EEC REPORTS: CONTROL OF POISONOUS SUBSTANCES

HL Deb 01 April 1976 vol 369 cc1317-60

4.40 p.m.

Baroness WHITE rose to move, That this House takes note of the Reports of the European Communities Committee on the following EEC proposals relating to the environment:

1. (a) Standards for lead (R/1150/75) [6th Report, Session 1975–76];
2. (b) Water for Human Consumption (R/2098/75) [19th Report, Session 1975–76];
3. (c) Titanium Dioxide Waste (R/2003/75) [19th Report, Session 1975–76];
4. (d) Dumping of Waste at Sea (R/105/76) [23rd Report, Session 1975–76].

The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper, and in so doing draw the attention of your Lordships' House to the reports from your Select Committee on five draft Directives which have issued from the European Community within the past few months. In the opinion of the Sub-Committee which deals with environmental matters, of which I have the honour to be Chairman, each of these Directives raises matters of importance; and two of them—that on titanium dioxide waste and that on dumping of waste at sea—raise matters of principle which, in our view, should cause our representatives at Brussels to resist them in their present form.

Before I turn to the reports, may I say how much we deplore the absence through illness of the noble Lord, Lord Ashby. He has fallen victim to a severely virulent form of American influenza. We wish him well, but his authoritative contribution today will be very much missed.

The first report on our list is concerned with two draft Directives, one on biological standards for lead, with certain requirements for the screening of our population, and one on air quality standards for lead. I believe that the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, hopes to deal with these in some detail. He has made a considerable study of the subject, so I will confine myself to saying that we acknowledge the increasing concern caused by lead. It has, of course long been recognised as persistent and toxic, but only in relatively recent times has it become apparent that continuous exposure to even small quantities in the air or by ingestion may possibly be damaging, particularly to children. So we sympathise with the general objectives of these draft Directives.

We are, however, critical of some of the methods proposed, and believe that, as usual, the authorities in Brussels are aiming at universality and uniformity when more valuable results could almost certainly be obtained by concentrating our resources and efforts on areas and on population groups which are likely to be most at risk. We also find certain difficulties, which we have tried to describe in the report, concerning the desirability of the screening methods proposed, and we took evidence of this both from Sir Richard Doll, the Regius Professor of Medicine at the University of Oxford, and from the Departmental witnesses. This evidence is printed with our report.

Lead is the principal villain of the piece in the next report which is on the quality of water for human consumption. Here the problem for the United Kingdom arises hardly at all from the water supply to consumers by the water authorities whose responsibility it is to bring wholesome water to the rising main. Public water supplies in the United Kingdom are constantly tested and monitored and comply in almost all circumstances with World Health Organisation standards. The standards put forward by the Commission in the draft Directive are somewhat more stringent than those of WHO, notably for lead and for nitrates. We believe, however, that WHO is about to promulgate tighter quality standards, and these would be supported by our own Department of Health and Social Security.

Our problem, however, arises because the draft Directive is concerned not with public water supplies but with water as it is drawn from the tap. There is, of course, logic in this, as the person who needs protection is the one who drinks the water or consumes food or drink prepared with the water. It should be a commonplace of health education that water for consumption should be taken always from the main and not from a pipe leading to a storage tank which may be contaminated with dust, dirt and probably deceased insects. This, of course, is a matter for proper domestic management. But the intractable problem concerns the nature of the pipes which connect our domestic supplies with the public supplies. If these pipes are of lead—and this is particularly true in soft water areas—there can be constant contamination of the domestic water supply.

We reproduce in our report figures which indicate that there are many households, more particularly in Scotland, which would fail by a very considerable margin to reach the proposed limits. I have seen reputable estimates that in England there may be around 1 million houses which would show a lead content in excess of the standard of 0.05 mgs. per litre, and that in the early morning, when water may have been left in the pipe overnight, the number could reach even as high as 3 million houses which could be found to be consuming water in excess of what is regarded as safe. I am sure that other noble Lords—not least, I would expect, the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford—will wish to comment on this draft Directive. So I will confine myself to asking the noble Baroness, who I understand is to reply to the debate, what action is proposed by Her Majesty's Government. She will have noted that our Committee believes that no lead piping should be permitted in new housing in the future, and that the replacement of lead pipes should be a condition for future house improvement grants.

We were much disturbed to learn that at least one water authority in the United Kingdom—I believe, the Thames Water Authority—still permits the installation of lead piping. Even if it is used primarily for waste water rather than for supply, with the increasing recycling of water for re-use, this does not seem to be a desirable practice, either. I should also like to ask the noble Baroness what steps are to be taken to increase the research into this field. We know very well that there are as I have said, a large number of houses in the United Kingdom in which the standard is not up to the proposed inter national standards. It would be an enormously costly and time-consuming job to replace all the pipes or the lead storage tanks, which I understand are particularly deleterious to the water supplies, especially in Scotland. But one could possibly find methods of changing the constitution of the water which would make it less liable to contamination by lead. There are also suggestions, I understand, for lining tanks or even lining connecting pipes. I think it would be very helpful to the House, and I would hope to our representatives in Brussels, also, if we could be given some further information as to the steps Her Majesty's Government propose to take.

My Lords, even if remedial action is promised, I think we would surely agree that the time limit of two years suggested in the draft Directive is completely unrealistic. The Association of Public Water Companies and Suppliers within the Community, appropriately named Eureau, suggests a period of at least 10 to 15 years as being required. The unrealistic estimate on the timescale was very clearly recognised by the Economic and Social Committee which issued its opinion on this Directive on 25th February last. It had many sensible things to say on the need to distinguish between parameters which are really important for public health and public water supply and those which are perhaps ideally desirable but frankly not worth the cost involved. This, I think, applies more especially to water used in manufacturing processes. This Directive, therefore, in our view needs the most careful and detailed scrutiny and should, we believe, be amended in detail. But we must recognise that in the matter of possible lead pollution we in this country should be prepared to act, where necessary, with or without the Directive to prevent, in particular, additional future risks.

I now turn to the next draft Directive which deals with titanium dioxide waste, a draft Directive for which my Sub-Committee had little patience and not very much respect. I am afraid that it is a further example to add to those we have already received from Brussels of proposals which could become binding on British industry, being put forward with quite inadequate justification and with no convincing evidence in support. We hope that Her Majesty's Government will firmly resist this proposal in the form in which it is now presented. It is well known that what we believe to be the exaggerated importance attached by the Community to titanium dioxide waste arises from the Mont Edison situation where severe discolouration of the sea has been caused by an Italian works most unwisely sited on Mediterranean shores, where the tidal conditions are such that the waste products cannot be swiftly or adequately dispersed. There have been complaints from neighbouring Corsican fishermen of diminished fish catches. But I must say that we have been unable to trace any substantive evidence that this was cause and effect. Even, however, if it were proven, it provides no case for insisting on expensive preventive measures in areas where the condition of the receiving waters is entirely different. We are fortunate in being able to site such works in the United Kingdom on fast flowing estuarial rivers where waste material can be rapidly dispersed. In such circumstances we therefore have no need to take measures which might indeed be required in the Mediterranean.

The draft Directive not only fails to convince us of its general necessity but it seems to us to add insult to injury by claiming that satisfactory alternative methods of dealing with titanium dioxide waste are ready to hand. So far as we can tell, they are not. None of the methods recommended in the draft Directive has gone beyond the pilot plant stage, and one at least of the processes referred to has been abandoned before reaching a practical form. It would indeed be possible to pile titanium dioxide waste on land instead of dispersing it in water, but the environmental problems would be far worse and the quantities would be enormous. It simply does not solve the problem of industrial waste to remove it from one element to another.

This waste, in our view, is unaesthetic, and objectionable on that ground, rather than positively harmful. It can be taken by barge out to sea, and this may be necessary where river conditions are not good, but it all depends on the local conditions. There is no case for uniform standards which can add quite unnecessarily to the cost of the product without significantly improving the safety of the environment. Our argument here is similar to that which we adduced some little while back on waste from pulp mills. Such installations should be sited in suitable locations so that problems either do not arise or can be mitigated without undue cost.

Finally, I come to the fifth Directive in the group we are discussing today, that on Dumping of Waste at Sea. This draft Directive, too, causes us considerable disquiet, but our reasons on this occasion are more complex. There are our customary difficulties over uniformity and universality, but there are wider political considerations to which I think I should draw your Lordships' attention. I need hardly say that the United Kingdom is fully conscious of the need to protect the marine environment, and we have the necessary legal basis for action in the dumping at Sea Act 1974 and the Radioactive Substances Act 1960.

