HL Deb 28 June 1977 vol 384 cc1064-105

5.35 p.m.

Lord ASHBY rose to move, That this House takes note of the following Reports of the European Communities Committee on EEC Environment Policy:—

The noble Lord said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in my name on the Order Paper. Your Lordships' Select Committee on the European Communities is charged with reporting on matters which come from the Commission which raise issues of policy or principle. The four reports which are before your Lordships this afternoon have been before the Sub-Committee presided over by the noble Baroness, Lady White, and we decided that they raised matters of principle which should be debated in your Lordships' House. I am very grateful to the noble Baroness for giving me the privilege of opening this debate.

The questions are important because they confront Her Majesty's Government with a dilemma. On the one hand, if the Government were to comply with the proposals in one of these Directives before your Lordships today we would be obliged to incur what the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, described as "astronomical" expenditures, and, as I shall explain in a moment, expenditures which are totally unnecessary for the purpose of the Directive. If we comply with another one of these Directives, we shall be committed to a prodigious and almost useless programme of monitoring, using scarce manpower and resources. On the other hand, if the Government do not comply with the Directives on environmental issues, without giving compelling reasons for their dissent, then we create the impression—the false impression—that Britain is querulously unto-operative in environmental matters, that we are dragging our feet in this campaign and that we are encouraging pollution havens where people can dump waste on the cheap. It is a dilemma between totally unnecessary expenditure and totally unjustifiable tarnish of our public image in Europe, and your Sub-Committee hopes that this debate may help to clarify these issues.

Two of these four Directives are about pesticides; and, fortunately, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, is here, and will speak upon these with far more authority than I can. All I should like to say is that there is in the United Kingdom a surveillance of the use of pesticides and fungicides under the Pesticide Safety Precautions Scheme. It operates a voluntary phasing out of dangerous, persistent pesticides. How successful is it? The simplest way to find out how successful it is, is to find out how much of these pesticides accumulates in the bodies of human beings. This has been done for organo-chlorine compounds, which are the most notorious of them, since 1963. Over these last 14 years there has been a steady decline in the levels of these in the fatty tissues of human beings in Britain. They never were a threat to health, and today we are almost at the bottom of the league table for concentrations of pesticide residues in human beings—and, for that matter, in many animals, which are monitored, too. So the only real point of contention in these two reports is whether to substitute some legal ban for the voluntary process which is being operated at present; and there is in any case provision for doing this under the Control of Pollution Act 1974.

The other two Directives I shall have to say a little more about. One is on the quality of freshwater for fish, and the other is on the quality of salt water for shellfish. I would remind your Lordships of what is in these two Directives, and why the proposals cause such disquiet. Then I should like to put the facts very briefly into a perspective which I hope will persuade Her Majesty's Government to make strong representations, not only against these two Directives but against the general philosophy which lies behind them.

I begin with the Directive on water standards for freshwater fish. Its purpose is unambiguous. It is to impose quality objectives which—and this is a quotation from the Directive, aim at allowing fish…to live in favourable conditions". It applies only to waters already capable of supporting fish. Its intention is clear: it is for the sake of the fish, not for the sake of the fishermen or for the sake of those who eat the fish. This policy—to protect nature for its own sake not just for the convenience of man—was in the declaration made by the Heads of State of the Community when they met in 1972, and it is one wholeheartedly supported in the United Kingdom. But from the beginning Her Majesty's Government made that attitude clear. They prepared a memorandum about the draft declaration to come from the Heads of State of the Community, and they said this: …the important thing is to agree on objectives. When it comes to implementation, the most effective and acceptable means of making progress should be employed". This is the gist of the matter. It is not over ends that Britain finds herself in disagreement with the environmental policies of the Commission; it is over means.

The objective of the proposals for freshwater fish is to allow the fish to live in favourable conditions. It would seem to me that a reasonable way to reach this objective would be to ask the fish—in other words, to monitor fish populations. But this is not the way the Commission is tackling the problem. The Commission's Directive prescribes 16 parameters—levels of temperature, oxygen content, acidity and concentrations of a number of chemicals—all of which have to be monitored regularly. If these levels were proposed merely as guidelines, or for information, they would be quite interesting and ueful, but ten out of these 16 levels are mandatory. If they are adopted by the Council and we do not comply with them we shall be breaking Community law; if we comply with them, we shall be committed to a monstrous expenditure.

May I pass on to your Lordships what the National Water Council stated in evidence: they said that if all rivers and streams which presently support fish life need to be designated under Article 4, which specifies which rivers are capable of supporting fish, then: …water authorities collectively might have to spend thousands of millions of pounds on sewers and sewage treatment works to comply". If expenditure on this vast scale were essential in order to keep fish in our rivers, the case would at least be arguable. But the plain fact is that many of our rivers carry flourishing populations of fish and yet do not comply with the mandatory standards prescribed in this Directive. Let me put on record one or two facts. Eighty-nine per cent. of the rivers in England and Wales carry fish. But just over one-third of these fish-carrying rivers (36 per cent.) do not comply with all the mandatory standards prescribed by the Commission. Here are a couple of examples supplied to your Sub-Committee by the Severn-Trent Water Authority. The Afon Garno is a salmon nursery and trout fishery. It carries no contaminants, except those from natural sources and yet it fails to comply with two mandatory and four guideline standards imposed by the Directive. The Severn at Trimpley is a coarse fishery used extensively by match anglers. This river fails to comply with seven of the quality standards proposed in the Directive. Indeed, the Severn-Trent Authority told us that no fishery in a river in their region would wholly comply with the conditions of the Directive.

If the Directive becomes law, one of the common disqualifications in English rivers would be too high a temperature. The mandatory maximum in the Directive is 20 degrees. We were told that this is a misprint for 25 degrees, but I notice that it reappears as 20 degrees in the First Report on theState of the Environmentpublished only two or three weeks ago. However, 20 degrees (or perhaps 25 degrees) is the maximum for summer and in winter 10 degrees. If this standard were to be applied to the Trent, the power stations there, which generate 25 per cent. of the Central Electricity Generating Board's total capacity, would either have to close down or spend millions of pounds a year to cool the water below the present level which is just under 30 degrees; and yet the Trent—our Sub-Committee was assured—is used by hundreds of thousands of anglers every year.

In England and Wales there are some 12,000 kilometres of river which carry fish, but which do not comply with the standards prescribed in this Directive as being favourable to fish. The fish are unaware of this disqualification and I suggest that it would be unreasonable to ask Her Majesty's Government to ban them from these rivers. I would ask instead another question: as we can afford only limited resources for the improvement of rivers, would it not be better to employ these resources on rivers which at present are too polluted to carry fish? May I now direct your Lordships' attention to another of these Directives, one which sets water standards for shellfish. This Directive too is explicitly stated to be for the sake of the shellfish, not for the sake of those who sell or eat shellfish. Like the Directive for freshwater fish, this Directive too prescribes quality requirements for the water rather than evidence that the fish are living happily in the environment where you find them. In this case, if you include a list of nine metals which have to be monitored, the total number of parameters to be kept under surveillance is 19. Among the quality objectives are some which are astonishingly unrealistic. Thus, there is one that the temperature variation within six hours must not exceed five degrees. To achieve this standard, it would be necessary to control the rain, and the water and the sunshine; feats which are at present beyond the capacity not only of Her Majesty's Government but of any Member State in the Community. Another quality objective is to keep the bacterial coliform count below 300 per 100 millilitres for 90 per cent. of the samples and below 500 for the remaining 10 per cent. This objective has nothing to do with the welfare of the shellfish which will flourish in colicounts thousands of times higher than this. It would be relevant only if the shellfish were to be eaten without any further treatment. This could be achieved by chlorinating the water, but that would lead to other harmful effects. That shellfish should be safe to eat is obviously essential; but that is not what this Directive is about and the efficient way to ensure that shellfish are safe to eat is to do as we do already, to insist on treatment between harvesting and marketing.

