SOCIAL AND INDUSTRIAL POLICY-MAKING

HL Deb 24 January 1979 vol 397 cc1427-502

4.19 p.m.

Debate resumed.

Lord HINTON of BANKSIDE

My Lords, the discussion which we are having on the Motion which we are debating this afternoon is long overdue. There is a danger that we are in some respects losing our sense of proportion and I am extremely grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, for introducing the debate. I find it difficult to agree with some of the things that she said about energy, but I am not going to cross swords with her over this this afternoon. It seems to me that that is a matter which we can—and perhaps should—debate at some later stage.

I have tried to point out on earlier occasions in this House that amenity has many forms. Broadly, one could divide it into environmental amenity and material amenity. But those broad areas can be considerably subdivided. For the enjoyment of environmental amenity, we try to preserve the landscape or indeed improve it. We try to ensure that our rivers and the atmosphere are unpolluted, and so on. For material amenity—and material amenity is highly valued by a very large number of people in this country—we try to ensure that there are good housing, cheap energy, pure potable water, freedom from accidents, and an endless list of other things. Our troubles start, as the noble Baroness, Lady Young, said, because the provision of material amenities often conflicts with the preservation of environmental amenities and, what is more, the provision of some material amenities may conflict with other environmental amenities. There is no simple solution to that problem because it is impossible to put a money value on environmental amenity and it is difficult in some cases to put comparative money values on material amenities.

I had, over many years, constant and bitter experience of this when I was Chairman of the Central Electricity Generating Board. I think it is not unfair, from many scores of cases, to select one particular case as an example of the difficulty. We had to strengthen the transmission system across the Pennines and we proposed to do that by way of a high voltage overhead transmission line which, for most of its length, was to run alongside the main arterial road, along which thunders the heavy lorry traffic which carries goods between Lancashire and Yorkshire. The Parks Commission objected to that scheme. We pointed out that it was not a particularly high amenity area and they said, "No, but there is a rock-face not far from the road which is used by climbers."

I am no rock climber myself, but I should have thought that rock climbing was best done when one paid close attention to the rock-face and did not look over one's shoulder at the traffic thundering along the road behind. However, I appreciated their argument. I pointed out to the Parks Commission that we both got our money from the same source—from the taxpayer—and I said to them, "It will cost us £3 million more" (and, my Lords, I am talking in terms of 1963 money values; it would be a great deal more than that today) "to underground the line than to run an overhead line across the Pennines. Supposing I was in a position to hand you £3 million, would you give it back to me and ask me to underground that line, or would you, short of money as you are, use it for improving the facilities of the National Parks?" I did not get an answer to that question, nor did I expect one: but that case, was typical of scores of others that I dealt with. When I left the Generating Board at the end of 1964 because I wanted to do work in developing countries, I think I can be forgiven if one of the thoughts which was uppermost in my mind was that I should no longer be constantly engaged in arguments with people who wanted to enjoy every available technological amenity provided that somebody else would pay for it.

In a lecture I gave to the Royal Society of Arts in 1959 I spoke about this problem.

The lecture was written at a time when we were having to strengthen the transmission network in the country and we were being pressed to underground the lines. I showed that the extra cost—and I would ask your Lordships to remember, again, that I am talking in terms of 1959 money values—would be equal to sixpence in the pound on the income tax. I find it difficult to believe that if people were told that sixpence in the pound was to be added to income tax in order to underground our lines they would have been very unwilling to accept that increase. But the additional cost in fact would have been far more than that, because if we had been made to underground those lines we should have had to rethink the whole electricity system of the country and instead of building the large, cheaper and much more economical power stations that we were building we should have to have built smaller, scattered power stations which would have been a lot less economical.

I have given those cases as examples of the way in which demands for environmental preservation can be made by people who are, I am quite sure, well-meaning but who are imperfectly informed. Perhaps it is our fault that they are imperfectly informed. Having said that, I should like to say most emphatically that careful thought can minimise the impact of the new works which must be built in this country and can make them not merely acceptable but also perhaps exciting new features of the landscape. Is any unbiased person prepared to tell me that stations such as Sizewell, Oldbury, or even Didcot, are really eye-sores? When I look at Didcot and remember what was at Didcot before the station was built there, I think that an improvement has been made. As for the nuclear station at Trawsfynydd, I remember on one occasion saying to the matron of the little hospital at Ffestiniog, "Do you object to it?" She answered me in her beautiful, musical Welsh voice which I would not attempt to imitate: "No indeed, and in the evening light when the sun sets behind it, it looks to me like a fairy castle!" We did not, of course, set out to build fairy castles, but that was her unbiased opinion.

Satisfactory results can be obtained only if from the very inception of a scheme a team of engineers, architects and landscape architects is built up and the people are made to work harmoniously together. Unfortunately, it is quite rarely that this happens and I am bound to say that some of the most unfortunate examples of buildings where it has not happened, are those put up by Government Departments, and, in particular, by the Service Departments. I could give several examples but I will give only one. The Atomic Energy Establishment at Dounreay was well laid out on a well-chosen site and it was designed, I think, so that it added rather than detracted from the grandeur of that Caithness coastline. After I had left the Atomic Energy Authority, the Admiralty were allowed to have part of this site to build the prototype submarine reactor which they were going to use for training their crews. I am quite sure it is a good reactor and has been very useful to them. I have not seen it but I do know that it was housed in a building which would have disgraced a get-rich-quick Victorian entrepreneur, operating in the most misused area of Smethwick.

I think that I have said enough about the preservation of visual amenity, and I should like for a few minutes to talk about the pollution problems that arise from new industrial installations and to show that, so often, industries are left with the problem of proving a negative. When consent for the station at Bradwell was sought and there were objections to it, it was said that it would damage the oyster beds in the estuary. In fact, not merely have those oyster beds thrived, but they were the only oyster beds on the East coast which survived unharmed the hard winter of 1963. It is interesting to remember that a very promising oyster bed is growing up in Southampton Water, near the outfall from Fawley power station.

So far as air pollution is concerned, the CEGB were accused, and were rightly accused, of causing objectionable pollution in the neighbourhood of their power stations. They proposed to build higher chimneys, and were told that eddy dispersion might instantaneously cause undesirable levels of sulphur dioxide.They went on, expensively, to build very high 800 ft. chimneys at their power stations. Now they find that they are accused of causing acidity in rivers in the South of Norway, and it is only as a result of long-drawn out and careful research that it is coming to be accepted that only a minimal amount of the acidity in those rivers is caused by sulphur dioxide carried over either from this country or from the Continent. The bulk of it is caused by what is called the fall-through of rain through forest trees, and the seepage of the water through granitic rock and through peat. Constant care is necessary, but industry is, as I have already said, far too often left with the problem of proving a negative.

Lastly, I should like to speak about physical safety and, by way of example, to talk about nuclear safety. In yesterday's debate, I spoke about the need for nuclear power and, because of the danger of a uranium famine towards the end of this century, of the need for fast reactors. Now, I understand that a two-stage inquiry is thought to be necessary. The first stage is to inform the public of the need for and the safety of fast reactors, and the second stage is to consider siting. When the first nuclear power programme was announced in 1955, the public had already been kept fully informed. You have only to look back on BBC records, on articles in magazines and in daily papers to convince yourself of this. Now, a public inquiry, which is highly remunerative to barristers and perhaps a very good shop window for the environmental organisations, is thought to be necessary. The hearings are held before a body appointed by the Minister, but, of course, no member of that body may be a man who has practical experience of atomic energy factories, because such a man is bound to be prejudiced. It is on the recommendation of a body which contains no one with practical experience that the Minister makes his decision.

Of course, there are risks in atomic energy factories. There is a risk everywhere in life. But, as the chairman of the Canadian Atomic Energy Authority pointed out in a recent lecture, the men who work at his nuclear power stations are far safer when they are at work than when they are at home. It does not help a nervous public when escapes of radio-activity which give an exposure which is comparable to that which one would have got from wearing an expensive, old— not new—luminous watch, have to be reported to London and so find column inches in the papers.

Has anyone worked out how much the restrictive legislation in the Health and Safety at Work Act is costing the country? It is costing a very great deal. Those costs must fall ultimately on the consumer and the restrictions which are imposed may hamper progress. Some of those restrictions are necessary or desirable, but some of them safeguard men against risks to which those men—perhaps unconsciously—willingly and light-heartedly expose their wives every day of the week in their homes. Let us remember that the number of home accidents is very nearly at the top of the table.

We are more than usually vulnerable to restrictive amenity legislation at the present time because the EEC is putting forward proposals. Our legislative control over the environment started well over 100 years ago. Many other countries gave very little thought to the environment until recently, and then they found that they were doing serious damage to it. Those countries are now rather like the reformed prostitute, than whom no one is more virtuous. But, in addition, modern science has given us more sophisticated methods of analysis which can reveal remote dangers of which we were previously happily unconscious.

Examination of hot spring water in other parts of the world showed that it contained an amoeba. Following this discovery, the spa waters at Bath were examined, and it was found that there was an amoeba in them. That water had been bathed in and had been drunk for 2,000 years. Now the Roman baths at Bath are drained and, while you can get a drink of water from the faucets in the Pump Room, you will get from those faucets exactly the same water that you could get from any kitchen sink in Bath. Really, I think that we are getting to the stage where we are running away from our own shadows.

What ought we to learn from this? In the first place, I think that we should remind ourselves, if we are foolish enough to think of death as a hazard and not simply as an incident, that the greatest risk we run is that of dying from natural causes, and we ought to remember that man-made risks are very small as compared with that risk. Secondly, we ought to remember that we are not far removed from those early men who lived by taking risks. We are not removed by so many generations from the men who lived only by taking risks. I wonder whether, if we try to shield men from every conceivable risk—though I do not think that we should expose them to unnecessary risks—we may overstrain their ethological adaptability, and, if we get to that stage, may they not seek to adjust to ancestral habits by creating risks for themselves, sometimes in a way which is socially undesirable? We are, I think, reaching the stage when we are frightened of our own shadows.

Thirdly, I suggest that we should learn to think lovingly of the environment as something that is constantly changing and which, like ourselves, has always changed. Fourthly, we should learn that most men and women want to live in a technologically progressive world and that the man who demands technological progress but who at the same time distrusts all technologists is going to be both unhappy and dissatisfied.

4.40 p.m.

Lord DULVERTON

My Lords, if in following so eminent a speaker as the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, I seem to take a somewhat different line from him, I should like to say how much I have enjoyed his words of wisdom and the thoughts which he has just given to us. With so many of them one must agree, but may I offer to noble Lords one of two thoughts from a person who is involved in the conservation movement—as a trustee in this country of the World Wildlife Fund and as a member in Scotland of the Nature Conservancy Council.

I shall start by reminding noble Lords that we live at a time when, mercifully, there is a growing awareness that our abundant and, in some senses, successful species, homo sapiens, is on a headlong course towards destroying the only planet that we have. If you go to the Wild-fowl Trust at Slimbridge, you will find among the display models devised by one of the world's greatest leaders in conservation, Sir Peter Scott, a prominent notice proclaiming, This particular panel portrays the most destructive and dangerous animal the world has ever known". When, with aroused curiosity, you approach closer to peer, you are regaled with your own reflection, framed in a mirror, and of course your reaction is, "Not me, but all the other thousands of millions of us".

Today this House takes cognisance of our responsibilities as modern-day humans, and considers and weighs the balance of the demands of human comforts and conflicts against the practical difficulties of pursuing these interests without destroying ultimately the finite resources which make life itself possible. What other forum is there in the wide world of the ancients, which we now know to be a tiny harbour for life in the infinity, better able to discuss such problems with dispassionate but diversely informed experience than your Lordships' House? It is not easy to think of one. The noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, deserves the thanks of all of us here and of the human animal everywhere for introducing this debate. I am particularly glad that the noble Baroness mentioned the problem of the farmer, who on the one hand is being advised by the Ministry of Agriculture to drain his fields but who, on the other, is being advised by the Department of the Environment not to drain them. I hope that that problem will be noted because the giving of advice and, indeed, the giving of grants needs to be co-ordinated.

To balance and reconcile economic and environmental needs and demands is not an easy exercise. Assuming that the human race, with its internecine tendencies and enormous destructive power, acquired through science, does not destroy itself—which is apt to be nature's way with lemmings and other imbalances between population and resources—wisdom and common sense will need to be harnessed to the wider knowledge of environmental factors if the wheels are to be kept turning in manners that can be reconciled with conservation. The recruits to the conservation awareness, which happily has come about recently, are sometimes led into an excess of zeal which, by exceeding the bounds of commonsense, endangers the very causes which they espouse. Do not let us be blinded by this to the cogency of the conservation cause.

The land, the sea, the freshwater rivers, the gaseous atmosphere itself which we not only breathe but which regulates, in delicate balance, the influence of the sun's radiation reaching the earth are all being influenced measurably, if not devastatingly, by human activity and devices. The wildlife, from the whales and the elephants to the microscopic organisms, or the giants of the tropical rain forests to the most humble of the vegetable world, are being destroyed by the sophisticated means of exploitation now available and/or by the constriction and destruction of the habitat on which they depend.

I wonder how much the Book of Genesis is responsible for this. Despite the corrective messages of 2,000 years ago, our civilisation has developed largely remembering the Judaeo-theology which we seem to have acted upon. Verse 28 of Genesis, Chapter 1, reads: Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth, and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the fowl of the air and over every living thing that moveth upon earth". My goodness, have we done that? But we on this side of the House certainly have a saying that rights and privileges carry their responsibilities, and on both sides of the House we must agree that we have not exercised these responsibilities well.

We have harried to extinction 200 species of animals in the last 300 years; and 300 years is a moment in time in terms of evolution. We have a longish list of others under dire threat. There is the same sort of story in the vegetable world; and our fellow beings are destroying, right now, the tropical forests with their immense influence—note this, my Lords—not only on a vast population of wildlife but on the climatology of the world. We are demolishing it at a rate of 75 acres a minute.

We in our own island are still allowing the brick and concrete jungles to sprawl over precious acres of rich and scarce alluvial land, while leaving the peri-urban wasteland, as other noble Lords have pointed out, to become a useless eyesore. We are polluting our rivers and streams while extracting water from their sources and springs. We pride ourselves on clearing up the Thames and the Severn, while ignoring the damage to their feeder streams. We are over-fishing the oceans, from whales to whitebait; and goodness knows what we are doing to the plankton by upsetting the balance of nature, spilling oil all over the place from colossal and careless tankers and filling the oceans with the insidious poison of heavy metals and man-made toxic chemicals.

This is especially dangerous because we are also filling the atmosphere with carbon dioxide at a rate higher than that at which natural agencies are able to break it down again into its constituent elements and release the life-giving oxygen. This, which stems from our enormously increased burning of fuels, together with the almost incredible damage to the ozone in the upper atmosphere through the use of aerosol sprays—which surely ought to be banned, although they are one of life's quite nice conveniences—could, so the scientists tell us, destroy the atmosphere's capacity to filter the solar rays in such a way as to make the earth a place incapable of supporting life.

