how soon and how they will organise it.

As the Bill sets out, it is important that we should protect the environment of people in this country and protect the health of workers in factories. However, it is not satisfactory simply to drive an industry out of this country to some Third world country or other part of the world. The product could simply be made there and reimported here. That would be completely unsatisfactory. If, rightly, we have strict regulations on products made in this country, we should also insist that products from abroad conform to those same high standards. It would be wrong if my constituents were protected from pollution only to find that the product was made to the detriment of people in the Philippines or Nigeria.

I hope that the Government will tell us their thinking on the two issues that I have raised in this brief debate.

Mr. Adley

The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) and I shared a number of debates i n Committee. He referred a moment ago to supermarkets' trading methods in green products. As I was unable to catch your eye, Madam Deputy Speaker, a few moments ago, may I in passing give a strong welcome to Government amendment No. 314, and to the introduction of penalties for errant supermarket trolleys that disappear to railway stations? That is an example of the changes that have crept up on society without anyone being consulted. Huge supermarket lorries appearing in small towns and the increase in shoplifting—it would be out of order to discuss that now—are similar changes.

9.30 pm

The Government are to be congratulated on amendment No. 314, which grasps an important nettle and establishes a welcome principle to try to control some of the giants who so reorganise our lives.

The new clause moved by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish is an attempt to establish on the statute book a body to enable us to keep up with changes to contemporary life. The hon. Gentleman mentioned plastic sacks; he will recall that, even before he tabled an amendment in Committee about those huge plastic fertiliser sacks that have appeared in the countryside, I had done so. I should not be able to look my wife in the eye when I go home tonight if I had not at least made the point, in agreement with the hon. Gentleman, that those sacks are environmentally unacceptable. They are a classic example of how an industry—the jute industry in Dundee in this case—can be decimated purely at the behest of the plastics industry. Even if my hon. Friend the Minister cannot accept the new clause, he should recognise that the House, on behalf of the people, expects to be able to keep up with changes taking place before our very eyes. I hope that he will be able to say something about the Government's thinking on those evolutionary changes.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory

New clause 1 would create a new public agency whose job would be to assess a wide variety of products and to try to grade them according to their environmental friendliness. I ask the House to reject the measure, not because I disagree with the need to encourage environmentally cleaner products but because we are taking this forward by other means.

The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) mentioned our environmental or eco-labelling scheme. On 9 January we announced proposals for developing a scheme of positive labelling which, when it is up and running, will provide reliable information to consumers and encourage environmentally cleaner products. It will also assist trade, because we hope that the environmental labels will be recognised and accepted throughout the European Community.

We want the scheme to be as voluntary and flexible as possible and we want it to work with the grain of market forces whenever possible. We also want it to assess products from cradle to grave, which means that it will take account of their environmental impact right through from raw material state, to manufacturing, through distribution and use and right up to disposal. The scheme will also cover a wide variety of products, including, I hope, packaging; perhaps there should not be separate environmental labels for packaging, but I hope that in assessing the environmental friendliness of a product the committee administering the scheme will take into account the quantity and type of packaging.

My hon. Friend the Member for Christchurch (Mr. Adley) introduced the very different issue of what to do with plastic sacks, especially those in use on farms. He will know from the debates that we had in Committee that the plastics recycling industry is very much in its infancy, but we are doing what we can to increase the low percentage of plastic that is recovered and recycled. We are always looking for a cycle or loop. It exists in glass, in the normal doorstep delivery of milk: the same person who delivers the milk takes away the empties. That practice could be followed with plastic sacks, and the delivery of bags full of fertiliser could be extended to encompass the removal and reuse of empty sacks. I certainly undertake to consider further my hon. Friend's suggestions.

The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish mentioned bottled water.

Mr. Devlin

My hon. Friend spoke about plastic sacks. He may not be aware that I have introduced a Bill for the recycling of plastics at the behest of the plastics industry, which is substantially based in my constituency. The industry wants to encourage the recycling of plastics throughout Britain and would look favourably on a deposit or collection scheme, especially for agricultural plastics and plastics used in the packaging industry. There are only five main types of polymer, all of which can be reused time and again. It is important for the industry and for the public to recycle as much of that plastic as possible.

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory

I congratulate my hon. Friend. No doubt where his constituency proceeds the rest of us will follow. Certainly we want to make a concerted effort to increase the percentage of plastic that is recovered for recycling.

I was speaking about bottled water. The campaign organised last year against water in our taps was perhaps aimed at sabotaging water privatisation. It was unsuccessful in that, but it has a most unfortunate environmental side effect in that it drove some people to drinking a great deal more bottled water. It is by no means clear that the consumption of bottled water is more environmentally benign. The water has to be collected at source, bottled and transported. It then has to be sold and drunk and somebody has to take the bottles away. There is also the danger of some bottled waters containing small quantities of benzene. As some of the bottled waters are more expensive than petrol, there may be some irony there. The hon. Member for Denton and Reddish makes the serious point that judgments on those matters are difficult to make. I hope that when we have the eco-labelling scheme in place, it will assist consumers to make the right choice.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

When will the first of the labels be in place?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory

We hope that the first labels will be awarded by the end of next year. Unfortunately, we can go only at the same pace as the European Commission, which is working out its own proposals on the matter. However, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for the Environment has made it clear that if the Commission is too dilatory, we shall implement our own environmental labelling scheme anyway.

New clause 2 was also spoken to by the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish. It is a reminder that the battle to protect the environment is international and that international action and co-operation is essential. Other countries, especially developing ones, have great difficulty in coming up to the environmental standards that increasingly we insist upon for Britain. The difficulties faced by those countries are often a direct consequence of poverty and lack of technical expertise. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will recognise that by effectively banning certain imports from those countries, his clause would make the problem of poverty much worse.

In effect, the hon. Gentleman is advocating a fairly spectacular system of import controls. Quite apart from anything else, I am sure that they would be in contravention of GATT. It would be a nightmare to run such a system because it is difficult enough to assess environmentally benign or harmful products in this country. To try to extend that and make the same judgments about every country would be impossible and it would be wrong even to try.

Although I sympathise with many of the sentiments behind the hon. Gentleman's two new clauses, I invite the House to reject them.

Mr. Andrew F. Bennett

In view of the Minister's reply and the need to get a move on, I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion.

Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.

Forward to