Not only have we ratified the Oslo Convention but, as the name suggests, we took a leading part in initiating the London Convention, which is worldwide in its application. The London Convention was intended to give general guidance on dealing with this problem of the dumping of wastes at sea with the quite specific objective that there should follow a series of regional agreements. We welcome very much the arrangements that were agreed at Helsinki for the Baltic and the recent Barcelona agreement for the Mediterranean—agreements which, very rightly, take into account the peculiar and particular physical conditions of those seas.

But now we have the Community coming forward with a fresh set of rules which differ in certain important respects from the terms of those Conventions—particularly those which are applicable to United Kingdom conditions. I do not say "United Kingdom waters", partly because we do not know yet what agreement on territorial waters will come out of the current Law of the Sea Conference, and partly because we have already acknowledged that the Community may make proposals relating to areas extending beyond territorial waters. We refer to this in our Report. Paragraph 2 of Chapter 6 of the Community Programme of Action on the Environment is concerned with the Oslo and London Conventions which are not, of course, limited to territorial seas.

I should also draw attention to other international arrangements which are in force, more particularly dealing with radioactive substances. A Written Answer given in another place on 26th February last sets out in some detail the international arrangements for dealing with radioactive substances, and makes it plain that the United Kingdom has disposed of low activity radioactive waste in the sea since 1949. In 1967 the Nuclear Energy Agency of the OECD agreed to arrange sea disposal operations, to establish on an international basis the means by which solid radioactive waste could be safely disposed of at sea without damage to the marine environment. Furthermore, the International Atomic Energy Agency—an inter-governmental organisation under the aegis of the United Nations—is also concerned with radioactive waste management questions, including sea disposal.

We find it therefore disturbing that the Community, under the guise of "harmonisation", should endeavour to establish a set of uniform rules based, in part at least, on regional conventions, which have been deliberately worked out on a localised basis, simply because physical conditions vary so much from one marine area to another, and they seem to be oblivious of the other arrangements which are in force. After all, membership of the Community extends to States some of which are within the Mediterranean system, some of which are in the Baltic system, and some of which are in the North Sea and North-East Atlantic system. It is going completely against the philosophy of international action in recent years to try to set up a draft Convention for the EEC countries on the basis which is currently proposed.

It is not only the philosophy of the matter; we are not clear as to the enforcement arrangements. We ourselves are mostly concerned with the Oslo Convention, which provides for jurisdiction by the Oslo Commission, and it is their business to receive and consider records of permits and approvals issued and dumping which has taken place. Are we, then, to have a separate system of enforcement for the draft Directive which is before us? Is there to be a dual system with at least two different sets of rules applying to the same maritime area, the international rules and the Community rules? If this is what is intended, then surely it is a confusing, wasteful and unecessary procedure. My Committee was strongly of the view that if, in its wisdom, the Community considered that any one of the international Conventions which affect its members was in some way defective, it should seek to secure an amendment or improvement of that Convention, possibly by itself first becoming a party to it.

From the point of view of pollution control, if some measure is desirable for members of the Community, it is also desirable for other States in the marine area concerned, even if they are not members of the EEC, because nature does not recognise political boundaries. Our uneasiness is based on the difficulty which arises when one tries to marry conflicting concepts which are embedded in Community thought but which do not match the physical world known to science. Pollution control to protect man and the natural environment, the biosphere which we share with other forms of life, must be science based if it is to make ecological sense. It does not seem to us acceptable that, possibly in order to assert its political identity, the Community should propose actions which do not appear to be in the best interests of rational, international pollution control. There is ample scope for Community initiative in the field of pollution without either duplication of international administration or the adoption of generalised standards when all reputable effort in recent years, in the United Nations organisation and elsewhere, has been in the direction of the identification and refinement of localised standards for marine pollution control.

It would have been helpful to give examples in other areas if the Community had been able to persuade its members to adopt a common policy at the recent London conference on civil liability for offshore pollution damage. There are plenty of other instances where the Community could give a genuine lead, but the conflict with scientific validity exemplified in the draft Directive before us is clue, of course, to the desire for harmonisation at all costs. The principle behind the Directive seems to be the desire to deal uniformly with conditions which are not uniform in order …to avoid creating distortions in trade and in the distribution of investment. This is a matter to which we have referred before in our comments, as I have mentioned, on pulp mill effluent and today on titanium dioxide waste. Where natural conditions are favourable to a particular process, it is surely the depths of stupidity to scorn the benefits offered by nature and to acid quite unnecessarily to the cost of the product, while by harmonisation one removes from the industrialist the encouragement to choose sites which are particularly favourable to his particular enterprise.

I have endeavoured to explain the reasons of principle which have caused us to draw this draft Directive to your Lordships' notice. There are, of course, a number of points of detail which need considerable further clarification; we have touched on them briefly in our report. The most important one is the proposal to prohibit the dumping of any radioactive waste, of however low activity it might be. This in itself of course does not solve the problem; it simply means that one must find storage areas on land. This is far from easy, but I would not deny that it is at least arguable. We, under the London Convention, are obliged in our dumping policy to carry out considerable investigation before we issue permits for dumping. I have had some difficulty—perhaps the noble Baroness will be able to help me in this—in finding out just what investigations we have made, for example, into the physical characteristics of the Bay of Biscay, which I understand is our favourite dumping ground for low activity radioactive waste. I am sure that investigations have been made and it could be that my researches were not sufficiently adequate to find out whether they have been published. I should like to know about this and to make certain we are completely in compliance with our obligations.

I hope very much that it will be possible to have further thoughts on this draft Directive. We were very much encouraged that following our debate last October on some other environmental Directives, the Ministers when they met in Brussels in December were able to agree on a compromise modus vivendi for countries with differing views on the sensible way to deal with certain pollutants. I am afraid that this afternoon we have felt obliged once again to be strongly critical because, as I have tried to explain, we do not think that the scientific basis for the proposals in the last two Directives which I have mentioned have been adequately worked out. And where pollution is concerned we believe that science must come first. I beg to move.

Moved, That this House takes note of the Reports of the European Communities Committee on the following EEC proposals relating to the environment:

1. (a) Standards for lead (R/1150/75) [6th Report, Session 1975–76];
2. (b) Water for Human Consumption (R/2098/75) [19th Report, Session 1975–76];
3. (c) Titanium Dioxide Waste (R/2003/75) [19th Report, Session 1975–76];
4. (d) Dumping of Waste at Sea [23rd Report, Session 1975–76].

—(Baroness White.)

5.7 p.m.

Lord SANDFORD

My Lords, I join in this debate today as a member of the Front Bench team on this side of the House and as a new member of the noble Baroness's Committee. I am glad to say that, at any rate for this debate, I do not feel any division of loyalties. I wish to begin by claiming that the United Kingdom is second to none in its sensitiveness to the damage and danger of industrial pollution. It seems to me that we have learned our lessons the hard way. We are working hard to restore and reclaim our own despoiled environment and therefore we want very much to take a wholehearted part in protecting and improving the whole European environment and putting our extensive experience at the disposal of that task. We also want to help other countries, particularly the developing countries and those which are not yet fully industrialised, to avoid the mistakes that we made in the early days of our industrial past. This makes it all the more regrettable that our encouragement and support of the good intentions behind the European Commission and its Environmental Action Programme has to be tempered, as the noble Baroness said, with either sharp criticism or serious misgivings, or, in some cases, outright objection to almost every directive in this field that has come before us so far and certainly all of those we are debating today.

Fortunately for us, the fish in the Thames and the Trent, the clean buildings of Sheffield, the winter sunlight here in London, the valley floor around Swansea, all bear witness to our zeal, even in hard times like these, to press on with the control of pollution, with the protection and improvement of the environment, to the fact that we know how to set about it and that we very greatly prefer the principle known as the application of the best practical means. This requires the application of patient, painstaking, detailed policies applied with precise knowledge of the damage that each particular pollutant really causes and as an exact idea as is possible of what remedy produces what improvements and at the least cost. That is what the Commission is not doing. Take lead, for instance, which is the subject of the first of the Directives before us. If the Commission had had its way, we should even now have in force procedures which would apply over all large cities in all the countries of the entire Community for taking samples of people's blood and monitoring the level of lead shown in it. The need for this proposal is unsupported by any evidence that there is any widespread damage to health from lead poisoning and unsupported by any evidence of any particular disease being entirely attributable to lead poisoning, even in particular places where there is some danger of lead being ingested. Certainly, in such places where there is a prima facie case that some danger exists, there is a case for careful research and caution and monitoring such as is proposed. When that shows that remedies are required, by all means let us apply them. But there is really no justification for sweeping measures over the entire Community.

