§ Mr. Weetchasked the Secretary of State for the Environment what view the Government have formed on the conclusions and recommendations of the report, "Accidental Oil Pollution of the Sea", published in September 1976.
§ Mr. Denis HowellThe report, which was drawn up by an interdepartmental group of officials under the leadership of DOE's Central Unit on Environmental Pollution, assessed the organisation and resources needed to deal with oil spills round the United Kingdom. It found that the existing division of responsibility—between the Department of Trade at sea, the local authorities on shore and the industry at fixed installations—was essentially correct. The report confirmed that dispersants were at present the only really effective and generally applicable method of dealing with oil at sea, where this is necessary, and made a number of specific recommendations for increasing the amount and availability of dispersant and equipment stocks. However, it endorsed the current investigations of the potential of systems for recovering oil in open sea conditions.
Those who had an interest in, or who were affected by, the report's recommendations were invited to submit comments, and the recommendations have been reviewed in the light of these and of the separate review of the arrangements for dealing with blow-outs which has been carried out by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Energy. These comments were generally favourable and 408W neither they nor the report of the Ekofisk Study Group have led to any substantial modification of the recommendations. Many have been adopted already and others, such as the establishment of Government equipment stockpiles, will be implemented, wholly or in part, as soon as is practicable. A detailed statement of the Government's views on the recommendations has been laid in the Library of the House.