This confusion between the desire to promote the wellbeing of shellfish and the desire to protect public health has been criticised also by another Member State of the Community. On May 6th 1977 the GermanBundesrathad a number of adverse comments to make about the Directive and declared that it needed amendment. But apart from this confusion, the main objection to the Directive at present is its reliance on the monitoring of 19 parameters as the means to ensure the health of shellfish. To do this would put an intolerable burden upon the scientific services which are employed to protect the environment.

The Lancashire and Western Sea Fisheries Joint Committee reckon that it would need some 400 manhours of field and laboratory workper annumto monitor one average-size shellfish bed; and the Shellfish Association of Great Britain reckon that some 10,000 sampling stations would be needed if this Directive were to be complied with. At a rough guess, therefore, compliance with this Directive might commit well over a million man-hours, perhaps up to 4 million manhoursper annumfor monitoring shellfish beds.

My Lords, it would be a pity to put these criticisms before your Lordships it' there were no remedy—and I speak as a committed pro-European. Britain is as anxious as are any of her partners to provide favourable conditions for the growth and flourishing of freshwater fish and shellfish. The simple way to work towards this objective is not to prescribe long lists of parameters in the water—some of them, as you see, quite demonstrably unrealistic—which have to be complied with: it is to monitor the fish. So I hope that one outcome of this debate may be that Her Majesty's Government will bring pressure to bear on the Commission to give up this cumbersome and misguided method of trying to protect the environment and to put in its place three very simple principles. The first is to let the fish and shellfish decide whether the waters are favourable for them; the second is to monitor very carefully their health and growth and—very important—to publish the results of that monitoring and to ask the other Member States in the Community to publish their results, too. The third is to act promptly to treat the environment at the first sign that the fish or the shellfish are under strain.

This brings me to the last point I want to make to your Lordships. How did these misconceived Directives come to be composed? And what steps can be taken to prevent in future the embarrassment—to the Commission, I am sure, as well as to the Government—which follows the criticisms which have to be made of these Directives and not only these; but similar criticisms have had to be made on two other Directives, one on effluents from wood pulp mills and the other on the waste from titanium dioxide plants.

Before issuing a Directive, the Environment and Consumer Protection Service in Brussels invites a panel of experts, drawn from Member States, to give advice. For freshwater fish there is a wealth of sound advice available, because the Food and Agriculture Organisation has a body called the European Inland Fisheries Advisory Commission (EIFAC) which is a body of experts who have published an impressive series of reports on the conditions favourable for fish. The convenor of EIFAC is one of our own authorities on fish, Mr. J. S. Alabaster, who is at the Water Research Station at Stevenage. The Commission's panel drew heavily on the report of EIFAC. They gave good advice to the Commission. But when the Directive appeared, it was quite inconsistent with the experts' advice on several very important points including the levels of oxygen which are tolerated by fish; and no reason for this was given.

There is a similar inconsistency between the advice given to the Commission by its panel of experts on shellfish and the terms of the Directive which purported to be based on the experts' advice. So I hope that a second outcome of this debate may be that Her Majesty's Government can persuade the Commission's Environment and Consumer Protection Service to set out clearly the scientific evidence upon which they base their Directives and, in particular, to state their reasons when their Directives differ from the advice that their own experts have given to them.

My Lords, those of us who have been to Brussels to discuss these problems with members of the Commission have the impression that part of the difficulty is that the Environment and Consumer Protection Service has much too small a staff and not a sufficient spread of expertise to deal with the demands made upon it. There is a mismatch between the heavy obligations to fulfil an ambitious programme which was set out by the Council's Declaration of 1973 and the resources given to this part of the Commission's staff to do that job.

I wonder whether Her Majesty's Government, during this period when Britain's influence can be most easily exerted in Brussels, could encourage the Commission to strengthen the staff who have to draft these difficult and highly technical Directives; because misguided Directives of the kind before your Lordships this afternoon and of the kind that have been before you before, are going to make, if they are approved, a waste of millions of units of account in Member States; not to mention the awkward controversies they cause which strain good relations between Britain and the Commission.

But the most important expression of opinion which, I hope, may arise out of this debate concerns what one might call the "philosophy" of policies to protect the environment. The foundation of these policies is, again, in the Declaration of the Council in 1973. The Commission's present policy of harmonisation is not consistent with this Declaration of their own Council. There are two passages in it which have been over-looked in most of the environmental Directives with which your Lordships' Sub-Committee has had to deal. One is the statement that concern for the environment should be—and I quote—"at the lowest cost to the Community". To spend huge sums of money to make water favourable to fish when it is already so favourable that people pay to fish in it, does not seem to me to be doing something "at the lowest cost to the Community". The other phrase is that in setting objectives—and, again, I quote from the Declaration—allowance should be made for "the specific regional conditions". To spend huge sums so that you get exactly the same water quality standards in Italy and Scotland does not take account of "specific regional conditions". I should hope, therefore, that Her Majesty's Government could persistently press this point when they are negotiating Directives with the Commission.

So, my Lords, I come back to what I said at the beginning. Over ends, there is no fundamental conflict between Britain and the rest of the Community. Over means, Britain has great experience to offer her partners because we were in the business of protecting the environment long before any other European country; for 114 years ago the noble Earl, Lord Derby, made a speech in this House which initiated the first really effective means of controlling one of the kinds of pollutions of the air, the acids coming from alkali works. Ever since then, this House has played an important part in legislation on the protection of the environment. There is still much to be put right; but our pragmatic approach has been a proven success over more than a century. I believe, therefore, that we have much to offer our European partners towards a genuine harmonisation of laws to protect the environment; but, my Lords, we still have to persuade the Commission that there is a difference between harmonisation and homogenisation. I beg to move.

Moved, That this House takes note of the following Reports of the European Communities Committee on EEC Environment Policy:—

5.59 p.m.

Lord SKELMERSDALE

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has given us several valuable pointers as to the way we might well conduct ourselves and the points that we might well follow throughout the course of this debate. He has made particular reference to his two reports on fish: the quality of water for shellfish and the quality of water for freshwater fish. I am a little unsure of my ground on these two; and I should like to draw your Lordships' attention to the two papers on pesticides as reported in the EEC Sub-Committee G's 16th and 31st Reports concerning organo-chlorine compounds and plant protection products respectively.

I have been especially interested in these linked subjects from the time they first appeared as Consultative Documents last summer, not only because they refer to chemicals that I use in my work as a horticulturalist—and here I must declare a pecuniary interest—but also because the chemicals affect the air we breathe and the food we eat to such a marked degree that anyone who takes the slightest interest in the quality of life on this planet cannot fail to be interested and, moreover, concerned that very dangerous chemicals are used in agriculture and horticulture, and indeed in such unlikely industries as carpet making I will refer to this briefly later.

Although we are debating the two Papers together—and in fact they arrived in Westminster almost simultaneously—they arise from two different directorates in Brussels. The Report R/1628/76 is an interim one to the council on some persistent organo-chlorine compounds and is a Health Directorate document, whereas the draft Directive emanates from the Agricultural Directorate. For convenience, I will be referring to them as the Report and Directive respectively throughout my remarks.

Let us take the Report first. Although this suggests that legislation will be needed in the future, it does not deal with any of the Directives currently under consideration. As it is a Report and not a draft Directive, it is probably not a proper subject for debate at all, but the Sub-Committee, on which I serve in a minor capacity under the very strict though fair chairmanship of the noble Baroness, Lady White, thought that it was so important that our own Report (No. 16) needed verbal underlining.

It sometimes seems to me, as a comparative newcomer to your Lordships' House, that some subjects do not get the treatment in Parliament that they deserve, that the Official Report loses something by not being able to use capital letters, red ink or quotation marks, making it very difficult to stress points that really are important. I know that this is quite impossible, that there are both technical and visual difficulties and that there are Parliamentary techniques for emphasising particular points; but, my Lords, this Report deals with poisons and here you can imagine that the word is in the biggest capital letters that it is possible to print—or, in this case, not to print.

At the risk of being contradicted by noble Lords who are much more scientifically-orientated than I am, I would define a persistent organo-chlorine as a chemical based on the chlorine atom, which is so constructed as to enter the sap of a plant, making the whole plant toxic to animals—including man—for a certain period. This period may be anything from a few days to several weeks. One can take for example Dicofol as an acaricide for the control of mites on apples and strawberries where the minimum interval to be observed between the last application and harvesting of the crop is seven days. DDT, as we are all well aware, is still used on a whole range of pests on agricultural and horticultural crops, and here the minimum interval to be observed between the last application and the harvesting of edible crops is two weeks.