Much the same applies to water for drinking, as the noble Baroness said. Here, there is another sweeping Directive which, if the Directive is not amended, is to be applied within two years throughout all areas of the Community and which calls for routine comprehensive monitoring of all drinking water supplies. Here, there is more supporting evidence of polluting dangers, but it all points to the dangers being concentrated, as the noble Baroness suggested, in houses with lead pipes in soft water areas, rather than anywhere else. As your Lordships can see from the annexe to our report, all members of the Community have laws or regulations restraining the use of lead in domestic water pipes. All nevertheless have large amounts of lead water piping still in use and in many cases more lead piping is still being added. So there appears straight away to be a strong case for more selective enforcement of the national legislation which is already in force before we start to think about any Community legislation.

Research into the harmful effects of continuing to permit the use of lead in soft water areas certainly needs to be advanced. Then, if the need is shown, steps can be taken to restrain or reduce the use of lead by such means as building regulations. It could be made a condition of a housing improvement grant that lead pipes should be removed where they existed in soft water areas. As an alternative or addition, home safety steps could be taken to avoid the dangers of lead in the areas in question, for instance, by putting up a written notice in houses which had lead pipes in soft water areas, warning the occupiers to draw off water before taking any for drinking. Certainly, there are many better and cheaper steps to take about drinking water before it would be useful to introduce the proposed Directive.

I turn to the Directive on titanium dioxide. I strongly support the noble Baroness. This Directive is also objectionable, as the noble Baroness said. As a result of one particular case in the Mediterranean where some ecological damage has been alleged but not proved, we now have a sweeping Directive restraining the dumping of titanium dioxide anywhere at sea. Once again, this appears without any evidence that the present practices of, for instance, in our case, discharging it into rivers and estuaries by pipeline whence it flows to the North Sea, do any harm at all. On the other hand, we know for certain that any other way of dealing with it would be dangerous and difficult. As the European Assembly's own Public Health Environment Committee put it, the extent to which titanium dioxide waste is harmful depends on its composition, the way it is dumped and the kind of place where it is dumped. That is perfectly true. If the Directive were addressed to controlling these factors according to the circumstances of each discharge, it would of course be acceptable, but it starts by proposing uniform emission standards and I submit that it should not be accepted.

I shall not deal at all extensively with the dumping of waste at sea because the noble Baroness has—in my view, quite properly—devoted a fair amount of her speech to it. Here, once again, as she says, we have overlapping jurisdictions and potential conflicts in their application. We have insufficient scientific proof of environmental damage to justify the full range of proposed controls over so many broadly specified substances. Annexe 2, for instance, refers to all acids and alkalis. It is absurd, when they differ so much in characteristics and danger, to lump them all together in this way. It is far too wide an extension of too comprehensive codes of uniform prohibitions to be applied in a whole variety of different circumstances. As the noble Baroness said, it is only common sense that the warm, relatively still, non-tidal waters of the Mediterranean coast should need a different scale of protection from the turbulent, tidal, cold and deep waters of the Atlantic. It is absurd to have a common code for both. We must try to dissuade our friends in Brussels from blundering about blindly with a cudgel when what they want is to take up a more elegant stance based on scientific research and then put in a few well-aimed thrusts with a rapier at the places where there is real trouble.

To sum up, it seems to me that the main lessons to be learned from the four latest sorties by the Commission into the environment are as follows: first, preliminary research must be directed to establishing as accurately as is practicable the real damage that can be caused in various circumstances by each threatened pollutant; secondly, the choice of methods of control available; and, thirdly, the cost and the effectiveness of each method in each case. Against that background, the meaning and purpose of harmonisation of national regulations by Community measures which the noble Baroness rightly dwelt on at some length needs to be clearly set out because it means something quite different in each case. Then, and only then, ought Parliaments to be asked to give opinions and Governments to be invited to take decisions. I shall be interested to hear whether the noble Baroness agrees with that summary of the situation.

5.19 p.m.

Lord AVEBURY

My Lords, may I raise a general point before coming to the Reports of the Select Committee which we have before us. This is the third debate in which I have taken part on the Reports of your Lordships' Select Committee on EEC draft Directives. The first was on nuclear safety and, more recently, there was that on migrant workers. I am wondering what happens as a result of the speeches which are made in your Lordships' House. Can the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, tell us whether there is any point in the exercise at all? Do the things which are said in this House get reported to our delegation in Brussels and what action do they take on them? Most important of all, could there be some feedback? I have found it very discouraging to look at the Directives, to read the Reports of the Select Committee, to come here and make a speech and then to be left completely in the dark as to whether action has been taken or the Government have agreed with what was said. I believe that it would be useful to complete the circle of procedure by having some kind of additional stage of reporting back on the recommendations which are made not only by the Select Committee but by those who have not been serving on the Committee but who have taken part in the proceedings following the latter's Report.

I agree with some of the criticisms made of the Directive, but it would not be good enough if we were simply to rule them out without suggesting any alternatives. I do not take a complacent view about the questions of pollution raised here, and I wish to refer particularly to the matter of atmospheric levels of lead. I wish to put a different point of view on this matter to that expressed by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, who seems to think that one must wait until there is conclusive clinical evidence of damage being caused to members of the public before one can take any steps to control the substance causing that damage. I am not sure that the determination of blood levels is the right approach. I can see that this has serious difficulties and implications for civil liberty.

One might consider whether blood samples taken for other purposes might be used, although obviously they would not represent a random sample of the population. But there are many thousands of blood donors, and samples are also being taken all the time to ascertain whether the level of alcohol in the blood exceeds the permitted maximum. It is possible that legislation might be introduced to enable these samples to be used as a means of determining the levels of lead in the blood. Certainly there are groups of people who have levels much higher than the average of the population as a whole. I agree with the sense of what the noble Baroness said: that one should look at particular groups—(as distinct from the general population)—rather than to try to determine a uniform method of tackling the problem, which may be inappropriate in particular cases.

I was looking at an article by Dr. T. J. Chow writing in Chemistry in Britain for June 1973, referring to a study of London taxi drivers. Obviously if anyone is to be vulnerable to levels of lead in the atmosphere it would be people who are constantly driving their vehicles in the highly built-up areas, where the concentration of fumes would be at its worst. This article showed that the mean blood level of London taxi drivers was 0.29 parts per million, and the range extended from 0.16 to 0.45 parts per million, which I think exceeds the permitted maximum recommended in this Directive. That also leads me to the point that where these groups of workers or residents may be thought to be highly vulnerable, I should not have imagined that there would be any difficulty in securing their co-operation, if necessary, in the voluntary taking of blood samples to make sure that their health is properly looked after.

There is also the point, which needs to be stressed, that continuous exposure, even in very small quantities, may be damaging to the health of individuals, even though there are no clinical symptoms. This point was brought out by some studies made on animals during the war in the Soviet Union, and since repeated elsewhere with similar effects. Those studies found that there could be very significant changes in the behaviour of the animals at blood concentrations far lower than those required to cause clinical symptoms.

Furthermore, studies in human beings show that children are particularly vulnerable. I wish to refer to an article by Professor Bryce-Smith, professor of organic chemistry at the University of Reading. He pointed to behavioural changes caused in small children as a result of high concentrations of lead in the bloodstream. He pointed out that these can, for example, result in mental retardation and other behavioural abnormalities, such as lack of attention, children being easily distracted, and being unable to sit for a long time. They may, too, be slower to learn, more aggressive, and possibly even suffer from dyslexia.

It may be extremely difficult to associate these behavioural symptoms with the concentration of lead in the bloodstream. As I have said in relation to the taxi drivers, people who live in urban areas are clearly more vulnerable than those who live well away from the traffic. This needs to be emphasised, in that the levels of lead in these urban areas may be adding to what has been called the "cycle of urban deprivation" on which millions of pounds has been spent by the Home Office, but to deal with the physical environment, when there may be other factors of equal importance.

The article by Dr. Chow, to which I referred, indicates that the levels of lead in the atmosphere in Fleet Street increased very considerably between 1961 and 1971. I do not know what has happened since 1971. The Government have taken measures to reduce the concentration of lead in fuels for motor vehicles, but I am seriously worried that this action may be negated entirely by the increase in the volume of motor traffic. If one is to believe the forecasts by the Department of the Environment of twice as many road vehicles circulating by the end of the century, we could be back in the same position, having reduced the permitted maximum concentration of lead in fuels, but then having entirely contradicted that by having so many more vehicles that the concentration, in fact, remains the same.