Lord ZUCKERMAN

My Lords, if I may interrupt the noble Lord on a question of fact, is he quite certain that what he has just said about the ozone layer is the current view of the majority of those scientists who can speak with authority on the subject?

Lord DULVERTON

My Lords, I am very grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Zuckerman, for his intervention. The sea is also of enormous importance in the job of breaking down the carbon dioxide. As the noble Lord will know, the billions of plankton in the sea have an important part to play in that process.

On land the trees and the forests are an efficient agency in performing this task of converting carbon dioxide back into its constituent elements. Man has been destroying the trees for thousands of years, which partly accounts for the deserts of the world. At the same time, man continues to need timber in ever increasing quantities and the national forests of the world cannot keep up with his mechanised inroads on them. To this, plantation forestry is the only answer, and some of your Lordships may not be surprised to hear me take the opportunity of repeating the message that we, in our tiny island, must take the global view and do all we can to expand our forestry effort, whatever our critics may have to say. The forestry industry is aware of its responsibilities towards environmental interests. At the present time I am involved as a member of NCC's Scottish Committee in the exercise of working out their policy paper on nature conservation and forestry, and I hope it is not inappropriate for me to give what is purely a personal expression of belief, that these two interests can, with a little give and take, advance purposefully together.

Before I sit down I should like to say how glad I was to hear the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford mention the need for environmental education in the young. J very much hope that my noble friend and colleague on the World Wildlife Fund, Lord Craigton, may be saying something about that later, so, I will not do so now.

4.52 p.m.

Lord AVEBURY

My Lords, we have just listened to an interesting contrast between the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, speaking for the technologists and that of the noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, speaking for the environmentalists. At some points one could hardly have imagined that they were taking part in the same debate. This may be partly due to the wide terms in which the Motion is couched, but I suspect that it also has some bearing on the fact that the mutual incomprehension between technologists and environmentalists has proved extremely difficult to break down and we have not yet learned how to get them to speak each other's language.

The noble Lord, Lord Parry, made the comment that we were taking time out from confrontation this afternoon and I think it is very difficult, while Britain is in the grip of such severe economic and industrial troubles, to generate interest in the questions of conservation and the environment. Perhaps we can take consolation in the fact that so many noble Lords are taking part in the debate this afternoon, although of course this is not a reflection of the interest outside. People may be inclined to say that the restoration of industrial and economic stability should be our first priority and that we can return to the matters which we are discus- sing this afternoon when we have some order on the economic front. I would quarrel with that view because I think the two subjects are connected in one important respect. People want to increase their material consumption because that is held up to them as the only worthwhile objective for the human race and that perhaps is the one question on which all the voices of authority are agreed. We find that the shop steward and the big businessman, the Marxist and the capitalist all say the same thing—that we must increase our material consumption without limit; and the vast and powerful resources of the advertising industry are devoted to persuading everybody to consume more, even of products which are harmful to them, such as tobacco and alcohol.

So, when large groups of workers go on strike for higher wages which can only give them greater purchasing power at the expense of the rest of the community, why should we be surprised? I do not think that the root cause of this phenomenon is excessive trade union power or—with great respect to the right reverend Prelate—technological progress. I think mass greed is the answer because that is being stimulated and encouraged by the most powerful forces in our society. The Bible calls it "pleonexia", sometimes translated, I believe, as "ruthless greed." It has become almost axiomatic that material growth will continue as far ahead in time as we can foresee and that means of course that everybody will grab for himself as large a slice of the loot as he can. Unfortunately, even those who are most successful in this selfish struggle do not find that they enjoy greater contentment or satisfaction. The gold which they strive for rapidly turns to dross, and yet we are subject to such a barrage of propaganda in favour of growth that I believe we have no free choice and, if I may say so, I think that is the answer to the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who asked whether people really wanted zero growth or whether that was something which they would reject if they were given the opportunity of making a choice.

I think it is possible to make some fairly general predictions about the kind of society we can foresee for the 21st century if growth remains our overriding objective. There will be periodic eruptions of extreme social unrest caused by the failure of the economic system to satisfy the unrealistic expectations of groups of workers. There will be enormous man-made disasters where mistakes are made on the frontiers of technology. As examples which have already occurred I might mention the explosions in large tankers, such as the appalling tragedy which occurred the other day in Bantry Bay, in which 50 lives were lost; the collapse of box girder bridges; the explosion at the Flixborough Caprolactam plant; the thalidomide disaster, which my noble friend Lady Robson mentioned; the Turkish airlines DC 10 crash; the destruction of Ronan Point; and the spillage of 2,000 tons of oil the other day in Sullom Voe.

It is possible that we shall become so used to these catastrophes that they will drop out of the news altogether but meanwhile we tend to treat them as isolated events which are followed as a matter of course by public inquiries. Some mention has been made of the value of public inquiries this afternoon as though that was really the answer to the catastrophes and as though, so long as one had a public inquiry afterwards, it did not matter if the catastrophe occurred. These identify the causes and they sometimes lead to their elimination by further advances in technology, which in turn carry their own risks.

I believe there will also be large-scale adverse health effects caused by the release of harmful industrial materials into the biosphere. I shall give one example of that in a moment, to show that we have been dangerously complacent about a particular material. Finally, I believe there will be interruptions of supply and discontinuities of price in essential raw materials, such as we saw in the case of crude oil in 1973. These will occur particularly in oil, natural gas, uranium—and the noble Lord Lord Hinton spoke about the possibility of a uranium famine towards the end of the century—but also very likely in certain essential industrial metals such as copper. I think this will be a really uncomfortable world to live in and yet no alternative is ever presented to us, and it seems virtually impossible to get official agencies to consider the ingredients of a non-growth strategy.

When the noble Baroness, Lady Young, was attacking the latter-day disciples of Rousseau, I think she was tilting at an insignificant target because the number of people who advocate a total return to nature is, of course, infinitesimal. No one is really suggesting that we should do that. But, on the question of a nil growth economy, I have on several occasions asked the Department of Energy to consider the implications of zero growth. When I first raised the matter, following the publication of the Department's paper, Energy R and D in the United Kingdom, at a symposium at the Royal Society of Arts in June 1976, the then chief scientist of the Department of Energy, Dr. Walter Marshall, said that my suggestions would be examined.

What I proposed was taking the low growth scenario we were offered in the Department's paper and feeding into that the energy conservation effects from the high growth model and the coal and renewable resources contribution from the non-nuclear model. The chief scientist said that would be examined. Nothing happened. So I repeated the proposal in the debate we had in this House on the Flowers Report in December 1976 and again in the debate on energy policy in May 1977, when I also said that it was absurd to suppose, as the Department's Energy Policy Review, just published, did say, that oil prices would rise in real terms by only 50 to 100 per cent. by the end of the century. In October 1977, I referred to the proposal yet again at the Royal Institution Forum on Nuclear Power and the Energy Future which was attended by Dr. John Cunningham, the Under-Secretary of State in the Department of Energy. I am sorry to say that none of these initiatives elicited any response.

Now, however, we have for study the very interesting paper of the IIED, A Low Energy Strategy for the United Kingdom, which was referred to by my noble friend Lady Robson in her brilliant and thoughtful speech. I very much hope that the Department will take this paper as seriously as it deserves, because the authors claim to show that we could be self-sufficient in North Sea oil and gas to the end of the century; that coal production could be maintained at 120 million tonnes a year; that—with great respect to the noble Lord, Lord Hinton—no more than 30 gigawatts of new nuclear plant should be required by the year 2000, compared with the 83 gigawatts in the Department's reference forecast; that the fast breeder reactor could be shelved indefinitely, and that all this could be achieved with the same kind of economic growth as the Government postulate. That last claim I must say I take with a pinch of salt, because it would mean that certain activities would be responsible for a much higher output to balance the savings which are claimed in the energy sector. But I entirely accept the broad conclusion of this paper that we could use much less energy than we use today without going in for what one might call a hairshirt economy.

I believe that the Government ought now to follow up this excellent work of the NED. As Mr. Gerald Leach, one of the authors of the paper, pointed out in New Scientist, the Government have to set standards for energy consumption in building through the building regulations, and Government-led industrial agreement is needed to secure economies in other uses such as road vehicles, cookers and electrical white goods. Fie also says that determined efforts have to be made to provide consumers of all kinds with information about better practices, technologies and techniques. While the Department of Energy has made a start with its official list of fuel consumption tests on passenger cars, and the Advertising Standards Authority has made an important contribution in recently issuing new guidance to the heating fuel industries on the claims that they make in their advertisements, I believe that a lot more has to be done before we can be satisfied that the public has adequate information on which to make proper choices.

I mentioned the risk of adverse effects on public health of industrial materials. Asbestos is an example of a substance which had been very widely used as a construction material before it was discovered that it could give rise to extremely unpleasant diseases such as mesothelioma and asbestosis. I think we are more conscious of these risks now, but the asbestos industry did fight a very powerful rearguard action against the imposition of more stringent precautions and much remains to be done.

However, asbestos is not the only substance. Take one other example the hazards of which are not yet so clearly recognised, airborne lead. The conservation society of which I have the honour to be president took a deputation to see Mr. Denis Howell, the Minister of State responsible for this problem, on 12th April last year. At that meeting, there was a Department of Health and Social Security adviser who dismissed every reference to evidence of harm caused by airborne lead as unscientific. At the conclusion of the meeting the Minister suggested that we, the conservation society, with our very limited resources, should submit a paper, which could be examined by the experts in the Department, on the health effects. We as a society, of course, are not in a position to carry out widescale scientific studies of that kind and original research of our own, but we scanned through the literature of the previous 18 months and were able to quote no fewer than 63 references entirely supporting the conclusion reached by the US Environmental Protection Agency, for example, that Lead particle emissions from motor vehicles present a significant risk of harm to the health of urban populations, particularly to the health of city children". In Britain a study by the UK Atomic Energy Authority at Harwell published last November showed that blood lead levels are twice as high as previously thought for a given concentration in the atmosphere; at the highest exposure, for example, in the neighbourhood of a busy motorway, people can take in about the same amount of lead from the air as they can in the diet. The Government's response to this alarming state of affairs has been to publish regulations bringing the lead content of petrol down to a maximum of 0.4 grams per litre by 1981. We shall still then be three times as high as the Federal Republic of Germany has achieved already. The Department has also set up a working party to review the overall health effect of environmental lead from all sources, which includes several persons who are strongly and publicly committed to the view that lead poisoning is a myth. Ultimately I dare say the public may wake up to the damage that lead may be causing, particularly to children.

The point I want to make in going through this in some detail is that lead poisoning is only one of a very large number of unwanted side effects of the continued growth of material consumption. What we should be aiming at, I believe, instead is a world in which everybody's need for shelter, clothing, warmth, food and transport is met at the lowest possible cost in resources and that the endless multiplication of wants is curtailed. I think we should be living in a healthier, safer, more contented and satisfying place if that was our objective.

5.8 p.m.

Lord AUCKLAND

My Lords, I join in the tributes paid to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, both for the subject she has chosen to debate today and for the very clear way in which she presented her case. The word "environment" has really only come into our national dictionary to any great extent over perhaps the past 20 years. It was possibly the great smog in 1952 which blanketed London—I was then living in London and felt the effects quite considerably, as no doubt did many of your Lordships—which caused many deaths and much discomfort, which really alerted the nation to the extent that pollution in the air, due to chimneys belching out smoke and so on, was really affecting the environment. Since then much has been done in this country, particularly through the creation of smokeless zones and so on, to make the air fit to breathe, although there are a number of hazards, for example, the emission of exhaust from motor vehicles and so on, notably on motorways on occasions, which do still tend to pollute the atmosphere.

About eight years ago my wife and I were in Los Angeles for a few days en route to New Zealand. We stayed with charming hosts in Burbank. As twilight was falling we looked down upon a lovely view of the city and I saw something which was blue. In my innocence I said to my hostess, "Is that the sea?". She said, "No, honey, it's the smog". I think that that is perhaps an indication of how we in this country do not really recognise how much pollution exists in other countries. As a corollary to that, I must admit that during my visit to Los Angeles the amount of smog which I personally saw was far less than I had been led to believe from my researches about that very fine city. I understand that in the past several years much has been done to alleviate the nickname of "the city of smog", as well as other rather unkind things which are said about it.

We in this country are very proud of our environment and countryside. Even this morning as I walked some of the way towards London from my home near Leatherhead in Surrey—I did so for the obvious reason of the shortage of trains—I noticed, despite the hazards of the ice and snow, how very beautiful the countryside looked, covered with the snow and frost, even though I was only 20 miles from London. Perhaps that is some consolation in these rather grave times. However, there is a great row in my area about the extension of the M25; this is causing a great deal of discussion, debate and argument in many parts of Surrey. People want faster traffic. They want to get through a town like Leatherhead, for example, which has a bypass which tends to slow up traffic even more. We can only enable people to get through such towns faster by, perhaps, building a new road, but in doing that the environment is polluted by the various machines used. It is the old, old story about progress and power, but perhaps that is oversimplifying matters to some extent.

There are two areas that I should like to mention. One is in North Wales, at Bar-mouth which used to be in Merioneth—I am not sure what it is called now, perhaps Dyfed or one of the other new names—which I visited several years ago and where Rio Tinto is, or has been, exploiting tin. There has been a great row from those who wish to preserve that very lovely area, particularly the famous panorama walk. Then there is Dartmoor, which the noble Barones, Lady Seear, has sought to protect from the ravages, as she calls it, of those who try to mine Cornish china clay.

One can also use the Services as an example. During my service in the Territorial Army I was sent to camp on the Norfolk/Suffolk border, near Thetford, to a place called Stamford Training Camp—a name known to many of your Lordships. In order to turn that area into a tank training ground a great deal of beautiful agricultural and scenic land and a particularly lovely church had to be uprooted. One is faced with the dilemma: which is the more important; that the Territorial Army should have a tank training centre, or that we should preserve some very lovely rural countryside? I have seen talking about the early 1950s; but that training ground still exists and I believe, albeit reluctantly, that it is necessary that it should exist despite the fact that some very lovely country has had to be impaired so that that situation can be achieved.

As regards Scotland, where I lived for many years, I recall the great rows which ensued when the hydro-electric schemes came into operation. There was a great dilemma as regards the protection of the environment and some particularly lovely country against alleged despoliation through the erection of pylons, the flooding of farms and so on. Some of your Lordships may know the dam at Loch Faskally near Pitlochry. By some very fine architecture a dam was constructed which made the area even more attractive and, indeed, the fishing has been substantially improved. The same can be said of many of these schemes. But at the time, quite understandably, those who lived in the area were highly suspicious about what might happen.

As regards recycling, of course we throw away an enormous number of bottles and other things. Glass is a very expensive product to manufacture, and I wonder whether the Ministry has any figures about how much glass is lost through being thrown in the dustbin instead of being recycled. As a country we have to import—I do not know the exact figure—something like £800 million worth of minerals per year. If that is an exaggeration, I stand be to corrected. However, whether or not it is true, the figure is substantial.

