Lords Sitting of 11 March 1970

Preamble
The House met at half past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Ripon.

HERBICIDE 2.4.5-T: USE AND HAZARDS
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether the 2.4.5-T herbicide is being manufactured in Britain; if so, for what purpose; whether any instance of the poisoning of workers engaged in the manufacture has occurred; and what has been the result of the research carried out by the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF TECHNOLOGY (LORD DELACOURT-SMITH): My Lords, this herbicide is manufactured in Britain. It is used in agriculture and forestry for the control of woody weeds. 2.4.5-T poisoning is not a notifiable disease under the Factory Acts, and as far as my Department have been able to discover there has been no instance of workers engaged in the manufacture of this herbicide being poisoned. I have not yet seen the results of any research carried out by the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, while thanking my noble friend—and I will return, if I may, to the point about the accident in the factory—may I ask him this supplementary question? In view of the doubts about the effect of the herbicide, would it not be desirable to with-draw it from the British market until tests have proved unequivocally that it is safe? Is my noble friend aware that the United States Government has now, as a result of research on pregnant animals, which in one case showed that 70 per cent. of the births were deformed, without heads,
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eyes, and other deformities, banned its civilian use and limited its use in Vietnam to unpopulated areas? Would it not be possible to apply a similar ban in this country?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, the danger of formation of a particular toxic impurity does exist in the manufacture of the intermediate chemical from which this herbicide is derived, and that fact is well known. In production in this country the level is closely controlled, and the level of impurity does not exceed one part per million, which is generally regarded as free of hazards. I am aware that an examination associated with this herbicide has taken place in the United States. So far as banning the use of the herbicide is concerned, the situation is that a voluntary safety scheme is operated with the assistance of an advisory committee which gives guidance on the use of pesticides and herbicides, and our information is that provided this herbicide is used in accordance with the instructions laid down as a part of that voluntary scheme, no danger and no hazard should arise.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, in view of my noble friend's statement that he had no knowledge of an instance of poisoning in this country, is he aware that I have the name of the company and the factory? Why has this accident been hushed up? Is he aware that I am refraining from mentioning the name of the company because it has now adopted a clean process? But is he also aware that even this clean process and crystallisation of the product is now doubted by many scientists, as contamination may recur in light and heat, as illustrated by strong sunlight?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, the position is that this herbicide, so far as we are aware, is manufactured by two companies in this country. It is manufactured on the basis of am inter-mediate chemical, which in turn is manufactured by one company. It is true that in the production, not of the herbicide but of the intermediate chemical from which it is derived, an accident did occur. It did not arise in the normal process of manufacture. It arose as a result of the overheating of the reaction mixture and a consequential explosion. I would emphasise that it was not in the course of the process of manufacture of the

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herbicide but in the course of the process of manufacture of the chemical from which the herbicide is derived. I would make the point that one feature of this intermediate chemical is that it is the raising of the temperature above a certain point in the process of its manufacture which causes the toxic impurity. It therefore follows that an explosion in the course of the process did produce a volume of toxic impurity quite out of scale with anything which one might expect in the normal process of manufacture. It has been suggested that this accident was hushed up. The incident was investigated by the factory inspector and the plant concerned has now been modified.
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is considerable concern about this matter? Could he tell us which Government Committee is investigating the subject? Is it the Standing Committee on Toxic Chemicals, on organo-chlorine compounds? Am I right in thinking that the British Society mentioned in the Question has done measurements on the toxicity of this particular chemical?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, the guidance on the use of the herbicide to which I referred has been given by the advisory committee which operates under the general ægis of the Ministry of Agriculture and which is concerned with the voluntary safety scheme in connection with the use of herbicides. So far as the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science is concerned, I under-stand that a paper has been prepared by this Society, but, so far as I am aware, it has not yet been published in this country.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I give notice—
THE MARQUESS OF SALISBURY: My Lords, on a point of order, is not the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, carrying the licence allowed on Starred Questions much too far?
THE LORD PRIVY SEAL (LORD SHACKLETON): My Lords, as some noble Lords were aware, I was getting a little concerned at the extent of the fascinating information given by the noble Lord, Lord Brockway, and indeed in my noble
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friend's most helpful reply. But, frankly, I agree with the noble Marquess that there is a borderline within which the House begins to feel that Question Time is perhaps being misused.
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, may I just give notice, particularly in view of that statement—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: NO!
LORD BROCKWAY: My Lords, are noble Lords aware—
SEVERAL NOBLE LORDS: NO!
LORD BROCKWAY: —that on April 19, on an Unstarred Question, I shall be pursuing this matter?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I think my noble friend is confusing our procedure with that of another place, where one gives notice of an Adjournment Motion, which of course has the effect of stopping any further questions. I think that is what the noble Lord has now achieved.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, would not the noble Lord the Leader of the House deprecate the importation of that particular procedure into this House?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, there are a number of procedures which are apt to creep in, and I think a time comes when one should take note of them.

IMMIGRATION: PROBLEMS OF KENYA ASIANS
2.45 p.m.
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government when, since they are parties to the United Nations Convention on Statelessness, they propose to alter their treatment of Kenyans of Asian origin, since their present policy creates a group of United Kingdom citizens who are de facto stateless.]
THE MINISTER OF STATE, FOREIGN AND COMMONWEALTH OFFICE (LORD SHEPHERD): My Lords, the members of the community to whom

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the noble Lord refers are not stateless and it only adds to anxiety to suggest, in your Lordships' House, that they are. During the last five years some 50,000 members of this community have been admitted to the United Kingdom for settlement. The system of control introduced under the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 requires these United Kingdom passport holders to wait their turn for admission to the United Kingdom in accordance with a system of priorities which takes account both of their needs and of our capacity to absorb them.
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, while thanking the Minister for that reply, may I ask him whether Her Majesty's Government recognise that recent developments in Kenya have made the Commonwealth Immigrants Act 1968 even more unfair than it was before? Further, will the noble Lord give an assurance that these British subjects will not be condemned to flying around the world, like boomerangs in perpetual motion?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I am well aware of the anxiety in Kenya. But those who are now "flying around", as the noble Lord says, are, in the main, those who are under no direct pressure to leave Kenya and are, in fact, jumping ahead of people who have willingly undertaken to remain in the queue in Kenya.
LORD O'HAGAN: My Lords, arising out of that reply, may I ask the noble Lord whether he is surprised that some of these people should jump the orderly queue when they have no faith that their turn will ever be reached? And can Her Majesty's Government re-allocate some of the spare work vouchers, or increase the basic quota of heads of households, especially in view of the amazing decline in the number of new Commonwealth immigrants coming to this country?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, so far as those who are, as I say, jumping the queue are concerned, I am quite certain that Parliament and the country would wish us to take the view that they should not jump ahead of those who remain in Kenya despite their anxieties but recognise that there must be an orderly flow of their community into this country. As regards work vouchers, all Common-
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wealth countries are entitled to some 300 A class work permits, and, as I have said on a previous occasion, very few have in fact been taken up. Information is available in Kenya, and I would hope that those who fall within this class would make use of this particular allocation.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord a question on that point? The noble Lord, Lord Beswick, in an answer to me on February 10, mentioned that of the 300 extra permits which were available only nine had been taken up; yet in the Press and on the radio we are continuously told that there is a long waiting list. What is the reason for this? Is there any machinery here for notifying the people that vacancies exist? Is there any category which covers the Asian who has sufficient money to come here, but has not necessarily a manual craft to declare?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, my noble friend was referring to the number of A class vouchers. I have not found other members of the Commonwealth who use this class of voucher, which depends upon an employer being avail-able in this country, experiencing difficulty in finding work or jobs available here, or employers willing to take them up. In the main, this is undertaken by their own community in this country informing them of vacancies. Our own High Commissioners are advising suitable candidates for these vouchers as to the ways and means of obtaining such a voucher.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, why does the noble Lord think that only nine out of 300 vouchers have been taken up? There must be some explanation.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I have asked this particular question myself and I have not been given an answer.
LORD BYERS: Neither have I.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think it may be due to the fact that many of the Asians who are now trying to enter this country from Kenya do not come within the manufacturing classes. This may be a factor. But certainly, through our High Commissioners, we are making this facility known to all the applicants who we think fall within this particular class. In regard to those who have

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money, if they are in a position to sustain themselves here without taking employment, then they can come into this country outside the limit of 1,500 vouchers.

FORESTRY COMMISSION PLANTING AND TIMBER IMPORTS
2.50 p.m.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what was the total expenditure of the Forestry Commission, excluding interest, on afforestation during the 50 years 1919 to 1969, what is the total acreage planted, and what was the cost of timber imported from abroad during the last year for which figures are available.]
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at March 31, 1969 the total expenditure, excluding interest, charged to the Com-mission's forestry enterprise was £198 million. At the same date the Commission had nearly 1¾ million acres under plantations. In 1969 imports of timber were valued at about £217 million.
THE EARL OF DUNDEE: My Lords, I should like to thank the noble Lord for that information. May I ask him, seeing that the total expenditure of the Com-mission on planting in 50 years is a good deal less than our national timber import bill for one year, whether the Government do not think that we should try to expand still further the Commission's programme of planting, while at the same time encouraging an equal expansion in private afforestation?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I have great sympathy with the noble Earl in his wish to see more timber planted in this country. The only difficulty is that which we experience in other fields, the difficulty of establishing priorities as between various good claimants for national expenditure. But I am glad to see that the noble Earl is pressing the claims of this particular investment. I should say, however, that from now on the plantings in Scotland will be in-creased from about 40,000 acres to
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50,000 acres, and if suitable land were available in Wales I think that an in-crease would be possible there.
THE EARL OF CROMARTIE: My Lords, may I ask the Minister two supplementary questions? What is the aver-age acreage of Sitka spruce planted annually by the Forestry Commission? Would not the Minister agree that in too many cases the least attractive and, except for pulping, most useless of our conifers is planted on good grazing land? Would not the noble Lord also agree that the taxpayer's money is being wasted as the Fort William pulpmill cannot absorb the amount available, and in many cases it is impossible, or uneconomic, to get this timber to the pulpmill?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I confess that I shall have to look at what the noble Earl said in his first two questions and write to him. As to whether there is an outlet for the timber which is produced, my information is that the Forestry Commission can sell all they can grow.
LORD INGLEWOOD: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether the figure of £217 million for the imports which he has given us includes pulp and newsprint, which is only timber in another form?
LORD BESWICK: No, my Lords, I compared like with like, and I gave the figure for timber. The noble Lord is on a valid point. If one includes pulp and other products, the import bill runs at about £648 million.
THE EARL OF MANSFIELD: My Lords, arising out of the original Answer, showing the costs of planting in the Forestry Commission, do Her Majesty's Government realise that the efficient private owner can plant at a very much lower cost than the Commission, owing to the latter's very high overheads? Would the noble Lord therefore ask the Government whether they will consider further assistance to private owners, either by provision of further grants or by loans at a low rate of interest?
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, I am not sure that I agree with the assumption on which the noble Lord bases his appeal for the private owners. The fact is that a good deal of the increased overheads

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rests upon the fact that the plantings are in an area where the expenditure is justified on social as well as on economic grounds. Moreover, I did say, in answer to a question a week or two ago, that a good deal is already being done to streamline the administration of the Forestry Commission.

PEERS' DEBATES AND EXPRESSIONS OF THANKS
LORD DENHAM: My Lords, I beg leave to ask the Question which stands in my name on the Order Paper.
[The Question was as follows:
To ask the Leader of the House whether he is aware of the recently established convention whereby it seems to have become incumbent on every speaker to express the thanks of the House to the mover of a Motion and whether he agrees that this practice detracts from the composition of each speech by monopolising the opening sentence: that in a long debate constant repetition of an almost identical sentence becomes tedious; and that with Parliamentary time at a premium it is the initiator of a debate who should be grateful to the House for listening to him, rather than the other way about.]
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am aware of the growth of this practice. I think your Lordships are inclined to favour brevity if it is not achieved at the expense of courtesy. While, therefore, I could criticise the length of the noble Lord's Question, and his use of this Question as a medium for arguing a case—in this instance to the extent of over 100 words—I am inclined to agree with him that thanks should be given only when thanks are due.
LORD BALFOUR OF INCHRYE: My Lords, would the noble Lord the Leader of the House give us his views as to whether the convention of a Member thanking a Minister for answering his question might not also be abandoned? I have never heard a Minister thank the questioner. It is quite unnecessary that the questioner should thank the Minister who is, after all, only doing his job.
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am much inclined to agree with the noble
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Lord. I would say that on those occasions —and there are occasions—when thanks are due to Ministers it would be appropriate to give them, but not on those occasions where it is not relevant.
LORD BLYTON: My Lords, is my noble friend aware that on Questions we get long ministerial Answers, which give rise to long supplementary questions, and that the time of the House could be saved there?
LORD GLADWYN: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord the Leader of the House whether he realises how indebted we are to the noble Lord, Lord Denham, for putting his Question?
LORD SHACKLETON: My Lords, I am not called upon to rule: I do seek occasionally to restrain the enthusiasm of my ministerial colleagues, but not always with complete success. It is, of course, admirable that Ministers should be anxious to give to your Lordships all the information in their possession, but no doubt there is a certain interplay which leads to the abuse of Question Time.

OVERSEAS PENSIONS
LORD BESWICK: My Lords, at a convenient moment after half-past three my noble friend Lord Shepherd will be making a statement on the cost of overseas pensions.
DONCASTER CORPORATION BILL [H.L.]
Read 3a, and passed, and sent to the Commons.

WASTE MATERIAL: SALVAGE AND RECLAMATION
2.58 p.m.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY rose to draw attention to the commercial re-use of waste material; and to move for Papers. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, as the first victim of my noble friend Lord Denham's Question, I should like to say that I entirely agree with him, and that it is really for me to thank your Lordships for allowing me to raise this debate to-day. It is, to my mind, both

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from the economic and from the amenities point of view, a very important debate for the nation.
We have recently had an excellent debate on pollution. But, after all, that is the negative side, what we must not do; pollution is a crime. This debate to-day will, I hope, be on the positive side, that of reclamation and salvage, which must be a virtue, and one which I am afraid at the present moment is rather lacking in our national character. It was not so during the war. Those of us who went through that time will remember that we saved everything that was in any way usable. I looked up my war records and I found that in my county alone in one year we saved 15 tons of aluminium for Lord Beaver-brook's Spitfire appeal, mostly in bottle tops. Even now when I throw away an empty cotton reel I think of the noble Baroness, Lady Swanborough, and feel guilty, because under her impetus as head of the W.V.S. we collected thousands of cotton reels for the Air Force. I hope that some day my Recording Angel will tell me what they were used for. For certain materials waste sorted on the doorstep is half the battle. I think per-haps women are more prone to save things than men, and perhaps that is why men are such excellent but rather extravagant cooks.
Noble Lords who are to speak after me will no doubt speak in detail about matters on which they have an expertise, or in which they are particularly interested, and I feel that as the mover of the Motion I should try to supply the frame-work for these details. I base my argument on three main principles: first, to save waste material that could be re-used in industry here; secondly, to save the expenditure of foreign exchange on waste material bought abroad which we ourselves could have provided; and, thirdly, to save the amenities of our countryside which I believe to be the most beautiful in the world and which we should want to keep.
Before I come on to those points, I should like to say a word about the men who at the present moment collect our refuse, and who are known as dustmen. I think we rather tend to look down on this service until it stops—and last autumn we were very conscious of how useful this
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work is. I had a good deal of sympathy with the dustmen when "totting" was stopped. After all, that was a definite and positive form of salvage, and treasure trove must have lightened the day's work very much. We all remember the song, "My old man's a dustman", and no doubt when he brought home a perambulator wheel to replace a broken one he had a certain glamour and was very popular. Now all that has gone.
I should like to see more self-respect and importance attached to this work. I know of one local authority where the men are put into white overalls, their vehicles are hosed down after every sortie, there is a wash basin in every vehicle so that they can wash before their midday meal while they are on the road, and they are trained to believe that they are doing work of national importance—and so it is. I should like to see them called "salvage crews" instead of "dustmen".
It might interest your Lordships to know that the first place to institute the collection of refuse was the City of London in the early 14th century, when dustmen were called "scavengers", and the first dustbin dates from 1875. The collection of refuse as a general service is relatively modern. In 1914 only 66 per cent. of the local authorities collected refuse. I remember that in my village in Sussex everything was put into the village dump, and occasionally a public-spirited farmer would cart the whole lot away— goodness knows where. By 1964, 469 local authorities had got going, but what is rather sad—I am not going to give many dates and figures, because I am very bad at them and I know they are rather boring—is that, although in 1959 salvage brought in £2,884,000, by 1964 the figure had gone down to £2,501,000, so that salvage reclamation, instead of gathering momentum, has been falling.
I wonder whether our methods of collection are really up to date compared with some of the continental countries? How about our dustbins? I believe that the only local authority in England using the spring closing, mechanically picked-up dustbin is Birmingham, whereas it has been used in Italy since 1920. I am sure that there must be more efficient vehicles than those we have, and I wonder how much we have studied what happens abroad. Also, what O and M studies have been made into the gathering of our