I believe that this needs to be monitored very carefully. According to an article in the Sunday Times last January, approximately 10,000 tons of lead is discharged into the atmosphere in the form of particles which come out of the exhausts of motor vehicles. This could be a very significant source of the concentration of lead in the bloodstream of individuals. The oil companies have always contended that if lead is removed from fuel, it will be necessary to pay 3p or 4p more per gallon at the pump. That had always been accepted until quite recently, when in Germany the regulations were tightened, I think to a considerably greater extent than in this country, and low and behold!, it was found that the oil corn-panics were able to accommodate this change without any increase in the price of petrol at the pump. We ought to look at that experience to see whether we are not perhaps going too slowly, irrespective of what we may be told to do from Brussels.

Finally, I believe that the report dealt with in the Statement yesterday by the Secretary of State for Employment, on the hazards of asbestos, is an excellent example of the Government's preparedness to react when an industrial substance is shown to have caused serious harm or even, as in this case, death, yet because we have no dramatic evidence to which to point, we shall be extremely lucky if we get similar firm action in the case of lead. But there are these behavioural problems and sub-clinical effects from lead in the environment which, I believe, it would be very dangerous to neglect.

5.30 p.m.

Lord HINTON of BANKSIDE

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady White, has drawn to the attention of your Lordships' House four reports which have been prepared by her Committee and which comment on draft Directives prepared in Brussels. Two of those reports deal with effluents and with the disposal of industrial waste, and it is with those two subjects that I should like to deal this afternoon. Besides the papers which have been drawn to the attention of the House this afternoon, there have been other draft Directives on effluents and on industrial waste which have been considered by your Lordships' Committees during the last few months, and those Committees have found reason to object, on various grounds, to several of those draft Directives.

However, there has been one feature in all of them to which we have found ourselves bound to object; that is, that the EEC seem to base their standards on the concentration and quantity of effluent at the point of discharge. It has been the practice in this country to deal with pollution in a more pragmatic way and to consider, not merely the composition of the effluent at the point of discharge but its effect on the environment, and in doing this to realise that an effluent which might well be objectionable if discharged into a small stream might have no objectionable effect on the environment if it is discharged into the open sea or into estuarial waters. But we have been told that the Minister is extremely conscious of this point and that he has made the British approach to this problem quite clear in Brussels, and therefore I need waste no more of the time of your Lordships' House in dealing with it.

There is a cognate point, however, which was raised by the noble Baroness to which I should like to draw attention, or perhaps I should say, I should like to underline what she has said. It is the declared purpose of the Treaty of Rome, or one of its declared purposes, to harmonise industrial practices within the Community countries; but surely that does not mean that environmental standards should be harmonised by setting standards which suit the worst sited, the worst designed, the worst operated plants. Yet this is what seems to be happening. I hope that, in taking examples of this, I shall be forgiven if I refer as my first example to a report which is not before your Lordships' House this afternoon, and that is the one on the discharge of effluents from paper pulp mills. That paper sought, as so many of the other EEC papers have done, to lay down the composition and quantity of discharge quite irrespective of whether the discharge was into rivers, into estuarial waters or into the open sea.

But it went further than that, and said that pulp mills which found difficulty in complying with the standards which it was sought to lay down should be given what was referred to as "specific aid from public funds". This presumably means that the plants which have been sited well in relation to the supply of raw materials or in relation to the markets that they serve, but which have been badly sited in relation to the discharge of effluents, should, while retaining the advantages of siting in regard to raw material supplies or distribution of products, have other people pay for the environmental danger which they cause. The draft Directive said that the standards for effluent discharge: …could distort competition and create a barrier to the proper functioning of the Common Market". But surely it is wrong to consider a factor which is disadvantageous to one certain plant while disregarding all the other considerations which give advantages to that plant. If the polluter has sited his factory badly, or has sited it so as to gain other advantages, surely he should pay for any environmental damage which results from that siting.

The second example which I should like to take is one which is before your Lordships' House this afternoon, and that is the disposal of waste from titanium oxide plants. The only titanium oxide plant whose waste has been judged to cause damage to the environment is the one in Italy. The waste from that plant, as has already been said, is discharged into the tideless Mediterranean. The Germans dump the discharge from their plants into the open sea; the British discharge the effluents and wastes from their plants into tidal waters. In neither of those cases is any damage done to the environment. Yet the proposed Directive appears to seek to apply conditions of disposal which may perhaps be necessary in the tideless Mediterranean but which cannot be considered to be universally necessary.

The Italian plant was presumably sited where it is because that site had advantages for the manufacturer; but, surely, if he wants to enjoy those advantages he should comply with the principle that the polluter pays, and he should offset the cost of dealing with his waste products in a satisfactory way against the advantages that he has gained from the siting of his plant. It should not be expected that other manufacturers, who have located their plants in positions where the effluent can be more easily dealt with, should necessarily be brought into line with the man who has sought other advantages.

I have given only two examples, but that same trend of thought, I think, can be seen in other draft Directives. I suggest that the principle of harmonising at a level which suits the worst case is one which ought not to be acceptable to us, and is one which should be resisted.

5.38 p.m.

Lord NUGENT of GUILDFORD

My Lords, perhaps I may begin by thanking the noble Baroness, Lady White, and her Committee for this excellent report which is now before the House. I feel certain that the Government will find it helpful, as well. The Commission's proposals deal with a number of important matters, but I should like to use most of the few words that I wish to say in referring to the problem of the lead content in drinking water. Perhaps I may first say something to console the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, as to the product of these debates, which I must say are conducted at a very high level, I think, in terms of scientific content of the kind which comes from Lord Hinton and, on previous occasions, from Lord Ashby and others. I think we had a very good product from the last debate, because it enabled a Minister to go to Brussels and to achieve, substantially, what the House was recommending in the wake of the noble Baroness's report. So I think we can be entirely satisfied that we were cost-effective on that occasion.

Perhaps I may also say, in passing, how much I enjoyed the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, about the mistaken approach of the EEC in insisting on uniform emission standards. There really could not have been a more cogent economic argument than that which the noble Lord adduced. I just hope it is read in Brussels, because it could not fail to convince the authors of these documents that that is the proper approach in the interests of the whole future economic development of the Community.

My Lords, I should declare my interest to noble Lords as chairman of the National Water Council but I think that my interest is sufficiently indirect not to interfere with my making a comment now. Let me say that we, in the water industry, all 10 regional water authorities, are deeply concerned about the potential dangers of lead in water. We accept that a build-up of lead in the human frame is something potentially dangerous and that lead in water could be one of the sources of it. We are most anxious to take up a responsible and positive attitude; although I am inevitably going to follow a good deal of what the noble Baroness has said in being somewhat critical of the approach of the EEC Directive. The sample survey carried out by the 10 regional water authorities shows that some 2½ per cent. of daytime samples of water exceed the present WHO standard of 0.1 mgs per litre and that about 8 per cent. of daytime samples would exceed the proposed EEC standard now before the House of .05 mgs per litre. Those figures can be doubled if we take first draw early in the morning.

The noble Baroness rightly referred to our statutory duty in this country which is to deliver wholesome water to the point in the mains to which each household is connected. In fact, there is very little lead present in the mains; almost all is probably coming from the connection from the main to the house and in the householder's own plumbing. The EEC proposals, as the noble Baroness rightly said, refer to water in the tap; and that is a perfectly practical thing to do, although it makes the problem very much more difficult to deal with. The noble Baroness was also correct in saying that most of the areas in this country where there is high lead content in the water are the soft water areas because soft water has a greater lead solubility; but it is a fact that there are some hard water areas where, for not very clear reasons, they also have some lead in the water too. This is evidently due to the different natures of the hardness.

The noble Baroness asked some questions about what is being done in research on this difficult problem. The Water Research Centre is working on possible methods of water treatment to reduce lead solubility; but this is not at all a straightforward problem. There is some scope for progress here but one of the difficulties is that if the solubility of the water to lead is reduced it may result in a by-product of particulate lead in the water which will be ingested by the householder and will do damage in that fashion. So this problem becomes almost a matter of art rather than science; development is going to play quite as big a part as research; that is, the water authorities will have to try out approved methods of treatment to see what happens in their own particular waters. Water varies considerably from one place to another. They will have to find out whether the treatment does achieve improvement or not. This work is going on and it will achieve some improvement for the benefit of householders.