There are of course many other examples, but I hope that I have made my point that these chemicals are highly dangerous for some considerable time after application. In many cases they are also dangerous while they are actually being applied and, as an employer, I have often had to insist on the wearing of face masks and gloves while they are being handled. It is even more alarming to know that organo-chlorines can persist in air, water and soil as well as in foodstuffs.

I meant to paint a frightening picture—and this goes some way to explaining why the use of these chemicals is, it would appear from evidence that we have received, on the decrease and not, as may be deduced from the Commission's Report, on the increase. Indeed as we say in our conclusion under paragraph 13(a), on page 5, we know of no organochlorine pesticides currently used in the Community which are likely to be used increasingly in the future. It is our view that these chemicals are so dangerous, both to the user and to the end consumer of the product, that it is next door to impossible that either manufacturers will wish to increase their production or farmers to increase their use.

It is in everyone's interest to phase them out completely; but—and this is most important—food must be produced economically and this means that pests must be adequately and cheaply controlled. This cannot be achieved while there is no alternative chemical on the market that works as well as, or better than, the persistant organo-chlorine. Therefore the "considerable amount of research" to which the Commission refers would be far more justified in developing alternative chemicals than, as they propose, that: this should be directed towards those organochlorine compounds which are likely to be increasingly used in the future". I do not think that it would serve any useful purpose to emphasise the rest of our Committee's conclusions and opinions on the Report, which are what one might term the theoretical side of the argument. The practical side then would be the Commission's Draft Directive on Plant Protection Products. These include all inorganic mercurial and many organochlorine pesticides, and the points I have made already on the Report refer equally well to the Directive. However, theory and practice do not always go together, and practical considerations very often outweigh the theoretical ones to such an extent that the theory has to be re-thought and re-written.

I was fortunate enough to be able to go to Brussels earlier this year with the noble Baroness, Lady White, and the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, who briefly referred to this excursion to the EEC capital. I was able to meet M. Bartholemy, the Director for Agricultural Legislation, and his colleagues. As the Sub-Committee had already decided that the key to the whole problem was the legislation that may be required to implement the Directive, one of the first points raised was the suitability of the Pesticides Safety Precaution Scheme (the PSPS for short, to which the noble Lord also referred). In all other EEC countries it is necessary to introduce legislation to control or ban the use of plant protection chemicals. In the United Kingdom, however, we have an anomalous situation where the use of pesticides is controlled by the non-statutory PSPS. This controls the pesticide products which are put on the United Kingdom market and the precautions to be observed in their use.

Under the Scheme the manufacturers concerned agree not to market a product containing any new chemical for use in agricultural or food storage plants or to introduce a new formulation which could show an increased hazard until recommendations for safe use have been agreed with Government departments concerned.

It would appear to be part and parcel of the Agricultural Chemical Approval Scheme, under which proprietary brands of horticultural chemicals can be approved; and if not, it must be very closely allied to them. It is, I understand, the only voluntary scheme there is and, although it is backed up by sections of various Acts of Parliament, for example, the Health and Safety at Work Act 1974, the Pharmacy and Poisons Act 1933 and, most important, the Health and Safety (Agriculture) (Poisonous Substances) Regulations 1975, the Commission, it appeared, are extremely unhappy about its being able to enforce the Directive in question. This is a point on which I am slightly at variance with some of my colleagues on the Committee, who believe that no harm would be done to have a mandatory scheme, and that the United Kingdom should in this matter operate consistently with the rest of the Community.

One of the main problems as explained by M. Bartholemy is that it does not cover third party imports and retail sales outlets. However, there is a suggestion by the newly-formed Trade Association covering the distributors of agricultural chemicals that there should be a parallel scheme for them. So far as imports go, there seems to be no reason why a section of one of the Customs and Excise Acts should not be used for this purpose.

I am very afraid, though, that a recent Government decision may well put the seal on the argument or, indeed, completely invalidate it. The operators of the Agricultural Chemicals Approval Scheme—that is, the Ministry of Agriculture—have published a booklet calledApproved Products for Farmers and Growersannually since the very beginning of the scheme. This contains a list of approved products and gives guidance on the efficient and safe use of agricultural chemicals. Every year it has been free to farmers and growers and, indeed, everyone directly concerned with the working of the scheme. This year, however, the Government have decided that the charge shall be£2 per copy.

I fully realise that this is in line with current thinking that users of the Ministry of Agriculture's services should pay an economic charge. To a certain extent I feel this is the right attitude, and it is right to charge for such things as growing season inspections and soil tests. These are going to be used in any event especially by certain seed producers and exporters who will not be able to carry out their normal business otherwise. The situation however, is even worse than I thought, because when I went to Quantock House —our new prestige agricultural office in Taunton—yesterday, I discovered at the door not only a huge orange notice advertising the booklet, but also the information that it was available only from Government bookshops—in other words, by post at£2.17 a copy. Furthermore, I was told that the staff were not allowed to sell it at all.

My question, therefore, is this: by charging£2 for this booklet, which lists such plant protection products as are available and approved in this country, many of them being included in the annex to the draft Directive, have the Government considered that many small-scale and perhaps not so small-scale producers will, at worst, not now bother to get it or, at best, have out-of-date copies and therefore will not be acquainted either with the new or better products or, more seriously, will continue to use chemicals for purposes which are not now recommended or are indeed illegal? If I am right in my assumption—and I hope I am not—do the Government agree that the whole scheme will break down so far as the users are concerned and could ultimately become a danger to the health of the whole community? I believe there are still free individual leaflets on particular chemicals, and I hope those will remain and will remain uncharged for.

However, I am straying slightly from the Directive. As I have said, I agree with witnesses from the Ministry and therefore hold slightly differing ideas from some of my colleagues on the Sub-Committee as regards the operation of the draft Directive; but I do not differ at all from their other findings. I agree entirely that so far as possible one must minimise the risk of using any chemical, but I am among the first to say that, in order to ban a chemical totally, an efficient substitute must not only be found but must be tested and approved for general use. For example, Dieldrin is still recommended in this country as a dip to control cabbage root fly simply because, although there are other products, they are not as efficient. Even so, in the annex to the Directive, it is listed as a product which should be banned for this purpose and used only for certain purposes, mainly in non-edible plants, from 1979. That is only two years away, and I doubt whether it would be possible to perfect an alternative and have it tested and approved in that time. Incidentally, Dieldrin is also used in the carpet industry to control carpet beetle and will continue, presumably, to be so used since the draft Directive covers only plant protection products and not the uses of what I term to myself toxic, mainly agricultural, chemicals which perhaps would be more appropriate.

Again, it is recommended that inorganic mercury compounds, with the exception of mercuric oxide, which has a partial derogation, should be banned immediately. One such is mercurous chloride, perhaps better known as calomel. This is a widely used chemical, both commercially and by amateur vegetable growers, as a dip for seedlings to control diseases of brassica crops, particularly club root. That is an extremely important pest which could destroy a cabbage crop completely. It is also used as a seed dressing to control white rot on onions. So far as I know, it has not yet been effectively superseded. My Lords, I could continue giving examples, but I hope I have shown that many of the proposed banned and partially banned products have uses which it would be a mistake to withdraw. So long as they are carefully used, following correctly the directions on the labels and in the PSPS booklet, they are perfectly safe. I hope, therefore, that derogations from the list will be applied for and given.

Lastly, my Lords, Sub-Committee G has a general comment which has come up before in these debates. This is the subject of a bibliography which we feel should be appended to any Directive or report. It is the old "niggle" on which the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has very outspoken views, although he did not comment on it this afternoon. I could hardly, then, refrain from discussing it very briefly with M. Bartholemy. We feel that it is not only desirable but requisite for those concerned with the detailed surveillance of the reports to be able to read the background and, especially in the case of your Lordships' Scrutiny Committee, to be able to check this with facts as they appear in the United Kingdom.