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refuse? Some local authorities have done this.
Then there is what is to my mind the most important point of all. How far are the private reclamation industries, which now have a turnover of £1,500,000, encouraged to work in close contact with the local authorities? I think there is a lack of cohesion there, and there is a great deal that ought to be done. There ought to be some way of exchanging information on what waste is available and where that waste is needed. We need a sort of stock exchange of waste material, but this information is not generally available throughout the country.
A great deal of foreign exchange and indigenous capital is involved in this service. From the researches which my noble friend Lord Sandys—who has been my partner in crime this last month or two—and I have made, I am certain that what is needed is a great deal more planning and capital investment, which would give a really big reward. As regards foreign exchange, The Times published an article just before Christmas which explained that we had bought 38,000 tons of waste paper from abroad, and I have been down to Purfleet and have seen the Dutch barges full of waste paper waiting to be unloaded. Since then I have had more up-to-date figures, and the latest figure from the British Waste Paper Association is that we bought 52,707 tons from abroad. That seems to me a most terrible waste of foreign exchange when we could provide all this waste paper ourselves; and I should like to ask the Minister whether he can let us know what we spend in this way.
There is a magazine published in Europe, called the Bureau International de Reclamation, which stated:
"In three years the use of waste paper instead of wood will replace forest which would cover approximately the area of the Netherlands. The reclamation of waste paper therefore not only contributes to the supply of cellulose, but also helps to lessen the need for clearing forests."
Even from the little I have seen, heard and read, I feel that there is no awareness in the country of the urgency and importance of this subject; of the real need for re-search, applied especially to certain materials; and of a better co-ordination of private enterprise and local planning.
Some industries are doing great work and so are some local authorities. At
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Bradford there is the Esholt set-up where, through the scouring of sheeps' wool, they make all sorts of products such as lanolin, axle grease and so on. Then there is a local authority on the South Coast near my home, which is a model of enterprise and organisation. It services about 80,000 people and has not extravagant but modern plant, set up over the last five years. It salvages waste paper, tins, ferrous and non-ferrous metals, bones, fat, bottles, rags and so on, and methane gas is extracted from the sewage to provide electric power for the plant. The paper is packaged, the metal is compressed, the rags are sorted and compost is made from the sludge and the tailings, which is used to cover a dumping tip which is landscaped. So nothing is wasted; and, what is more, that policy benefits the rates. They reckon that over the last five years they have saved the country £250,000 in foreign exchange. I cannot help quoting the local engineer, who is a splendid per-son. He has trained his householders by propaganda, personal visits and so on, and I am going to quote what he said to me because I think it will appeal to your Lordships. He said: "I tell my householder, ' Once you have pulled the plug, its all mine.'" How happy we should be to think that we were helping the national economy in that situation!
Where the local authorities are not big enough they should combine; and I think there are regulations which enable them to do so. I read in the Redcliffe-Maud Report—I think it is on page 88—that it has been suggested that the lower-tier authorities should collect and the unitary authorities should dispose. There has been a reaction to that which is a very natural one; namely, that if the lower-tier authorities collect and deal scientifically with their refuse, they will be reluctant not to benefit from this service by way of the rates, and if they do not the house-holders will not be so co-operative. The general feeling is that this would not make for very good profits in the end.
I am sure that in the last years an enormous amount of valuable material has been thrown into pits, that valuable crude sewage has been pumped away into the sea, and that we have lost a great deal of valuable material which might have been re-used. I read the Question on the disposal of crude sewage, which the noble Baroness, Lady Stocks, put down in 1967; and I thought the noble

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Baroness got rather a "dusty answer". I hope we have moved a bit further since then. There must be a very great deal of money lying about the country, if only we took the trouble to research and pick it up. I am not an engineer, I am not a chemist and I am not an industrial tycoon, but I was brought up as a farmer, and I was brought up to believe that where there is muck there is money —and I think that is where we have to get down and look for it. There was a great French chemist who said:
" In nature nothing is lost, nothing is created, everything is transformed."
We, my Lords, must transform our refuse.
I have only touched on a very vast subject because, as I say, I hope your Lord-ships will deal with the details, but perhaps I may just mention some headings. There is the reclamation of our derelict areas, which want re-landscaping and re-using; there is the clearing of our countryside of hardware, which should be compressed into scrap; there is the reuse of disused pits, where there are a great many chemicals lying about which have not been examined; and valuable chemicals are being washed away by some industries which are the raw materials of others. Incidentally, Germany has set up a consortium among her chemical firms to deal with precisely this particular side and to prevent the loss. Then there is the use of old tyres. We do not seem to get on with it very well, but I am told that in Hungary and Czechoslovakia they have solved that problem.
There is, again, the question of bottles. In the United States they are now making "glasphalt" with which to re-surface their roads. Whether that will be successful or not I do not know; but, at any rate, a great deal of research is going on. There is, of course, the big question of what one does with plastic. I hope it will not be "the glassy floor of Heaven" that we sing about in church occasionally. I have awful visions of its lasting into Eternity and getting there before I do. One last word on paper. I am told that there is a firm which has discovered how to make paper soluble in water. On the other hand, I gather that we are all going to wear paper clothes quite soon. I am just wondering what
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would happen if we were caught in a rain-storm without our plastic mackintoshes.
My Lords, not only must we save, but we must also guard against getting into the position in which they are in the U.S.A. The New York problem is a national problem. What was once an urban nuisance is escalating into a huge and expensive environmental outrage. One of their big problems is to get rid of old motor cars, which they calculate now number 825,000 a year. How they are going to deal with that problem I do not know. Chicago is rushing to build the nation's largest incinerator, a furnace which will consume 1,600 tons of refuse a day. In the United States they have to deal with the most appalling figures, and there they are at panic stations. I should like to think that we shall make our preparations in time, before we, too, are overwhelmed.
My Lords, I am afraid I have just exceeded my norm of ten to twelve minutes, but, as mover of this Motion, I hope that your Lordships will forgive me. I now leave the debate to those of your Lord-ships who have put their names down to speak.
I beg to move for Papers.
3.16 p.m.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, the noble Baroness has initiated a debate on a most important subject with a very comprehensive and well-informed speech. If I may not thank her for it, I congratulate her on it. She has quite rightly drawn attention to the two main facets of this subject, the commercial and the social. She has mentioned the lesson of America. Those of us who have been there recently are well aware of what is happening in that country; and it means that we have to keep a very watchful eye indeed on the way man has been allowed to pollute and defile his own environment and, in the process, to upset the ecological balance of nature.
The example of the Great Lakes is quite horrifying, where whole industries and many people are moving away from the areas where the water is absolutely filthy and the stench is becoming impossible. And the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, knows that this is happening in other parts of the world, too. Time magazine reported in early February that each of the 18· million residents of California throws away 20 lb. of solid

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waste a day, and they calculated—I hope they got it right—that this was sufficient to build a wall 100 feet wide and 50 feet high from Oregon to Mexico. It may be that that would be one way of getting rid of it; but that gives one some idea of the magnitude of the job which they have and the magnitude of the job we want to avoid. I believe that in this country we are in fact getting to grips with these problems just in time, but we cannot afford to be complacent. This is not of course a British problem, as I have said, but we could at least set a good example and we could make a better start, perhaps, than we are making at the moment.
The point is, I think, that up to now the world has taken it for granted that it can go on expanding the population, producing more goods and chucking away the waste products of Nature and production without worrying too much about it. This simply is not true. It is clear that man has now to examine critically all the materials that he abandons after using them in part of one civilised process or another.
He must do this because, first as the noble Baroness said, they could be capable of re-use, either directly or after adaptation; and, indeed, some of these may become essential for man's survival. I do not know how long we can go on wasting water in the world at the rate we are doing without finding some way of replenishing it. And it must be done, secondly, because things casually thrown away can unwittingly pollute the environment to an alarming degree. People just do not know what they are doing when they throw these things away. For instance, I am told that even so-called scientific methods of treating or dumping waste can occasionally cause pollution after it has been scientifically treated. Sewage treatment will prevent pollution of the river system, but the treated sewage, once it gets into a lake, can upset the ecological balance. That is why this, I believe, is a business for professionals and not for amateurs. It is a job for scientists, chemists and others fully trained in the first place to give their knowledge on these matters.
That brings me to the activities of the industrial waste disposal contractors. I did not in fact know that such people existed, but as a result of research for
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this particular debate I find that there is a National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors. They have produced a code of conduct for the industry; and with the help of the relevant training board they are intensifying the education of the smaller members to raise the professional standards of the industry as a whole. This must result in a growing professionalism and, more important, a more scientific basis for the industry. But it is going to be a long process.
The trouble is that this Association cannot insist on other industries' using its services. Too many firms still discharge untreated refuse into rivers and private tips. We shall undoubtedly, in my view, have to face stricter legislation and better enforcement of the present laws if we are to improve things. I am told that it would help the Association if some form of Government recognition were forthcoming. This need not be costly, but it would enhance the status of the organisation and give them the backing that it wants. Action by Government, local authorities and industry, intelligently guided by professional organisation, could do a lot to improve things.
But, my Lords, disposal is not the only problem. As the noble Baroness has said there is still much to be done in the field of reclamation and recovery. I am indebted to Mr. Tony Morgan, Chairman and Managing Director of the Purle Group (which has been mentioned before and which has pioneered so much in both these fields), for a good deal of enlightenment on these matters; although the views that I express are very much my own. As the noble Baroness has said, where there is money in muck it will not remain muck for long. But there is another problem: where there is no profit in muck there is no incentive to recover and reclaim. Another problem that we have to tackle is how to finance the orderly recovery and reclamation of items which will otherwise constitute pollutants or eyesores. This is my view will have to be done partly by insisting that industry pays the cost of getting rid of these waste products by socially acceptable methods. If they cannot pay the whole cost, it may be that they can pay part of the cost and we shall have to find some other way of dealing with the remainder. In some difficult cases it may be preferable that tax relief should

815
be made available in the interests of the area as a whole. In other cases it may be necessary to subsidise the capital and/or the operating costs of various reclamation schemes which at the moment appear to be uneconomic.
It may well be that local government can offer reasonably profitable contracts to encourage waste disposal operations —as I think the G.L.C. are doing—and, if necessary, offer the operators low interest-rate loans to help with the capital cost. In fact, with a firm contract and reasonable borrowing facilities it should be possible for a number of these services to be undertaken without much difficulty. The truth is that the existing economic structure of our technological society is not going to lead to the fulfilment of long-term happiness and the health of the people unless something is done about changing our potential pollutants into useful assets—and this will have to be done by a combination of changes in the tax and the law and attitudes to the whole question.
If I may, I will mention one or two subjects which have been touched on by the noble Baroness. First, land reclamation. Areas which have been laid waste can be reclaimed by scientifically based landfill operations. Holes can be filled and contoured to provide a landscape which will hide existing industry and provide recreational and residential areas. The possibilities for such sites are extremely exciting. The Purle Group is at present preparing plans for a site in Essex which will find a solution to the disposal problem of toxic liquids in the South of London and act as a chemical treatment centre for hazardous wastes. In addition, it will provide recreational facilities and reclaim for ultimate recreational use more than 300 acres of land which at the moment is completely unusable. There are many sites like this which are not being used at present because they are isolated from the place where the waste arises or be-cause they are difficult to work.
A system of grants to contractors would help a lot and a transport subsidy to enable waste to be moved relatively far away would also help. In fact, it would be much better to get the local authorities transporting waste to distant derelict areas instead of investing rate-
816
payers' money in socially unproductive capital equipment. I think that the same sort of thing could apply to the recycling recovery processes, where a reasonable subsidy would make this profitable in competition with the original production processes. There are many things which could be done for a relatively small expenditure in cash: the Hungarian rubber industry's crushing of tyres to grist has been mentioned. I understand that this has not yet been found economic in this country but it may be that with a little Government help and backing it could be made so. There is the whole question of the auto crushers. I believe that in the United States they are considering putting a surcharge on all new vehicles in order to find the money with which various organisations can set up the necessary plants and dispose of these old cars in a proper way to the steel works. At the present moment there is no incentive to get rid of these motor cars or to get them to a central point.
I think that there is a great deal which could be done in this field and also in the field of incineration. I am told that in Stuttgart the municipal authority have a magnificent way of disposal of most of their industrial waste by incineration without causing any air pollution. In Britain to-day there are no fewer than 5,000 firms engaged in helping industry to save its own money and lessen the depredation which industrial waste has on our environment. Between them, they encourage British industry to re-use something like 30 million tons of re-covered material every year. But if the nation would look at some of these other problems not in terms of straight profit and loss, not in terms of pounds, shillings and pence, but in terms of profit and loss in the field of environment, ecology and the quality of life, then we could get much better results and, what is more, we should be tackling this vital problem in time. I hope that the Government will give a lead to the local authorities and others interested in this so that we can start moving forward in this decade.
LORD SALTER: My Lords, before the noble Lord sits down, I think I could mention one thing which would greatly strengthen his argument. In America, in New England, the most rural, most beautiful country is ruined and made horrible to look at by these old cars

817
which are lying about and by other refuse of that kind. While—
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if I may intervene, I think that if one uses the phrase, "before the noble Lord sits down", it is the practice to put a question. I do not think that it is for the purpose of adding to the contents of the noble Lord's speech.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord. As I have cut my speech by seven minutes, I do not want to take up any more of your Lord-ships' time.
3.29 p.m.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, I know that I am not supposed to say that I am grateful to the mover of the Motion, but I should like to express my gratitude to my noble friend not only for her speech but for giving us all the chance to talk about a subject of great national and individual importance. In her speech she properly laid great emphasis on the domestic aspects of waste material and its disposal. The equally interesting speech of the noble Lord, Lord Byers, broadened the field into industrial waste and disposal. I should like to add only a few comments which may be of some interest to your Lordships. At lunch to-day, when explaining that I had to be here to join in the debate on the commercial re-use of waste material, a friend said: "So you are going to talk about retired civil servants entering the City". I hastened to correct him as he is himself a retired civil servant.
I think that in this field we should recognise that in using the phrase "waste material" we are considering not only domestic disposal but also disposal from industry and commerce. And the Motion is specifically phrased that it should be "the commercial re-use". In other words, we should see what the market forces will do in order to solve the problem. Of course, the commercial re-use of waste material has been going on in industry ever since industry started. Scrap iron supplies are essential for iron foundries and scrap steel is an essential part of the raw material supplies for our steel works. There is a careful collection of wastages in engineering works. Base metals, filings, turnings and the like are all care-fully segregated, sorted and sent back to where they can be used again. If
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noble Lords were to go round a cigarette factory they would find that the floor is carefully swept; for the floor sweepings are more valuable by weight than silver owing to the high duty content of the tobacco scrapings which are swept up. So it is no new thing that has suddenly dawned on this Island of ours. We have always been collecting waste material and devising means for securing its commercial re-use.
What is perhaps new is the conspicuousness of the waste arising to-day, particularly in respect of waste paper and old motor cars, Regarding waste paper—and here I should declare an interest because I am deputy chairman of a company which controls important paper and board mills which want to use waste paper—it seems at first sight ludicrous that we should be importing waste paper from abroad. My noble friend mentioned that she had been to the Thames Estuary to see the Dutch barges coming in loaded with Continental waste paper. That serves to underline the point which I should like to put to your Lordships, that we should allow the forces of the market place to operate; and if it is more economical for the people on the Continent of Europe to collect waste paper than it is for us, then let us use their waste paper collection system to supplement our own resources.
A good example of this arose in the years after the war in relation to scrap iron and scrap steel; because in those days, when it was desired to keep down the price of steel, an essential ingredient was scrap iron at a particularly low price level. What happened was that the prices on the Continent were much higher and so scrap iron was exported to the Continent; and the fussy Government of the day then had to decide to ban exports of scrap iron in order to conserve supplies for British steel works, thereby frustrating the collection of scrap iron in this country because the price was not as high as other-wise it would have been. So I come back to my essential point that in this field market forces are best. I noted that the noble Lord, Lord Byers, referred to the desirability of Government assistance, tax relief, possible subsidies and the like. I would submit to your Lordships that this is a field in which there should be the minimum of Government assistance, because before we know where we are,

819
it will become Government intervention. What is probably—
LORD BYERS: My Lords, before the noble Lord leaves that point, and because I am sure that he does not wish to mislead the House, may I say that I was put-ting that against the background of the environmental and quality of life value. That is something which, in my view, cannot be left to the market forces.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: No, my Lords, I should never wish to mislead noble Lords, and still less to mislead the noble Lord, Lord Byers. I thought he was making the debate rather wide by bringing in the environmental question. Of course I agree with him that a certain measure of either local authority intervention or Government guidance to local authorities may be required. But let us not lose sight of the fact that the best way to deal with waste material is to let the market forces operate. It may be untidy at the edges here and there, but, by and large, that is the best and most economical way to make sure that what to us may seem to be a waste material is a very valuable commercial raw material to somebody else. One of the most difficult problems for us in Britain is that the cost of labour has risen so much. What was worth collecting twenty or thirty years ago is no longer economically worth while, because it is so expensive to collect. Having had it collected, it is expensive to sort, and having sorted it, it is expensive to transport to the point of re-use.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, may I interrupt my noble friend for a moment? Is it not strange that in some parts of the world it can be done and is economical, but in a great many parts of the world it has not even been tried?
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend for that intervention because it shows that I have retained her interest, and I am always grateful for that. I was about to give one or two illustrations from other parts of the world. But dealing with the situation as we find it in Britain, we have to consider whether it is economic to collect certain forms of waste material and re-distribute them or whether it is better, in
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economic terms, to burn or destroy the product. It may even come to pass that it is cheaper to import waste paper from the Continent than to collect it ourselves because of the high cost of collection, sorting and distribution. Here I am not, I must hasten to add, stating the case of the paper makers, who, of course, want to maximise waste paper collections in this country. But it is very much a question of the economic level of activity.
I should like to mention to my noble friend that if one jobs around the world, one sees some remarkable examples of what it is worth while salvaging in some countries but is not worth while salvaging in others. When I was in Nigeria I was fascinated to find that not only were the empty soup cans or cans which had contained milk or beans, carefully collected; they were traded in in the market place, because they were useful receptacles. They had a new market value as milk cups or as units of measurement. It would be unthinkable in this country that we should have old tins or old cans on sale in the market place, because no one would want to buy them. But, given the very different economy in Nigeria, they had a market value.
When I was in China I was fascinated to find that in Canton there was a small shop where they were breaking down old mattresses. I do not know whether any of your Lordships have tried to get rid of an old mattress, but in England it is a very difficult thing to do. No one seems to want it. But in Canton old mattresses are eagerly sought after, or they were when I was there, because the springs are taken out and straightened. Noble Lords who have ever tried to straighten a coiled spring will know that, apart from influencing Her Majesty's Government, it is probably one of the most difficult things to do. Here were two extremely dexterous and able Chinese taking the springs out of these old mattresses and straightening them with the minimum of technological equipment (copy to MINTEC!)—with their bare hands and a piece of wood; and very well they did it. Those straightened pieces of wire had a market value and were eagerly bought by the citizens of Canton.
LORD KILBRACKEN: What for?
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: Because they wanted straight wire. It is very