Our economy would improve to an enormous extent if we could make ourselves far more self-sufficient with the mineral resources we have, even though on occasion we need to clash with the environmentalists who consider that the protection of our countryside is the more vital. Indeed, vital it is. There is no doubt whatever that many of the tourists who come to England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, come to see not only Westminster Abbey, Stratford-on-Avon, and so on, but the Lake District and our hills, mountains and countryside.

The debate which we have had today has thrown out a real challenge to both sides. It can only be hoped that as we go into the 1990s, and with scientific progress moving ahead as it is, the problems involved in keeping our lovely countryside and at the same time making more use of our mineral wealth in order to solve some of our economic problems, can be resolved.

5.20 p.m.

Lord HATCH of LUSBY

My Lords, I join with previous speakers in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, for introducing this debate which, after all, is a debate concerning the whole future of the human race. Some noble Lords have confined themselves to the definition of the environment as it applies to this country; others have extended it further to the planet as a whole. I propose to take the latter course.

The debate has also highlighted one of the highest handicaps of our democratic system. A number of the speeches so far—and I include the speech which I am about to make—would never be included in the manifestos of any of our political Parties for the simple reason that if they were, they would lose votes. In the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, I ask one of her colleagues to pass on to her this challenge. The noble Baroness spoke of the dangers—indeed, I believe she spoke of the impossibility—of a nil-growth economy. But she then added "Of course, there are limits to growth". I should like to know when that limit is reached. Has it been reached? What does the noble Baroness mean and what do noble Lords opposite mean by reaching the limit of growth?

I shall suggest that although the test for national growth, as usually taken by the GNP, is often very inaccurate and needs to be changed, it may well be that at least we should consider whether in the industrialised world—indeed, including the East of Europe—that form of growth has not reached its reasonable limit. This is a matter of some political dispute. I was glad to hear the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, point out how materialistic general public opinion in this country has become, starting from infancy and going through the educational system. So long as political leaders in this country talk about the advantage of gaining £1 million by the age of 30, or talk about the necessity of increased rewards for high skills, so long shall we continue to measure our population, our people, our neighbours by their wealth and affluence.

I make that point because I want to challenge the whole concept which seems to have bedazzled the eyes of politicians of all Parties in this country that economic growth is an essential first priority in our political system. If, as I think most Members of this House would agree, it has now been established that the basic resources of mankind are finite—that is, energy, raw materials and foodstuffs—surely we must look at how they will be distributed in the 21st century. I say "in the 21st century" because it is no good starting in the year 2000. Unless we start to look at the prospect for our children and our grand-children now, it will certainly be too late by the time they are adults.

When one considers that without any question we now know that the population of the world will double in the next 30 years, whatever form and however successful policies of birth control may be, and when we know that therefore there will be 8,000 million people living on this planet who have to be fed and who have to find shelter and clothes, then this is an appalling cataclysmic legacy that we are leaving to future generations.

I should like to give one example from the environmental field which illustrates the kind of global problem which we now face and which shows how that will be multiplied exponentially by the next century. I refer your Lordships to the most revealing report published by the World Bank last August and to the division it makes between the various forms of wealth of different countries in the world. I shall encapsulate this simply in the generality that among the poorest countries of the world—that is, those with an average annual per capita income of no more than 150 dollars—the unit of energy used was 52. If any noble Lord wishes, I can explain the unit, but I simply use this as a matter of comparison. Fifty-two units per year were used by countries with an average annual per capita income of 150 dollars. For those of us in the industrial world with an average annual per capita income of over 6,000 dollars a year, the use of energy was almost exactly 100 times greater—over 5,000 units per year.

I am told by those who support the concept of essential economic growth that the only way in which the poor people of the world can be brought up to modern standards is by increasing their growth by pulling them along in the wake of the growth of the industrial countries. That theory has now been totally exploded. We have seen that it just does not happen. Again, from the report of the World Bank I shall take the years from 1960 to 1976. During that period, the poor countries of which I spoke had a growth of 0.9 per cent. per year. The rich countries had a growth of 3.4 per cent. per year. What does that mean in terms of the 21st century? Surely it is an inevitable scenario that here we face the prospect of the two worlds getting wider and wider apart, with the poor world increasing rapidly in numbers—much more rapidly than the rich world—with resources becoming scarcer, and therefore inevitably social and political disorder. Therefore, inevitably a scramble for those resources, and a scramble in which our children and our grandchildren will suffer the dangers of the kind of war that is already being projected, as uranium spreads around this planet.

I have said that those who believe in material rewards as the test of the worth of the individual are aggravating this attitude of materialism which has spread throughout the industrial world. I think they have already shown just what happens when materialism is a first priority. We heard from the noble Lord who spoke last about the beauties of the Surrey countryside. I should like to take him to Lord Parry's area of South Wales, and to the industrial areas of Scotland. I should like to take him to where I was brought up in the coal and textile areas of Lancashire, or to the North-East, or to any of the industrial areas where there are empty factories and scarred hillsides. This is what materialism as a first priority has done to this country.

But what is it doing to the part that this country plays in the world as a whole? I am happy to follow the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford in what he said about the responsibility of this country to the inhabitants of the planet as a whole. Unless we in this country can use our inventive skills and experience in innovation, the imagination and the intelligence that distinguishes the human being from all other animal species, in looking ahead and planning ahead, then we are leaving a desperately dangerous legacy to future generations.

May I say that everything that has been said in this debate points clearly to that central issue of modern politics, indeed of politics for the last 3,000 years; the balance between the responsibility of the community and the rights of the individual. But in this case unless the community, through its elected members, through its institutions, is prepared to prevent those market forces of the individual and the collection of powerful individuals from carrying out their work undisturbed, then we are going to see the 21st generation leave behind the depredations, the rape of the environment, that we saw in the 19th century. We are going to see the danger to future generations of that scramble for scarce resources, that destruction of our natural environment, to which previous speakers have referred, that can endanger the future of the human race itself.

May I finally make one specific proposal to my noble friend who will wind up. 1 have made it clear that so far as I am concerned this is an ideological issue. It is only by the principles of Socialism, as I see them, that the environment of the future can be preserved. It cannot be left to the market forces. It cannot be left to the individual entrepreneur. It cannot be left to the person who is urged to gain his million by the age of 30, or to seek the highest rewards that his organisation can provide. Above all, it cannot be left to the multinational companies that flit from country to country according to where they find it most useful, and most convenient, to escape from local taxes.

I believe that there are members of all Parties, and of no Party, who are concerned about the future of the human race, as I have tried to outline it. I should like to suggest to my noble friend that she considers and responds to the setting up of a committee or a council composed of members of all, and no, Parties, plus members of the public particularly concerned with conservation, with the environment; people who have spent many years in this work. I know that no Party dare go out with this as a high priority in its manifesto, but such a committee could advise Governments of any nature on new legislation that is coming out. They could make proposals to Governments as to how the environment can be protected in a whole manner of different ways.

I would suggest that on the experience that we have had in a similar committee in the Ministry of Overseas Development, it would be possible to have a watchdog that would report to the Ministry of the Environment, of any Party of any Government, to ensure that there are those people committed to the future of the human race on this planet who can give some leadership and some advice to the contribution of Britain to the preservation of humanity.

5.37 p.m.

Lord CRAIGTON

My Lords, the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, like the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has given us the ideals and theories which, put together, form the basis of the right policies that we have to pursue in conservation in the future. I must bring your Lordships down to some of the practicalities of the way we have to tackle these policies. My noble friend Lord Dulverton goaded me into saying something about environmental agitation, which the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford mentioned. I must shortly do what he has asked.

We had a symposium about environmental education in schools, universities, and colleges, just the other day at the Royal Society of Arts. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, I think is the chairman of the Council for Environmental Education. Speaking personally, the kindest thing 1 can say is that I was amazed, horrified, to realise how far we had to go in this country before there would be proper and adequate environmental education in schools for our growing children. Two years ago, as chairman of CoEnCo—the Committee for Environmental Conservation—I had asked for a report on out of school environmental education. It is now known as the Witherington Report. It covered some 2½ million boys and girls who were members of active youth clubs. What were they doing about environmental education. The answer came loud and clear; together they were doing nothing. Some were of themselves doing nothing at all. Where anything was being done it was completely uncoordinated. Without the assistance of my noble friend Lord Dulverton this would not have happened; we in CoEnCo started a youth unit to co-ordinate out of school environmental education, something that had not been done before, and we are amazed and excited at how much there is to be done and how successfully one can do it. I realise that unless we deal with environmental education as a priority, the next generation will not know what they have to face.

In the Motion, Lady Robson calls attention to the need to reconcile economic and environmental factors in social and industrial policy-making, and I wish to speak about industrial policy-making. The difficulty here is that so many of those responsible for the policies of their firms and organisations—policies that affect the environment—are not always aware of what all the factors are. Some, such as smoke and effluent pollution, are obvious, but some, such as industrial noise, energy conservation, nature conservation, wildlife protection and so on, might not yet be perceived as environmental factors at all. That is not surprising because all the factors cover nearly the whole spectrum of industrial endeavour. That is the situation I had to face when, as chairman of CoEnCo, I set out to co-ordinate all the industrial, environmental knowledge and experience of my distinguished member bodies to produce, especially for the smaller firms, a book of reference under the title Industry and the Environment. It was a sort of senior executive's guide to the conservation policies that might be practised by his firm. In the end we came to the conclusion that the most useful and constructive method was to draw attention in each chapter to one of the broad sectors into which all these factors are grouped, and we have to cover the whole field: air pollution, water pollution, waste disposal and reclamation, the preservation of land and landscapes, the siting of buildings and so on. In each such chapter the book describes the factors in general terms and, if that particular subject could apply to his own business, tells the executive where he can apply for further information.

The factors, we found, are far too many and varied to be dealt with in any other way in one book, but there is so much help and information available to those who seek it, and not only from the specialist voluntary organisations; it is also available from the Government Departments concerned. The Departments have built up a considerable volume of constructive and helpful literature. They can now offer a large amount of advice and a welcome, but not so large, amount of financial help. If, as a result of this debate, the Government do no more than increase their already substantial efforts to publicise the services they can now provide, this debate will have been worth while.

So far, therefore, one problem as yet not overcome is that every industrialist, every industry, that has environmental problems and possibilities of improvement, should know what those problems and possibilities are. At present that can be said of only a few. A growing number of our major industries have their own environment departments; that is for them an essential part of their operations. Other industries have an environment officer working alone or doing duty also as a safety or fire precaution officer, or both. Here, there seems to be a need for some organised basic training courses to which such environment officers could be sent. I know of none, though I understand that the Department of Energy supports a scheme for identifying energy managers. Of course, energy conservation is, as the noble Baroness said, only one important part of the whole problem. I look forward to the time—and we shall get real results when it arrives—when the environment officer, reporting to a senior executive or working director, will be as much a recognised part of the organisation as are safety and fire officers today. Only then will environment be seen as an essential aspect of management and not a cover-up or conflict-avoiding operation.

As with fire and safety, the environment officer has available environmental consultancy services. These have increased in number in the last decade. They provide a service that may be quite beyond the capability of the firm concerned, who must have scientific and technical advice if they are to find the best solution to a pollution or similar problem. But in so many fields, once a firm realises that something should be done they will find their own way to do it. Our job is to try to point out to them what should be done.

Looked at from another angle, the Motion refers to the need "to balance and to reconcile", and that falls into two separate categories; the construction of new buildings and plant and necessary or desirable changes in existing structures and installations. In the field of new construction, great credit must be given to the Financial Times' Industrial Architecture Award and to the Business and Industry Panel for the Environment under the presidency of Sir Peter Parker, an organisation in which my noble friend Lord Sandford plays so important a part. These annual awards—and there are others—are stimulating a new awareness of exactly how well an industry, even a normally unsightly one, can be fitted into without offence, and can sometimes enhance both the scenery and the surroundings of people living in the neighbourhood. Of course some schemes have more than aesthetic considerations. There will always be major projects that require extremely detailed consideration. We in Britain, in common with the rest of Europe, are aware that before some major projects are started there should be a total evaluation of the proposals; that is, there should be an environmental impact assessment.

There is room for widely divergent views on the sort of projects and exactly how this costly and time-consuming assessment should be made. Meanwhile, the Secretary of State for the Environment, on 13th September, suggested a practical treatment of planning inquiries for the National Coal Board's proposed new coalfield at the Vale of Belvoir and the construction of a commercial fast breeder reactor, first elucidating the facts, then a public inquiry and finally, in the latter case, a Parliamentary debate. These proposals seem just about right at this time, when final decisions on environmental impact assessments have yet to be made. But in major or local public inquiries in which concervation measures are a factor, there is one other difficulty still to be met. In a typical case, a charitable organisation with perhaps a body of local people has to put forward its objections against a proposer who can afford to spend all that is necessary to prepare and speak for his side of the case. The objectors have not, and cannot be expected to have, the funds to fight such powerful interests on equal terms. There is already legal aid for citizens who show need. Is the time not overdue when financial aid to help present their case should be available to limited objectors who object to proposals which do not, in their view—and in the words of the Motion—reconcile the "economic and environmental factors" involved? That is a matter about which we must continue to press the Government.

So much for new buildings. The alterations to existing structures of course present a much greater variation. Whether the problem is effluent, fume cleansing, or waste disposal, it must be the polluter who pays. But there can be a bright side. I refer to the story of the North British Distilleries Company, as reported last October by Environmental Data Service Limited. The distillers were faced with an ultimatum: clean up, or shut down. They were discharging unacceptably polluting wash from their stills. The company decided to evaporate the wash and spent over £½ million a year on capital and processing charges. They sold the dried wash at £60 per ton for animal feed—it has probably gone up now—and they drew in £1,200,000 a year. So the result of eliminating that particular pollution was an annual profit of over £½ million.

But whether the anti-pollution measure is profitable, as in that case, or costly, as in most cases, there is good news from the Department of the Environment's Digest of Pollution Statistics; namely, that there has been in the last decade marked improvement in the quality of air and fresh water. But, my Lords, there is also bad news: there has been an increase in the complaints about noise. Moreover, there are as yet no satisfactory statistics. I feel that the Government and all concerned in this growing problem are taking far too leisurely a view of aircraft noise. They pay no more than lip-service to the majority of complaints, however legitimate, and seem to rely on the day some time in the late 1980s when quieter aircraft will be available. It simply is not good enough.

Aircraft noise pollution will soon be joined by another offender. The Noise Advisory Council was set up in 1970 to advise Ministers. The council's latest forecast is that by 1980 six million people in England will be living in houses where the road traffic noise levels exceed 68dB(A) which is the level used to assess eligibility for insulation grants. Need I say more?

I have tried to show the need to create, especially in the smaller industries, a greater awareness of their environmental harmony possibilities and dangers, and for an environment officer to become an accepted department in every firm. I have drawn attention to the need for Government help for objectors in environmental inquiries, and Government action, rather than lip-service, over aircraft noise, and perhaps later over traffic noise.