I got a very interesting reaction to this proposal; I learned that it was not the practice of the Commission at any level to question experts who have been asked for their opinions. Indeed, I had the impression that it was a practice to be avoided at all costs—and, my Lords, I still fail to understand it, despite the earlier remarks of the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, and in spite of the possible lack of expertise among the Commission staff. Surely, in order to report fully on a particular matter, it is absolutely necessary to get all the facts. One is that any piece of scientific data can frequently be interpreted in more than one way. Is it not possible for a committee of your Lordships' House to form a valid judgment when different views are expressed? I think it is, especially when several members of the committee have the scientific expertise required to judge between differing views. Even if this was not the case, it would be much easier to find and approach the appropriate witnesses after one had read the background information and decided which points needed to be followed up. I also feel that it would be a great help to the civil servants who are concerned in each particular case. Often they have their own channels of communication and know the background, but I am assured that that is not always the case, or indeed adequate.

My Lords, I have spoken for far too long and I must apologise for taking up the time of your Lordships' House to quite such an extent; but I hope your Lordships will realise that this is a subject dear to my heart and one about which I am pleased to be able to say that I am a tiny cog in a gigantic machine. If any of my remarks today have fallen on even slightly fertile ground—I hope not completely sterile—I shall be amply recompensed.

6.16 p.m.

Baroness WHITE

My Lords, I am sure that all Members of your Lordships' House will join with me in congratulating, first, the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, for a masterly presentation of these reports which are before us today and, secondly, the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, who indeed showed a considerable knowledge as well as a very deep concern with the two reports on which he spoke. We were very glad indeed to have his company in Brussels and to feel that we had someone with us who, in his own practical life, had direct experience of these matters and therefore could speak with knowledge as well as conviction.

As the reports have been dealt with so competently and so comprehensively, I do not wish to retrace the ground, but I think it is of some interest that this very week the United Kingdom ceases to hold the presidency of the Commission and it is perhaps of some significance that the six months during which for the first time we have occupied that role have not been entirely happy ones either for us or for the Commission. I am not now speaking of some of the major matters of difference between ourselves and our European partners, because I doubt whether any different presidency could have influenced some of the really deep divisions of interest which persist, but I had frankly hoped that during this period we might perhaps have been a little more successful than I think we have been in persuading our European colleagues at the official level, in the European Parliament and in the Economic and Social Committee which examines some of the matters which come to our Select Committee, that our United Kingdom difficulties were well-founded and not, as I am afraid they sometimes consider, due simply either to some antipathy towards the Community as such or to some peculiar insular obstinacy on our part.

It is therefore distressing to those of us who are certainly not antipathetic to the Community as such and, I hope, not unduly obstinate, that we have not made as much progress as we would have wished in increasing mutual understanding on these matters, in spite of the best endeavours on our part and, I am sure, on the part of the Commission in Brussels—and also, I should like to stress, the quite excellent personal relationships between ourselves and the staff of the Commission. But I think that the matter must be taken a little further if our debate today is to be of any real value, and I propose to do so with regard to the two reports on freshwater fish and on shellfish.

However, before I do so, I am under an obligation to draw to the attention of your Lordships some remarks in the Sixteenth Report on organo-chlorine compounds, on behalf of my noble friend Lord Shackleton. He had very much wished to be here when we discussed the two reports on organo-chlorine compounds and pesticides, but he is abroad and is not able to be here. But he wrote to me, because, as a dedicated ornithologist and naturalist himself, he felt that we had not given due weight to the concern which had been felt when some of the substances referred to in the report, and in the draft Directive, were used to a far greater degree than they are at present, particularly during the 1960s.

He said that our reference in the Sixteenth Report to the effect of pesticides on birds, in which we said that this had been the cause of some concern, was entirely inadequate. He said that these particular substances had, …a very serious effect indeed on several species of wild life and not just on falcons", to which we had particularly referred. If it had not been for a great deal of agitation…the effects would almost certainly have been much more serious…These paragraphs are very misleading since it looks as if it was simply a matter of ornithological interests against those of gardeners". I can very well understand the feelings of my noble friend Lord Shackleton in the matter; I promised that I would refer to it in this debate.

We took the matter up with the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food and they, of course, entirely concurred that the changes in the practice in this country were due to the concern felt from about 1956 onwards, when large numbers of seed-eating birds were found dead in cereal growing areas in the spring, and that it was certainly true that the activities of the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds and the British Trust for Ornithology, in particular, were to influence Her Majesty's Government and the advisory organisation of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, with the effect that we have, as the report makes perfectly clear, very considerably diminished the use of a number of these products. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, has complained that it took the Government quite a while to reach this conclusion. Public interest was aroused by the American book Silent Spring, but I think we owe it to the organisations concerned, as well as to my noble friend Lord Shackleton personally, to admit that perhaps we might have been a little more emphatic in our reference to this point. I do not propose to say any more about those two reports, because the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has dealt with the details most adequately.

However, I should like to say just one or two words about the fish reports, partly because I must confess that it was very gratifying to find that one of them was the subject of a feature article by David Wood in The Times newspaper of 30th May, which I am sure a number of your Lordships saw, headed, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive-o!" My noble friend Lord Ashby has made plain why it is that we are so much concerned with these two reports. Nevertheless, I wonder whether perhaps some of the misunderstanding which has undoubtedly existed between ourselves and Brussels has been due to the United Kingdom's attitude to the way in which these draft Directives are really intended to be carried out; that we take them much too literally.

This had not occurred to me, because they seem to be specific enough. But I have been looking at the report of the very brief debate which took place in the European Parliament last February on the draft Directive on freshwater fish. I am sorry to say that, in spite of all our feelings about shellfish, this Directive was simply passed "on the nod", although there were absolutely glaring difficulties about it. But it simply went through with no debate whatsoever on 6th June, so far as the European Parliament was concerned. Of course, fortunately, that does not mean that it is legislatively enacted.

But in that very revealing debate in the European Parliament on 7th February, when the rapporteur, Mrs. Kruchow, presented her report, she was aware, because of a brief amendment which was subsequently withdrawn, which had been put forward by a Conservative Member from another place who is a member of the European Parliament, that there were some reservations about this draft Directive. So she said, rather tartly, that she could not commend the proposed amendment—innocent and insignificant as I felt it to be—because it was based on a misunderstanding: The directive we are discussing today does not deal with the existence of fish in fresh-water areas capable of supporting them, but with the fresh-water areas in which the individual governments have decided fish should be able to survive". This is an attitude of mind to which we, I am afraid, as my noble friend Lord Ashby, has already indicated, find it extraordinarily hard to adapt ourselves. I raised both eyebrows when I read that.

But then I read further the contribution of M. Noè, who spoke in that brief debate. He took the same line as the rapporteur and was urging Mr. Spicer to withdraw his modest amendment, which he also felt was based on a misunderstanding. He said that Mr. Spicer's anxieties can, …have no real foundation if one considers the criteria on the basis of which the water-quality classifications have been and will be applied—namely, according to the particular stretch of the river concerned". He went on to explain that the parameters, which worried all of us so much, would be expected to be applied, in effect, only in the, …upper reaches of rivers, that is the section near to the source, for which conditions permitting fish to thrive are laid down. But bit by bit as one descends towards the river mouth these criteria are retained only where possible. A high level of industrialization, of course, makes retention scarcely possible". He then went on in further detail.

But it appears to me that what is intended by these Directives, if one takes the stance of the members of the European Parliament, is not that they should be absolutely binding upon Governments of the Member States, and all one has to do is to indicate: "Here we have a reach of the river which does not cause us many problems. We will designate this and for the rest, so far as the draft Directives are concerned, we will quietly ignore their existence." Similarly, applying the same principle to the shellfish, which were not debated, it appeared to us, when we were considering this in the Sub-Committee, that there was at least a possibility that one need designate nothing at all. Therefore, if one designated no areas the Directive would not be operative.

My noble friend Lord Ashby very properly raised the moral dilemma in which one would be placed when one knew quite well that one was marketing shellfish from a certain area, or, mutatis mutandis, that in certain rivers fish were living, but decided that it would be much more convenient not to designate rivers unless they were already up to standard, or not to designate shellfish beds unless there was no doubt at all that they met all possible water-quality parameters, and that therefore, in effect, the Directive would be inoperative.