Turning to the EEC Directive that the level of lead in water should be reduced to .05 mgs per litre, this in our opinion is completely beyond the capacity of water treatment to achieve. It would be impossible to achieve except by replacing all the lead piping now existing in connecting mains to the householders and in the households as well. We cannot make any precise estimate of what this would cost. The noble Baroness's figure of about 3 million houses being affected is something of the right order. The cost, we reckon, is something of the order of £500 million. That is equivalent to the total capital expenditure of the whole water industry for the year. If we did nothing else for a whole year that could be done. That is the order of it. One must immediately pose the question: would this really be the right priority? I am certain that before this summer is out there will be some places which are going to be very short of water and and they will think that these hundred of millions of pounds would be better spent on new reservoirs to make greater storage and on greater security than on replacing all the lead pipes.

The fact is that at the present time there really is not the scientific evidence to justify this gigantic expenditure which would oblige the deferment of many other desirable developments in the field of water: on supply, in the environment and generally in all the water services. The fact is, as we all know here as Parliamentarians, that in the reality of life there are all kinds of desirable improvements that we should like to be able to make, whether in the field of water and anything else. They cannot be done at once. We must arrange a system of priorities judged according to the best scientific evidence available.

When you turn to the picture to which the noble Baroness referred which appears in Appendix 1 of the Nineteenth Report of what happens in the other EEC countries, we see that they are, on the whole, a good deal worse off than we are as far as lead pipes are concerned. Therefore they are going to have the same, if not greater, practical problems than we in conforming to the proposed Directive. The noble Baroness rightly referred to the reaction of Eurea, which is the European Organisation of Water Industries of the Members of the EEC. They who have to deal with the realities on the ground would say something similar to what I am saying now: that they could not possibly conform to this under 10 or 15 years. It is quite clear that if the EEC are to go ahead with this proposal, all of their Members, I should think, would have to apply for what they call EMACs which are exceptions; for none will be able to conform with it. It seems a slightly absurd start to this new Directive that all the Members should have to ask for exceptions. I should like to suggest, with respect, that when the Commission are considering making these proposals, they might consider an alternative approach; they might find find out, first, what are the general standards obtaining through all EEC countries and having, from that knowledge, then established a common standard for all which is something like what is now existing, they might then proceed to aim at some progressive improvement and give some advice as to how that improvement is going to be achieved.

In the meantime, what we are doing here is aiming to conform with the existing WHO standard of 0.1mgs per litre. We are advising that all households should fit a rising main tap for drinking water supply and that where lead pipes exist between the mains, their first draw, the first half gallon or so, should be used for washing purposes rather than for drinking purposes. I warmly support the noble Baroness's suggestion—on which I do not doubt the noble Baroness, Lady Stedman, will be making a comment—that the Government may consider making a regulation that in new houses there should be no lead pipework, and it should be made a condition of any reconditioning grant that lead pipework should be removed. This is obviously a position to which we want progressively to move; it cannot be done overnight. I thank the noble Baroness and her admirable Select Committee on the wisdom of their Report. I trust the Front Bench will think it sound and our Ministers will once again go to Brussels armed with some sound common sense, and will be able to inject this into the deliberations of the Commission.

On other matters, may I say briefly that I feel the cogent speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, allied to what the noble Baroness said, has completely disposed of the titanium dioxide situation. I agree with them. I am certain that the proper approach is selective standards depending on the environment concerned. Certainly the sea is the proper place to dispose of titanium dioxide provided that there is adequate dilution.

Regarding solid waste, there are a number of sludge ships that carry solid sludge out to sea. The disposal sites are selected by the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and carefully monitored by them. The whole record of this disposal has been entirely satisfactory. There has been no apparent danger to fish life—if anything, rather the reverse—so we can say confidently the systems being used for this particular process of disposal are completely satisfactory. As a politician, I agree with the noble Baroness that there is likely to be considerable political complications arising out of the EEC proposals, and I hope they will listen to the advice which she gave. May I once again thank the noble Baroness, Lady White, and her admirable Select Committee for the tremendous amount of work that they do for us, and say how grateful we are to her and her colleagues for what they do.

5.52 p.m.

Lord O'HAGAN

My Lords, so far the debate has been one of outstanding quality. As the proud possessor of a rather bad 0 level in biology, I hope your Lordships will sympathise with me if I say that I do not feel wholly confident that I have a valid contribution to make. But perhaps I can introduce a new tone to the discussion on the reports from the Sub-Committee of the noble Baroness (which I have now left) by saying that I speak as a Federalist who believes that environmental controls can only be successful if applied above and beyond the nation State level. I am sure that if Members of the House disagree with other things I may say, I may carry some of your Lordships with me by starting off with the remark that we all hope the emission standard of proposals from the Commission should be markedly improved, because their environmental proposals are not of the same quality as those that the other Sub-Committees of the EEC Scrutiny Committees have observed.

I suggest that there is a simple reason for this. The Treaty of Rome has nothing to do with the environment it was not a pre-occupation of its authors and, if you add the number of people who are occupied with the environment inside the Commission, it is not surprising that their proposals are not all that good because it has only been a subject of their concern since about 1970, when the Heads of Government decided to introduce and insert the idea of the environment into what is basically a free trade treaty, the Treaty of Rome, which has now been overtaken by events, and updated by diktat of the Council of Ministers. Those parts of the Treaty which are wholly concerned with free trade have nothing to do with the environment, as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, pointed out. It is to be hoped that perhaps a little before we have a written Constitution the Treaty of Rome can be updated as the Heads of State have agreed in practice it should be. This consideration lay behind Lord Diplock's reference to vires in a previous debate. If we are dissatisfied with the level of the quality of the Community's proposals in the environment—and I am—should we not press Her Majestys' Government to allocate more money to the Commission solely and specifically for improving their scientific expertise, so that when they come forward with proposals they are well based and well grounded? May I ask the noble Baroness whether she will look into that?

The situation is one where the Community has embarked on new territory and has not yet learned to cope. Having achieved the weapon of harmonisation as the legal basis for its activities in many other fields, mistakenly those enthusiasts in Brussels apply the same all-purpose legal basis for action to a field where it is not necessarily appropriate; namely, the environment. By and large, the Commission, in its present incarnation, has abandoned harmonisation for harmonisation's sake, if only at the urgent insistence of the present and previous British Government. The Commissioner now takes great steps to make sure harmonisation achieves some objective beyond that of harmonisation squared. I think when we suggest in your Lordships' House that sound environmental reasons must be the basis for future proposals, we are pushing at a door which is already open. We should also be comforted by the fact that the death rate for proposals from the Commission is extraordinarily high. The mortality rate of the British Government's legislation is, on the whole, low; but because of the open nature of the Community process, where the Commission is acting as a central motor attempting to drive the Community forward, many of their proposals are never put into effect because they are merely in the nature of Green or White Papers. We should comfort ourselves with this thought.

Very much of what I wanted to say about lead has been—I was going to say "pirated"—said before me by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I do not want to repeat what he said. There is a middle course which can be steered between his views and those of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. The Sub-Committee received evidence from Sir Richard Doll, Regius Professor of Medicine at Oxford, which leads me in all my innumeracy still to be worried at the lack of real steps to control lead in the environment. Sir Richard said to us: I think the first thing to say is that, together with many people, I am disturbed at the fact that blood levels of lead in this country are getting—or perhaps I should say are, rather than are getting—uncomfortably close to what is generally recognised as a toxic level. They are closer to a toxic level than blood levels of any other element or toxic substance. We do not have to wait for thalodimide to stop it. We do not have to wait for the lead equivalent of thalidomide to stop it. However pragmatic you may be, my Lords, you do not have to wait until your foot drops off to do something about it. I suggest to wait until disaster strikes is a little short-sighted.

I feel that the attitude of the Department of the Environment to one of the proposals we are discussing today fell into the "waiting-for-the-foot-to-dropoff" category, because in the Explanatory Memorandum to Directive No. 1150 they said: The United Kingdom practice in environmental protection is to use the best practical means of control. This always involves taking into account the local situation. Of course we should do that. But what happens when the local situation is almost everywhere? By logic, we are getting towards a uniform emission standard when the local situation is almost everywhere, because air is everywhere and airborne lead is dispersed widely. It does not hang around cars in an invisible cloud and wait for people to stick their heads into the cloud and sniff it: it is dispersed into our reservoirs, on to our gardens and on sewage works which produce the sludge that we use as fertiliser. So when the Department of the Environment talks about taking into account "the local situation", the local situation is everywhere.

The Community's environmental policy is tending towards the same objectives as our own. We must not assume that in their methods the Department of the Environment is always right and that the Commission is always wrong. But to exaggerate differences in methodology into points of fundamental principle is a great mistake, and I hope we shall not let the very obvious defects in all the proposals we are discussing today blind us to the fact that genuinely successful environmental controls can only be achieved above and beyond the nation State level, and no matter how bad the Commission is now, it could become the most effective international organisation for dealing with the problems we are trying to solve.