I wish that there were no other problems, but there are many, and I shall mention only two on which I have no constructive suggestions to offer. There is the difficulty of harmonising our island practices with those of the mainland Common Market countries. I am sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, has left the Chamber. Those of your Lordships who heard his magnificent speech will remember that he said he was happy to be abroad and not worried about amenity considerations. There is the danger of other nations saying to our heavily polluting industries, "Build here and you can pollute as much as you like." But I do not despair. We win some battles, we lose others, but we are making progress all the time.

5.54 p.m.

Lord NATHAN

My Lords, I greatly regret that I was not present at the commencement of the debate due to difficulties with the trains, and I therefore apologise to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, for not having heard her speech, although I was fortunate enough to hear the speech of the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I much look forward to reading the report of the speech of Lady Robson. I was particularly interested in the terms of the Motion which has been put down, and for which we are all very grateful, which refers (if I may abbreviate it) to the need to reconcile and balance industry and the environment; and that is the particular area on which I wish to speak.

It seems to me that the environmental interests in which I have long shared have been greatly harmed by those extremists to whom the noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, referred, who seem to have put it about that in all circumstances industry is an evil—a necessary enemy perhaps, but evil all the same. I think it is as foolish to make that point on the environmental side as it is for the industrialist to scorn all interest in the environment as being of no concern to him. These extreme views, which possibly came to the fore most of all in the 1960s, have now to a large extent fallen away; and fallen away perhaps precisely because of the oil crisis in 1973 and the recognition that we depend for our lives on industry, and indeed that the environment depends on industry.

I should like to confine my few remarks not to the opposition between environment and industry, but to the contribution of industry to the environment, and, secondly, to the point that in many cases industry is the environment. Of course one turns to thoughts of the countryside. If I speak in terms of energy representing industry it is because I was chairman of a working party on energy and the environment whose report was published some years ago. With regard to agriculture, the input of energy is enormous. It is represented by the energy expended in the manufacture of tractors. I think I am right in saying that someone has calculated that the equivalent of 46,000 kilowatt hours of energy goes into the manufacture of a 50 horsepower tractor. Fertilisers require energy for their creation. Someone has calculated that one kilogram of nitrogen fertiliser requires 2.2 kilowatt hours of energy to produce it. The figures are certainly not within my knowledge, although I have read them, but I believe the point is clear; namely, that agriculture as practised in this country demands enormous industrial resources.

Therefore, when one gazes down from the hills of Devon upon the rich fields beneath, or when travelling back from the Continent one looks out of the window on to the patchwork fields of Sussex, and says, "How glorious this environment is", it must be remembered that the environment is in part made by, and certainly enhanced by, industry. I believe that this point is not sufficiently often taken. This point struck me very much while listening to the very interesting speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, who I am sorry is not in his place at the moment. He referred to the underdeveloped countries and to their needs.

It is not sufficiently often recognised that quite shortly there will be very large numbers of cities of 10 million or more inhabitants, and these will be not in the developed world, but in the underdeveloped world. They constitute now, and will continue to constitute, perhaps the most uncivilised, the most terrible environment that man has ever endured. In so far as we have any power to take action at all, one is entitled to ask whether we are to leave the situation as it is, or are we at least to envisage that energy shall be introduced there in order to alleviate that position? When you think of the houses, the alleyways, the stinking sewers, the untreated water, the high-rise buildings—flats and offices—the warehouses and the factories, and when you think of the teeming millions going to and fro every day, are they to be unserved by those elements of civilisation to which we are so readily accustomed? Are we to say that industry is of no consequence to them to improve their environment by light, heat and the facilities to which I have referred? This seems to me unthinkable.

That brings me to a point which I think is relevant to this debate, and I am very sorry that the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, is not here to correct me, because he is the person, above all, who will keep one on the right lines when talking about energy. I think that one of the great political difficulties we are up against, and are increasingly going to be up against, is the question of the provision of energy for the under-developed countries. If they go for nuclear energy, they are going to become almost wholly politically dependent upon the developed world, because only the developed world has the technology and the highly skilled manpower, not only to make these machines but also to maintain them and service them; and this is a political element, it seems to me, in the whole of this energy complex. Is it desirable, in the interests of the under-developed countries, that they should become so dependent for energy, which is so vital to them, on the developed world? It is a question to which I think there will have to be an answer.

The second point, which was raised indirectly, I think, by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, related to agriculture and the population. If the population is going to increase—and my information of projections is exactly the same as his—to the level that he envisages, an enormous explosion of population, that population will have to be fed, and the food can be produced only by land and skills with the assistance of industrial products. This will have to be foreseen, and the problems with regard to energy consumption will have to be dealt with. I am afraid that was a diversion, but I was prompted to it by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hatch.

My Lords, may I turn for just one moment to another topic? Of course, the contribution which industry can and does make to the environment, both rural and urban, is unfortunately complemented by the damage that it can and does do to the environment in both rural areas and the cities, and I think it is worth considering one aspect which has not, I think, been touched upon today in this very interesting debate. That relates to the size and location of factories, because their size and location do and must affect the environment. Not only do they affect it by way of the bricks and mortar, the noise and pollution and all the disagreeable elements; they also draw people to work there from great distances, disturb the local community and generate a traffic problem, as we all know.

One experiment in Devon which came to my notice seems to have worked well is the creation of a satellite factory employing 150 or so people, semi-skilled workers, to make components, which are shipped by one lorry a day to the assembly plant in a nearby town. The factory is built within an old mill, which had become derelict, in the village. Employment is thereby provided in the village. It enhances, not disrupts, the community; and traffic is reduced by moving the goods, not the people. It is perhaps an example which might be followed in the revival of inner cities. It is said that London is a collection of villages. The reinforcement of the existing village community in this way might do more than any number of grandiose schemes to improve the environment in the inner cities and, of course, reduce the traffic flow, which stifles the roads.

I have wondered whether opposition on environmental grounds to the establishment in a rural area of industry, or the development of coal mining, requiring large numbers of specialist workers, is perhaps motivated, at least in part, by the disturbance of local community life more than by what are generally regarded as pure environmental factors. I think this is a very important matter when considering the environment and industry. Industry clearly needs the help of all those concerned for the environment in its widest sense, and some of its leaders, at any rate, have shown how enthusiastic they are to respond. Nowadays almost everyone is both a pedestrian and a motorist. In each capacity we know and respond to the other. Our objective should be to create the same relationship between the environmentalist and the industrialist.

6.7 p.m.

Lord SANDFORD

My Lords, I, too, must apologise to the noble Baroness for not having been here at the beginning of this debate, and I hope that in my remarks it will be seen that I have interpreted the purpose and the nature of it correctly. I am sure, if I may say so, the noble Baroness chose aright when she chose the words "to balance and to reconcile", and that is the theme I shall try to pursue. I think she is right, too, to concentrate upon industry because, after all, industry has very powerful impacts upon the environment. It occupies space in it, and the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, has just reminded us that the agricultural industry occupies the whole of the countryside. It also derives a tremendous number of its raw materials from the environment; it uses the environment to collect them, and to distribute its products; it puts all its waste materials into or onto the environment, either as liquid effluents, as emissions to the air or as solid wastes; and many of its products, when discarded, are left to be dealt with in the environment, like plastic containers, glass bottles and so on. So there is certainly need for industry to exercise a particular responsibility in the environment.

When there is plenty of room, as there was in this country 100 or 200 years ago, and when the amount of power and energy being used is slight—manpower, horse- power, waterpower or windpower—the factors that I have just mentioned are of little more than academic interest; but, as many speakers have said, and Lord Hatch with some anxiety, we are reaching the limits of growth, and in many cases we have reached the limits of growth. By that, I do not mean limits to all growth of any kind, but limits to any growth but of the right kind. From now on there are many fields in which, if there is growth, it can be only of a certain quality. I could perhaps now mention a little parable. I hope it has not been used in the debate already, and I apologise to noble Lords who have heard it before, because it is used frequently in these sort of discussions. It is the parable known as the tragedy of the commons, which I think illustrates what happens when the limits of growth are reached.

Take, my Lords, the situation where we have a common with, say, a grazing capacity of 65 cows and there are currently four herdsmen, each grazing 10 cows on it. Herdsman A, if the price on demand for milk goes up, can readily increase his herd to 20 and prosper—prosper better than he was prospering before—and herdsman B can do the same. Herdsman C, seeing how well A and B have been doing, would not have any difficulty in being persuaded by his accountant and by his solicitor that there is no reason why he should not double his herd. If he does, the grazing capacity of the commons will be exceeded and no one—no cow, at any rate—will be doing as well after that as before. If herdsman D increases his herd as well and we have 80 cows grazing on a commons with a capacity of 65, then I suggest that they will all go under. Notice what has happened. While there was plenty of room, it was possible to grow and to consider only the economic factors and, possibly, some legal ones. Once the limit of growth is reached then other factors come in and can only be disregarded at everybody's peril. At that point, it is no good appealing to people to act responsibly, because there is no frame-work against which to behave responsibly. At that point, therefore, the law, or some fiscal measure, needs to be introduced in order that people can go on acting responsibly and not be left with a choice between going under or surviving.

Then the question is: What kind of law and what kind of taxes or subsidies are needed to keep the whole machinery operating once the limits of growth have been reached. We have 100 years experience at least in this field. We have pioneered and led the world in the Industrial Revolution and we have made a number of mistakes; and the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, has rightly reminded us that there are signs of these still littering our industrial areas. But we have learned our lessons. There is on the Statute Book a mass of legislation controlling pollution and protecting the environment in this country. My noble friend Lord Craigton in his capacity as chairman of CoEnCo has produced, in the booklet that he mentioned, as compact and serviceable a collection of this material as I think it is possible to get between two covers—and very useful that will be. But what we need to remember is that it is not just a question of piling on the legislation but choosing the legislation with very considerable care and applying it with very considerable skill. We have to remember, despite our mistakes, that the environment is very resilient; it can safely absorb a considerable amount of pollution and waste material and recover quite successfully. There is no occasion, therefore, to go into a great panic and to start lumbering ourselves with anti-pollution legislation and protective legislation beyond what is needed by the environment as a whole and by particular parts of it.

Lord HATCH of LUSBY

My Lords, will the noble Lord allow me? In his analogy, would he not agree that, if the four herdsmen were working together cooperatively rather than in competition with each other, they would be able to avoid the necessity for that legislation which most of us have agreed comes from a centralised body that is frequently resented in the locality?

Lord SANDFORD

My Lords, the noble Lord must not press the analogy too far. Parables have their uses, but you cannot use them for everything. When there are 10 herdsmen, one would hope that the idea of getting into a co-operative or a collective might occur to one of them. But, if you are dealing with whole nations and, particularly, whole continents, I think you must have recourse to proper legislation and use all the democratic machinery to get the legislation right. Some of my noble friends might not like my saying this, but I think that at the limits of growth you reach a point where you cannot rely on market forces alone to get the right answer: you must have legislation and fiscal arrangements as well. I think we found that in our experience.

We also found that it is no good applying legislation which is more rigorous than it need be; for that is burdening industry with unnecessary cost. I serve on Sub-Committee G of the Select Committee on the European Communities and we find ourselves engaged in a more or less continuous battle—which the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, knows well and to which he has referred—with our Continental colleagues to help them to see the value of the lessons that we have learned over the last 100 years: that you have to choose the legislation very carefully and then to enforce it by the best practical means, because the object of the exercise is not to make every industry suffer the same burden of constraint but to protect the environment to the degree that is required at the least possible cost.

I think that we are making headway. It is very slow, but we shall have to keep pressing on and getting this right. There is no point in requiring the same standard of effluent control into the sunny waters of the warm non-tidal Mediterranean as you impose upon a plant which is discharging effluent into storm-tossed, tidal, cold waters of the Atlantic. The environmental situation is entirely different and the legislation, if you have it, should be designed so that it bears to a different degree on different situations.

The points that I hope I have made so far are that at the limits of growth you need legislation and fiscal control but that the kind of law you have must be specially adapted and enforced to deal with the environmental situation that the particular plant is in. But I would go on to say that that is by no means all. There is a great deal more that industry can do, and should do, for their own benefit in making the most of the environment than merely complying with the law which is necessarily being imposed upon them. The chief aim behind all that they should be doing is seeking to reduce the weight of impact on the environment and the demands that they are making in the things that have to be got out of it—their raw material and energy, all of which come out of it. And this is reducing the weight of impact on the environment for a given quantity of production. This is more a question of catching the spirit of the game than of complying strictly with legislation; although that is necessary, too. This is something which is much harder to define, but not too difficult to exemplify.

The noble Lord, Lord Nathan, has already taken one of the four examples that I was going to give and I am grateful to him for leaving the other three. But all are worth using. These are taken from the last awards of the Business and Industry Panel which it was my honour to present at the Royal Society of Arts about a fortnight ago, awards which were given by H.R.H. the Duke of Gloucester. The other three of these awards have useful lessons. These awards have been given for the last four years and each of them points up a different lesson, a different example, of an enlightened approach by industry towards the environment.

I shall go through the three quickly. They are all the premier awards for this year. The first was by the factory of Vickers, in Newcastle, which makes marine thrust bearings. They had been there for perhaps 70 years, and the question was how they were going to modernise. Much the simplest thing for them to have done would have been to take a green field site outside Newcastle and build a new factory at their leisure, as it were, while continuing production at the old factory. That would have taken up a considerable acreage of land which could otherwise be growing crops. It would have involved considerable transport problems for the staff who decided to live where they were or demands for housing on a new site if staff had to be recruited from elsewhere. In any case, they would have lost their ties with the area where they were.

Furthermore, when they went they would have left another large gaping hole in the inner areas of Newcastle which had already got more than enough problems. Greatly to their credit, they decided to rebuild on Scotswood Road, where they were, an incredibly intricate building operation if they were to remain in full production. They carried it through; they chose excellent builders—Shepherds of York—and they completed the contract six months ahead of time. By good co-operation with the planners they completed their planning procedures in three weeks. That shows what can be done when a firm takes the right environmental decision and sees it through with pride and imagination.

My second example is different but is also urban, and was by Simons, builders of Lincoln, who recycled a tumbled down 14th century building up on the hill, lying between the castle and the cathedral, and turned it into a thriving pub purveying real ale. It was opened by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Lincoln and was entitled the Wig and Mitre. Recycling a 14th century building is a difficult operation. Many builders would much prefer to pull it down and start with a clear site. They did not take the easy course; they decided to rehabilitate it and show off the extraordinarily interesting architectural features in it. But they had to find an activity which would yield a return on their money. Their minds in the end rather naturally turned to the purveying of real ale because there are tourists, judges and the close of Lincoln Cathedral all at hand. I am glad to say that they are thriving splendidly.

The third example is the one which the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, has given; and the fourth is a particularly praiseworthy effort by the National Coal Board who have a colliery in the South Notting-hamshire coalfield, Bentinck, which has been there now for many years. In about 1950 they had to apply for a fresh planning permission to tip their waste adjacent to the pithead. At that time the planning requirements for colliery tips were not very exacting. There was an altitude limit to the height of the tip and the requirement that when it was finished—the date of which was not specified—it had to be planted up with shrubs and bushes. Nothing more was required.