If this is really true—I find it hard to believe, but the indications in this debate and in the European Parliament are that it may be—why are we all wasting our time? While we are doing all this work, why are our officials going to and fro between here and Brussels? If all that is intended is to devise a set of standards which in some few, almost ideal situations may be attained but for the rest one just shrugs one's shoulders and says, "All right, we will get along as best we can and we won't worry too much about it", then obviously we have been under a complete misapprehension. I believe that I gave the House a wrong date. The freshwater fish debate was on 14th January.

In perusing the brief debate, I turn next to the intervention of Mr. Tugendhat, who is a member of the Commission and who, therefore, was speaking officially for the Commission. The first point which worries me about his intervention is that he suggested that our objections to the scientific basis of this and various other draft Directives is misplaced, in the sense that the scientific data in any absolute form is not, as yet, available. Mr. Tugendhat proceeded to suggest that the data so far available upon which the Commission is working are based on studies conducted in artificial conditions. This is quite absurd. Through the water authorities and others, we in this country can provide the Commission with reams of data based not upon laboratory, artificial and simulated conditions but upon the actual conditions in the rivers.

It seems to me that Mr. Tugendhat was under some misapprehension as to why it is that we object constantly and urge constantly that the data upon which the propositions are made should be public and manifest, with all the various authorities properly quoted. He seems to regard the fact that the Commission are proceeding to make draft Directives on inadequate scientific evidence as an unfortunate fact which cannot be helped. However, I am sure that in particular those noble Lords who have been working in the Sub-Committee will agree that this is just not the case. Ample evidence is available, most particularly in the case of freshwater fish, from which proper scientific conclusions can be drawn.

Mr. Tugendhat then proceeded to say that, …what the Commission is trying to do is to set a quality objective, but it will be up to the Member States themselves, each individual Member State, to decide how it should be achieved: it will be up to the Member State to say whether it should he one stretch of river or another, whether it should be the total river or just a part". This is not what we in the Sub-Committee had understood to be the position. Had this been simply a question of quality objectives and not standards, and had these standards to be applied only to particular stretches of water which could be designated at will, then I repeat that we should not be worrying ourselves too much. The quality objectives would be something to aim at, but we should not be unduly harassed by the feeling that we were in breach of some international Community obligation.

At the end of that paragraph from which I have just quoted Mr. Tugendhat goes on to say that, …the overall objective standards will be imposed by the Community". What does he mean? I do not know whether my noble friend Lady Birk, who is to reply to the debate, can clear up what appears to be quite plainly a confusion of thought, one which I must admit has not been made plain to us even after more than one visit to Brussels and the most interesting conversations we have had with members of the appropriate Directorate in London. It appears to me that since we feel that this is entirely unjust we are being put in the doghouse, because members of the European Parliament, which is only an advisory body but which nevertheless has to be listened to, certainly take a quite different view of the obligations which would be imposed upon us by these draft Directives.

It is worth drawing the attention of your Lordships' House to what seems to me to be a situation which we must indeed endeavour to clear up. I do not wish to stress unduly something which is referred to incidentally in our reports to the House but to which we find no satisfactory answer; that is, the economics of these proposed draft Directives. My noble friend Lord Ashby referred to the astronomic costs involved if we took the draft Directives literally and carried them out in every detail. It is not a matter only of the economic costs of the particular proposals in the draft Directive. As the noble Lord, Lord Nugent, made plain in his evidence to us, the fact is that if you are concerned with the total management of a freshwater system you have to balance one interest against another. One of the gaps in the Brussels administration seems to be that they put forward individual Directives. Even if they were more satisfactory than we normally find them to be, there is still no obligation upon the administration to consider these Directives in their totality as affecting the management of our water systems.

Finally, I could not help being struck by reading a brief report of the recent United Nations Water Conference held in Mar del Plata, Argentina, in March of this year, where the United Nations pointed out that they were considering, "Water for better quality of life and life itself". I quote from the United Nations pamphlet: Only a fortunate few (one-fifth of the world population) can get water simply by turning a tap. For the remaining four-fifths securing water is part of the daily struggle to exist. When contaminated, which happens all too often, water can be a source of disease and death". Do we really have to spend all the money suggested in these draft Directives if we carry them out in the sense in which we supposed at least that they were to be carried out, when resources of both money, effort and skilled manpower should surely be diverted to the far more pressing water problems of other parts of the world?

6.37 p.m.

Lord ZUCKERMAN

My Lords, first I should like to congratulate my noble friend Lord Ashby for his brilliant review of the considerations which have led to the opinions expressed in these reports, and then I should like to focus on that part of his address in which he expressed the view that the expert advice which had been given to the bodies in Brussels who are responsible for producing these draft Directives had not been completely taken into account. From there may I turn to the real problem, as it seems to me: the difference between mandatory and voluntary standards and regulations.

I suspect that the main reason why the Commission has gone further than the expert evidence warranted, and why it has shown so much zeal in trying to do good, is to be found in the gulf which separates the body of scientifically established fact from the advice and opinions which different scientists can be expected to tender. We all know that scientific fact has to be accepted until it is proved to be false. Scientific advice, however, particularly when it is based upon very slender evidence, varies according to the judgment of the individual scientist. We must never forget that fact. The amount of scientific knowledge in the spheres of toxicology or ecology which underlies these draft Directives is extremely limited. In toxicology, where there are real facts, decisions can be taken.

I was the chairman of a Government Committee in 1951 and, although it was set up by the Government, I was an independent. That committee dealt with organo-phosphorus compounds. It did not take us more than four weeks or so to get the facts, and it took the Government of the day no longer than about two months to have legislation forbidding the use of organo-phosphorus compounds except under the most rigid controls.

On the other hand, in the vast area which we were then looking at we were dealing with "grey" facts. We did not know whether we were dealing with real risks, or possible risks, and out of the recommendations of a further committee which followed the first and which I also chaired, the present Pesticide Safety Precautions Scheme came into being. In my view it has had a brilliant record of success.

On the ecological side the situation is far more a case of "we do not know". Those people who suppose that they can exactly predict the ecological consequences of doing this or that are mainly fooling the public. It is usually a matter of intuition. In one of these reports one reads, for example, that the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds wants to see DDT banned—and I quote—"as a major step forward". That may be right, but I do not know what the evidence is on which it is based. Usually when people talk about preserving an ecological balance they are speaking intuitively, and not on the basis of scientifically established fact.

In saying this I want to make it quite clear that I believe warnings about the possible dangers of agrochemicals are necessary. Obviously they have had an effect. The spring which Rachel Carson warned us—was it 10 years ago?—would soon become silent is still filled with the melody of birds. This may be partly because of the warnings that have been given about the possible dangers of agrochemicals. It is true that the use of agrochemicals on the farm has affected some species of birds in the wild. But overall it cannot be said that the general scene has changed over the post-war years as a result of the use of agrochemicals as much as it has from the drainage of land, the removal of hedges and climatic changes. This also is referred to in the report on persistent organo-chlorines.

It was inclement weather, not the use of agrochemicals, which decimated the wren population in this country in 1963. Today the wren is one of the commonest birds in the country. I do not know what the true facts are about the peregrine falcon. I am prepared to accept that that bird and the sparrow-hawk have declined in numbers, possibly because of the build-up of chemical residues and consequently of changes in the food chain of which they are part. On the other hand, hen harriers, bearded tits and many other species have spread. I was talking to a farm labourer only this week and he told me that in the part of the county in which I live the lark is more common this year than the locals had ever known it to be. Nobody knows why.

What I found significant when I was reading the current literature is that in recent years the gains have far out-numbered the losses, which through the exercise of a vigilant monitoring service have clearly been kept down. I was also surprised to read in a work which gave the chronology of the extinction of birds, namely the New Dictionary of Birds—which was edited by Sir Landsborough Thomson, a conservationist and ornithologist if ever there was one, who has only recently died—that many more species disappeared in the first half of the century when modern agrochemicals were not being used than have disappeared since. I read, too, that no bird has become extinct since 1945. Clearly the fact is that we do not have sufficient background information about the natural secular changes which are taking place in the fauna and flora of the world—not only of our own island—to judge of the significance of such changes as may be due to the use of agrochemicals or of any of the substances about which we are warned in these Papers.

