HC Deb 18 May 1994 vol 243 c807
13. Mr. McGrady

To ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what discussions he has had with his ministerial colleague in Northern Ireland concerning the establishment of an environmental protection agency.

Mr. Atkins

My officials are in contact with their opposite numbers in Northern Ireland, where my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland's approach reflects the differing circumstances there.

Mr. McGrady

I thank the Minister for his reply, but I am not sure that I understand what he means by the differing circumstances. He must be aware that some four years have passed since 1990, when the Select Committee on the Environment recommended strongly that such a board be set up in Northern Ireland. Since then, the Government have commissioned a thermal oxide reprocessing plant which, with the regulations attached to it, can allow a 900 per cent. increase in toxic atmospheric discharge and a 1,100 per cent. increase in the toxic discharge into the Irish sea. Is the Minister aware that people living on the eastern coast of Northern Ireland are concerned that the Department is both poacher and gamekeeper in environmental protection and that such an agency is urgently needed as an independent assessor?

Mr. Atkins

I am only too well aware of the hon. Gentleman's concerns as I was the Minister who took the decision, in the face of the Environment Select Committee, which came to interview me at Stormont on exactly the answers that were given. I recall that the answer was simply that I had a commitment to set up an environment agency in due course, that in Northern Ireland, where the Department of the Environment in Northern Ireland has different responsibilities, there was no need for it at that stage, but that the Department of the Environment, represented by me as its Minister, was by no means opposed to such an agency.