In actual fact, they stockpiled the top-soil and the subsoil. They are now using the new form of tipping which superseded conical tipping. Conical tipping does not allow one to do anything at all on the tip until the whole thing is finished. The other method allows one to reclaim the tip progressively, and work goes on. In this particular case, it has now been restored with the help of the stockpiled subsoil and topsoil. So while it is not possible now just to plant bushes or even graze cattle, there have now been two seasons where a full arable crop of barley up to the local standard has been secured off the top of the tip while the tipping proceeds. That is another development which is worthy of a prize. These things cannot be done by an industry which is doing no more than seeking to comply with the legislation.

The point that I am making is that we really must find more ways of bringing the standards of the rest of industry up to the levels of the best such as I have been describing. Here, I agree, albeit on a rare occasion with the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. I do not often agree with the noble Lord, but here I do in saying that it is high time we succeeded in bringing together into some better and more fruitful relationship the hardheaded businessman and the long-haired environmentalist who have so much to offer each other but who find themselves so often one in the red corner and one in the blue corner, confronting each other at public local inquiries, wasting their resources in paying very large fees to barristers from the planning Bar.

There are really better ways of working together. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, and one or two other noble Lords who said that those of us who are engaged in environmental education—and I preside over a number of bodies in this field—may one day bring these two forces into some fruitful relationship together. At the present moment we have the situation where far too many industrialists in the blue corner think that they have done all that needs to be done when they have measured the various factors that can be measured in these issues and found that the things they have measured are pointing in their direction and in their favour. There are certain things that can be measured in these issues, but they are not the whole thing. Environmentalists believe that there is more to life on this planet than can be demonstrated by cost benefit analysis. In that they are right, too. The important thing is to put both these conclusions together and then we could make some progress—put them together in common studies rather than in confrontation.

In that connection—and this is where I should like to end—I am particularly glad to know, as the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, has already noted, that the planners of Leicestershire and the National Coal Board are doing just what 1 have been recommending as a preliminary to the Belvoir planning inquiry. Their joint study is not likely to preclude totally the need for a public inquiry. That would be expecting too much. But it means at this stage that some of the parties involved are spending their energies co-operatively on a common cause—namely, to see how to get at the energy we need under the Vale of Belvoir at the least cost and at the least damage to the environment. That seems to be the object of the exercise.

6.28 p.m.

Lord BEAUMONT of WHITLEY

My Lords, we approach the gap on the speakers' list. This has been a first-class debate. We owe it to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, whose expertise and interest in this field over a long period of time and long before it started to hit the headlines is known to some of us. I was a little disappointed when I saw the terms of the Motion. I thought that this question, balancing and reconciling economic and environmental factors, might lead us into a discussion on environmental matters alone. The phraseology was such that it can and has been used by those who are producing an ambivalent reply for people pressing for the simplest of environmental claims.

I seem to remember some three years ago, when I asked the noble Baroness who is to reply to this debate a question about whether in European Wetlands Year the Government were going to stand idly by and see the rape of Seal Sands, Teesside, I received almost exactly that reply: that we must indeed balance the environmental and economic answers. I am ashamed to say that I cannot remember whether we won or lost that battle in the end, or whether it was merely a sort of "semi-rape and indecent assault." In fact, the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, drew us firmly into the whole of the ecological area, wider than that of the environment. Perhaps, since I shall use these two terms during the rest of my speech, I might explain how I see them.

I am well aware that there is considerable dispute about the true meaning of these two terms and that in different academic disciplines they are used in different ways; but I have found over the past year or so and in my experience in the politics of the environment and the ecology that in fact there now seems to be fairly general agreement that when you are talking about environmental matters you tend to be talking about keeping the fields green, stopping Westminster Abbey falling down and stopping the Thames getting dirty. But when you talk about ecology you are talking much more in terms of what we have learnt to call the "ecological perspective." Is it the idea that care of the environment is not an optional extra or one department among others, but that in fact one should be looking at the whole of our national life, and indeed the life of the world, from the point of view of the entire ecology of the world as a whole. It is in that sense that I shall be using it in this debate.

In this idea of ecology, it seems to me that there are three strands which might well be called the past, the present and the future, without too much manipulation of categories. The past is really what we do when we stop beautiful and ancient buildings being pulled down, when we stop the countryside being ruined and preserve what has been handed down to us for future generations. Although I know that a number of people will be very angry with me for saying this, I think that that war has been more or less won. There are still lots and lots of battles to fight, I know, but in our national life, certainly, the site of the battlegrounds has changed, and the people who are trying to despoil in any way are themselves driven to arguing on ecological grounds.

The people who try to dig up bits of our national parks produce the argument firmly that in fact they are going to make those parks even more beautiful than they were before. The people who wish to go on culling grey seals do so on sound ecological grounds, or on what they put forward as sound ecological grounds, concerning the ecology of the fish as well as the ecology of the seal and of the fisherman, too. There may sometimes be an element of hypocrisy on one side or the other, or even on both; but this is where the arguments are being fought now and we should be profoundly thankful for that.

The second of the strands is the future—when we look at the resources we shall have and at our rate of using them up and wonder whether our appetite is far too great for our resources or our future excretion far too great for the beauty, the wealth or the health of the world—and it is on this matter that the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, touched so admirably. I think it was the noble Baroness, Lady Jackson, whom we are extremely sorry not to see here today, who also referred to that point, for which she coined the phrase "rules for the care and maintenance of a small planet". That idea, "rules for the care and maintenance of a small planet", is something which is beginning to get hold and a number of noble Lords in this House today have made admirable speeches on this subject.

However, there is a third strand, and one which we have really only just touched on, although the noble Lords who have talked about the relationship between the environmentalists and industry have touched the border of it. That is what I call the importance of the actual present—the actual importance of man's relationship to man as he finds it now and the fact that we are trying to build a better world by co-operation and that we see, even in today's events and the events of the last week, signs of an alienation from society which can be cured only by a totally different approach to economics and the world at large. This is one of the places where the tragedy of the commons comes in. It is also very rightly the point that the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, made when he asked that very pertinent question of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, about co-operation.

I entirely take the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, that this is difficult as yet on an international or continental scale. Nevertheless, I think that in our country it is the way forward. I was very interested to see Mr. Pardoe, in a letter to the Guardian recently, bringing forward the idea that we must follow the way so ably outlined in a pamphlet not so long ago by Mr. Peter Jay before he departed for the United States, of trying to move ahead into turning our industry and our economy into groups of small and middle-sized co-operatives. It is through co-operatives that the third strand we are talking about can best be found. Here I think that Mr. Grimond, too, has made a significant step forward with his setting up of an organisation to help co-operatives. On another side, the Lucas shop stewards have shown a possible way forward for industry.

I have not got the time, nor I imagine have your Lordships the patience, for me to go through what I think are some of the answers to these matters. Indeed, at least two-thirds of them have been dealt with very fully and much more ably than I could possibly do in this debate today. The only thing I would say is that zero growth, as such, is not the answer, and I think that very few people believe it is. When they talk about zero growth they tend to mean zero growth in economics only, as it is at present measured in economics. To take the measurement first, we all know—at least I hope we do—how totally lunatic the measurement is. A juicy crash on the M. 1 causes a lovely rise in GNP as at present measured, what with the cost of replacing the vehicles and their parts, the work given to insurance companies, the services of doctors and hospitals and the luck of boosting the undertaking business as well. Young mothers, at the other extreme, may do their best for their country by giving up breast feeding as soon as possible. Breast milk does not count in GNP, but Cow and Gate does.

This is madness in measurement, but it is a different way of growth that we are looking for. I think the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, was so right when he said we only now have space and opportunity to grow in the right way. I think that Mr. James Robertson got the way in which we should approach it right when he said in The Sane Alternatives: We want growth, but such growth will be part of a shift from the present emphasis on less tangible personal quantative possessions and achievements to a new emphasis on less tangible personal qualitative capabilities and activities, from economic growth to personal and social growth". Of course, in the right way of measuring this will be economic growth, too. It is that kind of growth that we want, rather than to go on, as many speakers have said, with the idea that growth is in itself good. In certain circumstances and in certain ways it is not.

I cannot sit down without saying a word about the Green Alliance, which was mentioned by the noble Baroness, Lady Young. I am sorry to see that she is not in her place, because I wanted to answer one or two of the points she made. Nevertheless, I want to mention it because I want to tell your Lordships about it; partly because I must declare my interest in that I am a paid employee of it. I do not need to tell your Lordships that this has not altered in any way the content of my speech. It also enables me to urge the corollary, that what I am saying must not be taken as the view of the Green Alliance as such.

The Green Alliance is a body which is in the process of being formed, consisting of a number of individuals who believe that the whole of the ecological perspective, as I have described it, should be put much more into the centre of democratic politics. That is basically all the views it has. That is the sole reason for which we are there. Obviously it consists very largely of environmentalists. Practically every environmental body has leading members in our membership. Your Lordships' House has Members in our membership. 1 do not know from what draft document the noble Baroness was reading, because we have not yet got as far as publishing a complete document. I hope that it was one of the later ones; some of the earlier ones were not as good, and that is putting it mildly.

She said that she seemed to detect romanticism in it. There is a place for romanticism. It might be thought that some of the most attractive figures in the history of the Tory Party were romantics, and they were rather more attractive than some of its other leading members. It might be thought that to say that we should not be striving for a paradise situation, as I understood the noble Baroness to be hinting, comes ill from a Party which periodically, wholeheartedly and full-throatedly declares its intention to build Jerusalem in this green and pleasant land. We all need to have romantics. But in the Green Alliance we do not have only romantics. Leading members of the International Institute for Environment and Development, which has already been praised today, are members of the Green Alliance, and their document encourages growth as well as environmentalism. I can assure your Lordships that, although we may have the occasional slightly fanatical member—and there are some in your Lordships' House on all subjects—the Green Alliance is, on the whole, a very down to earth body, whose job it is to try to put more firmly in the political field the ideas that we are discussing today.

This debate is one of the most serious in Parliament, in going as far as it has. Your Lordships' House contains a number of Members who take this matter extremely seriously. If you go out into society and move among people who think seriously about ideas, you will find that people understand and are prepared to argue about the full rigours of ecology, because it is a sensible subject. They may not agree with you—they do not necessarily agree with each other—but it is a subject that can be discussed. In the corridors of power, in Brussels, in Whitehall, and among civil servants, it is accepted that intellectually valid arguments are involved, and for that a lot of the credit must go to CoEnCo, of which the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, is chairman. But it is very difficult to find anyone taking this matter very seriously either in another place or in the Party organisations.

There, is of course, the tiny Ecology Party which is growing in capacity as well as in numbers, but it has only a small handful of local councillors. There is the Liberal Party which, by instigating this debate today, and by the speech of the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, has shown its great interest in this matter. But, as I see it, the Liberal Party is in the middle of an internal debate. It is almost schizophrenic between, on the one hand, Manchester economics and free trade, and, on the other, the environmental and ecological issues which it takes so seriously. I hope that it is the latter which wins, but it is a serious internal debate and it is to the credit of the Liberal Party that it is taking this attitude.

In the Labour Party, we have the admirable Socialist Energy and Resources Association, with more people really interested in this subject in another place than any other Party has, and they are doing splendid work. They even had a very far-reaching statement carried at the Assembly this year. The report from the NEC was carried overwhelmingly—probably unanimously—and it commits them very far. Unfortunately, there is a possibility that the Labour Party as such may treat it as they treat a number of other, less welcome, matters which are passed by the Party Conference, and they are still fighting an uphill battle.

The Conservative Party—in spite of the extremely good speeches that we have had from the noble Lords, Lord Craigton, Lord Sandford and Lord Dulverton—and also in spite of a very brave and good effort on the part of the small Conservative ecology group, shows no sign of having taken this matter aboard. This is a tragedy, because deep in the Conservative psyche, as the noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, showed us, is, or should be, great care for conservatism and for conservation taken to its logical conclusion, which is ecology. I hope that the Conservative Party, too, will be moving in that direction, because the future that we see as possible in an ecological world is inevitable. It will be forced on us by shortages, by limits and by the fact that if we do not get it we shall get disaster. There are two ways by which we can get it. One is through disasters—through the kind of scenario that the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, foresaw, forebodingly, in the future. The other way is through co-operation. It is between co-operation and cash that we must make a choice in all the democracies of the West, as well as throughout the whole world.

I close with a quotation from Christopher Hollis, who said: And the job of practical politicians is, as all practical politicians know, to give names to the things that are happening and to persuade people to vote for the inevitable". I think that that is partly our job, and I hope that we do it.

6.49 p.m.

Lord HOWIE of TROON

My Lords, this has been a most interesting debate and we are all indebted to the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, for putting down the Motion which has made it possible. Like many other Members of the House, I was most impressed, as usual, by the admirable and lucid speech of the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, who has already said more or less everything that needs to be said on this subject. He reminded us, especially engineers and technologists among us, of the duty to preserve the visual amenities of the environment. In saying that, it is worth remembering that the environment that we are talking about is virtually entirely man-made. It was made by civil engineers—I confess to being one of them myself—by architects, by builders and by farmers, and the rest is wilderness. Sometimes, in their activities, the engineers and architects have been clumsy, inept even, sometimes apparently malevolent, but, more often than not, the hand of man has improved the wilderness, has improved it practically and has improved it visually. "Back to the wilderness" seems to me to be a very poor rallying call for civilisation at this late date.

It is interesting, of course, that what is thought to be nature in the environment changes from time to time. When conservationists attack motorways, as they do, it appears that the railways have become part of nature. It was not always so. When the railways were being built 100 or 150 years ago, they were attacked by the environmentalists and the conservationists of the day. When George Stephenson was surveying the line of the Liverpool/Manchester Railway in 1825 or thereabouts, his survey parties were threatened, even shot at and sometimes driven off the land by people who did not wish change and improvement to be made. Although they were opposed, the railways have now become part of nature, and it may well be that other artefacts which are now opposed will in due course take their place as part of what we might call nature.

In her opening address, the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, mentioned energy. Energy is important both in itself and for the part which the artefacts of energy play in the environment in terms of the problems and the dangers which they pose. Just before Christmas, speaking to the British Nuclear Engineering Society, Mr. Allday, the managing director of British Nuclear Fuels, remarked that he thought that nuclear power should be expanded as of right rather than to fill the forthcoming projected energy gap. I agree with him. 1 think that nuclear energy should be the major source of energy both in this country and in the industrialised countries of the world.

I say this because it is still the cheapest source of energy; it is the most efficient, in the sense that one obtains a higher proportion of useful energy from it than from any other form of energy. It is also the safest. A zebra crossing is more dangerous than a nuclear power station. That has been so until now, and there is no reason to suppose that the position will change in the future. Incidentally, nuclear power strikes me as offering the best opportunity to provide the power which the Third World needs. This matter is very close to the heart of the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, who sits in front of me.

