Pesticides (Fees and Enforcement) Bill (Hansard, 27 June 1989)

§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food (Baroness Trumpington)
My Lords, I beg to move that the Bill be now read a second time.
I am pleased to be able to inform noble Lords that, in the debates which took place on this Bill in another place, both Government and Opposition speakers found themselves very much in agreement on the two broad principles which this Bill seeks to reinforce. Those two principles are, first, that the industry which generates profits from the manufacture and supply of pesticides should underwrite the full cost of the procedures by which the use of these products is approved and monitored; and secondly, that the arrangements under which the controls on pesticides are enforced embody sufficient flexibility for them to be applied and quickly when the need arises.
The products I am talking about consist not only of pesticides which are used in agriculture and horticulture but also those which carry out essential pest-killing and health-protecting roles in factories, 660 food stores, sewers, hospitals, restaurants and homes. All of us benefit, every day, from the use of these products and all of us need to be assured that they are safe.
Clause 1 sets out an amended version of Section 18 of the Food and Environment Protection Act—customarily referred to by the acronym FEPA—and thereby solves a difficulty which has arisen over the arrangement for imposing charges for the approval and monitoring of pesticides. When the charging system was being drawn up after FEPA had passed into law in 1985, it was intended that there should be two different types of charge by which the pesticides industry should meet the costs of ensuring that its products were safe from the point of view of human health, wildlife and the environment before their use was approved. Part of the costs, but not all, would be recovered by means of fees which would be payable before approval was granted, and the remainder would be recovered by means of a levy that would be charged on turnover on approved products after approval had been granted. That levy would also serve to underwrite the costs of monitoring the use of pesticides in the United Kingdom. In that way, smaller companies within the pesticides industry would not be required to bear the full burden of approval costs before any revenue had been earned from the products concerned, and a disincentive to technological innovation would be avoided.
That scheme turned out to be incapable of full implementation, because it was established that the present wording of Section 18 of FEPA did not allow approval costs to be met partly by application fees and partly out of the levy on turnover. As a result, the taxpayer as well as the pesticides industry has had to contribute to the costs, to the tune of about half a million pounds a year. The new Section 18 set out in Clause 1 of the Bill will allow the original charging scheme to be implemented in full and ensure that all the costs are met by the industry.
Clause 2 puts right another unforeseen difficulty concerning the people who may be designated as enforcement officers under the Bill. Under Section 19 of FEPA at present, local authorities and port health authorities cannot be designated as enforcement officers under the Act, even though it is to those bodies that the primary responsibility for enforcing the controls on pesticides falls. The result is that all the officers who need to have enforcement responsibilities have to be authorised personally by Ministers. That is a highly impractical arrangement and the amendment to Section 19 of FEPA set out in Clause 2 puts this right by enabling local authorities to authorise members of their staff as enforcement officers in categories specified by Ministers.
I hope that the passage of this small but important Bill through this House will provoke as little disagreement as did its passage through another place. I commend the Bill to the House.

§ Lord Gallacher
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness for confirming what my own reading of the Bill conveyed to me and for reminding us of the peace and harmony which prevailed at Second Reading and in Committee in another place concerning this measure. I played a part when the 1985 Act, which I did not realise was known as FEPA, passed through your Lordships' House and to that extent I must accept my share of the responsibility for the inadequacies of the drafting. Nevertheless, as the noble Baroness has explained this evening, Clause 1 will place the burden where it properly belongs and Clause 2 will tidy up an administrative matter which needs just that treatment. We wish the Bill well and a speedy passage through the House.

§ Lord Auckland
My Lords, I should like to speak briefly as a member of the All-Party Parliamentary Chemical Industries Group. The record of the pesticides industry and its allied organisations is a good one. What slightly worries some people about the Bill are the powers given to the Government. It is surely possible for the industry itself to set up a task force to generate the data required by the Government and be self-regulatory as opposed to the Government doing the job. That would decrease the amount of time required. Any organisation which failed to provide the data would not be exempted from the levy.
My understanding is that it is open to the Secretary of State to review at any time an approval given for the use of a particular pesticide. Moreover, under the clean air legislation, I believe that the Government already have considerable powers to control the use of pesticides and other such substances. However, with that reservation, I give a warm welcome to the Second Reading of the Bill.

§ Baroness Trumpington
My Lords, I am most grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Gallacher, for his welcome to this tiny Bill. I was also most interested in his paternity claim as regards FEPA. I noted what my noble friend Lord Auckland said and I shall write to him on any points which I think he may like to have answered.

The Earl of Dundee
My Lords, I beg to move that the House do now adjourn during pleasure until 8.30 p.m.