821
difficult to get one's point across to some noble Lords on the other side of your Lordships' House without making it so obvious. I mentioned this example, per-haps at greater length than I meant to do, to illustrate that it is all a question of the general level of the economy. In China it is worth while straightening out the springs of mattresses because the straightened springs have a market value. In Britain it would be completely ludicrous. I hope I have answered the point made by my noble friend about looking round the world.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: Not quite, my Lords. When I said "all over the world" I meant also in this country, where certain local authorities have found that it pays and some other local authorities have not even tried.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, I do not want to go on about the mattress springs, but I should like to deal with my noble friend's point about local authorities. Of course there are different levels of zeal and activity in local authorities in this country. Some have decided that it is worth while making waste paper collections; others, for other reasons, have decided that it is not. It may be sloth on their part, or it may be that they have a sharper eye for economic realities. There is also the question of the density of housing in a particular local authority area and whether it is worth while employing an extra man to go round with the refuse vehicle in order to keep and segregate the waste paper resulting from the collection which is generated, or can be generated, by the zeal of the local authority. This matter can be resolved to some extent by Government encouragement, but in the last resort it must be a matter for the local authorities to decide whether to make periodic and regular collections or whether to give up and let every householder dispose of his or her waste paper as he or she thinks fit. I think that in this field we should be chary of asking Her Majesty's Government to give assistance; the free play of market forces ought to be encouraged and allowed to develop. Nevertheless, I think that the Government could properly make a contribution in encouraging local authorities to see what the opportunities are and then make their own decisions.
822
Secondly, although this may seem to be contradictory, I should have thought that the Government could help to get economic realities in better perspective if they were to abolish the 10 per cent. import tariff on waste paper, because that tariff is protecting the relatively inefficient collection of waste paper instead of it being entirely free to find its own economic level. For those companies who have to rely on imported waste paper, it seems unfortunate that they should pay a tariff on what is essentially one of their raw materials, when they do not have to pay tariffs on other imported raw materials; and for the paper board industry waste paper is nothing more than a raw material.
As regards the disposal of motor vehicles, this is a problem or, one might say, an opportunity for progressive local authorities to show how well they can cope with the situation. I should have thought that here is a particularly import-ant field where we can say to the local authorities, "You do not want to be dictated to by Whitehall in every matter. Find out your own solution of how to deal with derelict motor cars in your area." Nevertheless, there are many-individuals who are prepared to run, in a kind of gypsy-like fashion, a dealer's scrapyard in old vehicles. We have all seen them, not very beautiful I know, but they provide a source of spare parts for obsolescent vehicles and provide a living for those who are prepared to do that kind of work. It would be wrong to insist that all motor vehicles should be put through some enormous pulping machine. I do not think that the Hungarian scheme suggested by my noble friend for reprocessing motor tyres for road materials would necessarily work here. Let commercial forces operate and see how it will work.
LORD BYERS: My Lords, what are the commercial forces going to do with the hundreds of thousands of old tyres and old motor cars? These are piling up. Surely this attitude is terribly complacent.
LORD ERROLL OF HALE: My Lords, I thought about this point when considering what I might say to your Lordships, because I felt sure that what I was going to say would be castigated as complacent. I believe that there is a time for direct action and a time for letting other people

823
do the work. If enough tyres pile up, then it will be a commercial opportunity for somebody to take them away, instead of all of us getting very busy and worrying about how to deal with the problem. We are apt, in your Lordships' House and at the other end of the corridor, to take all the problems of the world on our shoulders and feel that we must solve them. If we would just allow a little time, many of them would solve them-selves. And I do not believe that this is a very great problem. When enough tyres pile up, sources of disposal will be found; and where they are not, then it is the proper duty of the local authority to take the necessary steps. I hope that the Government will not set up another department or subsection of MAXTEC to deal with this problem, because I do not believe that a great problem exists if only the market forces are allowed to operate.
As regards the environmental question, I regard that as outside the terms of the Motion which is why I have not referred to it. I hope that your Lordships will not regard my contribution as complacent; it is anything but. It is the result of careful consideration and I offer my observations to your Lordships in that spirit.

OVERSEAS PENSIONS
3.45 p.m.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, with the permission of the House I should like to repeat a Statement on the responsibility for the cost of pensions to expatriate officers in respect of pre-independence Government service which is being made in another place by my right honourable friend the Minister of Over-seas Development. This is the Statement:
"Her Majesty's Government have recently given careful consideration to representations made by several Governments of developing countries which were formerly British dependent territories about the financial burden on their economies of their responsibility for paying pensions and compensation to expatriate officers who were in Government service in those territories be-fore independence.
"Having regard to these representations and to the views expressed by many sections of informed opinion in
824
this country, including Members of this House, the Government have decided that as part of their policy of aid to development they are willing at the re-quest of any Government concerned to consider assuming responsibility for the cost of pensions to expatriate officers in respect of pre-independence Government service. The assumption of such a responsibility would be taken into account in determining the total amount of aid a country might receive for all purposes having regard to needs and the funds available in the aid programme.
"In general the Government would be willing to assume responsibility from April 1, 1971. We could not contemplate reimbursement of expenditure incurred or due to be incurred up to that date. In broad terms, the officers whose pensions would be included in any arrangement would be those who are covered by a Public Officers Agreement or would in the view of Her Majesty's Government have been covered if there had been an Agreement and who are not citizens of the country concerned. Outstanding com-mutation and compensation loans would also be covered and annual payments of principal or interest due after April 1, 1971, would be waived.
"The Government are also willing to consider entering into similar agreements with the Governments of dependent territories approaching independence. In the case of other dependent territories account would be taken of their expenditure on expatriate pensions in assessing their needs for development expenditure, which we recognise as constituting a special and increasing claim on the Aid Programme.
"I propose to lay before the House in due course a Bill which would en-able me to assume responsibility if necessary for the payment of individual pensioners. Until there was such enabling legislation we could only proceed by way of annual reimbursement of the total amounts involved to the Governments concerned.
"The Government's decision removes the impediment to a renewed aid programme in Tanzania; and we shall be ready at any time to exchange views with the Tanzania Government on this subject."
THE EARL OF BESSBOROUGH: My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord for this Statement, which we heartily welcome. I think that this is what we have always advocated should be done. But may I ask the noble Lord these questions? First, can he say what will be the likely overall cost of these pensions to the Exchequer? And what will be the interim annual disbursement to which he referred before enabling legislation is introduced? Lastly, can he tell us whether the Government propose to apply these concessions to Kenya, in view of our present concern about British East African Asians?
LORD WADE: My Lords, I should like to join in thanking the noble Lord for repeating this Statement. We certainly welcome this decision: I wish that it had been made many years ago. May I put two questions? In this rather complex subject of expatriate officers' pensions, the noble Lord will be aware that there have been a number of border-line cases on which unsuccessful representations have been made from time to time. To what extent will these anomalies be overcome by the statement that the new arrangement will cover those who would be entitled to benefit if there had been a Public Officers Agreement? Secondly, as to the amount of the pensions for which Her Majesty's Government will be responsible, will there be any adjustment to take account of the rises in the cost of living?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I acknowledge the gratitude of the noble Earl, Lord Bessborough. In regard to Kenya, we expect that a delegation from Kenya will be coming to London next month to talk about aid generally, as well as about pensions, and this might be a convenient opportunity for further talks about immigration. As to the cost, the sum involved on pensions is some £12 million, but naturally it will decrease with the passing of the years. It is difficult to assess what will be the final cost to the United Kingdom Government, because we shall have to take into account the aid ceilings for the various countries. Therefore it is not possible to give a net figure. With regard to the interim annual expenditure, I fear that I have not that figure with me, but I will let the noble Earl know it.
826
Apart from the £12 million that I have just mentioned, compensation and com-mutation loans will represent some £50 million, to be reimbursed over a period of some 22 years from 1971. As regards the borderline cases this Statement does not envisage any change in the present basis of pensions. The phrase that the noble Lord, Lord Wade, used was in fact to cover Nigeria, which was on the point of signing a Public Service Agreement, but because of certain changes, with the Federal Government coming into being, it was not possible for the agreement, which was to cover Nigerian expatriate officers, to be signed. As regards the cost of living, this Statement does not affect the level at which pensions will be paid.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, may I ask the noble Lord whether, in the event of any overseas Government being in arrears in the payment of pensions to pensioners, Her Majesty's Government intend to make good those arrears if and when there is this requirement to take over responsibility for the pension payment to pensioners in that territory?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, so far as expatriate officers are concerned, I see no reason why there should be any arrears, because I think that under the previous Administration the arrangement was made that if there was default Her Majesty's Government made ex gratia loans to the pensioned officers affected. As to how this will be recovered from a defaulting country if we were to enter into a new arrangement with them, this would be a matter for discussion.
THE LORD BISHOP OF DURHAM: My Lords, I should like from these Benches to join in the general welcome for this Statement, expressing as it does this wide interdependence between different nations. Certainly it is a matter of great importance to international social justice.
LORD WALSTON: My Lords, I also should like to say how pleased I am that this has been done, but perhaps I may ask for a little more information on the cost. I understood from what my noble friend said that the cost would be taken into account (I think those were his words) in arriving at the aid programme. Does this mean that the aid ceiling will not be raised at all, and that

827
the extra cost to the British Government will be nil? Or will there be some additional cost, and no deduction in other forms of aid?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, we have entered into this arrangement on the basis that the aid ceiling will remain as it now is but will increase with the passing of the years. In regard to an individual country, the way in which this would affect its overall aid would depend upon its own particular needs. In other words, there would not be an immediate deduction from whatever figure might be arrived at as to the needs of that country in order to pay for the pension, but it would be taken into account.
LORD ALPORT: My Lords, may I ask one other question? In the event of the pensioner being a national of the country in which the new pension arrangement has been made, do Her Majesty's Government take over responsibility for paying to him a pension, despite the fact that he is not a national of this country—that is, an expatriate officer—and despite any legislation to the contrary which might be introduced in the country concerned in respect of its own nationals and their pension rights and liabilities?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I think I should need to look at that question with some care, but I think I have the gist of it. If a pensioned officer is residing in the country in which he served, and he is an expatriate officer and comes within our expatriate terms of service, then he will receive the pension from Her Majesty's Government.
LORD HAWKE: My Lords, speaking for myself, and I imagine also perhaps for the noble Lord, Lord Fulton, when we were advocating this concession last Wednesday we visualised, I think, that this would be a net addition to the aid and not a possible substitution for it.
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, I share the wish that it could be a net gain. However, we have to contain (I think this is generally accepted, although perhaps with reluctance) an overseas aid ceiling in the light of our own economic problems, although they are much lighter than they were when we took office in
828
1964. But, naturally, this point will have to be borne in mind.
BARONESS GAITSKELL: My Lords, may I ask my noble friend whether this does not really mean that we are paying these pensioners out of overseas aid? Is there any need for self-congratulation?
LORD SHEPHERD: My Lords, if my noble friend will read the Statement, I think she will see that the conclusion that she has arrived at is not correct.

WASTE MATERIAL: SALVAGE AND RECLAMATION
3.57 p.m.
Debate resumed.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, I am sure that we are all of the opinion that thanks should be expressed where thanks are due, and I think we should all regard them as due to the noble Baroness for having initiated this timely debate. As our standards of living have progressively risen we have come to use more and more materials. This happens, of course, in all industrial societies. We are faced, obviously, with the prospect of progressively greater quantities of waste material, which must be either reabsorbed into industrial processes or disposed of in some other way.
Our techniques of disposal (and I use that word in the broadest sense) must keep abreast of the advance in our living standards. Otherwise, as has already been pointed out, we run risks which are both social and commercial. They are social because of the obvious dangers to environment and amenity; and they are commercial because if we let our waste products lie without taking suitable steps towards reclamation we may well be missing opportunities for greater national well-being. It will, I think, be best if my contribution to the debate at this stage is confined entirely to the commercial aspect of the matter, and at a later time, if I have your Lordships' leave, perhaps I can comment briefly on some of the points raised in the debate. This does not, of course, mean that either your Lordships' House or the Government are anything but extremely conscious of the social and environmental aspects of this question as well.

829
Your Lordships may recall that it is just one year to the day that the noble Lord, Lord Inglewood, introduced a Motion which enabled us to debate the social aspects; and more recently, of course, the Government have announced the setting up of a Standing Royal Com-mission on Environmental Pollution. I trust, therefore, that I may properly con-fine myself to the commercial and industrial aspects of the question, although in doing so I do not intend to follow the noble Lord, Lord Erroll, into the fascinating issues which he raised of the complete adequacy of market forces for dealing with this question. My starting point is the simple one that much scrap and waste, if recovered, can be used instead of virgin raw materials in our industrial processes. Many such raw materials are not indigenous but have to be imported. Recovery of scrap, there-fore, can make a valuable contribution to the balance-of-payments problem, and it is good husbandry in relation to the national economy not to squander any resources if we can possibly avoid it.
I have been asked in this connection by the noble Baroness to give the figures of the foreign currency cost of waste paper and scrap metal. In the steel industry, imports of ferrous scrap in 1969 amounted to 290,000 tons, at a cost of £5,672,000. Imports of waste paper in 1969 were 52,000 tons (and my figures confirm those given by the noble Baroness) at a cost of £880,000. In the existing circumstances of buoyant demand for iron and steel, all ferrous scrap finds a worthwhile market. I do not think we need fear that import-saving opportunities in the recovery of ferrous scrap are being neglected. Some 20 million tons of ferrous scrap is indeed recovered annually, and accounts for almost half of the crude steel production, and an even higher proportion of iron castings. Usually imports are negligible, and even in the circumstances of last year accounted for little more than 1 per cent. of our total consumption of scrap.
In the case of waste paper, our imports last year accounted for some 3 per cent. of consumption, but they were greatly exceeded by our exports. I do not think there is any doubt that more could be done in this country to recover waste paper, and to reduce still further the pro-portion of imported wood pulp going into
830
paper and into board manufacture, with savings of foreign exchange. We are always likely to need to import some quantity of waste paper, since certain grades are not available in the United Kingdom, and because shortages are bound to occur from time to time, as demand and supply get out of phase. The noble Lord, Lord Erroll, raised the question of the import duty. Representations, as he will know, have been made on this point, and are being considered by Her Majesty's Government. In general, the view that has been taken is that the removal of the import duty might discourage local authorities from interesting themselves in making attractive contracts with paper mills.
Perhaps I may turn now to the other side of the matter, which the noble Baroness raised—domestic refuse collection. I appreciated very much the references which she made to the industrial and social importance of those who under-take this work. At the present time the Ministry of Housing and Local Government have a technical Working Party, and they are examining all aspects of refuse disposal organisation. Their report, which is expected this year, will give the Government a good deal of expert guidance on the part which local authorities might play in this matter.
A report has been prepared by the Ministry of Technology's Warren Spring Laboratory on The Treatment of Domestic Waste, and this will shortly be made avail-able. It estimates that some 18 million tons of domestic refuse arises annually in the United Kingdom, and costs local authorities some £15 million for disposal before the deduction of the amount secured for salvage. The quantity of refuse is rising, and it is expected that it may reach the figure of 29 million tons by 1980. If some economic means could be found for recovering all the scrap metal and waste paper in this refuse, substantial savings to the balance of payments would clearly be achieved.
How can we ensure the fullest practicable use of waste material? I want to emphasise that this is a mater of some complexity, as noble Lords will have found in preparing themselves for this debate. Scrap and waste are not homogeneous. The most important categories are ferrous scrap, non-ferrous scrap, chemical waste, textile waste, waste

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paper, plastic waste, and rubber; and although there are other categories these are the most important. As in so many subjects, there is no simple prescription which applies to all of them—no simple key to the whole problem. Scrap and waste can arise, for example, at different stages in manufacture. They can arise at the primary manufacturing stage or later, at the processing stage. While it is an element in good industrial production planning to seek the reduction of the waste material in the course of manufacture, it is probably very hard to eliminate it completely. As we have just been seeing, scrap and waste are found in the hands of consumers, or leave the hands of consumers in categories and ways with which we are all familiar.
The relative importance of different methods of tackling the problem varies according to the waste with which we are concerned. We owe a debt, which we ought to acknowledge, to the various reclamation trades, the scrap and waste merchants, who make a very useful contribution to the community in the collection, sorting and grading of these commodities, and in endeavouring to match supply and demand. There are a number of constraints, some technical, but some commercial, in securing the fullest re-use of waste. First of all, occasionally the use of scrap and waste in industry as an alternative to virgin material has some disadvantages for the user. For example, he may not always be able to use them for the whole range of his products, but only for the cheaper end of that range. There may be processing costs which can be avoided if virgin materials are used. The amount the user can afford to pay depends on the price he can get for the resulting product and on the net costs to him of using scrap and waste, rather than virgin material. I am sure that in that sentiment, at any rate, I shall carry the wholehearted agreement of the noble Lord, Lord Erroll.
Secondly, the amount of recoverable material varies between one form of waste and another. At one end of the scale we have ferrous scrap and waste paper, almost all of which can be used again. At the other end we have rubber waste, which has been mentioned once or twice in this debate but which so far we have found ways of re-employing only to a limited extent in further indus-
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trial processes. So it is difficult to generalise, whether one is looking at this from the technical or from the commercial point of view.
The third point is that there can be, in the short term at any rate, some mismatch, some disequilibrium, between the generation of waste and the demand for it. The rate at which the waste is generated depends upon society's consumption of the end product, and this grows at a fairly steady rate. Demand for waste, on the other hand, fluctuates with changes in the level of production and, to some extent, in the methods of production of the industries which use it. While a balance can be achieved in the long term, in the short term the supply of and demand for waste can get out of balance, and one of the major problems in some sectors is to find ways of overcoming this difficulty.
The last point I want to make with regard to this relates to transport costs. Perhaps I might take an example from the china clay industry. The china clay tips contain materials which are useful for other purposes; some of them, such as mica, are recovered, but the waste material consists principally of quartz sand, and the use of this in concrete aggregates and other building products is in fact largely confined, because of the high cost of transportation to centres such as the South-East, where it could be quite extensively employed, to the region in which the china clay tips are found. But, as I have said, much is being done already. I have already quoted the ferrous metals field, where 50 per cent. of crude steel production derives from scrap recovery, and in the non-ferrous metals field the figure is around 40 per cent. In these and in other industries the use of scrap and waste forms a crucially important part of industry's whole cycle of operations and they are indeed easily the most important indigenous raw materials. The total value of scrap and waste used annually in industrial processes has been estimated at £1,000 million.
To take a further example, waste paper represents about 30 per cent. of the basic raw material for our paper and board industry. The remaining 70 per cent. is woodpulp and this is for the most part imported. As waste paper substitutes for woodpulp, I need hardly emphasise the importance of its collection and segregation. In the same way, scrap from