Coal and oil are too valuable substances to be burned. They are much more useful to society as sources of chemicals than as highly inefficient fuels. It would be much more sensible to utilise coal and oil as the source of chemicals than to burn them up ineffectively. Alternative forms of energy have been projected and all of them are desirable. The sun, the wind and the waves are sources of apparently limitless and free energy. No man in his right mind would oppose the development of these sources of energy, and it is absolutely essential that ways of using them should be found. They are not yet, however, quite through the threshold of practicability, and they might not be for some time yet.

A year or two ago I made some very simple, rule-of-thumb calculations in an attempt to see whether Pembroke power station, a 2,000 megawatt station which is well known to the noble Lord, Lord Parry, could be replaced by windmills. On the information available to me then, Pembroke power station could be replaced by windmills. Four thousand of these windmills would be needed, each of them 100 metres high and each of them with a propeller of about 75 metres in diameter. If they were spaced out neatly in a line around the coast of Wales and if they were 100 metres apart so that the propellers could not foul one another, they would stretch from somewhere near Cardiff to not quite Liverpool. The impact of those windmills upon the visual amenities has only to be thought of to be imagined. Of course, windmills will be developed; these are primitive machines. In due course, Pembroke power station may be replaced not by 4,000 windmills but by three or four dozen, each of them perhaps half the size of the Post Office Tower and occupying no more than a few square miles of the Pembroke countryside. There would still be a considerable visual impact if these windmills were erected, but I am not saying that for that reason attempts to harness the potential power of the wind should be abandoned.

I want to speak about participation in the decision-taking which precedes these projects, whether they be windmills, power stations, motorways, or whatever. I think that the participation of the public is one means of attaining the balance and the reconciliation for which the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kiddington, asked. A very lengthy, time-consuming process of argument and inquiry is involved at present, a process which I believe needs to be speeded up and streamlined. It depends very largely upon information. The more information that is made available about what is in the mind both of the Government and of the nationalised industries when they are considering projects, the better it will be.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, mentioned in her speech—I am sorry to see that she is not present at the moment—environmental impact analysis as one way of spreading information. Analysis, however, is only one part of a system which is now widely used in the United States for bringing in the public and determining the effect of a project upon the community. Environmental impact analysis is part of an environmental impact statement, and that statement includes hearings, discussions, debates and also exchanges of information not unlike those which take place under our inquiry system. The American system is different, but it is analogous to ours in the sense that hearings take place.

Analysis, however, has to be used with a certain amount of caution. It suffers from the same defect as that from which cost benefit analysis suffered a few years ago; namely, it is an attempt to put a quantity value on something which might not be quantifiable. In the case of the cost-benefit analysis, a money value was imposed. Noble Lords will remember that cost-benefit received a very severe blow during the Roskill investigations when somebody—I believe it was Colin Buchanan—asked who could put a money value on Stukeley Church. Of course, nobody could do that. The question of Stukeley Church had to be decided not by a cost-benefit consideration but by some other consideration—by a different set of values altogether.

The same is true of the environmental impact. Instead of measuring the environmental impact in terms of money, you measure it on a scale ranging from one to 10. It is very hard to say whether Stukeley Church lies between one and 10 on that scale; indeed, it is just as impossible, and a political decision outside the analysis would have to be made. Nevertheless, this kind of quantification is a valuable and useful tool and one which should be used. However, the idea of the statement going beyond the analysis is well worth looking at in this country, and it might be just as useful to us as our present system. A few years ago, the Bulgarian artist, Christo, set out to run a nylon screen across part of California for about 25 miles. It was a nylon screen which was about 15 to 20 feet high and, as I say, about 25 miles long. He called this the running fence. It was not so much a piece of art; it was a happening and as such, because it had an impact on the environment it was subject to an environmental impact statement, with all the machinery of consultation and of hearings that that implied.

What was interesting in this use of the environmental statement was that not only were the quantifiable effects measured to the extent that they could be, but a large number of opinions were gathered and assessed and in the course of gathering together the assessment it became clear to people that Christo's running fence, whether it was a happening or a piece of art, was none the less fun and more and more people as they became embroiled in this curious enterprise began to realise that it was fun and that it lightened their lives. Reading the environmental assessment is extremely interesting because what can be seen through it is not merely the impact of that running fence, an artefact which only lasted three weeks, but also its impact on people's lives, which I think was wholly beneficial.

Last week Robin Wilson, who is a partner in Travers Morgan, a well-known firm of consulting engineers, published an article in a civil engineering periodical in which he was discussing the present planning procedures for roads (in which he is particularly concerned) and he made one or two interesting comments. He claims—and he has long experience of public inquiries and the like—that the Minister comes into the decision-taking far too quickly. Wilson argues that the Minister decides on a road proposal before the issues surrounding the proposal have been properly ventilated and debated. He has a very limited choice under the present procedures. It may well be that there are two or three different road lines which are perfectly suitable and acceptable to the Minister; it may well be that there are other alternatives which could be considered but under the present procedures the alternatives cannot be considered at this stage but must be brought in at a later date, reopening the whole inquiry.

Wilson suggests that there should be one inquiry only and that that should be as near to the feasibility study stage as possible, really so that the feasibility study does not get out of date, as can happen rather easily. He adds an interesting idea; namely, that the inspector should be an investigating inspector, rather like (if I understand it correctly) the Procurator Fiscal in Scotland. If there are any lawyers present they might tell me whether I am right in thinking that in Scotland the Procurator Fiscal has investigating powers not unlike those of the French examining magistrate. The value of this would be to give the inspector the right to widen the inquiry so that alternatives could be introduced during the inquiry, considered, debated, and in fullness of time he would report upon them. Then after the inquiry the Minister would make his first decision, not his last one.

There is one other interesting innovation which Travers Morgan have tried out and which should interest the House. They now believe that at the earliest stage in our feasibility study the public should be drawn in. Faced with a road project early last year in Leicester they opened a shop near the centre of the town, invited the public to come in to examine the problem and to present their proposals and also any objections—in fact, to discuss the project and to put a public input into the system before they had even come to any conclusions, while they were still at the beginning of the feasibility study. In that way the ideas and feelings of the public about the project came into the consideration right at the beginning. That strikes me as being an innovation which could reasonably be adopted.

I believe Wilson's proposals are not out of sympathy with those suggested by the Secretary of State for the Environment last year when he was speaking about the fast-breeder and other big projects. I think they could with advantage be extended along Wilson's lines on much smaller projects than the Secretary of State was thinking of. I end by asking my noble friend who is to reply to the debate if she will consider Wilson's ideas, not necessarily today but at some later date, to see whether they can be adapted to public use.

7.6 p.m.

Lord RITCHIE-CALDER

My Lords, I apologise for intervening in this debate without having put my name down, and particularly at this late hour. My excuse is quite simple, that last night at this hour I was in what the noble Lord, Lord Howie of Troon, described as a "wilderness" on the Equator, wrestling with the very problems that we are discussing here tonight and I did not get back until this afternoon. That equatorial discussion was very appropriate to your Lordships' deliberations and was concerned with one of the major problems connected with the whole ecological and environmental question—the question of the future of our last resource, the oceans themselves. This meeting brought together in the Cameroons the men of affairs of the black African countries to discuss precisely what we can do about the wilderness, in my noble friend's term, before we start wrecking their resources as we have done fairly considerably in our own land, by industrial development, but how to prevent the catastrophes in the oceans.

This is important because it is part of the major problem, not just the sentimental—I hate using the word "sentimental"—not just the sympathetic view of the fact that we want to prevent the developing countries of the world from making the atrocious mistakes—and I repeat the word "atrocious"—which we have made in our searching after purely material wealth, and indeed converting people's ambitions, and so on, into the demand for material wealth which as we have seen, certainly in the reaction of our younger generation, gives no satisfaction whatever; it simply breeds in them disenchantment and frustration with what money can buy in material terms.

In this conference at which I was present, where we were dealing with what they could do about the sea and what the sea could yield for them, we were talking about what we in this country and in the whole of the developed industrial countries have completely ignored in the past. We have completely ignored the social cost of industry. This generation is now picking up the cost of the devastations of the last century, and most of the cost we cannot pick up because the people are in their graves and indeed died of the effects of the exploitation of industry. "Where there's muck, there's brass," was the text: You were prosperous when you showed it demonstrably in failing to consume 90 per cent. of coal and to discharge it as soot.

This is something which, not only in your Lordships' terms but in every other type of term, we have to try to see it does not reflect itself any further in our own society and something which we should at least be prepared to avoid, together with the peoples of the developing countries. I assure your Lordships that they are highly sensitive to this question, partly because they feel this is in fact something which the industrialised countries are likely to impose—and I can assure your Lordships they are already imposing.

One of the most important debates was on the exporting of polluting industries. Whenever your Lordships in this country or politicians anywhere else start to impose regulations on industries those industries shift somewhere else where the ordinances do not apply, or corporations will shift, as we found in many cases in West Africa, the obsolete industries; they are simply taking what they were prepared to discard and sending it out to pollute the developing countries. The incidental pollution caused by oil development, whether indeed it is refineries or super-tankers spilling oil along the coastline, are other things which are the contribution we are making to the potential harm of the developing countries, simply because we are pursuing as fast as we can something which our conscience no longer lets us contemplate here. Here we have moved further than merely hard cash principles, but it does not stop the industrial thinking about how these things could be profitable somewhere else.

This is something of which the developing countries are aware and about which the men of affairs are highly sensitive. What they do about it is a more debatable point; how they put their profound misgivings into action is a more debatable point. When we say "Do not have polluting industries", they can turn round and say, "Look what pollution did for you. It made Britain the most wealthy, prosperous, dominating country in the world". It took the countries over in the process. How are we going to prevent them, before they discover that they have been taken in, as it were, from laying themselves open to the type of cash persuasions which would mean the dissemination of this pollution throughout the world?

I follow the noble Lord, Lord Beaumont, and others in thinking that we are making very considerable progress, not just in the well-doing sense of the word. We have, as my noble friend Lord Parry pointed out, at least a recognition that we are moving out of an industrial society into a post-industrial society. Look at the strikes and upheavals that arc going on at the moment. What we are failing to come to terms with is what is going to be the nature of that post-industrial society. The machine itself can deliver whatever goods we want. What we feed it with is another matter, but the machine as such can produce the material environment which we need. In the post-industrial society we will have to recognise that the quality of life is more important than the material side of life. The noble Lord, Lord Sandford, was pointing out that some very enlightened brewery has discovered how to make a contribution to the quality of life by giving us real beer for a change instead of synthetic-beer.

My statement is quite simple. We are passing into the post-industrial society. We have the Welfare State, or at least we have lashed the raft and are holding it together, and we are now looking for what I have already called the fulfilment stage. That is where we can measure what we want for ourselves, for our families, for our children and our childrens' children, in terms of the true nature of the world in which we live. This is what we are talking about when we are seeking to find a balance to reconcile economic and environmental factors in social and industrial policy. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, for having introduced the subject, and I thank your Lordships for having done what I think is the function of your Lordships' House if it is to survive; I hope that your Lordships' House will be, as in this case, the House of the future and not the House of the past.

7.15 p.m.

Lord WINSTANLEY

My Lords, it falls to me to try, on behalf of my noble friends on these Benches, to draw this fascinating debate towards a conclusion. In doing so, 1 think I would be right in congratulating my noble friends on selecting a Motion which has enabled the House to debate a matter of the utmost gravity and importance, and perhaps also in congratulating them on framing our Motion so widely as to allow anybody to say almost anything. Be that as it may, I am absolutely certain I would be right to congratulate my noble friend Lady Robson for the masterly—should it be "mistressly"; I do not know—way in which she opened this debate with a speech which was broad-ranging and comprehensive, but which nevertheless focussed our attention narrowly on the most crucial issues concerned in this whole area. I am deeply grateful to her for so doing.

In attempting to draw together the various threads of this fascinating conversation today, I find myself entwined in at least three of those threads. First, as an individual citizen and as a parent I am as concerned as any about the prospects of our preserving or otherwise an environment in which our children and our children's children will be able to lead fruitful and satisfying lives. I am bound to say that at times, in that capacity, I begin to wonder whether the human experiment has really been an outstanding success; one wonders whether it is perhaps grinding slowly to a halt. Secondly, as a doctor I have spent much of my life doing a job which frankly is assisting people to adapt to the environment in which they find themselves, an environment which sometimes can be pretty hostile. My third involvement is as a person connected with politics; I suppose a former Liberal Member of Parliament can be regarded as having some faint connection with politics. I have always taken the view that the aim of politics is to try to provide the environment most suited to man's aims and aspirations. Really that means that the whole business of politics is, surely, the predicting of the future consequences of present happenings and modiyfing those happenings so as in some helpful way to affect those future consequences. That, I think, is what we are trying to do here today.

In those three capacities I find that I have constantly come up against three parallel but related trends, trends which have been commented on by most noble Lords who have spoken today, and two in particular have been stressed very much. These three trends are, first, an increasing depletion of the basic materials upon which we depend for our very lives; secondly, and in parallel, an increasing pollution and contamination in one way or another of the environment in which we live; and, thirdly—one which has not been mentioned very much in this debate—an increasing world population, which itself adds to both the rate of depletion of materials and perhaps also the rate of pollution of the environment. It will be sufficient at this late hour if I give the briefest examples of these. So far as depletion of resources is concerned, 1 think almost every speaker in this debate has focussed attention on energy, and what better example could there be.

It would be fruitless for us to pursue arguments about whether coal will last 50 or 60 years, or whether oil will run out in 2010 or whatever. Surely what is clear is that our resources are finite, which means that sooner or later they will run out. That must surely mean that we must give ourselves as long as possible to pioneer and to develop acceptable alternatives. In that connection, it seems to me so far as growth is concerned—a matter referred to by so many speakers in this debate—that it would surely be madness to seek salvation in a total preoccupation with growth. I cannot feel very happy about an economy based on encouraging us all to consume more and more of what we have less and less of. Nor am I very happy with an advertising industry which seems bent on persuading each and every one of us that today we cannot do without what we had never heard of yesterday.

I accept, as has been said by so many speakers, that we must have growth. Indeed, I very much take the view taken by the noble Lord, Lord Sandford. We must have growth; but surely we must aim to have growth in socially acceptable and economically desirable areas. We must try to use the fruits of that growth for necessary and socially desirable purposes. Then we must couple growth with extreme care in nurturing and husbanding scarce resources. Is that what we are doing? Are we really likely to see the chairman of British Leyland appear on television and say to us all: "You don't need another car this year. If you look after your Mini or whatever it is, it may last you another three years or even another four. If you do not use it much your health will improve, your tyres will last longer. You could make your car last six years"? Is that the kind of thing we are likely to hear? But it really is the way in which we must think. Shall we proceed that way? I doubt it.

