§ Mr. Llew SmithTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will publish in theOfficial Report the text of the letter sent to the hon. Member for Blaenau Gwent in response to the question on representations on Sellafield of 19 November 1998, Official Report, column 835. [62484]
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§ Mr. MeacherA copy of the letter which I sent to my hon. Friend is attached.
Letter from the Minister for the Environment to Mr. Llew Smith, dated 3 December 1998:
In answer to your recent parliamentary question, I promised to write to you with the information about the representations we had received on the Sellafield applications.As you know in reply to Joan Walley's PQ we reported that 4 letters relating to the Sellafield MOX plant and 2 letters relating to the variations to BNFL's site discharge authorisations in response to the Environment Agency's statement on 23 October were received. However, one of the letters which was primarily about the MOX plant also made reference to the discharge authorisations and therefore the number of representations concerning the discharge authorisations figure should have been reported as 3 rather than 2.The 4 letters referring to the MOX plant were received from an overseas government minister, an MP, a non-government organisation and a member of the public; all of which were opposed to the recommendations. The 3 letters referring to the variations to BNFL's site discharge authorisations were received from an overseas government minister, an MP and a non-government organisation; all of which were opposed to the recommendations.You also asked to know what representations were received in the two months prior to the release of the Environment Agency documents. The number of letters received relating to the MOX plant were 3 and relating to the variations to BNFL's site discharge authorisations were 14. You may also wish to know that the 3 letters relating to the MOX plant were received from a non-government organisations and two members of the public. The 14 letters relating to the variations were received from members of parliament.I am copying this letter to Joan Walley with apologies for our error and a copy will also be placed in the Library of the House.