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ferrous metals is used as an alternative or complementary raw material to pigiron in steel manufacture. In the case of non-ferrous scrap, the position is very similar. Of more than 2 million tons of non-ferrous metals used by our industries last year, over 40 per cent. came from the re-use of scrap. The value of metal recovered from scrap in 1969 amounted to over £300 million. This indicates the considerable import savings which have been made by the recovery operations in the non-ferrous scrap field. As a last example, in the woollen trade 46 million lb. of shoddy and mungo were used in 1969, representing 13 per cent. of the woollen trade's total consumption of fibres. One could quote other contributions which have been made in other industries—the rubber industry, the plastics industry, and so forth.
The approach of the Ministry of Technology to the problems of reclamation is to work with industry in identifying those areas where useful action is possible and seeking to press forward with that action. The Ministry of Technology cover virtually the whole of the industrial field, and the various divisions of the Ministry will make it their business to evaluate the scope for re-use of waste in the industries for which they are respectively responsible. We have already, of course, conducted and inspired research into better ways of treating waste and finding new commercial applications for it.
I have referred to the Ministry's Warren Spring Laboratory, which has special expertise in the fields of mineral processing and metal extraction. Apart from the work which I have already mentioned, the Laboratory has built up close links with industry, with the trade associations and with local authorities; and in the year 1968–69 the expenditure of the Laboratory on all aspects of scrap recovery was over £100,000. Effort was originally devoted to the recovery and re-use of the constituent metals in complex alloy scrap, such as that which arises in the manufacture of jet engines, but it has since ex-tended to a number of other waste material problems. I have already quoted to your Lordships the report which is shortly to be published on the subject of domestic waste. In the course of its work the Laboratory has developed novel equipment for the physical separation of
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residues and scrap, and this is already in industrial use in this country.
Reference was made by the noble Baroness to the growth and importance of trade associations in this field, and we would endorse what she has said about the growth in their importance. There is now a clear expression of a need for a cohesive approach to problems on behalf of the waste and scrap trade in general. Perhaps the growth of the trade associations was a natural development; per-haps it was due to some extent to the community of interest which established itself in relation to certain issues such as selective employment tax. But, whatever the origins of the growth, we give an unreserved welcome to the recent initiatives which have been taken in this field.
In this connection the noble Baroness also made a reference to the Bureau International de Reclamation. In May, a conference is to be held in London under the auspices of the Bureau at which authorities will come together from a number of countries to discuss the whole problem of reclamation. One of my colleagues from the Ministry of Technology will be opening the conference and will be acting as host at a Government reception to the delegates attending it. I am quite sure that this international gathering will help to focus attention on the problems and enable some of the matters which have been raised, and others which will be raised, in this debate to be pursued in greater detail with the benefit of foreign experience.
The last point to which I should like to refer is that, as a number of noble Lords may know, a Working Party of the waste trade organisations has recently been set up, under the chairmanship of Mr. George Darling, M.P., to consider what possibilities there are of joint action in the future, and to investigate the desirability of setting up new organisational structures. As I said earlier, the Ministry of Technology, through their industry divisions, deal with almost all the trades in question. The Ministry have now decided to match Mr. Darling's initiative with one of their own (and I hope that here I shall not part company with the noble Lord opposite, having established, I am sure, a very good rapport with him by many of the things I have said earlier), and it is our intention to establish a section which will keep

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under review progress in the commercial re-use of waste and consider how far the lessons learnt in one area can be applied in another, and generally serve as a point of contact with the waste trades on issues that go wider than one particular material. I believe that I shall carry the overwhelming majority of noble Lords with me when I say that we believe that this action which we are taking, like this debate this afternoon, will forward the consideration of, and action in, this very important field.
4.19 p.m.
BARONESS HYLTON-FOSTER: My Lords, before apologies are abolished, may I explain to the House that, owing to an engagement, I may not be able to stay until the end of the debate. I have apologised to the noble Baroness and to the noble Lord who will wind up, and I now apologise to the House, although I still hope very much that I shall be able to be here. Then I should like to say what a blessing it is that this debate has been initiated at this time, and what a debt we owe to the mover of the Motion for making us all think about this subject.
The problem of waste in towns was very much on our doorsteps during the dustmen's strike, and of course the problem of waste in the country is there for all to see—broken bottles, dirty paper, polythene bags all left lying about. That is apart from the dumps of anything from motor cars to beds and mattresses. With due respect to the noble Lord opposite, I do not think he is a collector, while I am a collector of a number of many of these properties for charities. I do not collect mattresses, but I happen to know that mattresses are used in this country by the Salvation Army. They take them to bits and put them together again.
My Lords, we are living in a throw-away society and there is very little re-use of waste. This is now a national problem which needs to be tackled before it is too late. So far as I know, there is little re-use of glass, despite the fact that substantial quantities of the principal ingredients have to be imported, and in the country broken glass creates a very real danger, first, with forest fires, then with animals getting cut by glass and also with animals eating the glass. Of course it gets into their intestines, causes hæmorrhage and kills them. This problem
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is likely to increase if, as we are told, polythene soft drink bottles are to be replaced by glass bottles. That will increase the amount of waste glass, which is already a terrible problem.
I believe also there is no re-use of plastic bags, or indeed plastics of any kind, and again all country lovers know how absolutely revolting they look, scattered about the countryside and blown about in the wind, and what a terribly long time it takes for them to disintegrate, if they ever do. Again, this plastic brings great hazards to animals, because if they pick it up and eat it, it gets entwined in their guts and they die. At the moment I think I am right in saying that plastic forms only about 1 per cent. of our waste, but with the rapid increase in plastic goods and P.V.C. goods in particular it is a problem, because these materials can be destroyed only by incineration, and that figure of 1 per cent. will rapidly rise. It will also create another problem, I understand, of phosgene gas being given off by the fumes from incinerators.
Tin can be salvaged, but I would suggest that we might go back to some of our war-time habits and perhaps the housewife could be encouraged to keep certain things separate. I have in mind particularly tins and newspapers. As has already been mentioned, the United States of America are well behind us in matters of salvaging waste materials, but they are spending huge sums on research, including research on the salvaging of precious metals, mainly platinum, gold and silver, and on turning garbage and waste paper into gasolene and oil. Paper has been mentioned, so I will not say much about that except that it seems extraordinary that it is too expensive for the local authorities to collect it because they cannot get a sufficient length of contract to make it possible for them to do so. I believe that paper forms between 65 and 70 per cent. of our waste today and the figure is increasing, and if only it could be salvaged, as has been said, large quantities of wood pulp need not be imported and so there would be a saving on our balance of payments.
So it seems that very little re-use is made of waste materials. I believe 20 per cent. is incinerated or pulverised, and the remaining 80 per cent. is disposed of

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by means of controlled tipping; and as space throughout the country is rapidly disappearing I suggest that much more thought and research should be given to the method known as composting. I believe that was tried in this country some years ago but that it failed because too many foreign bodies were left in the compost. Since then great strides have been made in separating waste, and Holland has solved this problem and uses compost as a natural method of dealing with suitable waste. In this country at the moment we have nine compost plants. There are three in Edinburgh, five in Leicestershire, of which four are brand new, and one in Leatherhead; and I wondered whether I might tell your Lordships, in case some of you do not know, a little about the history of com-posting which Holland has been using for such a long time.
Up to the year 1900 composting was the common method of disposing of their waste, but after that, with the introduction of sewerage, the process was complicated and the compost was fouled. Then there was the introduction of artificial fertilisers, which became fashionable, so composting went out of business. They then had dumping and burning. The dumps had to be far away from towns because in those days they were fairly primitive and attracted many flies. Then it was found that the dumps took too much space, because Holland is a small country and there was nowhere to put them, even after reclamation. So burning was adopted, which was quick and hygienic. But the incineration plants were expensive and they produced smoke and gas, and in Holland even between the years 1900 and 1930 they were worried by air pollution. Then the stuff which would not burn had to be removed, which caused more problems, and of course the burning destroyed valuable organic matter. So in 1931 they made a start with the processing of town refuse on a large scale. This started in The Hague. Between 1950 and 1961 they had 14 Danish-manufactured compost plants and they produced something like a quarter of a million tons of compost (it is probably more now) of which 38 per cent. goes to agriculture, 38 per cent. to horticulture and the remaining 24 per cent. to the creation of playing fields and airfields and parks. Many of your Lordships will
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have seen the lovely bulb fields in Holland. They are fed with this compost.
Now how did we get on compared with them? So far as I can find out, we did not start until about 1961, when Leather-head was the first town in this country to start composting. They started it, oddly enough, with the same type of machine that the Dutch had been using for so many years. It is excellent, but one of the problems is that a magnet removes the metal particles while all the rest of the foreign bodies have to be separated by hand, and, as your Lordships will understand, this is a thoroughly dirty job. The compost is sold to nurserymen and householders. Fanners are not very receptive about it yet, but at any rate the demand in both countries well exceeds the supply. I put it to you, my Lords, that the object of using compost is to return to the soil the much needed humus following the depletion which has taken place over the past years, and I under-stand that at the request of the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food the Agricultural Advisory Committee is to investigate the theory that soil fertility and structure are being affected by the dramatic progress in farm food production. So in view of the fact that many fertilisers are now thought to contain poisonous substances which cause pollution in the rivers, is not this another reason for using compost?
As I am not an engineer or a scientist but just an ordinary person I am indeed most grateful for the help which has been given me by the Director of Cleansing in the Westminster City Council, by the Leatherhead Engineers' and Surveyors' Department, and by the Nether-lands Embassy. They have all taken a tremendous interest in this problem, and I think this is most encouraging. But it seems to me that more research is needed into the automation of the separation of recoverable materials and into a nation-wide system of composting, so that the whole process may be made much cheaper, and to solve the problem of where to put the waste and at the same time return to the land some of the humus it has lost. So we are left with the three methods of waste disposal: incineration, with loss of organic matter; controlled tipping, with before long no-where to tip, and composting, which

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solves the problem of where to put the garbage and returns to the soil valuable and much-needed humus. I hope that before long the Government will see that the greatest of these is composting.
4.32 p.m.
BARONESS BROOKE OF YSTRAD-FELLTE: My Lords, I shall intervene in this debate for only a very few minutes this afternoon, and I apologise for the fact that I have had the temerity to address your Lordships twice on two successive days, although I can promise you that this will be an even shorter speech than my speech of yesterday. I want to draw attention to the problem of hospital waste, most of which is, un-fortunately, quite unsuitable for re-use in any form. There is a considerable amount to deal with and it is an extremely costly undertaking. With the growing emphasis on disposable goods and the packaging of instruments and dressings and so on which are distributed throughout the wards from a central sterile sup-plies department, the volume of waste generated by hospitals increases and will continue to increase.
There are three main categories of hospital waste. The first is combustible and includes infected waste which needs to be destroyed immediately. The second consists of unburnable household refuse such as tins, bottles and ashes, which must be collected and dealt with by the local authority. The third is made up of products which could have a resale value such as food swill, fat, bones, clean paper, rags and metal. Incineration has long been regarded as a thoroughly effective method of refuse control. It destroys bacteria and reduces a large bulk of waste material to a small quantity of ash.
To-day the emphasis, quite rightly, is on clear air, and it is important that the old plant which is in use in many of our hospitals should be replaced by more modern and efficient incineration machinery if the increased demands now made upon it are to be dealt with adequately and without the emission of filthy smoke into the atmosphere. Modern incineration need not be an entirely unproductive affair if plans are made for the heat generated by combustion to be beneficially utilised. It is possible to draw
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a useful supply of hot air or hot water from large-scale plant, though this is easier in factories throwing out a lot of uniform rubbish than in a hospital where the waste is extremely mixed. But the main concern of hospital authorities must be to get rid of their waste as hygienically as possible, and that is the reason why there is not more scope for the commercial re-use of hospital waste material.
4.35 p.m.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, all of us were extremely interested and I think highly amused by the, as it were, Hong-Kong stretch that the noble Lord, Lord Errol of Hale, did with the bed spring finishing up with a piece of Canton straight wire. But as for his argument that this ought to be left to the free play of the market, I am very much afraid that I cannot go along with him. I welcome not only the Motion put down by the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, but also the statement she made in moving it, for I think it widened the scope of the debate to justify me in the approach that I hope to make to the subject.
The noble Lord, Lord Errol of Hale, reminded me of the classic dereliction of John Barr's book, Derelict Britain, in which he wrote:
"Our grandfathers tore wealth from this land, willing us a prosperity devalued by dereliction. Are we to do the same for our grandchildren? If we do, they will curse us and they will be right to do so."
The dereliction of which John Barr wrote represents the industrial waste of long decades, covering a vast acreage of, I think, over 120,000 acres in England, Scotland and Wales; and coal tips alone I think amount to some 28,000 acres, or expressed in tonnage, some 2,000 million tons.
I see these figures as a warning and a challenge, a warning to see whether we cannot place on industry some responsibility for disposing of its waste pro-ducts as it makes them without massive spoliation of amenities. If so charged, I believe industry could and would find good use for much that is now wasted. It is a challenge to discover uses for the waste that we have inherited from the past, and the exercise will be all the more valuable if we can use some of this wastage to avoid new dereliction and

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the extravagant and prodigal use of other natural resources, all of which, as my noble friend Lord Delacourt-Smith has said, are limited.
In the extensive road and civil engineering programme we have before us, there are opportunities which will not return, for once roads are built they are scarcely likely to be duplicated in our life-time. That we have lost such opportunities cannot be in doubt. May I give what may be something of a classic example by way of lost opportunity? When the Holy-stone section of the Tyne Tunnel road was constructed, the contractor obtained 350,000 tons of fill material from a borrow pit while suitable material was available from a pit heap only two miles away. The use of that colliery waste would have removed an area of dereliction, whereas exploitation of borrow pits means extracting material from enormous holes dug near the project. Borrow pits are peculiarly competitive in road and civil engineering projects where fill material is required; for when colliery shale, which is drawn from the waste tips, is used it is generally transported, at some point, on the public highway and the vehicles involved are liable for excise duty. But in the case of borrow pits alongside the roadworks, vehicles not using the highway are duty free, and experience shows that the cost of transport is a significant factor in tendering. There is also the question of liability to rating. The colliery tip being used is liable for rating, as I understand the borrow pit is not.
Another lost opportunity was the M.4, where 5 million tons of fill was required, and at least 2 million tons of waste material could have been supplied from the West Country and South Wales. British Rail is on record in the Reading Mercury for January 10 this year as saying that it offered to bring 2 million tons of bulk fill from these two areas. This would have helped in a big way to avoid spoliation of the countryside. If in fact that had been done, the railway system would have benefited tremendously, and the need for grant aid on the London-Westbury line would have been considerably relieved. But all the fill for the M.4 is to come from borrow pits, and Berkshire County Council seemingly will grant permission to the contractors, subject to appropriate conditions, for the extraction of
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gravel from those pits. Those conditions may well ensure that there is no permanent despoliation, but in the meantime good agricultural land will be put out of use. But perhaps that will not be regarded as a complete loss by those who may benefit by a rise in the price of land values, for I am told that good agricultural land valued at £300 an acre may rise in value to somewhere between £2,000 and £3,000 an acre when sold for exploitation as borrow pits.
Nor, my Lords, can we be ever satisfied that land used for borrow pits will be restored. I have with me a photo-graph which shows an abandoned pit at the Bradbury intersection of the A.1(M) and the A.689. It will indeed be ironic if, eventually, this hole should be filled with colliery shale. I understand that that matter is under consideration. If it is so filled, it is likely to be filled from the same pitheap that was considered too far away for use in construction of the motorway; and the cost of refilling that borrow pit will be additional, I under-stand, to the contract price.
I would ask that when the costing of these road projects is considered they should not be costed in isolation. There is a point in the public interest where the cost of not using waste material should be taken into account. We know that schemes for re-landscaping and re-contouring rank for grants ranging from 50 per cent. up to 85 per cent. I believe that there is a pit at Arley, in Warwick-shire, consisting of black and red shale which could be sold over the next five years for the purposes of road fill. I understand that there is a scheme to re-landscape and to re-contour it. And I wonder whether the figure that has been suggested to me of a quarter of a million pounds for that re-landscaping is very far from the mark. It would certainly be interesting to know how far off the mark it is. I suggest, in all seriousness, that it would be much better to use this fill for roadmaking rather than to create additional spoliation.
Looking to the future, there are many projects—the M.62 motorway, the M.18, the Sunderland by-pass, the A.1 spine road, the M.5 and M.9 (in Scotland), which could absorb nearly 30 million tons of waste material from industrial waste heaps. If this seems a small percentage of the figure I gave earlier as to the total, then I can only say that the challenge