6.3 p.m.

Lord DOUGLAS of BARLOCH

My Lords, I should like to support what has been said by the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan. Admittedly, the Select Committee has produced serious criticisms, but we must not run away with the idea that there are not some evils to be dealt with. The view has been expressed time after time in memoranda submitted by Departments that our existing legislation is capable of coping with all these problems, and they always adopt the attitude that has been expressed today: that we must have a pragmatic approach and consider each case on its merits. If that is done, and done thoroughly, there is a great deal to be said for it; but I am not satisfied that that is the case. Enforcement agencies are not always vigilant and sometimes they get very slack. We have had an example during the last few days in the report of the Parliamentary Commissioner with regard to asbestos in a certain works. This was trouble which had been going on for years and was observable. It was not concealed; yet no vigorous or effective action was taken.

This is where we must concentrate our attention if we are to adopt the view that we do not need to have uniform Community standards. But we ought to have some standards. In the case of titanium dioxide and other substances, it is said that, "It's all right if you discharge it into an estuary or into tidal waters". That is an easy thing to say, but it really requires very substantial research to see what the result is and whether there is a dispersion down to levels which are inoffensive and also whether there is a dispersion which ultimately could affect the fish life in the sea, for example. We are already seeing that the fish in the North Sea, for one reason or another—and the reasons are not always clear—have diminished significantly to a point where everybody agrees that the most drastic control and restriction on sea fishing is necessary. Do not let us imagine that that cannot—

Lord NUGENT of GUILDFORD

My Lords, before the noble Lord moves from that point, may I ask him whether he knows that recent research in this country has enabled a model to be built for monitoring the waste discharged into estuaries in order to ensure that the toxic elements are kept to a level which does not damage fish life? The effectiveness of this model is such that it has been universally acclaimed throughout the world; so we now have an effective method of doing just what the noble Lord wishes to be done.

Lord DOUGLAS of BARLOCH

My Lords, I think it is possible to have an effective method of following the physical and clinical dispersion of substances, although that is not quite as simple as it appears to be; but biological questions are a great deal more difficult to solve. I do not accept that they have all been solved—far from it.

Let me now revert to a matter on which this arises particularly acutely—the question of lead in the environment arising from industrial processes, from the discharge of lead in petrol and from domestic water supplies. It is only comparatively recently that this problem has begun to come to light, with the recognition that the consequences of lead to human beings are more varied and more serious than was thought for very many years. The question of brain injury to young children raises very serious disquiet, for example, and it possibly will become more acute as time goes by because of the fact that infants so frequently are reared upon artificially-com- pounded milk substitutes instead of being breast fed by their mothers. Consequently, in the most susceptible years of life they are subjected to far more lead than would have been the case in days gone by. The investigation of this kind of thing lags far behind the investigation of physical and clinical problems relating to industry, effluents, and so on. It is biological research which is lacking and which ought to be intensified. Until that is done thoroughly, we do not know what standards ought to be applied.

In the case of water supplies, the WHO level was revised from 0.05 to 0.1—in other words, it was doubled. What were the reasons for that? The reasons for that were not biological. The reasons were that the water authorities who were consulted about it said that it was impracticable for them to conform to the level of 0.05. It was not because anybody had discovered that lead was not so dangerous. It was merely in order to have a technical excuse for supplying water of a quality which is definitely undesirable.

I know that it is very expensive to deal with this and that the extent of the problem is very great. But if there are 3 million houses affected, that is 6 million or 8 million persons who are being exposed to lead poisoning and who ought to be saved from it. The sum of £500 million is a great deal of money but the longer we wait to begin to tackle these problems the more people may be injured and it will not become any cheaper.

It has been known for a long time that we had very large volumes of water supplies in this country which were capable of dissolving lead, and which did dissolve lead. There is not the slightest doubt about that. But for years the Ministry of Housing and Local Government refused to admit that there was any possible problem at all. They kept on saying that the water supplies were perfect, and that there was no lead danger at all. Now they say, "Ah, well! The water as we put it into the reservoirs and into the mains is all right, but unfortunately it dissolves the lead in the domestic water supplies and that is where the trouble is." It is indeed where the trouble is, but it has always been there. It has never been anywhere else. This ought to have been dealt with many years ago when it first became apparent that so many water supplies were being contaminated by lead. Therefore, I say once more that it is all very well to adopt the pragmatic approach and say, "We have got the machinery to deal with all these things and we will deal with them." Let us provide more proof that we are going to deal with them earnestly.

6.12 p.m.

Lord KENNET

My Lords, may I start with a declaration of interest. I was until recently a full-time consultant to the European Commission and on the completion of our piece of work I am still a part-time consultant to it. But I think your Lordships will see that this has not, to put it mildly, affected what I am going to say. I expect all your Lordships know that it was said within the Community before we joined that the Germans knew what the new Directives and Regulations were and tried to keep them; that the French knew what they were and that the Italians did not even know what they were. We, as comparative newcomers, are, I think, trying to find our place on this scale, and it seems to me that in the four draft Directives which we have before us this afternoon we should be well advised to adopt a German position on those concerning lead, and a French position on those concerning industrial emissions.

The villain of the piece is the concept of the uniform emission standard. I do not think I need to go into it, because everybody who is present for this debate is here because he knows about the subject, and knows the difference between a uniform emission standard and an individual emission standard. The key to the matter is: what do you want to be the use of the piece of the environment into which the pollutant is emitted? You take your decision. But in the achievement of your purpose a uniform emission standard is totally useless, because it may be 100 factories hitting that standard or one. The European Commission is addicted to the naïve and totally mistaken concept that you can control the environment by this means, on to which it sometimes grafts an even odder one that the emission of a given factory or industry, which is to be tolerated, should be related to its production. So one can imagine a factory where someone simply says, "I have the right to pollute this bit of the environment"—whatever it is, whether a tiny stream or the open Atlantic—"more and more, because, as you can see, I am increasing my production, which is of course a very good thing in the national interest."

The lead matter, on the other hand, is not necessarily related to this stupid uniform emission standard. It may be related to a uniform consumption standard through the tap—there is some sense in that—but the environment with which we are concerned in the case of lead is human blood and brain. If we can hit and keep below certain levels of lead in that internal environment, then we are all right. I must say that I share the feeling of the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, that we should not scorn the Commission's attempts in this direction, but should adopt a German attitude towards them; that is to say, we should know what they are and try to hit them. We shall fail to do so, but we should try.

On the titanium dioxide and dumping of waste at sea, I agree entirely with my noble friend Lady White that we should adopt the French position; let us be fully informed about what the Directive contains. The Commission is addicted to this harmonisation way outside the field of environment. I would not go along with the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, in saying that the Environment Department is especially addicted to it. These attempts to harmonise supply and demand in agriculture have been among the most conspicuously unsuccessful attempts by anybody to harmonise anything over the last 15 years. This attempt to harmonise the conditions of sale of poultry threatens, apparently, to deprive us of the right to buy fresh chickens at all, because of this extraordinary draft Directive about guts.

The uniform emission standard approach, the harmonisation approach to the matter, is equivalent to ordering the sun to be turned off in Sicily, because it is unfair to Scottish tomato growers or, alternatively, ordering all the Sicilian tomato growers to build glasshouses, because the Scottish tomato growers have to do so, and that will restore parity of competition. You cannot do it, as many noble Lords have pointed out. The climate is different; everything is different. I sometimes wonder: can the Community survive the Commission? I answer myself: Yes, but not for much longer. And we must hurry to apply the only possible corrective, which is continuous democratic control through a properly directly elected and fully active European Parliament. That will do the trick, and will get rid of a lot of the nonsense that comes out of the present short-sighted, under-informed, ill-organised and under-qualified bureaucracy in Brussels.

6.18 p.m.

Baroness STEDMAN

My Lords, the Government welcome the opportunity presented by the Motion tabled by my noble friend Lady White to hear the views of the House, and to give their own views on the draft Directives. Like my noble friend, I also regret the inability of the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, to be here with us today and I join in her good wishes for his speedy recovery. Your Scrutiny Committee, under my noble friend's chairmanship, has—as I am sure we all acknowledge—done a very thorough and expert job in looking at these Directives and drawing the attention of your Lordships to some of the serious matters for criticism.

The noble Lord, Lord Avebury, wondered whether these various discussions which we are having in your Lordships' House on the Directives serve any useful purpose. I can assure the noble Lord that the views expressed in this House are indeed noted very carefully. They are certainly passed on to our representation in Brussels, and I have no doubt that they are brought to the attention of the Commission. The noble Baroness, Lady White, and the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, visited the Commission last autumn and I have no doubt that they were not completely silent while they were there. I note the point about the desirability of feedback. I am not quite sure how this would be achieved but I will certainly have a word with my right honourable friend about it and see whether there is any possibility of feedback.