Nor do we know enough about toxicology or risk-benefit equations to impose statutory or mandatory controls to the extent suggested by the draft Directives. We need to remember that the world must have more food; it cannot get it without the wise use of more agrochemicals. Starvation and poverty can damage the fauna and flora of the world and the quality of life every bit as much as can the misuse of agrochemicals. We must remember that what the tourist finds picturesque in some underdeveloped country where the balance of nature has presumably not been disturbed, is often paid for by the misery of people who are still deprived of the benefits of modern farming practice.

I now turn to the Pesticides Safety Precautions Scheme, which was described by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, and which has operated now for some 20 years. It has remained essentially a non-statutory scheme although, as I have said, certain supporting provisions—for example, the organo-phosphorus compounds—notably in relation to workers, have now got a statutory basis and in fact have had it since 1951. The scheme itself however remains a non-statutory but formally agreed and utterly binding concordat between industry and Government. It lives and prospers without legal basis because both sides benefit. The industry, in getting a PSPS clearance, has a seal of safety second to none, and from my own experience and observations I can assure your Lordships that the quality of work that is done in the major industrial laboratories in this country which are concerned in producing new and effective pesticides and herbicides, is second to none. I have not seen work as good in university laboratories. This is not surprising in view of the amount of money that is available to some of the industrial laboratories in comparison with what appears now to be the lot of the universities.

I must confess to a fear of statutory schemes. They presuppose a depth of knowledge about toxicological and environmental matters which seems almost like a scientific conceit. Where is the knowledge whereby the absolute standards which statutory schemes would demand could be set? I do not want to suggest that some earlier speakers in this debate have, as it were, made fun of some of the mandatory conditions which have been laid down for fish. As the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has said, it would be necessary for us to clear the fish from our rivers because they are living where they should not be living. We do not have the knowledge to make these statutory demands.

Think of the nonsense which has flowed from the Delaney amendment to the Pure Food and Drugs Act on the American Statute Book, as a result of which industry and scientists who serve industry and Government have to prove negatives; they cannot prove that if you drink 100 gallons of water a day you are not going to die, even though the water is pure. Common sense ceases to be a basis for prediction. The fact that our fish are able to survive in rivers which do not abide by the standards in these draft Directives means of course that we have to shut our eyes to the real facts.

I remember when the Council of Environmental Quality was established in the United States of America, I was told that within five years every river in the United States was going to carry fish. I asked what would happen if, on the day before the five years was up, there were not fish in every river. I asked: "Are you going to call out the National Guard and are they going to carry their tin hats and a bowl of water with tiddlers in and pour the tiddlers into the streams to make quite certain that what has been stated as an objective is met?" This is the kind of nonsense into which we are led by absolute mandatory demands.

We must remember that legislation and mandatory controls can drive judgment out of the window. Ill-considered regulations can destroy initiative and make the whole process of innovation too costly and too risky. I am not speaking here about trying to see how shellfish or other creatures conform in their behaviour with the controls which are now suggested in these draft Directives. If too many regulations are made statutory on the basis of presumed scientific evidence, it inevitably turns out that there are not enough scientists to help in their enforcement, a point that the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has already made. As the record of the Environmental Protection Agency of the States shows only too well, lawyers and writers of draft Directives are always ready to step in where real scientists fear to tread.

It is disturbing that we in this country are always under pressure to make statutory what can be dealt with rationally and voluntarily. We have to try to spread our view, our way of doing things, in the Council of Brussels. It is the only sensible way. Statutory controls will not prevent mistakes and absolute toxicological standards are not going to prevent the occasional death. I wish it were possible to approach this whole problem in a scientific and rational way; that is, to compare our records, based upon a voluntary scheme of approval, and on full cooperation of Government and industry and the user, with what happens in those countries where statutory controls are demanded. If it turned out that life was safer and cheaper and better in those countries with statutory controls, we might re-consider, but until then it seems to me that the Government would be well advised to try to press our way of doing things on Brussels, and, if they fail, to persuade Brussels—given that these Directives do become final Directives—that our way of doing things conforms with what Brussels wants.

6.52 p.m.

Lord SANDFORD

My Lords, as a fellow member of this Sub-Committee which has formulated these reports, I should like to express my admiration to the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, for the way in which he has presented them to your Lordships and to confirm that I very much support all that he had to say. I also associate myself with the noble Baroness, Lady White, as regards the difficulties and doubts that we feel over the question of balance and priorities and interpretation. But I would prefer to dwell in my own remarks, which are of a more personal character, on the underlying philosophy and what I believe to be the basis of some of the faults and failings of the present situation, the frustrations that it seems beset us all the time in the present way of proceeding in European environmental matters.

It seems to me that, in addition to the defects which have already been cited in respect of these particular Directives, the present approach which the Commission, and this particular Directorate, have adopted does so little to harness the popular concern and care that already exists in Europe for the environment. It does very little, not enough, to develop public understanding of the environment. In fact, the more it makes the kind of mistakes that have been mentioned, the more it tends to confuse the public, public opinion in the schools and the colleges and among citizens at large. It does not seem to me to do enough to mobilise public opinion for environmental improvements. It is not really enough for environmental purposes to have a Treaty, the Treaty of Rome, which is fully conscious of one or two industries, notably agriculture, but, if you read it literally, virtually unaware of the environment which provides the setting for agriculture.

It is not enough to have a Council whose only resolutions on the environment, so far as I can discover and so far as I am advised, perceives the environment merely as a source of energy and a sufferer from pollution and ignores innumerable other aspects of far greater significance to the average European citizen. Nor does it seem to me to be enough to have a European environmental programme, which we have, which is merely a set of principles—though I admit that they are well expressed—approved for the guidance of the Commission in preparing its programme of work over a five-year period —a set of principles which, as it were, would be the basis of five Speeches from the Throne on environmental issues.

It seems to me that, in addition to debating Directives, we Europeans need to fashion an environmental ethic which we can all embrace, to which we can all aspire, a code of conduct towards the environment to which we can all subscribe, a standard of everyday environmental behaviour and responsibility by which we are all prepared to be judged by our contemporaries and our fellow European citizens, and a compact for the environment which will ensure that we hand over Europe in better shape than we found it to succeeding generations; in fact, a sort of charter for the Continent, the Continent which has already been the cradle for the civilisation we live under and which is already the workshop for nearly half of the world's trade. It seems to me important that we should work towards that, and sad that we have not got anything approaching it.

Of course, there is much, as the previous speakers in this debate have already shown, about which we would disagree, and we do disagree and will continue to disagree, within nations and among nations, in some of our aims. We do disagree, and I think we would continue to disagree, among the member nations and within member nations, about some of our priorities. We disagree and will continue to disagree among nations and within member nations, particularly about ways and means. But I believe that what we can agree about is far greater and far more significant than what divides us, particularly about aims, and would, therefore, be well worth stating more plainly, more boldly and more clearly than is already done, worth expressing in terms which can affect European behaviour right across the board, public bodies, private enterprises, individuals, and worth giving a status that will command respect and inspire support. I believe that in this way we could do something to establish and emphasise the wide agreement about aims which the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, has said in fact exists, and I agree with him.

If we could do this, in what form might it be promulgated? Of course, ideally and logically it should go in the Treaty, in the basic, comprehensive, simple kind of terms that set out the aims for European agriculture. But I recognise that to talk of amendments to the Treaty is to talk unrealistically. Failing that, possibly a Council Resolution or another Directive, or a statement by the European Environmental Bureau. The important thing is that such a charter should aim to reach down so as to affect everyone, as much as, say, the Highway Code affects road users in this country, or the Countryside Code affects visitors to the countryside, and not just in a document which is, as it were, an agenda for the Commission in Brussels.