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we face is so great that we cannot afford to miss any chance at all to reduce it. And if, at the end of the day, we have restored derelict land to good agricultural use, or made it available for good industrial development, and at the same time avoided additional spoliation, who can doubt that using this waste in this way is good business?
The Ministry of Transport have agreed the shales which are acceptable for fill purposes, and have given encouragement in a technical memorandum issued in September, 1968, on the use of colliery shales for filling; but they leave with the contractor the choice of acceptable filling material. This is set out quite clearly in a Written Answer given in another place, by Mr. Bob Brown, in reply to a Question by Mr. Bagier, and set out in column 278 of the OFFICIAL REPORT of February 28 of this year. My Lords, if we are serious in our desire to use industrial and commercial waste, and bearing in mind the contribution which might be made for the removal of dereliction, is it not time that we asked whether such an important matter should be left to the contractor? Is this not a matter where wider issues ought to be considered? The cheapest fill for any particular job may well cost the community dearly in the long ran in terms of hard cash and, I think equally important (here I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Byers), in terms of amenity values.
The point I seek to make is this. Positive support for the use of waste material in these schemes, looking at the overall position, assessing the possible saving on grant aid as well as ridding areas of dereliction and avoiding additional spoliation, may well in the long run save money. I would ask that, if we are serious about using waste materials and about avoiding spoliation and dereliction, all proposals for planning consent for borrow pits should be referred to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government for advice; that the Treasury should look at all the financial implications, and that where it is obviously in the public interest the Ministry of Trans-port should clearly specify in contracts for new roads within their control that suitable industrial waste should be used as underfill. This, I appreciate, would
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call for interdepartmental co-operation. Without it, there is danger that the pre-sent situation will continue—indeed, it could at some points deteriorate. It also calls for drive and a sense of urgency, for every time an opportunity is lost, not only to dispose of waste but to dispose of it usefully and constructively, we risk the curse of those who will follow us.
4.47 p.m.
LORD SANDYS: My Lords, I should first like to thank the noble Baroness for giving us this opportunity to discuss this subject. Not only that, but she has given me the opportunity of joint research with her into this most fascinating subject before your Lordships this afternoon. Several months of study have convinced me that I have barely scratched the surface in my part of the researches; and in the course of this debate to-day I think I find myself approximately about half-way between the positions taken up by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale. How-ever, I am greatly inspired by the phoenix, a mythological bird which is the proud badge of certain sections of the reclamation industry. That has stimulated me in my research. Not for nothing did those ancient people, the Phoenicians, derive their name from it. The well-known discovery by some Phoenician merchants of glass as the bases of their cooking pots, formed by silica sand fusing, under the influence of flames, with magnesium lime-stone, is surely a fine example of a profitable discovery coming from waste materials found just by chance.
In the mechanical handling of waste, reclamation mainly employs three elements—fire, water and air—to achieve the desired results. I should like to take fire as my starting point. Of course, the part it plays in the steel industry is simply enormous. The British Scrap Federation has pointed out in its March news-letter the plight which scrap merchants find themselves in to-day. While world scrap prices of up to £30 per ton for the top grade of best heavy melting steel are rising, the fixed United Kingdom price remains the same—between £10 and £12 per ton, which is just about one-third of world prices. It is only natural that British scrap merchants should wish to export all that they can; but they are prevented from doing so by a virtual

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ban on all but a few insignificant grades. The totally inadequate profit margins on the home market have had a deeply depressing effect upon the industry as a whole. Your Lordships will be interested to know, therefore, that membership of the Federation has fallen by over 100, or 13 per cent., in the last three years, caused by mergers or plain bankruptcy. That indicates a most disturbing lack of confidence in the scrap industry and its future, and calls for an appropriate remedy.
The best analysis I have seen of the complex price mechanism which affects the steel scrap or ferrous scrap trade appeared in the Financial Times on February 2 in an article by Rex Winsbury. I do not propose to quote more than three sentences, but I believe they are important and I hope your Lordships will bear with me. Mr. Winsbury wrote:
"One suggested solution to the scrap dealer's dilemma is that there should be an agreed buying price for scrap, as well as an agreed selling price, thus building a fixed margin into the business. If the Restrictive Practices Court accepted one, it might accept the other. The problem is that this would need a degree of co-ordination between scrap dealers that has not so far been displayed."
This is not an insoluble problem, but it calls for recognition by the Board of Trade, the Restrictive Practices Court and the British Steel Corporation. I ask the Minister in his reply to give his assurance that he will draw his right honourable friend's attention to the urgency of this problem for an industry which provides over 30 per cent. of the raw material for British steel at a heavily subsidised price. The noble Lord, Lord Delacourt-Smith, mentioned the figure of 50 per cent., but I think he was taking into account the arisings from the steelmakers themselves. The raw material which British Steel achieves in this way means that the B.S.C. is given an advantage on a plate by the scrap dealers; and, armed with approximately half their feedstock at about one-third of world market prices for scrap, the steelmakers are placed in an exceptionally fortunate position and the British Scrap Federation in a highly detrimental one. Surely it is grossly un-fair that the reclamation industry should suffer from this fixed price handicap, agreed some years ago in totally different circumstances. Another cause for concern for scrap dealers is that local authorities have the policy of incineration of
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waste rather than separation at source. I do not think there is any complaint that they should incinerate combustible waste, but that is not the point. If bulk collection is the order of the day, low grade quality scrap is produced as an inevitable consequence of throwing everything into the incinerator, with metal burnt into metal and mixed with combustible material.
I should like now to turn to a totally different aspect of reclamation; that of water. We look upon it as our birth-right as a natural resource, in much the same way as air; but we should attain a much greater objectivity by heeding the views of those who visit this country from abroad. I like to recall a royal visit by a distinguished head of state, the late King Abdullah of Transjordan, some years ago. At the end of his visit His Majesty was asked what had impressed him most. There was an ominous pause. The visit had included displays of the latest weapons, shows, exhibitions and festivities. But none of these were chosen, and there was a barely suppressed gasp from the Chiefs of Staff when the King said simply, "Your water supply impressed me most of all. It covers the whole country, and all one need do is to turn on a tap."
We place far too low a value on our water supply, and I should like to give an example of this. In this country, a three-bedroomed house has a water rate of approximately £7 10s., taking an average of the water authorities as a whole. The same three-bedroomed house in the United States would have a water rate of £48. The conclusion is obvious: that the statutory water undertakings in the United States are placed in a much more fortunate position, because they almost certainly allow for a much greater margin of profit to be set aside for capital works of a considerable nature.
Our rainfall provides a good supply, but we use very little of it—I believe scarcely more than one-eighth. Our rivers are indeed a prominent example of a commercial re-use of waste for our water supply. Let us look at the Metropolitan Water Board, which supplies no less than five-sixths of London's water supply from the River Thames. Here there is a crucial difference between the approach to the Thames taken by the sanitary

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engineer and by the water engineers, who are solely concerned with a potable sup-ply. This battle has been going on for many years, probably since the great Act of 1852 which set up the Thames Conservancy. On the question of water sup-ply, I would point out that the commercial re-use of our rivers is a very significant part of the total problem of re-use of waste.
One aspect in the pollution field which I feel should be pointed out concerns the River Lea, where their water protection officer is quoted as saying:
"Up until 10 years ago, only two spillages of oil occurred a year. Last year, there were 69."
Action is certainly needed, and in the field of legislation a fine of more than £30 seems to be desirable if we are going to put the code of law in line with current thought. An even greater source of anxiety arises from chemicals, quite apart from oil. The tragic case of the introduction of endosulphan into the Rhine, and the death of enormous numbers of fish a few months ago, is a very significant example. So far as the mixture of water within the Thames is concerned, I understand that the Port of London Authority rightly insist that one part of effluent must always be mixed with not less than eight parts of river water in order to ensure a satisfactory state of the river.
I should like to leave the question of water supply and come finally to the re-use of chemicals, which is a fascinating field. I begin with an extraordinary example of what is being wasted in this country. During the war one firm was called upon to clean the rough castings of undercarriages by use of solvent. Solvent was expensive, and at the end of each process many thousands of gallons were poured away. Some months after the war was over, a chemical engineer visited the factory and made an offer of several shillings per gallon for this particular solvent. He was asked what it contained, and he said, "It is worth three times what I am going to offer you for it, because of the silver". That is the nature of the recovery of chemicals with-in the context of industry. So often the most unexpected by-product can be produced by the native ingenuity of the chemical industry itself. Quite unsus-
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pected profits lie hidden in dumps and yards and places, and there they are lying to this day.
Another aspect of the salvage of chemicals is to be seen all the time at the salvage of warehouses which have been destroyed, or partially destroyed, by fire. Great ingenuity is needed to clean and re-use those containers, which probably have a valuable source of either the same chemical or some other by-product for further use. I will not go further into this subject because others who will be speaking have far greater knowledge of it. I thank your Lordships for your attention.
5.0 p.m.
LORD MCCORQUODALE OF NEWTON: My Lords, in spite of the interchange this afternoon between the noble Lord, Lord Denham, and the Leader of the House, I think we all wish to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, for raising this sub-ject—a subject which is of great interest, with all sorts of facets—in this Conservation year. Indeed, I would go further. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Denham, was wrong and that in these days of hustle and bustle we should ob-serve the courtesies of the House, for the effort of a minute or two. We can always postpone our "Who goes home?" time for a few minutes. That will not kill any of us.
I am not going to follow the last speaker in his most interesting speech, and I wish to talk about waste paper. I have been in the printing trade and the paper trade all my life, and it is a subject which affects all of us. After all, when we walk about the countryside or go into the parks, waste paper is probably the chief culprit in the matter of litter, and anything we can do to channel it or control it, or even to turn to ad-vantage the waste paper that otherwise befouls our countryside, must surely be of great value. We are faced now with a new menace which I read about in the newspapers the other day. The Goujon (Paper Togs) Mill, in Bolton, which according to the Sunday Times is at present producing no fewer than 1,750,000 pairs of paper pants every week, has now allied itself with a very big commercial enterprise and hopes to double, or even treble, that production. What a ghastly

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thought, my Lords! That will enlarge the amount of waste paper that might litter the countryside in a most offensive manner. Yet, on the other hand, it might be turned to advantage.
I wish to speak of how we can deal with this waste paper. One of the most important social problems that faces the highly developed countries in Western Europe, and especially in America, is the disposal of household refuse or waste; and of course here in London the dust-men's strike brought this home to us very strongly. When I was in New York last year, shortly after the great snowstorm there, the cleansing department in New York said that they could deal either with the refuse or with the snow, but not with both. So the State of New York was even worse than London during our strike.
The amount of household refuse produced has doubled in the last 20 years, and experts say that it is likely to double again in the next 20 years. How is it dealt with at present? It is dealt with by controlled tipping, which is rather un-pleasant for the people living near the tips, however careful the authorities are; it is dealt with by pulverisation—a most expensive process; and, finally, it is dealt with by incineration. All these plants are costly, and the cost is estimated to be rising by about 10 per cent. per annum. It has now reached something like £2 per head of the population in this country, or getting on for £100 mil-lion. Consequently, this is a matter of some magnitude.
It is the volume of refuse that matters most, not the weight. The statisticians always tell us everything by weight, and they will not tell us the volume. But in this matter it is the volume that matters, and it has been calculated that paper, cardboard, board of all descriptions and paper products amount in volume to nearly 70 per cent. of all the household waste collected in this country. If we could segregate that 70 per cent. into other receptacles, by providing a sack as well as a bin, a local authority would have to incinerate, tip or pulverise only 30 per cent. of what it handles at the present time, which would mean that the tips would last longer and the saving would be very great. On top of that, we should have a very large quantity of
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paper waste material which would be of value.
I would emphasise the connection between the volume of waste and the saving to the local authority if waste could be divided, because it is very important and is sometimes overlooked. Of course, on a conventional balance sheet we would treat paper salvage as a trading under-taking, divorced from the cleansing ser-vice of which it now forms a part; as a trading operation we would look to see whether it made a profit. But if a book profit of, say, £1 a ton was made on the handling of the paper, it might well mean a saving to the local authority of £7 a ton if we valued the refuse collection and disposal costs as up to £6 a ton, which is a reasonable figure.
Local authorities are not likely to over-look this matter where the officer in charge has both the collection and the disposal under his hand. But in the London area at the present time these are being divorced, and this split respon-sibility—which is causing a certain amount of anxiety in some of the boroughs—is leading the collection authorities to overlook the disposal savings, and merely to look at the actual savings in the use of the waste paper. So I hope that the authorities will look again at this matter.
In 1968 we had something like 1·8 million tons of waste paper. That was 200,000 tons more than the year before, and the figure is rapidly growing. The high-grade paper that is collected from printers, stationers and different industrial concerns is handled by a merchant, and goes back to the mills to be made again into high-grade paper. I wish to refer to the low-grade paper, the salvage paper that is taken up by the local authority. The cardboard, or strawboard, industry, is entirely dependent on waste paper for its raw material; and, indeed, over 30 per cent. of our paper and board production in this country at the present time comes from our own waste. If we had to import mechanical pulp the cost would be over £50 million, so there is a considerable saving in foreign exchange involved here.
Theoretically, something like 85 per cent. of all waste paper should be capable of being recovered, but at the present time we are recovering only about

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30 per cent. During the war, when pressure was on and everybody was recovering everything, the figure rose to something like 50 per cent. But if, instead of collecting only 30 per cent., we could push the figure up to about 35 per cent. there would be an enormous difference. If it were available, the industry could use greatly increased volumes of waste paper for board, for newsprint and for other grades. As has been said by the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet, and others, not only are we not increasing our recovery figure, we are having to import waste paper from abroad in increasing amounts. Two years ago we imported only 50,000 tons; the latest figure is 52,000 tons.
Another important aspect is that re-search recently done by the trade, not-ably by Reeds, Dixons and others, with the help of Government loans, has developed a new de-inking procedure which will allow waste paper to be used much more freely in the production of news-print, which is at present entirely manufactured from mechanical pulp imported from abroad. Not only will this mean a notable saving in foreign exchange, but should mean a considerable saving in cost of mechanical paper to newsprint. It is a most important breakthrough; but it is essential, of course, that we have the waste paper which we can use.
There have recently been excellent papers in a magazine which, I must con-fess, I had never heard of until I looked into this matter. It has a rather formidable title, that of Environmental Health, and it is the journal of the Association of Public Health Inspectors. It is most interesting and illuminating. Mr. Frank Flintoff has published four articles in successive issues of this paper, with another one at Christmas, on the whole subject of collection of waste by local authorities. Is it worth while? What is the best way to do it? What are the lessons from Sunderland, from Edinburgh, from Swindon, from different parts of the country? He conclusively proves that it is well worth while; that waste collection can be a very profitable affair for local authorities. I know—we all know—that town clerks and local authority officers are overworked and "pushed"; that Government instructions and local councillors demand this and that; but I think
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this is a matter which those who are not taking part should look at again.
We have the position, therefore, that demand for waste paper is growing, that collection can be profitable and that the saving of foreign exchange is consider-able. I would therefore suggest that the time is now ripe—very ripe—for us all to have another good look at this question. At present, out of some 1,365 authorities there are about 475 concerned in the collection of waste paper. The remainder have up to now not found it worth while, or have not been able to get going to do it. The paper and board industry have, especially over the last two or three years, been making great efforts to encourage local authorities to start collecting waste paper. I would urge the Government, in the light of all that I have been saying, to lend their weight to the encouragement of local authorities, and I would urge the local authorities then to encourage their public to segregate their household collections of waste paper both in their own interest, in helping to lower rates, and in the national interest as well.
Further, many authorities could be helped by the Government by means of easier access to sources of capital. Some complain that when they put in applications the Government take such a long time to deal with them. Speedier approval of small capital expenditures would be of great assistance; and if the Treasury could see its way to making investment grants available to local authorities, as indeed they are to industry, for the purchase of plant and equipment for paper baling and sorting, I am sure that that would make a considerable difference in encouraging these local authorities.
My Lords, I have said enough, I hope, to impress upon your Lordships that this is a matter on which we should now, I am quite sure, go forward. If that were done, I believe that we should be taking a real step forward in the relatively mundane but vital sphere of keeping our cities and our countryside cleaner and tidier, and benefiting our economic position at the same time.
5.15 p.m.
LORD STRANGE: My Lords, I believe in politeness; I was brought up to it. I should therefore like to thank the noble Baroness very much for introducing one of the most important subjects that we have in the world to-day—getting rid

