§ Mr. HeppellTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment what proportion of projects approved under the single regeneration budget and the last five years' operation of the urban programme were for(a) economic, (b) social and (c) community projects.
658W
§ Mr. AtkinsSo long as municipal waste incineration used older technologies and standards, it was a significant source of dioxins and furans. The Royal Commission on environmental pollution, in its 17th report "Incineration of Waste", Cm 2181, concurred with pollution paper 27, "Dioxins in the Environment", in estimating that in the 1970s and 1980s domestic waste incineration may have been contributing one fifth of the man made releases of dioxins and furans to the United Kingdom environment. In 1991, we introduced far stricter emission standards on incineration. This led the royal commission to conclude that the proportion of the dioxin and furan load attributable to municipal waste incineration would undergo substantial percentage reductions. The royal commission has recently confirmed its view that incinerators which meet present-day emission standards are environmentally acceptable. Further work is being done to assess the origins, scale and impacts of dioxin emissions; but the royal commission's conclusion should remain unaffected.