§ Mr. HuttonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if the Government will review the legislation relating to the Environment Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency as recommended by the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution. [38774]
§ Mr. MeacherI am today setting in hand a review, jointly with the Secretary of State for Scotland, the Secretary of State for Wales and the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food. It will examine the legislation relating to the Environment Agency in England and Wales and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, with a view to identifying any barriers preventing the Agencies from taking an integrated approach to the environment. The Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution recommended in its nineteenth report (Cm 3165) that such a review should be carried out within three years of the Agencies' taking up their functions, in April 1996.
The terms of reference of the review are:
To investigate the possible rationalisation of the regulatory mechanisms which the Environment Agency and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency operate, and the opportunities for integrating regulatory regimes which currently operate on a similar basis but under different legislation, so as:to identify any significant barriers to integration within each of the Agencies, whose removal would improve the quality of regulation by producing worthwhile improvements in environmental protection and enhancement, customer service and business efficiency,to establish whether such barriers could be overcome by administrative means or management action by the Agencies; andinsofar as this is not the case, to recommend legislative changes to enable them to be removed.307WThe review is not intended to consider the integration of the philosophical approaches underlying the different regulatory regimes, which are often bound up with European Union legislation. Nor is the review considering integration of the Agencies themselves.
The review will be carried out by the relevant Government Departments and the Agencies. Interested bodies will be invited to contribute their views at an early stage. We envisage that the review will take about a year to complete.
Any legislative changes in England and Wales arising out of the review would be considered by Parliament. Since the results of the review will be submitted around the time of the establishment of the Scottish Parliament, it would fall to Scottish Ministers to consider whether to put corresponding proposals to the Scottish Parliament.