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of scrap, coupled with the name "commercialism". The noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, mentioned spring mat-tresses. That took me back many years of my life, when it seemed that the feather mattress went out of fashion. That coincided with the days of an increase in the number of motor cars. It was no uncommon thing to see a feather mattress dumped over a hedge. I dare say there were zoological reasons for disposing of it so quickly. But when the noble Lord was speaking I was struck by an interesting thing. The ethics on which I was brought up are not applicable to materialists. It is no use trying to teach them the ethics on which I was brought up, because they do not count to them. It is no use telling a man, if he puts his feather mattress over a hedge or into somebody else's garden, that he will go to hell, because materialists are in hell already; there is no point in changing their way of life.
I think that perhaps the most interesting point which can be raised, not only in this debate but on many other subjects, is how the ethical code has lost touch with materialism. Materialists have no ethical code at all, so far as I know, and the religious code is not applicable to them. The reason for this is that the religious code—or, rather, the ethical code on which I was brought up— depends on the views and opinions of the evolved man: the evolved man who knows himself, who understands all the influences which influence him in life, which go back to animals and which go back to many that he has created him-self, with complexes and so on. His attitude towards life and towards other people is one of toleration; and this, of course, is the attitude on which are based the ethical codes on which I was brought up and which are not applicable to materialists. So far as I know, they have no basic codes at all. The two noble Lords who were sitting on the Front Benches have just left, and I think that is just as well because it occurred to me to say that in most approved and brilliant speeches they represented the attitude of materialists completely: if scrap did not pay, there was no obligation to do anything about it at all. It must pay. There was no question of Government grants or of researches to try to make scrap pay. They both agreed:
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if scrap is not commercial, it does not pay.
Many years ago I happened to be standing on the railway station at Baltimore (which is an unlikely place for anybody to be standing) waiting for something—I think it was a train. I was watching an American across the other rank who was also waiting for something. I do not know what he was waiting for; but he was a human snowstorm. He was eating little things, and there were bits of paper coming out of his pocket and pouring down beside him. It really was extraordinary. Now I understand that in America the "litter drop" of the population is 3 lb. to 5 1b. per day for every person. This, I would say, is alarming.
When it came to the littering of the world around us with scrap, I wondered whether it was right or wrong. Many people said it was wrong to take out-of-date electronic equipment and drop it on the moon and leave it there to rot. They thought it was wrong to put up satellites. I came to the conclusion (I do not know if it is wrong, but I think it is right) that when we look into the bigger-scale materialism in the void around us, we find that dumping is the rule. It may be that it is the rule of materialism—I believe it is. We find the place littered with dying suns, with useless planets, with chunks of rock, with meteorite displays that may replace for children the fireworks of which they are going to be deprived.
This is all going on through insella dust —and I spell it, the word, because it is not in the Oxford English Dictionary and I know that my unprepared, unwritten speeches are a terrible trouble to Hansard. The dust is as the dust on picture frames. It seems to be a grind-up of all the junk and bad experiments that do not come off in the material world around us. I believe that there may be some purpose, some sense in it. It may be that the rule of materialism is to dump. Of course we are looking into the void around us and finding that whatever the movement is which causes materialism it has a terrible problem: it has to make matter out of a force; and we are not sure what that force is. It has to make suns; and they have to die down; so any created matter which has been made in space can be of use in being reorganised and utilised

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in the creation of further energy or matter. For instance, it seems to me—I do not know—that a dying sun may hook up and become a planet. But there seems to be a definite reason that material has in scrapping. We should have this reason, too. We should scrap. That seems to be the fundamental rule of materialism. The fundamental rule of ethics is not to scrap but to preserve, and not to put your mattress into somebody else's garden. If that is the case then we should scrap, not as a commercial process but as the rule of materialism. We should scrap in order that our scrap in the small world that we live in may be used again. That must be the rule of materialism. I have not made myself clear, I am afraid: I did not think I should. But I expect that your Lordships may have a little idea of what I am saying.
To go back to mattresses. Mattresses are interesting things. A man whose name I will not mention—and I shall finish on this story—started a business buying feather mattresses. In those days he bought them all over the country. He went searching round for them. He took the cotton from them; it was valuable for paper—a better quality paper than a newspaper. He also did something with the feathers. I do not know what it was, but he had a sale for them. In those days (it was a long time ago) I suppose he might have carried them in bundles and sold them to be burned before ladies who were about to faint—which I understand was a cure. But the reason for his interest was commercial. That is the point. He realised that when people get old they get illish; they get disagreeable; they get deaf; they get cross, and their relatives go to see them as little as possible; and then they get frightened of being left alone to starve. So, quietly, they sew up some money and put it inside their mat-tresses. They do not expect to die; but when they are dead they find they have forgotten to tell anybody about the money. Opening one of those mattresses, this man got a "bonanza" mattress—it was full of gold coins. And he was able to retire and to go into a more pleasant occupation.
5.24 p.m.
LORD RITCHIE-CALDER: My Lords, I must say that it is very difficult to follow that delightful speech by the
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noble Lord, Lord Strange. But I think that he has something here. I think we may be known—since ours will be the last civilisation: who is going to remember us I do not know—as the "Non-returnable Civilisation". Because, as Lewis Mumford once said, civilisation began not with neolithic tilling but with the making of containers, pots. I have the horrible thought that civilisation, having begun with Lewis Mumford containers, will end with containers—plastic containers, which no organic method can destroy; plastic wrapping, plastic non-returnable bottles: plastic—the world that died of plastic! The spoil heaps of our civilisation, if anyone is going to discover them from outer space, will be identified not by the broken earthenware but by plastic ice-cream tops. This will be a civilisation that went not with a bang but a ripple.
To-day, in the United States—we keep on coming back to that country as the really horrible example; nothing here is as bad as it is there—30 million tin cans are opened every day and thrown away. Unlike plastic, they might even rust away; but at the moment they are collected, squeezed and dumped all over the place. In this country, off the mouth of the Thames where the two great blocks of Atlantic water, one from the North of Scotland and the other through the Channel, meet on the Dogger Bank beyond the estuary of the Thames, the fish are twice as numerous as anywhere else around our coasts. This is because we dump into the Thames 4,000 tons of sludge daily. It is taken out to the Thames Estuary by barges and tipped. A lot of it comes back on to the beaches, as we know. A lot of it goes out as a very rich nutrient and encourages fish to grow. It encourages something known as eutrophy, which is different from atrophy: it means that everything grows more vigorously, including seaweed. These nutrients are largely wasted. The phosphorus in the increased catch is estimated at a 120 tons a year, which is only 4 per cent. of what goes out in the sewage. It is ironically true that we take the phosphorus out of the great prairies of America; we cart it across the sea in the shape of wheat and flour and corn; we eat it and then it goes out into the North Sea as sewage to feed the fish. That

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is the largely irrecoverable phosphorus or phosphates.
May I turn now to an example nearer home in Scotland. The Lochgelly Burn is a very small stream, a course, which is the responsibility of the National Coal Board—why, I do not know; but they have to clean it out. At one spring-cleaning they recovered from the Lochgelly Burn four spring mattresses, 26 iron bedsteads, 30 angle irons, six pillars, six big baths, nine porcelain basins, one sofa, one armchair, four water cisterns, four kitchen sinks, one washing machine, six clothes poles, 46 sheets of corrugated iron, three prams, four fireside fenders, six bicycles, seven motor tyres, 13 lengths of gas pipe, one gas meter, nine truck-loads of bricks, tins, cans, wood, and the carcases of two dogs, one cat and four hens. That does not take into consideration any of the normal sewage which was there. That is identifiably recovery! But what do you do with it? As has been pointed out, it is very difficult to dispose even of the springs of the mattresses: although I must say that I thought, on listening to the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale, talking about straightening out springs, that maybe the Chinese ought to do something about straightening out Lord Erroll, because if we are going to contemplate this situation with the complacency with which he contemplated it we shall be asking for ultimate disaster and it may not be so very remote.
This is not something about which you can sit back and let what might be called the normal commercial process prevail. It is not manifest to anybody except Steptoe and Son that you can make a living out of waste. You have to go about it systematically. What we want to know is what we are doing here through Government research, not only to find out what is going to waste (many of us know that), but how to recover it and how to convince people that it ought to be recovered.
I can give three examples of the most fantastic use of waste. The first one is germanium in transistors. It is the basis £7 an ounce and is the basis of transistors. Imagine what we can do with germanium in transistors. It is the basic of one of the biggest technological expansions in our age. From where can we get germanium? It can be obtained from flue dust from chimneys. If you can
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recover it you are in business—£7 an ounce!
We had the wonderful story of penicillin. Your Lordships may remember that penicillin was developed at Oxford by Florey and Chain. It was a mould which had to be fed with rich nutrients. Originally we got the nutrient from a distillery in the East End of London. Then, when Florey and Heatley found that they could not make it in sufficient quantities they went to the United States —this was during the war, in 1942—to persuade the big companies in America that they ought to go in for antibiotics. It is one of the ironies—an example which I would commend to the noble Lord, Lord Erroll of Hale—of what is not economic unless you can persuade people to handle it, and make it so plain that it is such a commercial possibility that they are not taking any risk at all.
None of the corporations which have now made fantastic fortunes out of nutrients would look at it. Florey went to Peoria, to the fermentation laboratories of the Department of Agriculture in the United States which is concerned with distilling and fermentation. They asked him, "Do you think that we could use corn-steep liquor as a nutrient?" Heatley, who was a chemist, said, "Of course." Corn-steep liquor as a waste was costing the corporation, the cornflour makers, and the distillers millions of dollars a year because it was so rich in sugar, and so on, that even in America it was not allowed to be put in the sewers —though I may tell your Lordships that a lot of it got away into Lake Michigan and elsewhere. But this was so rich that they could go into what we now call deep culture of penicillin in great batches, with no limit to what could be done. It was possible to take what had been a throw-away, a non-product, a by-product, and make a fortune out of it.
My Lords, the atom bomb began with uranium waste. The uranium came from the slag heaps of Katanga. It had been thrown away because they had been looking for radium: and everything else was thrown away. Now they throw away the radium in Katanga and in Canada. Radium is no longer the sought product but uranium is, and the material for the American bomb came from "tailings". It is possible to go on ticking off the waste and realising how

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much is going to waste. But the point I wish to make very strongly is that in this atomic age we have the most dangerous waste of all. We have all the fission debris of all the by-products of bombs, or of atomic energy for peaceful uses. This is something which has concerned many people for a long time.
I was chairman of a commission of inquiry in the University of Chicago on "living with the atom": how we could get along with the peaceful atom and forget about the possibility of bombs for war. In our inquiries the greatest concern was about waste. It is radio-active, and some of it, like plutonium, if it gets into the waste system, will last actively and dangerously for a half-life of something like 25,000 years. That is "half-life". You can reckon that the final last kick of plutonium may be in something like 250,000 years, so what we have created in the shape of waste will persist in an active form for centuries, for thousands of years—for a quarter of a million years. This is something we have to dispose of.
My Lords, I am not talking about how we are to dispose of low level waste. By the way in which low-level atomic waste which goes into the Thames has been treated, Harwell has set an example for everybody. Now we can catch fish in the Thames. The water which was going into the Thames from the atomic plant was so much better than the water in the river that they had to do something about the river water. I will not discuss the question of the disposal of radio-active trash, the stuff that gets contaminated and is dumped somewhere in the sea. That is another matter which is of concern to a great many people. But the one thing I should like to know from the Minister is what we are doing with and about the nuclear waste that we produce from our generating stations and from our participation in the deterrent?
This is something we must look at from two points, from the point of view which the noble Baroness, Lady Emmet of Amberley, has raised, about what is commercially possible, and also what we ought to do with it and whether we can make a substantial commercial recovery. I say this partly in the hope that my noble friend will give me an answer,
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and also in order to make this point. We have to dispose of the waste, we have to bury it. In the United States, at Hanford, in the State of Washington, there is what is euphemistically called "the graveyard" where there are millions and millions of gallons of nuclear waste —"gallons", because the waste is in a fluid state, in nitric acid, in great containers, partly buried in the ground. It generates enormous heat because of the atomic activity, and it has therefore to be kept cool. Your Lordships will know what happens if there is a power cut and a refrigerator system stops. Imagine what would happen if this refrigerator system stopped! Incidentally, this is built on an earthquake system, and that is a matter about which we are having arguments with the Atomic Energy Com-mission. But millions and millions of gallons of radioactive waste are stored there. If that system broke down, the waste would go into the source waters of the Columbia River and would spread.
Since we in Britain are "canny", one of the great ideas at Harwell in the early days of nuclear development which was pretty obvious, was to take out the active material and sell it. The trouble with taking out the active material waste is that, in a world sense, you are distributing it all over the world in smaller quantities. It is safer in the ground if you have not the proper safeguards to look after it and distribute it. So I suspect that the danger is not coming from the atomic waste but from the atomic process of waste. I should be glad to know if in fact we are doing something, both to get an adequate return on this waste and to make sure that the waste is not going to destroy us. In America in the last 20 years it has cost them more to bury live atoms in Hanford nuclear Giza than it cost to bury all the Pyramid Kings of Egypt.
5.40 p.m.
LORD ABERDARE: My Lords, I can-not follow the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder. I wish I could, but I have not his deep scientific knowledge. I cannot wait to examine my flue dust to see whether it has germanium in it. The noble Lord did not explain whether it matters what fuel one burns in the grate in order to get flue dust containing this material, but if it is solid fuel it is the

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best advertisement yet for Lord Robens's call for the use of solid fuel.
Despite what my noble friend Lord Denham said, I should like to thank my noble friend Lady Emmet of Amberley for introducing this debate. I take my noble friend's point in general. I agree that we do not need always to be fulsome in our thanks to those who introduce the routine debates we have at regular intervals, but this Motion is something rather exceptional and has led to a fascinating and important debate. I should certainly like to express my thanks to my noble friend.
The importance of the commercial use of waste materials is quite clear and has a twofold advantage, which has been made plain in this debate. One is that of saving imports. The example has already been given of the use of metal scrap in the iron and steel industry. My noble friend Lord Sandys made a relevant point here. Unfortunately, this is not a market in which free forces are allowed to operate, because scrap merchants are not allowed to export their scrap and the price is fixed by the one consumer, the British Steel Corporation.
Another obvious area is that of newsprint, on which my noble friend Lord McCorquodale of Newton made an interesting and powerful speech. The number of newspapers that are thrown away into bins every week has always seemed to me to be a terrible waste. I should have thought that in this field, if a process can be operated whereby the ink is removed, then the market forces of my noble friend Lord Erroll of Hale might well come into play, for surely the newsprint industry could afford to pay a little more for waste newsprint and in turn local councils would find it more lucrative to collect it.
The other obvious advantage of the commercial use of waste materials is the prevention of pollution. Obviously, it is much better to use materials in an economic way than to pollute the water or the atmosphere. One interesting use of waste in this way happens in many municipal sewage works, where the sewage is treated bacteriologically to make it harmless, using the forces of nature in a highly economic way. In the process, highly in-flammable methane gas is given off which can be used to provide the heat which is necessary—I believe it has to be about 90 degrees—for bacteriological action to
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be effective. In that way this dangerous, polluting methane gas can be used in the very process of rendering sewage harm-less.
There are other lucrative processes for the recovery of precious metals. My noble friend Lady Emmet of Amberley made a quotation which I have heard somewhat differently in Yorkshire. There it goes: "Where there's muck, there's brass." If there is not brass, there is sometimes other valuable materials. I am told that a large amount of the silver imported into this country is used in photographic processes and here again there is an opportunity for recovering valuable material. It struck me that my noble friend Lady Brooke of Ystradfellte may find some valuable silver deposits from hospital X-ray departments.
It is gradually coming to be realised that there is value in recovering raw materials from what was previously called waste. Indeed, the very word "waste" is now frowned on and the "in" word in this country is "reclamation". In the United States they refer to "secondary raw materials". Even the trade paper has changed its name. It was called Waste Trade Record and is now Materials Reclamation Weekly. I am grateful to the editor of that paper, who helped me a great deal in my research into this question. It was that paper which sponsored an interesting inter-national exhibition on reclamation and disposal at Olympia last year, and also a conference at which some interesting papers were read. The noble Lord, Lord Byers, mentioned another organisation, the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors, and there is also the National Industrial Materials Recovery Association, which is also endeavouring to bring together industries interested in this subject and is doing a great deal of useful work.
I should like to devote myself this afternoon mainly to the question that I know best—and I shall not take very long—the recovery of waste material from coal tips in South Wales. I must declare an interest in that I have unfortunately a number of derelict coal pits in my ownership. I should like to say, as I have said before, that the Derelict Land Unit of the Welsh Office is doing an extremely good job in tidying up these

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derelict areas. In 1969 they approved 25 schemes in Wales, covering 739 acres, and agreed grants amounting to over £1 million. This is certainly progress in the right direction. I am glad to say that the town of Aberdare has the most ambitious scheme in hand, approved and agreed and going ahead. But even 739 acres is not a very great deal when com-pared with the total of 13,000 acres, which it is estimated would respond to treatment in Wales.
Some of these derelict tips contain enough coal for this to be used commercially, and where that is so it is being exploited. It is a well known process. There is a great deal of work going on, and provided that the market exists, all is well. But there are many other cases where the tip may be of more recent origin and does not contain as much fuel as some of the older tips and therefore it is not possible to work the coal. There are other instances where, although the coal could be recovered, for planning reasons it is seemingly impossible to make use of the waste material that remains afterwards.
I should like to follow what my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy said, in asking whether this waste material could not be used in connection with road building. I was interested to see in the South York-shire Times of last Saturday that a tip at Denaby Main Colliery at Pastures Road, Mexborough, is being worked and that, according to the newspaper, the dig-out is being used for road-surfacing purposes. I am aware that it is used in Belgium for such purposes, and I believe there was some research being done on whether this waste could be used in connection with road work. I should be interested to hear from the noble Lord who is to reply whether there is a possibility that this may be so.
But there is another very exciting possibility in the use of this waste material for the manufacture of synthetic aggregates. All over the country we are familiar with the extraction of gravel from pits everywhere for making concrete, and there is bound to come a time —if it has not come already—when either the natural supply will fall short of our requirements, or, for planning reasons, we shall not want to dig any more holes in the ground. When this time comes—
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and, as I say, I think it may well have come already—it surely will be disastrous if we have to import aggregates from overseas. How much better if we could use waste material to make synthetic aggregates!
Moreover, I am told that the synthetic aggregates have certain real advantages: they are of lower density, and thereby provide a better ratio of strength to weight in the manufacture of concrete; they give better thermal and sound insulation; they are better as a fire resistant; yet they do not in any way impair the structure properties of the concrete. I suggest that if we could use derelict land to manufacture concrete we should be killing two birds with one aggregate. In this field we are way behind many other countries. It is worth noting that in France and Germany some 15 per cent. of their concrete manufacture is made with synthetic aggregates; in America, the figure is 20 per cent.; in Japan, it is 30 per cent. Here it is only 4 per cent.
I have come across two processes that are being used in this field. One is being developed by the Newell Dunford Engineering Company, which has set up a pilot plant at Misterton, near Don-caster, for this purpose. Another exceedingly interesting process in Scotland is called "Aglite"; and a new factory was opened by the Minister of State, Scottish Office, last December at a place called Twecher, in Dunbartonshire. This is a co-ordinating factory where three processes take place. It is in a colliery area, and at one end the coal tips are washed and the coal contained removed; the remaining material then goes into a central factory where by a sintering process it is made into a lightweight aggregate called "Aglite". At the final end of the plant the Aglite is mixed with cement and fly-ash, and the resulting product is a concrete block. This would seem to me to be an admirable use for otherwise waste material.
I do not wish to run contrary to what my noble friend Lord Erroll has said, but I should hope that the Government could at least help in encouraging this kind of development, because if it is to be developed at the production end there must also be interest in it from the user end. There must be research by engineers, architects, and by all those engaged in the building industry, into the

