§ Mr. Donald Stewartasked the Secretary of State for the Environment if he will list any other studies available to him, apart from those being carried out by the Institute of Terrestrial Ecology, on the relationship between sulphur dioxide emissions and the acidity of rainfall in the United Kingdom.
§ Mr. WaldegraveThe United Kingdom Review Group on Acid Rain, a committee of scientists established by my Department in 1980 to review available data, published a major report on acid deposition in the United Kingdom in December 1983 and continues to meet regularly.
My Department is also funding work at AERE Harwell on chemical reactions producing acid rain and on computer modelling of acid deposition, and at Warren Spring Laboratory on the collection and co-ordination of rainfall composition measurements. In addition, my Department has close ties with the major research programme on acid deposition (both experimental and theoretical) being undertaken by the Meteorological Office and is kept informed of other research results in this field such as the work being carried out by the Freshwater Fisheries Laboratory, Pitlochry on behalf of the Scottish Office.