Lord O'HAGAN

My Lords, could not the six-monthly report by the Government on activities within the Community be more useful? At the moment it is a waste of time. Could not the Government give an account of what they have done in response to debates in both Houses, perhaps as an appendix to that report?

Baroness STEDMAN

My Lords, that might very well be a useful way of dealing with the matter and I will certainly put the noble Lord's suggestion to my right honourable friend. Turning to the lead standards Directive, we have always made clear our support for measures to reduce the risk of damage to health from lead. In this country we have adopted a good many practical measures, some of which are also the subject of EEC proposals, such as those concerning paint and cooking utensils. There has been a limitation of the lead content in paints for indoor use; it has been limited by voluntary agreement to one per cent. Also, there has been a limitation by regulation to 2,500 parts per million of lead in paint for toys, while the content for pencils and coatings is limited to 250 parts per million.

The EEC proposal for paints is nearly ready to go to the Council and a proposal for toys is at an early stage of drafting. There is also an EEC proposal on ceramics which is being discussed at Council level and another proposal on enamel ware is being developed. Already there are regulations in force based on British standards which limit the amount of lead in glazed ceramic and vitreous enamel, articles designed for use with food, as well as the regulations which control the tinning of saucepans, et cetera. In food, the lead content is at present limited to a maximum of two milligrammes per kilogramme for most food items but the Independent Food Additives and Contaminants Committee has recommended the lowering of the limit to one milligramme per kilogramme for most foodstuffs. Representations on this Committee's report are now being considered.

In so far as lead in petrol is concerned, the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, asked whether it is useful to reduce the content of lead in petrol, if we are to supersede this by putting more cars on the road. We appreciate the noble Lord's point that the number of cars on British roads is likely to continue to increase over the years. However, I do not think we can agree that this fact in itself will negate the benefits to be obtained from reducing the content of lead in petrol. The programme of phased reductions in the lead content of petrol which was announced by my right honourable friend Mr. Howell in another place on 4th March is based on keeping with the 1971 levels—this allows for estimates of increases in traffic—as advised by the chief medical officer. As your Lordships know, the Government's decision on the lead content in petrol is that there shall be a three stage reduction to a level of 0.5 grammes per litre as soon as practicable, to 0.45 grammes per litre by 1978 and 0.40 grammes per litre by 1981. In connection with this decision, I shall also draw the attention of my right honourable friend to the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, on the German experience.

This approach of tackling the risk at source is the most practical one if we are to prevent individuals absorbing too much lead. We have also made it very clear that we entirely support the work of the Commission on devoloping criteria on the dose/effect relationship of particular pollutants and, from these, arriving at quality objectives and, if appropriate, quality standards. We have always, however, insisted that proposals should be based on sound scientific evidence and that it would be quite wrong to adopt too rigid measures on the basis of inadequate information. At the same time we must avoid deferring prudent action simply because we do not know enough.

The Commission's proposals on biological standards for lead in blood and air quality standards for lead go, in our view, too far. The Government, therefore, are in agreement with the points made by the Scrutiny Committee about the inadequacy of the information on which the proposals for standards have been based. The scientific evidence, despite the effort put in over a number of years, is still not such that we can advance to the point where we should lay down, in legislation, precise standards. Such a step would imply in law that every individual exceeding the blood lead limit and everybody in an area in which the air quality standard was exceeded would be in danger. We would not dissent from the view that the sort of figures for the standards proposed are reasonably reliable indicators of where investigation of the sources of lead should be initiated and action taken. We are, however, opposed to the rigidity and overemphasis on particular figures which would be consequent on enshrining them in legislation and which would carry with them the absolute obligation that they should not be exceeded.

Until we know more, therefore, we should prefer something less rigid in the form of guidelines, or possibly quality objectives. These would set targets to be achieved which, in the light of further evidence, may be further modified or possibly adopted as standards. The main purpose of the proposal is to ensure that appropriate action is taken to deal with particular sources of lead contamination, and that would not be altered. Our attitude is wholly consistent with the recommendations made by the Royal Commission in its recently published Fifth Report. This would be, first, to set the targets to be achieved, which can be amended or changed to standards in the light of further evidence; then to ensure that action is taken as necessary to deal with particular sources of lead pollution (this requires identifying potential areas of risk which we are already doing in the United Kingdom through our monitoring programmes); and then, as a consequence of that, to improve the proposals for monitoring.

The point about the importance of the need to identify areas of potential risk was also made by the Scrutiny Committee and repeated by my noble friend Lady White today. The Government accept this point entirely. The proposals in the Directive are inadequate in this respect but we see no reason why we should not arrive at an answer. We are, at present, already doing a great deal of monitoring in areas where lead levels are known or expected to be higher than average. In the main, such areas exist around industrial sources of lead and near major roads, and are, in relation to the country as a whole, not extensive and readily identifiable.

The proposals for monitoring blood lead in particular do not meet the real needs of the situation. We would advocate first defining more accurately the areas at possible risk by means of monitoring lead in the air in places where people spend most time—in the localities where we know there could be higher levels of lead in the air. Where these exist it would be more effective to carry out some system of monitoring for blood lead levels. This kind of survey would indicate more accurately the possible dangers and whether there was a need to reduce them. We appreciate the legal difficulties of monitoring blood lead levels. United Kingdom health authorities do not have statutory powers to oblige citizens to submit themselves to medical tests and do not allow samples of blood taken for one purpose, such as blood donations, to be used for another. The Commission has, however, realised that sampling would have to be conducted on a voluntary basis and extra care taken to ensure that the sample is none the less representative.

There appears, therefore, to be little difference between the views of the Scrutiny Committee and those of the Government. We welcome the additional support that this gives—coming, as it does, from such an eminent and well-informed source. We have good reason to believe that a number of other Member States share our views on this Directive and we look forward to arriving at an agreed form of Community document which will meet the real needs of the Community in this matter.

The draft Directive on the quality of water for human consumption is still at a relatively early stage of discussion at official level.

We agree with the views which noble Lords have expressed today, that it is impossible to implement all the details of this Directive within the two years of notification to Member States. The facts quoted in the Committee's report make it clear that other Member States share our problems and we shall make it quite clear in Brussels that two years is unrealistic. We support the Directive in principle, but we are concerned that its requirements should be soundly based scientifically, that they should be realistic and that they should be practicable. We are therefore paying particular attention to the parameters listed in the annexes with which the water must comply, frequency of sampling and the methods of analysis used.

A general criticism which has been widely made is that the Directive does not distinguish sufficiently between sub- stances which are of proven harm to human health and those which are merely undesirable. We believe that only the former should be subject to mandatory standards. Individual standards have also been criticised as unnecessarily stringent; for example, those for copper and zinc. All the standards are currently under detailed discussion in the Community.

The main problem is lead. The standard proposed is 0.05 milligrammes per litre, and as the noble Lord, Lord Nugent of Guildford, said in his very informative speech, that is twice as stringent as the current WHO standard for water in supply of 0.1 milligrammes per litre, though a WHO working group recommended in favour of 0.05 milli-grammes per litre as long ago as 1972. All water put into public supply in the United Kingdom is well within the existing WHO standards, but as my noble friend pointed out today, water from the tap can contain higher levels of lead as a result of contamination from lead piping.

I should like to assure my noble friend Lady White that research is being carried out, with Government support, both into the factors which cause plumbosolvency in water and the treatment of water in areas where the water is plumbosolvent. It is a complex matter. The noble Baroness, Lady White, mentioned that soft water can be plumbosolvent. There are, however, soft waters which are not plumbosolvent and there are hard waters which have been found to contain lead, and this research will supplement the knowledge which we shall obtain from the current lead survey and the epidemiological studies which will follow.

There is often variability in the amounts of lead which come away at the tap. A recent survey of lead in water carried out by the Department of the Environment and other Departments in conjunction with the water authorities has shown the complexities of the situation. That report will be published shortly. We shall need to consider carefully whether the medical need to limit the overall intake of lead can best be met by tightening still further the existing WHO standard, bearing in mind that lead from water is only one of the sources of lead ingested by the body and, if so, how far a more stringent standard could be met by redeployment of sources of supply and by developing more effective means of treating water to reduce its plumbosolvency. If there proved to be a case for setting a more stringent standard for lead in water, this would have to be treated as a target with a realistically long period for implementation because, as the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, reminded us, of the gigantic expenditure that would be involved.