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properties of this concrete made with synthetic aggregate. There will need to be new codes of practice for the construction industry if synthetic aggregates come into general use. I believe that the Government could help by encouraging the use of concrete made with synthetic aggregates in new construction, and I hope that perhaps the new section of the noble Lord's Ministry could devote some attention to this possibility. It would involve developing plant, encouraging new designs and the actual construction of buildings using these synthetic aggregates. But once the initial research has been done, and pilot plants have proved successful, then I believe it can result in a profitable new enterprise and a valuable use of materials that are at present going to waste.
5.55 p.m.
LORD ARCHIBALD: My Lords, I must first apologise to the House for not being in my place when my name came in the batting order, but I had a meeting to attend which I thought would be well over in time. However, either some speakers dropped out or there was unusual brevity from those who have taken part in the debate, and I was late in getting back. I am particularly sorry to have missed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton, who I think probably dealt with the point that I want to cover. I must also thank my noble friend Lord Leatherland for agreeing that I might speak ahead of him.
I cannot pretend to follow the width and profundity of my noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder in his wide-ranging review of the world-wide scientific elements involved in this question of waste; nor can I follow the noble Lord who has just sat down on his exceedingly interesting technical survey of certain aspects of this subject. In fact, by comparison what I have to say will probably seem quite trivial, because I am going to deal only with the question of waste paper. I deal with it partly because it is almost a year ago (it was, in fact, on March 26 last year) that I asked a Question in your Lordships' House about the representations made at that time by the Joint Wastepaper Advisory Council regarding the dangerously low level of waste paper stocks, as they put it, in that particular month. My noble friend Lord Brown
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replied, and said, in effect, that this was primarily a matter for local authorities.
Taking my cue from that, I thought that I ought to try to stimulate my own local authority. I collected signatures— some from Members of your Lordships' House of all Parties, and others from Members of no Party, or of no known Party—for a letter to our local newspaper to urge the Camden Borough Council to institute a separate collection of waste paper. However, the chairman of the appropriate committee of the borough council replied in due course to the effect that central collection of waste paper was uneconomic. That was the end of that particular exercise.
Some months ago, however, the Scout Association announced a scheme of waste paper collection in association with a leading firm of paper merchants. I did not myself take any active part in this scheme, but my wife, on hearing of it, got in touch with the scouts and arranged for them to collect from the immediate area in which we live. They now make collections every two weeks; they are pleased with the amount they collect, and their funds will benefit accordingly. The Director of Fund Raising for that Association estimates that if it were fully organised this waste paper collection could contribute £25 million per annum towards our balance of payments. Even now, when our balance of payments is well in credit, a contribution of £25 million per annum is not to be despised.
Almost a year from my first Question in the House on this subject—that is to say, on February 20 of this year—a further warning was published by the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council on the serious shortages of waste paper. Their figures showed that Britain imported more waste paper last year than in any other single year. The Advisory Council placed the blame on the collecting agencies, particularly the local authorities. This is the case where, I am afraid, the advice of the noble Lord, Lord Erroll, that market forces should prevail, would not be applicable.
I then made what I must describe as a mistake on my part. I wrote a letter to The Times, and it was published in the Business News section. This was on February 27. I say that it was a mistake

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because although it produced two supporting letters, it also produced a large number of personal letters which I have neither office, secretary nor other resources to deal with. These personal letters ranged from describing what I had written as "fantastic" to those that were in complete support. Some useful points emerged from those letters. One correspondent pointed out that the Borough of Epsom and Ewell operated a scheme for the separate collection of waste paper, each dust cart towing a trailer for the waste paper. In one four-week period—and I quote from a letter from the Town Clerk—the income was £1,345 8s. 6d., which for a four-week period is not neglible. The other two letters told me that the Edinburgh Corporation also have a waste paper collection. Large jute sacks are supplied, and collection is made once a fortnight by the same department as deals with ordinary rubbish collection, but quite separately. As a Scot I think I may be permitted to say that if the Edinburgh Corporation organises such a scheme it cannot be uneconomic.
My Lords, if such different local authorities as Epsom and Ewell, in the South, and Edinburgh, in the North, can do this, why not others? Why is it uneconomic for other authorities? Perhaps the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council should be-come a little more imaginative, and give a lead to local authorities, instead of just issuing an annual complaint about the shortage of waste paper. If it is too ex-pensive to collect waste paper separately from the private householder, can we be assured that, apart from collections from private householders, there is an efficient system of collection from all the big con-cerns—the local authority offices, the offices of nationalised industries, hospital groups and all the other big sources of waste paper. I have not given notice of this point to my noble friend, but it is one which could be followed up. If such a system were in operation the saving on imports could obviously be substantial: we are not talking about small or insignificant figures.
I wonder whether the Board of Trade could persuade the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council to be less advisory and less complaining, and more active in giving a lead and in doing some organi-
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sation in this field. I have had a letter from the secretary of that Council, which I will pass on to my noble friend who is to reply to this debate. I am bound to say that I find the letter in some respects quite extraordinary, and in other respects I cannot understand why there has been the delay in sending me the letter, and what the point is that the secretary described to me. He gives quite sensible warnings about not collecting waste paper when there are no facilities for disposal; in other words, not to organise collections in areas which are so remote from the users of waste paper that the trans-port costs involved would make the whole matter ridiculous.
I think I might sum up my remarks by saying that in my view the Board of Trade should consider whether there is not a case for reconstituting the machinery for encouraging waste paper collection and disposal. I recognise that waste paper is only one of the many fields —and perhaps not the most important one—in which re-use of waste could be considered. However, it is an important field, and in some respects a much simpler one than many others that have been discussed this afternoon, and I hope that it will be very carefully reconsidered.
6.7 p.m.
LORD LEATHERLAND: My Lords, if I were to comment on the speeches that we have heard this afternoon I should be inclined to say that they contained only a minimal amount of waste material. But as I rise I can hear the cynics whispering, "Ah, but he is a newspaper man. For the past 45 years he has done nothing else but create waste paper. A case of Satan rebuking sin." As we are talking about sin, I ought to explain that before I became a kind of assistant curate in the parish of newspapers I was something like an archdeacon in the diocese of salvage. How did that come about? It came about because when the First War ended and I put aside my sergeant-major's crown, I was appointed by the Birmingham Corporation to create and control a cost accounting system in their salvage and refuse disposal department. I can still recall those charts and statistics which I used to bring to the committee chairman so that he could persuade the City Council that the refuse disposal

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department was a most efficient and economically conducted organisation.
We were very salvage minded. We used to collect thousands of tons of waste paper every year, grade it into the superior ledger paper on the one hand and the newsprint and wrapping paper on the other, and sell it at a considerable profit for the ratepayers. We used to collect old sardine, pineapple and salmon tins, ship them across to Germany, where there was a firm which had a special electric process for de-tinning them, after which they sent the bulk residue to the blast furnaces. It is per-haps a little sad to reflect upon the fact that it could be that those sardine tins came back to us twenty years later in the form of V.ls and V.2s. We also carried on a fairly considerable traffic in the salvage of non-ferrous metals, copper, lead, zinc, aluminium and so on. We took the refuse from the meat markets and fish markets; we put it through a steam digester and created meat meal and fishmeal which we used to sell by the barge load to the farmers of Warwickshire.
We took our old rags, divided them into two sections, and the superior ones went to the restructuring mills of York-shire, while the inferior ones were given a new lease of life for wiping down oily machinery. From the destructor furnaces we produced steam which we used to sell to the electric generating station across the road. With the clinker that we extracted from the furnaces at the end of the operation we used to make concrete slabs which we sold to con-tractors and to the city surveyor. That was all fifty years ago, and there have been many advances since then, but I do not think quite as much is being done as ought to be done. When all is said and done, in a nation which is constantly taking its temperature with a balance-of-trade thermometer we have to regard the substitution of imports as a very important item indeed in our economy.
Some reference has already been made to the extent to which this import saving can be achieved. This is no mere peripheral question. As we have heard, 40 per cent. of the metals used by our non-ferrous industries come from reconstituted scrap; £200 million worth of iron and steel scrap each year goes into the blast furnaces. The woollen industry
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saves £50 million worth of raw wool by using the trimmings and cuttings from our tailors' and garment workers' work-shops and factories. The felt industry, for its manufacture of roofing felt and floor-covering felts, uses large quantities of the inferior type of rag, together with a considerable quantity of surplus hair. As I look around me, my Lords, I do not see very much of that in your Lord-ships' House.
Most of the materials to which I have been referring are very well catered for by the commercial firms in the scrap and waste industry. They very systematically comb the factories and shops and workshops of the country and have this reclamation business organised on a very efficient scale. I would incidentally mention that these scrap merchants—I am not talking of Steptoe and Son; I am talking of the big combines, some of them with tens of millions of pounds' worth of capital—complain that they are regarded as a service industry and there-fore have to pay selective employment tax. They argue that they should be regarded as a manufacturing industry because of the particularly important service they are rendering to the country's economy. I can see part of their argument. The process which they perform is one of many processes which are continued in the factories and in the blast furnaces. I know there may be a Civil-Service argument in favour of drawing a demarcation line somewhere. I would merely add to that that I, of course, have no shares in any waste reclamation company. I rather wish I had.
I now want to turn to waste paper, which is really the subject about which I want to speak. I want to talk of it because I feel that here the local authorities have a direct and major part to play. Some of them, I know, are doing what they should. But let us, by way of a preliminary, look at a few figures. We use in this country seven million tons of paper every year. Two-thirds of this we manufacture ourselves; one-third of it we import. The cost of those imports, an uncomfortable factor in our balance of trade, is £180 million. True, we ex-port £50 million worth of paper, so that the net uncomfortable factor in our balance of trade is £130 million. On top of that, we import £100 million worth of woodpulp every year, and if by collecting and using more waste paper we could

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reduce that £100 million worth of pulp which we now have to import it would be very good indeed for our economy. But, as we have heard, we are not merely failing to produce the amount of waste paper that the paper mills need; we actually imported 52,000 tons in the past year. That, incidentally, is the highest figure in this regard that there has ever been.
That is not the only aspect of this question. On more than one occasion during the past year some of the mills were almost at crisis point. They had only three weeks' stock of waste paper in hand. What are they to do? Are they to be told: "Go on importing waste paper. Go on importing more pulp"? Or are they to be told that a real, concerted campaign will be organised in order to ensure that more waste paper is collected in our own community? This is not a static problem. Go into any supermarket and one sees more and more of what is ungrammatically called "packaging". Look at the newspapers. I know some of them have died in recent years, but others have been born and others have expanded their size, and more newsprint is being used to-day than was the case ten years ago.
Then there has been some reference to what are called the "disposables": disposable paper handkerchiefs, disposable paper dish cloths, disposable paper napkins, of both sorts. And there have been references to the paper panties which are now being manufactured at the rate of millions a month. I have not conducted any personal research into that question, but it is a fact that several factories are at present engaged in the production of those paper scanties. Moreover, the population of the country is increasing. That has nothing to do with what I said in the last paragraph; but as the population increases so will the demand for paper. So this is a problem which is not diminishing as the years go by but is actually increasing.
The amount of waste paper which is collected and delivered to the mills has increased in the last 10 years from 1⅓ million tons to 1¾ million tons, but this is not anything near enough. I do not want to commit anybody to a target, but we could easily collect another million or two million tons each year. But
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where are we to collect it from? The printers' waste, the newspaper offices' waste, the packing firms' waste is all very well catered for by the commercial waste-paper merchants. Therefore, if we are to fill the gap we must turn to the housewives and to the local authorities. The local authorities at the moment are supplying the mills with only about a quarter of a million tons a year, less than ¾ lb. from each household per week. If the housewives of Britain and the local authorities want to hoist the flag saying, "Let us help Britain", here is an opportunity for them to do so; not only to help the country's economy but at the same time to put money into the pockets of the ratepayers.
There are many local councils which are not carrying out the paper collection and salvage that they could. They give various reasons. Some of them are just not interested. Some of them have geo-graphical difficulties, particularly in scattered areas. Some of them say, "We used to collect it but it didn't pay." Then there are others—and I regard this as a serious excuse—which say, "We have been systematically collecting large quantities of paper; we have had it hoarded to overflowing in our destructor yards and depots, and the mills have turned round and told us that they cannot take any more." This is a serious complaint. But I believe that if they had shopped around a little more persistently they would have found mills ready to take it, because there are one or two mills in the country which are prepared to put their hands on anything they can get. But, whatever may be the merits of that excuse, it applies no longer; it is something of the past. The mills are now offering local authorities firm legal contracts for a firm quantity of waste paper every year at a firm price. That, I suggest, makes this a most attractive transaction for the local authorities.
There are local authorities which have been carrying out this work for some years and are prepared to produce their cost accounts—in fact, some have actually published them—showing that when all expenses have been taken into consideration, including amortisation and productivity bonuses to the dustmen, they can show a handsome surplus.
But, my Lords—and now I come to the nub of the situation, which has

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already been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale of Newton— if these councils do not sell their waste paper and get money from it, what are they going to do with it? They have either to burn it or tip it, and in either case it will cost money to their ratepayers. If they burn it, then the capacity of their destructor installation may have to be larger than it would be if they sold the paper; and I am assured by some technologists that a superfluity of waste paper in the furnaces does not lead to optimum combustion. I do not know much about that as an expert: the only kind of flames I know anything about are those that do not come out of furnaces. If the council happens to be one of those which tips its refuse, then its tips will be full to capacity long before they otherwise would be; huge expenditure must be incurred in transporting the refuse from the depot or the collection area to the tip, which is often miles away, and the controlled tip which contains paper needs to have more labour expended upon it than one from which the paper has been extracted.
There is another point which has been touched on by the noble Lord, Lord McCorquodale, but it is something which I learned in my cost-accounting days with the Salvage Department. If you present an ordinary commercial type of profit-and-loss account showing, on the one hand, the costs of collection and, on the other, the revenue derived from the sale of paper, you may get one kind of picture; but surely you have to take these other factors into account—the amount of money that has been saved by not having to burn all this paper or transport it to the tips. There then arises an entirely different kind of picture. A couple of years ago one big city council toyed with the idea of scrapping its special paper salvage system. It called in consultants, and those consultants told the council (and this bears on the point I have just made) that if the paper salvage system was scrapped the refuse collection and disposal would cost an extra £20,000 a year.
My Lords, I said a moment ago that the papermills are now offering firm con-tracts to local authorities. They are doing more than that: one of the big board mills is saying to the local authorities, "We will send our team of work study experts down to your district so
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that they can carry out technical surveys and advise you as to the best and most economical method of organising your waste paper collection." Therefore I think there are very few excuses left for any local authorities not to participate in waste paper salvage. With a well-thought-out scheme—and I emphasise that it must be a well-thought-out scheme —there are savings for the ratepayers, there are productivity bonuses for the workers and there is a distinct gain to the national economy. I should like my noble friend to assure us that a great waste paper salvage campaign will be organised. I do not want it to interfere with private enterprise and I do not want any expenditure (except on a minimal basis) to be incurred; but I think that if the country is roused to the importance of saving our waste paper a very good deal will have been done for the community.
6.25 p.m.
THE EARL OF GOWRIE: My Lords, I will not attempt to follow the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, because he has been dealing with waste paper and I wish to make a few brief remarks about glass and rubber. I would assure him, how-ever, that in my household a piece of paper which rapidly became waste the other day was that issue of The Times which referred him as Lord "Leather-head", after a particularly excellent speech of his which I enjoyed.
I was sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Energlyn, did not speak this afternoon. My own interest—a very lay interest—in reclamation was stimulated in this House by a conversation that I had with him a little over a year ago, when he told me that we were importing a substance (the name of which unfortunately I cannot remember) which could be derived quite easily, in his view, from the dreaded slurry and other waste materials from mine tips which my noble friend Lord Aberdare has mentioned. The Aberfan disaster seemed to me to be the worst thing that has happened in my adult life, which does not include, say, Hiroshima or Buchenwald.
Our interest in conservation, our desire to clean up the country, seems to me to take that as its essential human aspiration. As a non-expert I see my job this evening as an attempt to reconcile the

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positions taken by the noble Lord, Lord Byers, and by my noble friend Lord Erroll of Hale, because I am greatly alarmed by the notion that in an area of this importance there should be any real conflict between the Government and local authorities, on the one hand, and the free play of market forces or commercial enterprises, on the other. Surely in something of this importance, co-operation and a concerted plan are what we need.
My Lords, we live in what could be called in "ecologese" the "motor-sphere", and I draw my examples from waste rubber, which for all practical purposes means waste scrap tyres. There is a great problem here. Any of your Lordships who might have a genius in the twin arts of inventing and of treading the maze of international patent laws would shortly become as rich as Croesus if he could find a solution for the commercially viable re-use of all the tyres in the motorsphere. At the moment we do have re-uses, but many of them, although economically viable, will certainly need subsidy and encouragement. Some of these uses are attractive. Playgrounds have been suggested. One could make a form of asphalt which would negate the likelihood of bruised knees and tears in children's playgrounds. Then gymnasia, and similar institutions, could make use of textile-free rubber grist—rubber which has been reconditioned and from which the textile element has been removed.
My noble friend whom I may not thank, Lady Emmet of Amberley, told of her training as a farmer. There are attractive possibilities for tyres for farm buildings floored in reconditioned textile-free rubber grist. It provides a non-skid surface for animals, and it also carries attractive insulating possibilities. I am encouraged to learn that the floor of the new terminal (otherwise, in my view, a hideous building) at Euston Station is made of reconditioned rubber grist—a product of the firm of Pirelli. If the marriage between Pirelli and Dunlop is to go ahead, it augurs well for endeavours of this kind in this country. There are also tyre carpets and building blocks. And a lot of interesting work is going on in East Europe at the moment, particularly in Hungary and Czechoslovakia, where research is going forward into reconditioned rubber. Indeed, the
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Hungarians believe that they may have to start reimporting Western scrap rubber in order to fulfil some of their projects.
No doubt many of your Lordships will think of other things in the sphere of rubber reclamation. Some of these are commercially viable, and market forces will apply; others are not. There are some like the creation of road-building material, which again provides an insulant and attractive non-skid surface for motor cars and has the poignant recycling effect of old tyres going back and making roads. Some fall into the arenas where both Governments and private contracting industries are involved. And I would urge that in making contracts Governments and local authorities must be aware of the creative re-use of material and subsidise endeavours of this sort by giving preferential treatment to them.
What can the Government do? Research. Obviously, in a speech of this sort, research is the first priority that comes to mind. Here at least it is global, and I would say that there are encouraging diplomatic possibilities for this kind of global exchange on conservation. I mentioned the interesting work in East Europe. This excellent Czech pamphlet has come into my hands relating to a material called Gural, used for making building and insulating material from waste rubber, and it outlines tiles, carpets, bridges, pavements, playgrounds, floors. It adds, in poetic English:
"All these areas covered by Gural are noiseless, dust-free, non-slippery, greatly abrasion resistant, have a good chemical resitance, durable, monolith and corrosion resistant."
It seems to me that our embassies or diplomatic representatives might well do research on what is going on in other countries in regard to these common problems.
How else can Government and market forces co-operate? Where reclamation processes are physically possible but economically less attractive than the use of existing materials, the Government can help firms capitalise for reclamation and recycling equipment. The equipment to reconstitute rubber is the most expensive item. The Government could add to those incentives help in the form of tax allowances.
Rubber is a special case of a global difficulty. Glass, I understand, is less so.