I turn briefly to the profit motive and in a sense to some of the words spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby. I have nothing against profit, especially if I happen to make it. But, sooner or later we must come to realise that what is profitable in the short term can sometimes be immensely damaging in the long term. 1 am gratified to find that an increasing number of industrialists of one kind or another, and other people, are coming to realise that and to act accordingly.

The second trend which I mentioned was pollution of which we have examples everywhere. We must accept that we have demonstrated already that man excels all animals in his ability to foul his own nest. Everywhere we have contaminates of one kind or another—some unfortunately necessary and unavoidable, for example, the food additives about which so many people become so excited. We must understand that if we are to feed a growing world population, certain food additives are necessary to prolong storage life, to restore nutrient where that has been destroyed by manufacturing processes and so on. Nevertheless, the presence of increasing numbers of these additives requires increasing vigilance.

I would merely take one example in the area of pollution, and I take one as regards which I believe we have triumphed. This example has been mentioned by many people and it is air and polluted atmosphere. The noble Lord, Lord Auckland, referred to the great smog of 1952 in which, if my memory serves me correctly, 8,000 people perished from the inhalation of noxious fumes in a period of three days. We have worked wonders in this country as regard cleaning up our atmosphere. When I was a boy I used to expect to walk to school in Manchester every day in November and walk home again because there would be no trains or buses, not because of strikes but because of fog. Our clean air measures have removed what was a major menace and have pointed the way to the answers to many of the problems raised in this debate. We can solve most problems if we are prepared to pay the price. There is always a price. People will only begin to be prepared to pay the price when it can be demonstrated that it is worth paying and that there are advantages to be gained therefrom. As regards cleaning up the air the advantages were of course very obvious—for example, life rather than illness and so on. As regards some of the other matters about which we are concerned, the advantages are not quite so obvious or so immediate.

I move to the third of the trends which I mentioned; namely, population, which has hardly been mentioned in this debate. There is a danger now that our own population in this country has levelled—probably temporarily—for us all to become immune to the idea that population growth is still a problem. It is still a problem! If we accept what is now happening, namely, that world population is at present growing by 8,000 every hour—every hour there are 14,000 births and 6,000 deaths, leaving a growth of 8,000 every hour—and realise that of the world population today something like 50 per cent. are aged 15 years and under, we must realise the potential explosive growth of population with which we are possibly confronted. I merely say that the dilemma facing us at present with these three trends is that there are conflicts to be resolved, and there are prices to be paid in order to resolve those conflicts. But I believe that we can solve most of those problems if we recognise that they exist and if we give ourselves time. As regards population, we shall give ourselves more time if we keep our eyes open to the dangers of world population growth and if we act accordingly. I go no further than that on this occasion.

Conflict has been demonstrated over and over again in the speeches this evening. Conflict is apparent everywhere we look. For example, the perfectly natural desire for cheap and plentiful goods and the equally natural desire for clean air are, to a point, in conflict. One can have clean air if one pays the price, but the price sometimes is an increase in the cost of the goods. I should like to point out here—and I think that this is important—that when I talk about conflicts, I am not talking just about resolving conflicts between competing groups of people. Often we have to do so and it can be very difficult to try and steer a course which is broadly satisfactory to this group or that. But we must not forget that many of these conflicts exist within ourselves at one and the same time.

I am often reminded of an experience which I had in another place. I have kept two letters which I received from the same constituent. The first one complained bitterly of the intolerable nuisance of aircraft noise from Manchester Ringway Airport which disturbed him—he could not do his work, his wife was ill and his children were failing their ' O ' or ' A ' levels. He asked when the Government were going to do something about the intolerable nuisance of aircraft noise. I said, when indeed! But it costs money to pioneer and develop quieter aircraft engines. It costs even more money to site major international airports away from major centres of population. But if and when enough people demonstrate that they are willing to pay that price it is possible that the Government would act, and I would give my support

However, some months later I received a letter from the same chap, written I am sure sincerely and not with tongue in cheek. This time it came from his business address in Stockport and he was complaining bitterly about the inadequacy of the flight schedules from Manchester to Dusseldorf which were providing a serious obstacle to his important export business. He was right both times. He was perfectly right to demand peace and quiet and equally right to demand regular, reasonably cheap, aircraft travel. That is the problem. We must resolve conflicts which sometimes exist within ourselves. In my view we can solve many of the problems if we recognise them in time; if we understand that there is a price to be paid; and if we encourage people and educate them to understand that it is worth paying the price for benefits which are perhaps not immediate but which are sometimes a little more remote.

I do not want to speak for much longer, but before I sit down I should like to say a few words wearing another hat. I should declare an interest as the Chairman of the Countryside Commission, a body which has the statutory duty to advise Government on all matters to do with the countryside: the preservation of its natural beauty, access to the countryside and open air recreational activity within the countryside. I think it goes without saying that our countryside is a resource which is under threat and, indeed, is pretty scarce.

I wish to say at once that as chairman of the Countryside Commission, I am under no illusion that our countryside simply fell out of the skies. The country-side which we have in Britain is very largely the product of centuries of cultivation of the land. Further—and here I rather echo some words spoken by the noble Lord, Lord Parry—I have no desire to preserve fossilised areas of sterile land as some kind of museum of what once existed in the past. In order to be worth preserving the countryside must have its own dynamism and life, and inevitably that life must be based on or closely linked to agriculture.

Make no mistake, my Lords, our countryside in general and our agricultural land in particular is under threat, as are many of our other scarce resources. Nowhere is that more true than in our urban fringes—a point which has been made over and over again in this debate—where agricultural land is being nibbled away in small pieces; it is being threatened by fragmentation of land holdings, by planning blight and other uncertainties, by the activities of local councils depositing waste, by industry or by statutory undertakers seeking out the countryside or agricultural land for their developments of one kind or another.

I turn very briefly to yet another threat to our countryside. We are on the brink of an undreamed of explosion in leisure, the magnitude of which has not yet been fully comprehended by those who are likely to be on the receiving end; namely, all those of us who are concerned with the countryside and its preservation. I am not talking about enforced leisure through unemployment or even voluntary leisure through striking, or anything of that kind; I am talking about the leisure which must come about as the result of new technology to which the noble Lord, Lord Ritchie-Calder, has referred. I do not think that we shall accept the view of what I might describe as the Luddite element of the trade union movement, which seems bent on preserving useless jobs for the sake of creating employment or creating unnecessary work for the sake of employment. Is "employment" really the word with which to describe 20 people working 40 hours a week in doing what two could do in a morning? No; we must accept this challenge, and we must accept that it is a benefit if the burden of work—often boring, unnecessary, routine and monotonous work—could be lifted from man's shoulders. Surely, that is something which we should welcome. However, in welcoming it we must take the consequential steps. That means that we must provide for the increasing leisure due to earlier retirement, a shorter working week and more and more public and other holidays.

Here a final and very important factor arises which I want to mention. The Countryside Commission has recently undertaken a detailed survey—in fact, National Opinion Polls have carried it out on our behalf (they are usually right, although I know that on one occasion they were not entirely right)—into the recreational habits of our households. It was conducted on a sound statistical basis and revealed some astonishing, perhaps even worrying, but I think encouraging facts. It showed that 63 per cent. of our population today, of all ages and of all social groups, irrespective of their origins, opt as of choice to spend their open air leisure time in informal recreational activity, in the countryside. When we compare that figure of 63 per cent. of the population who, according to the survey, spend at least one day a month in our countryside in some form of informal recreational activity—such as a long walk, a short walk, a picnic or whatever—with the 17 per cent. who ever choose to watch any kind of professional sports, then noble Lords can see what is possibly in store with an explosion in leisure.

I would merely say that we must provide for it and not resist it. Somehow we must introduce techniques which will enable these people who pour into our country-side—a very scarce resource—to do so with the kind of knowledge necessary to enjoy it without destroying it. Here I return to a point made by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford about education. I come to a point on which I must take issue with the noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, who I think referred to us today as materialistic society; in fact, so did the noble Lord, Lord Avebury. Up to a point they are right. But everywhere I see extraordinary evidence of a new attitude on the part of young people who now opt, not for material things, but for different kinds of spiritual satisfaction. When we advertise for wardens in the countryside or for project officers to do jobs at very low pay and with very long hours we are inundated with applicants—many of whom are people who could earn a great deal more in the material sense. I believe that there has been a change of heart.

As a result of education, the activities of the media and so on, more and more of our young people are opting for the countryside, although as the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, said, perhaps it has not gone far enough. If that is happening, we must provide for it, and provide for it carefully. If we are to preserve the countryside, we must do what we can to preserve viable agriculture throughout our country. It means much more vigorous protection of agricultural land in planning machinery; one way and another it means many more steps. It means encouraging people to realise that it is worthwhile; in fact, it means paying the price. Sometimes it means asking farmers on the urban fringe whether they really want to farm. As the farmer affably shows me out at the front door after I have discussed interesting plans about tree planting or footpath management I sometimes have the feeling that he is hastening to open the back door to the gravel extractor. I make no complaint; it is understandable.

If we wish people to co-operate in this area, we must pay a price, and we must make it worthwhile. That is what this debate is all about. The noble Lord, Lord Hatch of Lusby, whose speech I greatly admired despite the fact that I take issue with him on these points, said that there were no votes in this. 1 am not entirely in agreement with him on that. We, in the Countryside Commission, have launched our new urban fringe experiment whereby, with Government help from the Department of the Environment and the Ministry of Agriculture, we seek to revitalise the countryside round the whole urban fringe of one of our major cities. We have been flooded with applicants from different cities up and down the country, from councillors who have begun to learn that votes do not consist in never spending any money, but that there really are votes in spending a minuscule amount on the kind of investment in countryside reclamation and restoration which can show quite extraordinary benefits for a very small investment. Again, I see a change of heart here, a recognition that there are votes to be won in this kind of posture.

I do not accept the view that we must appoint more committees. I think that we shall obtain results in this area by changing peoples' views and attitudes. When enough people throughout our country recognise the problems and the needs, and demonstrate their willingness to pay the prices, often in terms of personal sacrifices and in other cases in terms of money, I think that there is hope that Governments of whatever flavour or whatever Party will take the necessary action.

Finally, I am not pessimistic, 1 am optimistic. I have recently seen a number of things which have immensely encouraged me. The Minister of State for the Department of the Environment, Mr. Howell, wrote a letter to public bodies, like the Treasury and the Ministry of Defence, owning land in national parks, urging them to take proper cognisance of the kind of recommendations which are in the report of the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, and urging them most forcefully to heed conservation measures and matters of that kind in their management of that land. To me that is a change of heart. Looking at the statutory undertakers, the Coal Board has not exactly enhanced the countryside in the area in which I live. But I am fascinated to see the kind of work that has recently been done in restoration by the Coal Board. Our attention has been drawn to an area in Nottingham which was previously despoiled by opencast mining and has now been so restored that it is now "in work" and is classified as Grade II agricultural land, when prior to coal mining, it was Grade IV. If that can be done, anything can be done. But it will only be done if enough people really want it to be done.

I merely say that this has been an important debate. I thank everybody on behalf of my noble friends for taking part in it. I hope that the excellent speeches we have heard from noble Lords will not be the end of the matter. I hope that they will go away and spread the message elsewhere, because the more this message gets home to more people, and the more people show that they are willing to do the kind of things we have been talking about, the more certain it is that in the end we shall move in the right direction.

7.41 p.m.

Baroness BIRK

My Lords, I hope you will not all go away and spread the message before I have had a chance to say my few words. I join with everyone else in thanking the noble Baroness, Lady Robson, for initiating this debate. The wording was of course wide enough to encompass a great deal, or take in very little. There has been a wide-ranging debate, it has been extremely good humoured, and an interesting seminar and discussion for everybody here. I hope that the Hansard of this debate will be read not only by Members of this House but read outside as well.

I do not take the pessimistic view of the noble Baroness, Lady Young, who was concerned about little economic growth and very little improvement in the environment. I do not accept that that is so. I am one of the people who feels that we have always got to push ahead. I am what I would call one of the world's nudgers. Nevertheless, in the last decade or so we have become much more aware of how important it is to conserve the environment by improving the rural and urban scene and controlling pollution.

There are some who feel that the pendulum has swung too far in the environmental direction. I think that possibly the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, is among those. There are others like the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, who probably consider that it has not swung far enough. Difficult judgments have to be made, and these have to be made against the background of a highly-developed and geographically small country with limited economic resources, and concerned to improve its standard of living. There are bound to be differing views on where the balance should be struck, because there are no absolute answers to these questions, especially in a democracy where orders do not come down from on high and where there is constant argument and discussion going on all the time. This means that often decisions have to be taken with inadequate knowledge. For example, we know very little about the long-term health effects of low concentrations of even the most common pollutants, so how far should we adopt restrictive precautions in advance of firm scientific evidence? This is one example of the problems with which we are all faced every day.

The noble Baroness, Lady Young, and the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, referred to risk assessment. The noble Lord, Lord Hinton, with his scientific experience, considers that too much attention is being paid to some risks. Again, this is an area where acceptability varies considerably. Lord Rothschild's recent Richard Dimbleby lecture provided a useful stimulus for this debate and a wider discussion, even though I think, probably with other people, in some areas maybe there was a certain amount of over-simplification.

The issue which faces us now is not whether the environment should be protected: The question is what resources can we put into anticipating and preventing future environmental degradation, and how do we achieve the quality of life we want and that we can afford. In stressing the need to balance the economic and environmental factors, which we have to do, and the need for a suitably pragmatic approach, I know it is all too easy to sound complacent. I am far from complacent about this. I think we have a long way to go, and until such time as environmental hazards have been accur- ately assessed, and until such time as the cost and efficiency of remedial measures have been closely measured, we must remain concerned, but also thoughtfully sceptical of alarmist statements about either the hazards, on the one hand, or the costs, on the other.

In this country we have traditionally adopted this pragmatic approach. I think I would call it a Fabian approach. It has probably been more persuasive and effective than trying to set ideal standards and then failing to meet them, which is a depressing process. It is for this reason, for the way we have approached things and for the successes we have achieved, that I have doubts about Lady Robson's suggestion for a single independent agency. First, I have an immediate allergy to setting up any more agencies, or committees of any sort, if we can avoid it. Secondly, I believe that the range of aspects and expertise are so wide that it is difficult to conceive that they could all be controlled by one body. I also feel that so many bodies start as a free-flowing consensus of ideas, or forums for thought and discussion, and then quickly turn themselves into a sort of bureaucratic adjunct of the establishment, that one has to be careful.

Similarly, I thought that my noble friend Lord Hatch's conception of a watchdog committee was also an attractive one, but again it is something that needs more thought to see whether it would fall into the same problems as the one proposed by the noble Baroness, Lady Robson. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution has already done a good deal of valuable work, not only in the work it has done itself but the offsprings that have arisen from it.

Other countries have similar pollution problems to ours and, because air and marine pollution are by definition international, it is important that we do not take an insular attitude to our environment. I was grateful for the contributions made by my noble friends Lord Hatch and Lord Ritchie-Calder, because there is very little time for me to go in any depth into the international aspects of the environment; but it would be absolutely wrong if, in a debate of this sort, it was not referred to, and referred to, as it was by both my noble friends, with force and passion.