We know that my noble friend's Committee has been worried about the enforcement of the Directive, particularly about the powers to test water on a consumer's premises. The Directive does not specify the precise point at which its requirements should apply, and in particular at which sampling should take place. It may well be preferable to avoid precision in these respects. We are of course ultimately concerned with the quality of the water as received by the individual, that is, as it comes out of the tap. But the means by which a satisfactory quality of water is assured on a consumer's premises ought, we think, to be left to Governments to decide in the light of varying national circumstances. We think it is important that users of small sources should not be subject to the burden of an extensive testing programme. But again this should be left for Governments to decide.

So far as the United Kingdom is concerned, while the statutory duty of water authorities to provide a wholesome supply of water for domestic purposes does not extend to the quality of the water within the consumer's premises, they have power to make and enforce by-laws for preventing the waste, misuse and contamination of water supplied by them. These by-laws are now in force over the whole of the country. Local authorities also have powers to enter premises in the exercise of their public health functions. We are advised that the powers of both kinds of authorities should be adequate for enforcement of the Directive as it stands. These arrangements have worked well in protecting the consumer. Sampling at the tap, whether by water authorities or local authorities, is carried out only where necessary, and the need does not arise very frequently. We see no justification for changing and we shall certainly attach great importance to prac- tical provision being made for the application and enforcement of the Directive.

My noble friend Lady White and the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, referred to the question of lead in water, and my Department decided, after consultation with the water industry, to set up a national survey of the current levels of lead in water, to ascertain the implications of these proposals. Two thousand four hundred households in England and Wales and 500 in Scotland were included in the survey and we are most grateful to the people concerned for their co-operation. The water put into supply has lead levels below the current and proposed limits, but the levels can be affected by factors such as the length of time the water spends in the lead piping used in the supply system, or in the house itself, and by the chemical nature of the water itself.

As the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, reminded us, the results of the national survey showed that about 2 to 3 per cent. of the households in England and Wales had levels of lead in normal running water in excess of the current limit, and about 8 to 10 per cent. had levels above the proposed limit. In Scotland, the proportion exceeding the limits is somewhat higher, and, moreover, a higher proportion in each case has levels over the limit in the first draw water, Which is the water drawn off first thing in the morning after it has stood in the pipes overnight. The water authorities and the water companies are advising householders about what action may be desirable where higher levels are found, and usually this means not drinking the water which has stood in the pipes for some hours.

On the Directive on the titanium dioxide waste the Minister of State for the Environment, my right honourable friend Mr. Howell, declared on the 16th October last in the Council of Environment Ministers, that we could not accept the proposal in its present form since it embodied uniform standards for controlling discharges of waste, regardless of environmental circumstances. Discharges are said to present a problem in the Mediterranean, but we have no significant problems from our industry which discharges into the North Sea.

The noble Lord, Lord Nugent, referred to the draft Directive on pollution from pulp mills which was debated in this House on 13th October last year in connection with its proposal for uniform controls on discharges. We intend to take a similar line against ill-conceived uniformity and in favour of flexible controls, designed to produce an acceptable quality in the environment rather than a uniform standard of discharge. On the pulp mills Directive your Lordships generously supported the Government's line in this respect, and we hope that you will be able similarly to endorse our policy here.

As your Lordships know, the draft Dumping of Waste at Sea Directive intends to harmonise within the Community the application of three international Conventions. Each of the Conventions has a regulatory body. We fully support the need to control dumping at sea in accordance with the criteria in the appropriate Convention. However, the draft Directive establishes the Commission as an additional regulatory body whose functions will need the most careful consideration and examination if it is not going to duplicate the works of the others. The intention of the Directive, as I have said, is to harmonise. Your Committee has pointed out that there is a danger that the establishment of the Commission will give rise to duplication of the work already being satisfactorily carried out. We intend to establish what exactly is proposed and to ensure that there is no duplication.

My noble friend Lady White asked some questions about the Bay of Biscay. I am advised that it is not true to say there is prohibition of dumping of all radioactive waste. The draft Directive provides in Annex 2 for the dumping of radioactive waste not prohibited in Annex 1; but those high, medium and low-level wastes prohibited in Annex 1 have yet to be defined. We are completely in compliance with our own international obligations for the dumping of radioactive waste. The selected dumping areas are by international agreement under the control of the nuclear energy Agency. But we do not dump in the Bay of Biscay.

One area where conflict could arise, of course, is in the disposal of radioactive waste. The Commission's proposals envisaged a prohibition on high, medium and low-level radioactive wastes. This is quite different from the arrangements set out in Annex 1 of the London Convention, which effectively prohibits only the dumping of high-level radioactive wastes as defined by the International Atomic Energy Agency. Other categories of radioactive wastes may be dumped under this Convention provided this is not contrary to the current recommendations of the International Atomic Energy Agency, and that a permit has been obtained from the competent national authority. Because of our nuclear energy programme, we shall have a need to dump low-level wastes for the foreseeable future. This is clearly a matter which will have to be vigorously taken up, as the Scrutiny Committee recognised, in our negotiations in Brussels.

The noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, made reference to the environmental controls, and I am sure that we would all share his concern that such controls should be above and outside any nation State level. We are more environmentally orientated here than in many other countries, and perhaps by our criticism of these Directives from time to time we can help with all that is being done. The noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, also raised the question of more money being made available to the Commission for scientific research. There is a considerable effort in research in support of the Community environment programme, both directly in the Community Joint Research Centre, and indirectly in member countries, and a second research programme is about to start. The Commission usually, but not always, consults widely, and it has available to it the best scientific advice from the experts of the Member States, but it remains free to make its own judgment having received that advice. I will certainly pass on the noble Lord's suggestion that when we have money available this is one source to which it might perhaps be directed.

The draft Directive also envisaged a prohibition of the dumping of acids and alkalis from the titanium dioxide and aluminium industries. The Government share the concern of the Committee that such a prohibition is unjustified. Our long experience leads us to subscribe to the view that these wastes can be safely disposed of in coastal waters, provided that the operation is carried out under suitable conditions, when the effects of such disposal can be reduced to such a level that little or no ecological disturbance can be observed. We will naturally take up this question also in the forthcoming negotiations in Brussels.

I share the view—I am sure all noble Lords do—of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that here in the United Kingdom we are second to none in our environmental endeavours, and I know the Government appreciate your Lordships' interest. I hope to have shown the Government's awareness of the problems raised by these draft Directives, and also to have shown how we intend to deal with them. I have listened with interest to the debate and have tried to deal with particular points of concern. If I find that I have missed any points, I will get in touch with noble Lords on the points they have raised. Much of what has been said is indeed helpful in supporting the Government's attitude. I would hope in turn that those who have expressed concern are reassured about what action the Government intend to take. But I would not wish to be pressed to go beyond the present statements of intent, since, as your Lordships will undoubtedly appreciate, this will allow discretion to the Government and will not embarrass them in their room for manoeuvre.

6.45 p.m.

Baroness WHITE

My Lords, I should like to express the gratitude both of myself and of my Committee to all noble Lords who have taken part in this debate. Perhaps I might say that we were delighted to have the unexpected bonus of contributions from the noble Lords, Lord Douglas of Barloch and Lord Kennet, which added greatly to the quality of our deliberations. I was also particularly happy that the noble Lord, Lord O'Hagan, who has perhaps as close a knowledge of the workings of the Community as any noble Lord in this House, put our debate into the European context in, I thought, a particularly enlightening and illuminating way. I am also most grateful to my noble friend Lady Stedman for her comprehensive reply to the debate.

If I may make just two small points of regret, they are these. She did not make any reference to the esuggestion from the Committee that there should be consideration of building regulations for new houses which would prohibit the use of lead pipes in any new construction. I am sure this inadvertent omission does not mean that the Government will not pay some attention to it. Maybe she will be able to write to us in the Committee to let us know what is proposed. The other matter on which I felt some slight disappointment was her suggestion that it would be possible for the Community to administer a quite separate set of rules for dumping at sea without an element of duplication. I think those on the Committee take this point extremely seriously; we think that where you have adequate, fully international arrangements, it is not desirable as a matter of policy to embark on other rules for the same marine area which inevitably, if they are to mean anything at all, will mean duplication of administration. We would hope very much that our representatives in Brussels will make this point with considerable force.

Finally, I should like to say that I trust that our colleagues in Brussels, not least those in the Commission itself, will not take amiss the criticisms we have felt obliged to make. We do so in the most constructive and, we hope, helpful and co-operative way. We genuinely wish to see achieved the objectives aimed at in these various Directives. It is largely the methods to which we have taken exception.

On Question, Motion agreed to.