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It has disturbed the ecosphere of children, I imagine, that it is no longer so easy to get pennies and sixpences for collecting old bottles and taking them back. Alas! glass-bottle users find it un-economical to sterilise and re-use old beer bottles, coco-cola bottles and the like. I do know that the Schweppes-Cadbury firm gives £1,000 a year to the anti-litter campaign. I am very much in favour of the firm and their products, but this does perhaps seem a little stingy. No doubt, however, they are otherwise heavily committed.
To judge by a pamphlet issued by the glass manufacturers' association, the whole glass industry is creditably aware of the problems. It makes the following points about the disposal of glass waste. Glass can be easily crushed and incinerated in modern incineration equipment. The residual ash from other incinerated material adheres to small molten glass globules, to give body to what could becomes useful road-making or similar material. I think it was my noble friend Lady Emmet who spoke about the work on road surfaces in America with glass as well as rubber. Roads seem to come into both areas. It has the negative advantages that glass will not burn and pollute the atmosphere and it will not rot or decompose in soil or water. It does not give off nasty smells. And it can, even allowing for expensive equipment, be reduced to small particles and be returned to the soil in virtually its original state.
From a European report on solid waste disposal it is clear that the numbers of sophisticated procedures and equipment such as the Deepham incinerator, which costs approximately £9 million for the disposal of glass, are far too few. The main handicap to the development of sophisticated machinery in the United Kingdom is lack of funds. There is a firm which is developing a machine to be issued to public houses, hotels and the like, which will dispose of glass and broken bottles fairly cheaply and fairly noiselessly. The blueprint indicates that such a machine should not cost more than £100. I would remind your Lordships that the dishwashing machine which most catering firms have would probably, in the commercial size, cost them about that sum. There are appeals not simply for more research—
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the priority—but for more money to develop the idea of using glass as a fertiliser, to involve it in breaking down the chemical constituents which render otherwise intractable refuse into fertiliser. That has foundered, I understand, because of the large capital cost. It argues that there is a case for the amalgamation of the resources of various authorities for the disposal of waste products, similar to that conducted by other public utilities, such as water, gas, electricity and sewage undertakings.
From the speeches made this after-noon, it would seem that most people connect waste with what they deliberately throw out, and when they have bought a product in a container they are more indifferent to throwing away that container. Here again there is an excellent case for co-operation, and in making the case I should like to associate myself, if I may, with the wise closing remarks of my noble friend Lord McCorquodale. The re-uses or re-cycling uses of glass are various. I have mentioned fertilisers. I have mentioned the possibility of using it in road surfaces, and there is consider-able research going on in America at the moment which I see no reason why we should not probe. Compost has been referred to. Glass, if given a break, is a far more tractable material in almost all references than rubber, but we should not neglect it for that reason. I have given a brief synopsis of this information.
My real point is to ask whether such information is readily available to manufacturers and consumers of these actually and potentially wasteful products. I should like to know how much the Government are spending on advertising the dangers of waste, and how much they are making firms aware that they can consult MINTEC for industrial intelligence. Lord Leatherland talked about the manufacture of disposable or paper panties. Your Lordships may have read an interesting article published to-day in New Society under the snappy title of "The jettison set", in which an advertisement is portrayed which says:
"Give your dirty laundry to the dustman".
In my view, the dustmen have to come up with something equally propagandist to counter that.
May I close by going back to my self-appointed task of peacemaker between

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my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Byers. If there are all kinds of exciting and profitable possibilities open to private industrial concerns, then in my view the Government's role must be essentially a co-ordinating of human effort—a decent political aim—and a propagating of the results of recent scientific research—some of which results I have tried to outline to your Lordships. The Government are a large manufacturer (particularly, it might be said, of waste paper) and its task is an urgent one. Several years ago an association of British glass manufacturers tried to get co-ordination with representatives of packaging industries, but, in the words of their own report, the time did not seem propitious. My Lords, to say that the time did not seem propitious is just not good enough so far as the representatives of the pack-aging industries are concerned, but it does suggest a way of bridging the gap between my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Byers. The job of Government and Parliament is to make sure that commercial enterprises, in their own interest as well as in the greater interest of the community, see that the time is not only now propitious but long overdue.
6.40 p.m.
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, if I am to observe a reasonable time limit, it will not be possible for me to deal with every point raised by noble Lords in this interesting and constructive debate. I can, however, assure your Lord-ships that every point which has been made will be carefully considered, and that where appropriate, and particularly where questions have been put to me which time does not allow me to deal with adequately, I will communicate individually with noble Lords.
In surveying this debate, and in trying to comment upon some of the major points which have been raised, I wish to re-emphasise a point that I sought to make when I intervened earlier. It appears to us that this is a field where there is much scope for valuable action but no simple solution, no single key which will open up an answer to all the questions. This is a field for selective rather than indiscriminate action. We regard it as important to try to identify the fields where useful and effective action can be taken, and seek vigorously to support and
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encourage action in those fields. In so doing, of course, while I would not accept the view put forward by the noble Lord, Lord Erroll, that one can leave this entirely or overwhelmingly to the forces of the market, it is common sense (and I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Byers, would agree with this) to take into account practical and commercial factors when making one's decisions and deter-mining one's priorities.
I would ask noble Lords who have made proposals in particular fields, to ask themselves in respect of each proposal what would be the practical problems and the costs of collecting the raw material or the scrap concerned and transporting it, which is often a substantial problem; what would be the cost of processing it, where necessary, to make it suitable for manufacture, and what its attractiveness would be in all terms against virgin material, or possibly some other alternative scrap or waste material available from some different and perhaps nearer source.
To take one example, reference has been made to the possibilities of composting. Examples have been quoted of local authorities who have had successes in this field. These authorities have succeeded in finding a market. But this method tends to be expensive, and that factor has to be taken into account. There are authorities whose experiences have not been so fortunate. May I take another example in seeking to apply this general approach, and respond to the many noble Lords who have referred to the waste paper situation? I am sorry to say that, despite the well-informed and realistic speech of my noble friend Lord Leatherland, I cannot accept his suggestion that I should sound a trumpet for a comprehensive, indiscriminate, universal campaign for the additional saving of waste paper. But that is a quite different thing from saying (I think he himself used these words) that there is no scope for well-planned activity, well-planned campaigns to increase our collection and our use of waste paper.
In this connection, I should like to mention particularly the recent suggestions that voluntary organisations should go in for waste paper collection, both for their own advantage and also for the national advantage. I commend,

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in particular, the public-spirited work which has been done in this connection by the Boy Scout Movement. But, equally, I want to make it clear that, as I suggested as a general proposition in my earlier intervention, demands can fluctuate between one area and another, and I could not accept that the gap between the demand and the current supply of waste paper is so large as some noble Lords have suggested. I would therefore seek most emphatically to urge that all voluntary organisations, before engaging in such activity, should ensure that they have a reliable outlet for the waste paper they propose to collect.
Having made that proviso in respect of waste paper, let me go on to make particular reference to some of the initiatives which have been undertaken in this field. My noble friend Lord Archibald, made a reference to the Joint Waste Paper Advisory Council, which consists of representatives of paper mills, of local authorities and waste paper merchants, and which, incidentally, does not have upon it any Government representative. We have been in continuing touch with this Council, and we welcome the fact that it has recommended the use of long-term contractual agreements between waste paper suppliers and mills, and indeed has devised model contracts for this purpose. These contracts are intended to overcome the peaks and troughs which in the past have sometimes bedevilled the situation and which, as I have suggested, are a real problem. I should like most earnestly to recommend that all local authorities and all paper and board mills take a good look at these agreements and, if possible, seek to negotiate them.
A second most welcome development in this field is to be found in Greater London. Recently the Greater London Council circularised the various London boroughs, urging them to collect and to segregate more waste paper, and have offered financial incentives if this is done. Quite rightly, the G.L.C. claim that if waste paper is segregated and collected the residual costs of refuse disposal are reduced, and that this reduction in costs makes possible the financing of the incentive scheme. This incentive makes particularly good sense because, on the one hand, the Greater London area has considerable untapped resources in waste paper and, on the other, there is the con-
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centration in the South-East of the large waste-consuming paper and board mills.
Similar situations exist, of course, else-where in the country. There is a considerable complex of board and paper mills in East Lancashire, and at Liver-pool and Sheffield. It would be an ad-vantage for those mills which are short of waste paper material to make con-tact with a convenient local authority and to persuade them to enter into one of the long-term agreements to which I have referred. There are a number of local authorities who have made a substantial effort in this regard. I can think of Enfield and Waltham Forest; and Bristol and Sunderland also come to mind. But I would again emphasise that the waste paper problem is not a simple one. It is one that immediately catches the imagination, and certainly it is a field for well-considered action directed to particular circumstances; but it is not necessarily a field where widespread, indiscriminate action will produce the kind of results that we want to secure.
Now I would go on from waste paper to make a brief reference to hospital waste. I will see that the observations made by the noble Baroness, Lady Brooke, are brought to the attention of the appropriate authorities. I echo the remark made by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, that in the hospital service there is probably scope for some recovery of silver from X-ray films. I understand that in fact about 3½ per cent. of the actual expenditure on X-ray films, which percentage itself amounts to about £180,000, is recouped, and it is hoped to improve on that figure in the future. I will see that the general observations of the noble Baroness are brought to the attention of the appropriate hospital authorities.
May I come now to the number of points made by my noble friend Lord Garnsworthy, and by the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, about the possible use, for road-making in particular, of shale heaps and other waste from mineral ex-tractions. As I think my noble friend pointed out, the Ministry of Transport have drawn attention to the possible use of these materials for road-making purposes and have issued a commendable memorandum upon the subject. But here again the degree of use of shale is dependent upon its price as compared with

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available alternatives. The final choice in this matter must rest with the contractors. But the Ministry of Housing and Local Government and the Ministry of Transport encourage the use of colliery and other similar waste for filling material wherever this is practicable. These two Departments are also considering the general question of the extent to which waste material from collieries and other mineral sources can be utilised as fully as possible for highway projects, and the contractors and British Railways have been brought into these discussions.
VISCOUNT COLVILLE OF CULROSS: My Lords, I wonder whether I may interrupt the noble Lord for one moment. One of the difficulties about using this sort of waste material for roads, or fill, or anything else, is that under a recent series of decisions this now attracts rates; and sometimes it is this fact which makes it uneconomic. This is a major policy decision, but I wonder whether the noble Lord could also consider that.
LORD GARNSWORTHY: My Lords, before my noble friend replies to that, I think it might be more convenient if I were to ask him would he please undertake that there be some examination of the cost of not using this shale, because the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, referred to a million pounds expenditure for re-contouring. There is a fantastic expenditure on re-landscaping and re-contouring. I am sorry that I did not touch on this when I was speaking, but may I ask that there be some examination, when the contract is awarded to a contractor who uses borrow pits, to ensure that the price he is quoting provides for reinstatement of the borrow pit to a satisfactory condition?
LORD DELACOURT-SMITH: My Lords, we fully appreciate the importance of this complex issue, which has been raised by my noble friend and the noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, and has been followed up by the noble Viscount, and we will certainly look into all the points which have been raised on this question. A number of factors are involved, and certainly not the least of them is the amenity factor; because, although I said earlier that I should seek to concentrate on the commercial aspect of the matter before us to-day, we are all conscious
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— and this has come up in many speeches —that the amenity and environmental aspects of this problem cannot be separated from that with which we have been concerning ourselves. I can assure my noble friend, and other noble Lords who have addressed themselves to this question, that the points they have raised, with the various aspects they have touched upon, will be fully examined.
The noble Lord, Lord Aberdare, also made a reference to the possibility of encouraging the use of synthetic aggregates, particularly for concrete-making. There is a particular interest here in the possibility of using pulverised fuel ash for this purpose. Here again there is a great deal which could be said, and which it is tempting to say, but at this stage may I briefly reply that research is continuing in this matter and that the Government will continue to encourage the use of pulverised ash wherever doing so makes commercial sense.
The noble Lord, Lord Sandys, referred to a number of matters. I should like just to comment on his point about the prices paid by the British Steel Corporation for steel-making scrap. The prices which are paid—and this applies both to the British Steel Corporation and to the private sector of the steel industry—are a purely commercial matter, and form part of a voluntary agreement which has been made between the British Steel Corporation, the independent steel producers, and the British Scrap Federation. This agreement has been in force for a number of years, and at the moment it appears that there is every reason why the Government should not intervene in what is clearly a purely commercial matter but should leave the question of price to be settled by the parties to the agreement that I have mentioned.
My noble friend Lord Ritchie-Calder asked a number of questions about the situation with regard to atomic waste, and its re-use and disposal. I am afraid that in the time at my disposal I shall not be able to satisfy him fully, but I will say on the subject of re-use that, as he will be the first to appreciate, the re-use of partially depleted uranium and plutonium in the fuel cycle of the reactor systems is an essential part of the operation of the Atomic Energy Authority. Apart from this, the Authority does make

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the fullest use of depleted uranium which is rejected from the Capenhurst plant, in the manufacture of metal components for use in a number of fields, and also in the form of various chemical components used for the manufacture of pigments for pottery, and as a catalyst in some chemical processes. Other radioactive isotopes could be extracted from the waste products of the fission process if substantial new uses for them could be discovered, but the present situation is that the relatively small size of the market has not justified the capital expenditure for the extraction plant that would be necessary.
On the disposal of radioactive waste, I will write to the noble Lord giving him more particulars, but at this stage I should say that the underlying objectives of the Government in respect of disposal are, first of all, to ensure that the need to dispose of the waste is recognised; secondly, to ensure, regardless of cost, that the radiation dose received by the population as a whole does not exceed the permissible levels; and, thirdly, to reduce the actual does as far below these limits as is reasonably practical, having regard to cost, convenience and the national importance of the installation concerned.
My Lords, I am conscious that in the time available I have not been able to reply fully to the many valuable contributions which have been made, but I would repeat the assurance I gave earlier, that all the contributions which have been made in your Lordships' House will be carefully studied. I am sure that all who have participated in this debate, or who have been listening to it, will agree that it has been very valuable in clarifying a number of issues, and particularly in focusing attention upon the importance of the issue to which the noble Baroness addressed her Motion.
6.57 p.m.
BARONESS EMMET OF AMBERLEY: My Lords, at this late hour your Lordships will not wish me to say anything but a few brief words. First of all, I should like to thank those experts, whether they were in private industry
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or in local authority work, who have helped me and my noble friend Lord Sandys in the researches which we have made in the last month or two.
I very much appreciate the support that this Motion has received from noble Lords on all sides of the House. It was really fascinating to hear, in the Minister's summing-up this evening, what a very wide area of subjects have been included in this debate. I appreciate the sympathetic way in which the Minister spoke at the opening of the debate, and the trouble he has taken in summing up at the end. I am sorry that he will not follow the suggestion of the noble Lord, Lord Leatherland, and blow a trumpet. I am sure he would look very well doing it and would do it very well. But I am quite happy to feel that he has shown us that his Department is wide awake to this problem, and that they will look upon this as a beginning and not as the winding up of the subject. I should again like to thank him, and I hope that he will be able to give us encouraging information from time to time. My Lords, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.
Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.

HOOKER ESTATES LIMITED (TRANSFER OF REGISTRATION) BILL [H.L.]
Reported, without amendment.
INCOME AND CORPORATION TAXES BILL [H.L.]
  TAXES MANAGEMENT BILL [H.L.]
    SEA FISH INDUSTRY BILL [H.L.]
    Returned from the Commons, agreed to.
NEWPORT CORPORATION BILL
Brought from the Commons; read 1a, and referred to the Examiners.