Such a charter, of course, would need to be comprehensive. It would need to embrace, for instance, among its aims the following: the conservation of natural resources; the protection of natural flora and fauna; the safeguarding of landscape; sensitivity towards the cherished character of places where people live; raising the quality of life, both in terms of living and working conditions; and the thing we are chiefly concerned with, the reduction of harmful pollution. A comprehensive charter helps to set these things in perspective and in balance. Above all, it would also need to include and to emphasise the important principle which we are always stressing on the Commission and which the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, quite properly dwelt on so much; namely, the need to make proposals which are economical and to secure what is required in the improvement of the quality of life and the protection of the environment at the least possible cost—a factor which is clearly set out in the restated objectives of the Commission. That would be entirely in line with what in Britain we have long known as the best practical approach.

Some would say that there is scarcely any point in formulating and publishing such a basic, sweeping and unenforceable charter as that. Certainly every international conference on the environment, from Stockholm through Vancouver and many other places, is full of such aspirations, and that I acknowledge. I certainly recognise that it would not obviate the need for some environmental legislation of the right sort that bites at particular points. But I very much agree with the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, that the kind of Directives which we are now having, which would either be monstrously expensive to apply or which are based on unsound scientific evidence, will not help us.

I think that a charter could help to harness, inspire and focus all our diverse aspirations, and not least the whole range of non-statutory and voluntary effort which is available, for the sake of the environment of Europe. I believe it would help us somewhat to resolve the technical difficulties which have been raised in this debate and in all previous debates on these issues. I also think that it would be well worth attempting in itself, and the debate upon it would help to clarify some of the issues which at present are so confusing.

7.2 p.m.

The PARLIAMENTARY UNDERSECRETARY of STATE, DEPARTMENT of the ENVIRONMENT (Baroness Birk)

My Lords, the Government very much welcome the opportunity to hear the views of the House on the Commission's proposals and also the opportunity to put their own views on record. I, personally, have found it incredibly interesting and stimulating to have had the opportunity of hearing so many Members of the Sub-Committee, including my noble friend the chairman of the Sub-Committee. We are all very much indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, for what has been a short but extremely stimulating debate about these two particular areas of environmental protection. The issues are complicated, but the broad view of the House, expressed by those who have participated, is one that the Government share.

Before I go any further, I should like to express the Government's gratitude for the work done by noble Members of the Committee in producing these valuable reports which, as always, are clear and authoritative. I was also interested in the extension to this, about which almost every noble Peer spoke. The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, referred to the philosophy of policies to protect the environment and that seemed to be exactly the right context in which to set these rather more difficult propositions.

My noble friend Lady White certainly raised a response in me when she asked whether we perhaps take the draft Directives too literally. The contribution of the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, that there is a wide variety of factors that affect our quality of life outside the area of pesticides or even pollution, was a very healthy input into these particular subjects. Also, as always the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, put it in a wider environmental context, and the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, made an extremely interesting contribution in the particular area in which he has practical as well as committee experience.

First, I shall deal with the interim report on organo-chlorides. The Government basically agree with the Scrutiny Committee's criticisms and these will be recorded when the report comes to the Council of Ministers. In particular we support the Committee's view that the report does not justify further detailed Community action to control these substances.

I now turn to the proposal on plant protection products. As the noble Lord, Lord Skelmersdale, has acknowledged, successive Administrations in the United Kingdom have consistently aimed propressively to reduce the use of persistent pesticides by withdrawing them from the market as soon as effective alternatives become available. That policy has throughout been based on the scientific judgment of the Government's Advisory Committee on Pesticides. I very much took the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, when he differentiated between scientific facts and scientific advice.

In principle the Commission's draft Directive therefore follows a policy practised with great success in the United Kingdom for many years. But what we question is the Commission's view that there is evidence of any health hazard here. We are certainly satisfied that there is no such hazard in the United Kingdom; what we do believe is that chemical accumulations of this kind should be reduced, and, where possible, avoided altogether even though they may not present any human health risk. However, there are several features of the Commission's current draft where we have reservations.

First, we do not think that the "derogations" list of permitted uses of these compounds is adequate and we do not agree that some of these derogations should have set time limits. I believe that that is very much in line with what noble Lords have said. We cannot accept that our agricultural and horticultural production should be jeopardised by abandoning necessary pesticides prematurely. Although we hope that research establishments will come up with effective substitutes, it would be unrealistic to dictate in advance the time scale, and here we are not alone. Other Member countries have parallel reservations on the adequacy of these lists and they share our misgivings about time limits.

Secondly, the Committee note that the proposals at present would allow further bans to be imposed by majority voting. Whatever the merits of majority voting—and I do not intend to extend this into another area—it is surely not a sensible method for deciding measures which will have quite different effects depending on the particular methods of farming in individual Member States and depending also on the various pests or diseases to which crops are exposed.

Finally, the Scrutiny Committee noted that the Control of Pollution Act 1974 provides a broad legal framework within which proposals of this kind could be operated. The Government will, however, continue to use the Pesticides Safety Precautions Scheme. We shall do this because, as the Scrutiny Committee acknowledges—and the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, also spoke strongly for this—the scheme works and works very well. With others, the Nature Conservancy Council have testified to the scheme's success in their recent publication Nature Conservation and Agriculture. The Treaty of Rome leaves it to individual Member States to decide for themselves the "form and methods" for the implementation of Directives. The Government see the current safety scheme as a natural vehicle for operating our safeguards within the overall European régime which would flow from proposals agreed under this draft Directive.

Before I get down to the actual proposals for Directives setting quality requirements for waters capable of supporting freshwater fish and for those favourable to shellfish growth, I must emphasise that whatever criticisms the Government may have of these drafts, we entirely support the idea of defining quality criteria for water according to its use. The United Kingdom has always been in favour of flexible controls—and here the key word is "flexible" —designed to produce an acceptable quality of the environment rather than setting uniform standards for discharges. However, we are concerned that any obligations imposed at Community level should be scientifically soundly based and realistic. I have the feeling that in answering other debates, and one of the debates initiated by the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, I seem to have been saying the same words and that the same theme runs right through so much of this environmental policy.

So far as freshwater fish are concerned, the Government basically agree with the Committee's admirable report. One of the criticisms we share with the Committee is that it might be taken to imply designation of all rivers which support any fish life at all, or which could do so. I am glad to tell my noble friend Lady White that the Commission has now made it clear that they do not want our discretion to be so limited and that clearer wording should now be adopted, as I am sure she already knows. Once the objectives have been clarified, it is important to ensure that the technical standards should be both relevant and realistic. Unfortunately the Commission's proposals are neither.

This Directive is not addressed to human health, nor to the protection of the consumer. Yet the standards specified go far further than those required for the survival of freshwater fish. In fact, some seem to relate to the plant and bacterial life in the water and others to the taste of the fish. The Commission state one objective but the proposals certainly go far wider.

A more serious criticism—which the Committee report on at length—is that the standards proposed are often far more stringent than are needed to achieve the Directive's objectives. I think my noble friend Lady White made this point extremely succinctly. Many United Kingdom rivers which presently support fish life would not meet the standards in the draft Directive; the figures provided by the National Water Council in the Committee's report show that while fish thrive in nearly 90 per cent. of rivers in England and Wales, only a little over half of those rivers currently comply with the mandatory values proposed by the Commission, and only 30 per cent. comply with both the guideline and mandatory values. This means taking the philosophy of perfectionism extremely far. So, if all the rivers and streams which at present support fish were designated, we should be forced to incur very substantial unnecessary expenditure, as noble Lords have pointed out. In an ideal world we might like to have rivers up to this standard, but setting targets that are unrealistic now is both wasteful and counter-productive.

As the Committee noted, the proposed values are more stringent than those recommended by the group of scientific consultants who were consulted by the Commission. We fully endorse the Committee's view that where the provisions of the draft Directive are based on scientific advice, and the Commission want to depart from that advice, then they should state clearly their reasons for doing so. Here I take particular note of Lord Ashby's remarks—he took the trouble to write to me in advance about the points he was going to raise, for which I am grateful—about the inadequacy of the Commission's staff. There is no doubt that the staff of the Service is not very large in relation to the tasks imposed in the First and Second Environment Programmes, but I do not think that anybody could suggest that the size alone of the programme should govern the size of the Commission staff. In the past we have been critical of the over-ambitious nature and the unrealistic deadlines of the First Environment Programme.