There are a number of international organisations, in particular the United Nations Environment Programme, in which the global problems referred to by noble Lords are discussed. But in international discussions and law we must always take account of local circumstances and culture. I think that the noble Lord, Lord Sandford, endorsed this view when he referred to the resilience of the environment.

In our approach to EEC environment legislation we have maintained the view that member States should be able to apply quality objectives which take account of their own particular environmental circumstances, rather than harmonise to arbitrary uniform standards. I think some of the best and most effective debates on the Directives have taken place in your Lordships' House. If we did agree, if we harmonised to arbitrary uniform standards, this would impose unnecessary burdens on both pollution control authorities and industry, and be very costly to the country as well.

There are a large number of fields in which this approach is applied. The noble Lord, Lord Beaumont of Whitley, pointed out that when we are talking about the environment we are also talking in the widest sense about ecology as well. I entirely agree with him. A very basic way in which we have to find the right balance, or reconciliation, is between the competing claims for the use of land. This has been mentioned by many noble Lords, but it is seldom easy. Britain has a flexible but comprehensive planning system which enables us, or it should enable us, to ensure that all development (homes, industry, transport, leisure activity) accords as far as possible with the general environment. Obviously there is conflict and tension here from time to time—indeed, all the time—and it is natural that there should be.

Public inquiries provide a forum for the open discussion of development problems and, as we know well, public inquiries raise their own problems. My noble friend Lord Howie of Troon made some suggestions about inquiries into road proposals and I will draw those to the attention of my right honourable friend the Secretary of State for Transport. The noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, highlighted some of these problems with his story about the overhead electricity line. Here is a clear case where one must try to find a balance and make a decision as between the strength of amenity considerations, on the one hand, and the high cost of providing underground cable, on the other. Although I do not go along with him in all he said on other matters, on this issue I think the noble Lord is right to say that people want to enjoy every amenity so long as somebody else pays for it. There is a great deal of truth in that.

Our planning system must constantly adapt to dealing with new problems, for example the urban fringe, and although we have not had much chance to go into that, I thought the noble Lord, Lord Nathan, made some interesting comments about the way in which the inner cities might be enhanced in a way which would not only energise industry and activity in them but also deal with the quality of life, with derelict land and buildings and so on.

The conservation of old buildings also involves making difficult decisions between conflicting interests, as I know well from my work at the Department of the Environment. Like my noble friend Lord Parry, I am familiar with, and absolutely wedded to, industrial archeology and have watched with great delight the growing esteem for those parts of the environment which were, as he pointed out, recently deplored as monstrous relics of the industrial revolution. As the noble Lord, Lord Winstanley, emphasised, there is need to provide not just for leisure activities but for increased leisure activities, and I was glad he developed that theme. There are also the developing activities of the Countryside Commission, of which he is chairman. Of course, we would like to spend more money on activities of this kind, but the resources available are limited, a central point to which, I am afraid, one must keep returning.

One of contemporary society's great problems is air pollution. The concept of requiring "the best practicable means" to prevent and abate potentially dangerous or offensive emissions provides a flexible system; it may not be perfect but it is flexible and it works. It takes account of local conditions and circumstances, current technology and financial implications; in other words, it tries to sort out the environmental desirability with the realistic facts of finance and technology. It is also a dynamic system, allowing requirements to be made progressively more stringent as circumstances change and as one takes people along with one, which is extremely important. This system, which has been endorsed by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution, has helped to ensure an acceptable standard of air quality while at the same time not penalising industry unnecessarily, a point made by several noble Lords.

A considerable improvement in the quality of our non-tidal rivers has been achieved. In England and Wales, in 1975, nearly 80 per cent. of non-tidal rivers were generally free of pollution. And the improvement of the River Thames has meant a considerable increase in the number of species of fish inhabiting the tidal reaches, and the number of boats along the river has increased as well. We hope this improvement will continue at a realistic cost and we have also strongly supported the National Water Council and the water authorities in a major revision of the whole basis of water pollution control policy, which will coincide with the introduction of Part II of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, which will be implemented at the end of this year.

Like Lady Young and Lady Robson, I deplore the unfortunate delay in complete implementation of this Act, but due to financial considerations this has had to be put off. However, virtually all the provisions are now under way and, although only two authorities (Northumberland and Durham) have prepared waste disposal plans, most of the others are well on the way and, now that a date is in sight, more will be coming along and will be prepared by the time it is introduced. In 1979–80 an extra £50 million of current expenditure will be provided for local authorities' environmental services to help councils deal with their waste disposal. This means that, for the first time, comprehensive quality objectives will be set not only in water but on land. This will give us a proper yardstick to judge where improvements in river quality and on land are urgently needed and how the limited funds can be spent to the best effect.

Sometimes a pollution problem needs to be looked at across a number of sectors and is not easy of solution, and here I come to the question of lead, not only in air and water but also in food. This was referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, although he spoke primarily about lead in petrol. Policy on lead is based on a comprehensive review published in 1974. In his foreword, the late Anthony Crosland said that the objective must be: … to ensure that, while the proper use of lead is not unnecessarily curtailed, the health of all sections of the Community is not put at risk, and that every practicable measure is taken to reduce exposure". Since then a great deal has been done to reduce lead exposure—for example, from food and paint—or to ensure that there is no increase in exposure, for example by holding steady the total emissions of lead from cars by reducing the lead content of petrol in step with the increase of traffic, and further measures are in hand on a number of fronts. It is true that some of us would like to be going more rapidly along this road. However, our policy in this matter is flexible and takes account of new evidence as it appears.

Lord Avebury referred to recent studies, particularly in the United States and Germany, on danger to young children. Our present advice on these studies is that their conclusions are "not proven", but that does not mean they are not being taken seriously. Nor does it mean that the noble Lord should not go on prodding the Government in this matter. The whole question of the effect of lead on young children is currently being reviewed by an expert working group set up by the Secretary of State for Social Services. They will also be assessing the paper which the Conservation Society, of which Lord Avebury is president, has produced. To help the Secretary of State for Transport take action, if necessary, when the results of the health survey are available, he has set in hand a thorough review of the options and costs of further reducing or abolishing lead in petrol.

There are so many other examples or areas where things have been or need to be done that it is impossible for me to mention them all, but perhaps I should mention the question of asbestosis, a horrendous story which has now come into the open. In this story I am afraid that industry, nobody, comes out of it with very great credit, but at least it is now in the open and while that will not bring back those who died from asbestosis, we all hope that such a thing will never happen again.

On the other side of that particular coin, the up-to-date story on cadmium is very interesting. The soil at Shipham was found to have a higher level of zinc than it should have had. This was discovered from a survey carried out by Imperial College. As I am sure noble Lords will have seen on television or read in the newspapers, the people in that village are very angry at what is now happening to them. They are insisting that they are living to a ripe old age, and that they have not been at all affected by what has been discovered.

There is also the question of noise, which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, and there are many other elements in our sophisticated, complex and technological society against which the comfort and quality of life for the people living here have to be measured. Again we have here a matter which is terribly difficult to assess, and more resources are involved, too. If we are to have the benefits of Concorde—I was going to say the dubious benefits, but perhaps I should not say that from the Box—then there is the question of how we deal with the noise and the environmental problems that it brings. The noble Lord, Lord Dulverton, referred to layers in the ozone.

We must also keep a close eye on the range of new chemicals which are being introduced. Here again the point arises of a society in which a great many innovations and discoveries are taking place and in which scientific work is going on and is on the increase. Innovation is important, and we simply must not stunt it unnecessarily, but at the same time as new chemicals are developed we must ensure, so far as we can, that they will not create hazards for those producing or using them, or to the general environment. In order to assess possible hazards the Health and Safety Executive is developing a notification scheme for new chemicals before they are put into general use. This should help to avoid major environmental problems. This action shows that the precautionary measures that are being taken are on the increase.

Many noble Lords have referred to energy policy. Any strategy for meeting it must have environmental implications, as is the case with any of our energy problems. We must see that our plans for future energy supplies are adequate, and indeed generous, for there are not many who would willingly sacrifice the benefits of civilisation, most of which depend to a greater or lesser degree on an adequate supply of energy. Of course we must continue to press for energy conservation, and we welcome the Low Energy Strategy document to which the noble Baroness, Lady Robson of Kidding-ton, referred. I can assure the noble Lord, Lord Avebury, that the Department of Energy is closely studying this matter and the other low energy futures, including their implications for research and development strategy work, and this will take about two years to produce.

Estimated energy savings are already the equivalent of 20 million tons of coal a year, and we shall keep up the pressure. However, we cannot afford to base our policy on assumptions which might turn out to be over-optimistic. To do this would be to gamble with our living standards, or levels of employment, and our balance of payments. When we are speaking about a materialistic society, we must also accept that people who would certainly not consider themselves anywhere near the materialistic top brackets have become accustomed to a standard of comfort which, compared with that of not so many years ago, would appear to be luxurious, and which is now accepted as normal. People would now be very unwilling to give it up. Whatever energy strategy we have it must cover all the available sources. This comprises not only existing sources, including nuclear energy, which we believe still has a part to play, but also possible new sources. The Green Paper on energy policy has set out the Government's approach, and therefore I shall not linger on that matter.

There was a lengthy debate on the Royal Commission's report on nuclear energy in which the noble Lord, Lord Hinton of Bankside, took part and in which I replied for the Government, and one saw very clearly the difference of opinion between what I would call the highly environmentalist approach and the nuclear energy approach. In developing our energy strategy we must always not only take into account, but make absolutely sure that we do not ignore, environmental issues at every stage. The Government have undertaken to see that any decision to build on a commercial scale a fast breeder reactor in this country will be subject to a wide-ranging public inquiry. Here I should say to the noble Lord, Lord Hinton, that nowadays we live not only in a democratic society but also in a consultative society.

A major development in this area was the setting up last March of the Commission on Energy and the Environment under the chairmanship of Sir Brian Flowers, whom we shall shortly be welcoming as a Member of your Lordships' House. The commission has cross-membership with the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution on the one hand, and with the Energy Commission on the other, which should lead to a useful cross-fertilisation of ideas. I also think that it will give confidence to both sides involved in this particular debate. It will advise on the interaction between energy policy and the environment. So in this field at least we are precisely meeting the terms of the Motion of the noble Baroness.

So far I have been talking mainly about the role of the Government and those bodies which have been given statutory powers to protect the environment. But a great responsibility rests with industry. While the Government can guide and encourage industry, industry must respond to local and national needs. We have already had examples in this connection. From my own work I know of what is being done by some of the nationalised industries, including British Rail, the coal industry, and now by the steel industry. I was extremely pleased to hear what the noble Lord, Lord Craigton, had to say in this connection. I believe that the greatest progress is achieved by working as far as possible in co-operation with industry. Here the Press has played a very valuable part in the awards that it has made, the competitions it has arranged, and the publicity it has given.

It is also true that while some companies comply with controls reluctantly—and one cannot merely slide over that fact—enlightened companies have actually gone ahead of regulations in a number of fields; for example, in reducing water and air pollution, and in restoring landscapes spoilt by the dereliction of early factories or by mining and quarrying, to a standard which is not yet statutorily required. The gas industry has reduced noise from its in-shore installations. The majority of companies operating furnaces are ahead of the standards for grit and dust emissions. But today it must be the job of good managers to recognise the importance of the environment, as well as the importance of all the other factors that they must take into account in running their businesses.

I had intended to say something about the need for environmental education and the start that has been made in that direction, because this is a matter close to my heart, but this was extremely well covered by the noble Lords, Lord Craigton, Lord Sandford, and Lord Dulverton, as well as the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Guildford. So all I shall say is that I welcome the work that is already being done nationally and internationally both by professional educational organisations and by other groups. I also wish to pay tribute to the work of the Council of Environmental Education, which owes so much to the noble Lord, Lord Sandford.

The Department of Education and Science has produced a useful set of notes entitled Environmental Education in the UK 1977, which show the way in which environmental education can be included in the school curriculum. However, I agree that we have a long way to go down that road in terms of education for both youngsters and adults. When I was at the Department of the Environment I set up a Heritage Education Group under the chairmanship of the noble Lord, Lord Briggs. We arranged for the Daily Mirror to sponsor a competition, and this is now to be done for the third year running. It is a competition for schools and it is intended to encourage children to look around and use their eyes. It is called the "Wide Awake Trail". The impact which the competition has made has been quite amazing, and it involved not only the teachers but the parents, too. If people do not look around their own environment where they live and work, it will be difficult for them to demand a higher quality of life, if they have nothing against which to measure it.

In the time available it has not been possible to deal comprehensively with, or to do justice to, this enormous and vitally important subject. I have outlined very superficially the Government's approach and attempted to give some practical examples of how we try to achieve this balance and reconciliation. There are bound to be difficult decisions, but it would be wrong to suggest that technological advance must always be in conflict with the environment. To a large extent we rely on technological advance to reduce or eliminate the adverse effect of earlier industrial methods on the environment.

I see our debate today, in a sense, as a continuation of the debate we had last Wednesday on the conditions favourable to the creation of wealth and industrial growth. I suggested then that wealth in its widest sense means social improvement as well as economic development. We need to create the conditions for industrial growth in order to achieve real improvements in the social environment. Today we have been discussing the physical environment, and we have to recognise that here, too, we need to promote industrial growth in order to create the wealth that will enable us to raise our environmental and ecological standards. There need be no conflict between those objectives, provided that we realise that they are interrelated and can be reconciled.

8.11 p.m.

Baroness ROBSON of KIDDINGTON

My Lords, at the end of a long and fascinating debate I shall confine myself to a very few words. First of all, on behalf of all of us I should like to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Birk, for the very full reply she has given us on behalf of the Government; we are very grateful to her. At the opening of the debate I expressed a hope that as many aspects of the problem as possible would be covered during the debate. I am therefore also extremely grateful to all the noble Lords who have taken part and who have spoken so constructively and with such deep knowledge of their subjects. It has become obvious during the debate that we all share the same concern for the future, but we do not necessarily all see exactly the same answers. This is really the value of a debate of this kind—we can quietly and thoughtfully discuss a subject which has no easy answer, and because of that it is necessary that every contribution should be listened to carefully.

During the whole of the debate there was only one remark which made me feel very sad. It was made by the noble Lord, Lord Hatch, and it has already been referred to by my noble friend Lord Winstanley. He said that no political Party would include the subject discussed today in its manifesto because it would lose votes. We may disagree about whether or not it would lose votes, but to me that statement is frighteningly cynical. Is it not perhaps because political Parties have stood away from putting in their manifestoes what should be put in them that we have some of the problems we have today? I believe it is essential for the political Parties of this country to put these problems in front of the nation so as to enable the nation as a whole to make an informed judgment. In the hope that the wisdom that has been expressed in this House today will have an influence on a far wider circle than the House itself, I beg leave to withdraw my Motion.

Motion for Papers, by leave, withdrawn.