In November 1974 we told the Council of Ministers that more might be achieved if less were in fact attempted. We have long argued that it is fundamental to the success of the programme to establish clear priorities. I would say that this is still the case. The most effective use of the resources of the Community as a whole, and the relative importance and urgency of the work at national and Community level, are among the most important factors to take into account. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, made that point although in rather a different way.

It is obviously important to avoid duplication at Commission level of work already, and perhaps better, done in the Community as a whole. As the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, knows, the Commission makes extensive use already of national experts and consultants and of the information available within Member States. As he said, he himself and other members of the Sub-Committee have given their services not only here but in Brussels. What is important is that that information, once given, should be used wisely. Few are better qualified than the noble Lord to judge this and none, as I am sure the House will agree, could have worked harder on behalf of the Committee.

The noble Lord has criticised the Commission's disregard of the advice it sought. It does not follow that increasing staff will necessarily improve the quality of their judgment. The Commission is jealous of its independence in the development of its proposals. It consults and takes advice as it chooses. It is absolutely free to put in—or leave out—what it likes in its draft Directive. For our part, we send qualified and expert officials to Brussels to meet particular needs as they arise. They do their homework before they go. They give the Commission scientifically sound and forcefully argued advice—so they tell me! We cannot be blamed when the Commission has failed to take it: it is not, after all, bound to do so And the United Kingdom is only one voice among nine. We will continue to do our best but we cannot absolutely guarantee that our opinion will prevail. But it still is essential that we put it, and put it strongly.

The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, spoke about the cost-effectiveness of the Commission's proposals and the need for flexibility to meet local circumstances. We shall continue to press the Commission on these points, and I shall be very glad of any help that the noble Lord, or his colleagues, can give us. Taking account of local environmental circumstances is at the very heart of our quality objectives approach, and I freely acknowledge that we have still a long way to go in convincing our colleagues in the Community of the rightness of this. Like the noble Lord, and I think probably all noble Lords who have spoken, I am, and always have been, a very strong pro-European, but that does not mean that we do not have to argue in order to get things the way we think are right, certainly for us over here.

I also agree that in the past the Commission's proposals have lacked any really adequate assessment of cost-effectiveness. But the Second Environment Programme now contains a clear commitment to assessing the costs and benefits of proposals to improve the environment. We shall he looking hard to see this assessment in the new proposals from the Commission as they come forward.

The noble Lord, Lord Ashby, suggested that we should bring pressure on the Commission to adopt a different approach; that is, biological monitoring of the fish themselves rather than chemical monitoring of the water they live in. I have much sympathy with this idea, because apart from giving self-determination to the fish, which seems to me to be a good plan, it would, as the noble Lord suggests, save much effort and money.

The possible monitoring burden is one aspect of the Commission's proposals which has caused the Government concern; that is why we are convassing, during negotiations in Brussels, the idea that Member States should be able to waive the monitoring requirements for rivers with good fish populations which are unlikely to be at risk from preventable pollution. But there are, however, two reasons why I cannot support the noble Lord's ideas in their entirety. First, the Commission, and other Member States, would say that the Community has already adopted an Environment Action Programme which provides for EEC quality objectives for water capable of supporting freshwater fish. Second, discharge consent conditions have to be set in chemical terms and, since they must be derived from environmental quality objectives, it seems inevitable that those objectives must also be set in chemical terms. So biological monitoring should be sufficient for most of our relatively unpolluted rivers, though chemical standards will be needed where fish might be at risk. There is probably not so very much difference between us on that question.

Member States would have only five years in which to bring designated rivers up to the prescribed standard if the time-scale of the Commission were to be followed. It is hard to see why it should be as tight as this when, for instance, the bathing water Directive allows 10 years. We shall be arguing here for a more practical time-scale in the negotiations. The same goes for the shellfish proposal, which is still at a very early stage. Again the Government broadly agree with the Committee's criticisms. Most important, it is hard to see just what is the aim of this proposal. According to the Commission it is concerned with encouraging shellfish growth, not with protecting human health. But the bacterial levels proposed relate only to human health.

We need to clarify just what is meant to be the scope and application of this Directive. I am glad to say—I know that my noble friend Lady White feels the same—that the Commission has confirmed that it will be up to the individual Member States to decide which waters to designate. Such discretion is important here because otherwise there seems no limitation on how far the Directive is to apply geographically.

The proposed bacterial levels appear to be aimed at letting us crop shellfish directly from the water for sale for human consumption. Shellfish from many of our growing areas would not meet the proposed standards, but they can be made perfectly safe for human consumption if, as Lord Ashby said, they are cleared in accordance with our regulations operated by local authorities; we are pressing for the Directive to take account of United Kingdom practice.

The Commission has suggested that Member States should designate reference areas to give them standards of comparison for nearby shellfish-breeding areas. Like the Committee, however, the Government foresee practical difficulties in the application of this concept and we are anxious to find out how far Member States would be required to specify such areas, and what the Commission wants to do about those cases where no such areas can be found.

I am being as brief as I can, but this is a big subject and noble Lords will agree that a full reply is necessary so that the Government view may be on record. I want to say something about the idea that the purpose of the Directive could be achieved more simply by a strategy based on monitoring of the shellfish directly, rather than the water in which they grow.

This is interesting but it does have limitations. Direct examination of shellfish can give us an immediate impression of their state of health. But I am told that shellfish are generally most sensitive to pollution in their early stages. While certain environmental conditions would allow the adults to survive and grow, they might not be good enough for the larvae. So, if the aim was to protect shellfish, we would set standards for the water quality and monitor that as well as the shellfish themselves.

Such has been the reaction of the Member States to this proposal that the Commission has been forced to think again. The Commission will have to make radical changes to its proposals before they stand a chance of success and I can assure the House that we will be pressing for the revised proposals to be firmly based on reason and practicability. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, has made some interesting suggestions about a European Charter based on some aspects of British experience and legislation. This obviously needs to be looked at in greater depth than we can give it today, and I will write to the noble Lord about it.

Although we have been discussing some highly technical Commission documents, the general lessons to be learnt seem very clear. Once again we have proposals that are well-intentioned and probably desirable in principle, but there is a complete air of unreality surrounding many of them. We are indebted to the noble Lord, Lord Ashby, for drawing attention to the scientific failings of the Commission and we will continue to do all we can to ensure that the Commission has the benefit of our experience and knowledge, and, hopefully, it will take advantage of it. The Commission proposes, but it is the Member States themselves who, through the Council, adopt the proposals and implement them. The Member States are best placed to judge what is reasonable and practicable on the ground.

The negotiations in Brussels provide us with the opportunity to make sure that the Directives we finally adopt are reasonable and practicable, with due regard of course to the interests of our Community partners; I do not think we can be absolutely single-minded on this. We have managed to do so in the past and, I can assure the House, we shall not be prepared to adopt anything on this occasion that we cannot implement in good faith and with some confidence as to its results.

I have found the debate interesting and certainly instructive. I have tried to give the Government's view on the particular points of concern on these complicated subjects, and, while I have given rather a lengthy reply, if I have missed any points—I am sure there are some—I will be glad to write to noble Lords on the points they have raised. The Government take great encouragement from the support they have received for their policy and will make every effort in negotiation to secure their objectives.

7.24 p.m.

Lord ASHBY

My Lords, I do not intend to detain noble Lords from dinner and I hope that your Lordships will not be deterred from eating the fish course as a result of this debate. I am sure noble Lords would not wish me to sit down without expressing gratitude to your Lordships for taking part in this debate and to the House for considering, even at this comparatively late hour, such a complicated but, we think, very important subject. I would again like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady White, for allowing me to open the debate and to say that the debate has obviously been worthwhile because there seems to be so much consistency between the views which the Sub-Committee have reached and the views of the Government. Where we differ there is still time for argument. I well understand that our views cannot always prevail in Brussels, but it is excellent that in this House if our views do not prevail our dissent can be recorded.

On Question, Motion agreed to.