Delaying tactics

On those occasions when the government has been forced to 'do something' about a pollutant or a hazardous activity (usually as a result of a public outcry), its first reaction has invariably been to setup a scientific committee to 'look into the problem'. This delaying tactic (well known to fans of Yes, Minister) gains considerable time, since committees can take several years before they report. It also gives the public the impression that the government's response is even-handed, objective and well considered.

In recent years, no fewer than ten committees have been set up to examine the hazards of the herbicide 2,4,5-T. Each one has pronounced the poison "safe" if used according to the manufacturers' instructions - a recommendation which, as Chris Kaufman points out, completely ignores the realities of spraying the chemical under farming conditions. [46] Similar committees in the USA and elsewhere have reviewed the same basic evidence and come to dramatically different conclusions. Indeed, 2,4,5-T is now banned in the USA (for most uses), Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Italy, Japan and Holland.

In 1976, the Labour government set up the Simpson Committee (known after its chairman, Bill Simpson) to look into the relationship between asbestos and lung cancer - a full 70 years after the critical link between the two had first been established. The committee took three years to come out with its final report, which contained 41 recommendations. By January 1986, only four of those recommendations had been implemented. According to Angela Singer, "Many of the proposed reforms would have made no real difference to industrial practices anyway." [47]

Similarly, in the mid-1970s, under pressure from environmental groups to ban the addition of lead to petrol, the government commissioned Professor Patrick Lawther to look into the health effects of leaded petrol. "In doing so", notes Brian Price, "it bought time during which it did not have to act and also hoped for a whitewash of sufficient opacity to enable it to rebuff the environmentalists for some considerable time." [48] In the event, "the ploy backfired"; the report was too deeply flawed to stand up to more than superficial analysis, and it was quickly discredited.

More recently, the British government announced that it would take no action to reduce sulphur dioxide emissions from coal-fired power stations until the Royal Society had completed a five-year study into the connection between sulphur dioxide emissions and acid rain. The study is to be funded by the National Coal Board and the CEGB, the very industries which stand to lose most by any decision to tighten controls on emissions. Britain is the only major industrial country in Europe not to have joined the so-called '30 percent Club' - a group of 20 countries which are now committed to reducing sulphur dioxide emissions by 30 percent of 1980 levels by 1993.

As Nigel Dudley notes:

"Britain's major role as a polluter is not open to doubt, however, and has produced strong European pressure for a reduction in emissions. This Britain has steadfastly resisted, blocking resolutions within the UN and European parliament wherever possible." [49]

Non-implementation of environmental legislation

When it was first introduced into parliament, Britain's main piece of environmental legislation, the 1974 Control of Pollution Act, was widely acclaimed as a responsible and well-meaning attempt to grapple with the problem of pollution. At the time, Mrs Thatcher, then opposition spokeswoman on the environment, welcomed the act as "likely to have a greater, more lasting impact on the quality of life in many parts of Britain than most other measures".

Once she had gained power, however, her interest in the quality of life noticeably diminished. Ten years after the act received royal assent, few of its clauses on water pollution had even been implemented. As Fred Pearce notes, "Almost every polluting pipe or drain that the Act was intended to bring within the law has been granted an exemption." [50] The Act's clauses on waste disposal were similarly delayed. Indeed, had it not been for the need to comply with the EEC's directive on Toxic and Dangerous Waste, many of the Act's provisions on waste disposal might still not be implemented.

Commenting on the delays in implementing the Control of Pollution Act, the 1984 Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution made its view quite plain:

"Whilst we recognise that financial considerations will inevitably continue to be upper most in Ministers' minds, we wish to stress the importance of tackling pollution problems in an order of priority which has been determined on merit, not on grounds of expediency or merely in response to the pressure of international obligations. We must sound a warning against the use of exemption orders as a mere device for postponing action on the nastier forms of uncontrolled discharge." [51]

It is not only 'home grown' legislation like the Control of Pollution Act which successive British governments have failed to implement or sought to delay. Britain, to her eternal shame, has fought tooth and nail to stymie numerous EEC Directives aimed at protecting the environment and improving public health. Thus:

• The government did everything it could to prevent the EEC from passing a directive to ban the use of growth-promoters in cattle. It argued that to pass such a law would simply encourage the development of a black market in hormones. Were one to accept that argument then no legislation would ever be passed against harmful products or activities unless they could be shown to be unprofitable - in which case, such legislation would be unnecessary since industry and consumers would have no reason to adopt them.
• The government has also failed to implement the EEC Directive on the Quality of Water Intended for Human Consumption, which became law in 1985. The Directive establishes guide levels (GLs) and maximum admissible concentrations (MACs) for a range of pollutants. The guide level for nitrate is set at 25mg per litre, while the maximum admissible concentration is 50mg per litre. As Brian Price points out, however: "The British government is intending to ignore the new limit by issuing "derogations" (that is, exemptions) in the case of some 350 specified water sources." [52]
• Britain also tried to side-step having to implement an EEC Directive requiring the cleaning up of bathing beaches in Europe. It did so by exploiting a loophole in the wording of the Directive, which allows member states to come up with their own definition of what constitutes a bathing beach. "Britain decided on a definition so restrictive that it did not include Blackpool - by a long way the nation's favourite resort - as a bathing beach," notes Fred Pearce. [53] As a result, Britain designated only 27 of her 600 beaches as 'bathing beaches' as against the 3,000 so designated by the French and the Italians. Although the EEC has set a scientifically testable definition of what constitutes a 'safe' beach, England's water authorities have effectively ignored it. Instead, as Pearce points out, they define a beach as satisfactory "if there are no signs of sewage, such as sewer slicks or solids, in areas that people might bathe in".
• Perhaps the greatest battle between Britain and the EEC, however, has been over industrial discharges to rivers, estuaries and coastal waters. Britain's partners in the Community are adamant that the discharge of certain 'blacklisted' substances should be strictly controlled through a system of 'limit values' which would lay down the maximum permissible concentration of a given pollutant in any single discharge. The limit values would apply throughout the EEC. Britain, however, argues that such an approach is too "inflexible" and would penalise British industry. Because our rivers are short and fast flowing, says the government, they can absorb more pollution than rivers on the continent. Britain therefore insists that emission standards should be allowed to vary from river to river. Directives which seek to impose limit values have been summarily rejected by the government.

Britain's frequent use of the veto to block EEC Directives and her laissez-faire attitude to environmental legislation has earned her the opprobrium of Europe. Our government is seen as petty minded, arrogant, and insular. Sadly our reputation outside Europe is little better. It sank to its lowest level when Britain attempted to steamroller the London Dumping Convention (the international body which polices the dumping of waste at sea) into lifting its moratorium on dumping nuclear waste at sea.

Led by Spain, Australia and New Zealand, 25 countries voted for an indefinite ban on the practice. Only six countries (including Britain, France and the USA) voted in favour of nuclear dumping. When Britain lost the vote, the British delegation insisted that the resolution was not legally binding and that Britain (who is responsible for having dumped 90 percent of the radioactive waste which has ever been dumped at sea) would continue to look upon ocean dumping as a possible waste-disposal option.

Public inquiries: rubber stamping decisions?

Under the 1971 Town and County Planning Act, the Secretary of State for the Environment has powers to 'call in' any planning application which, if granted, would have "implications of more than local significance". Once an application has been called in, a local planning enquiry is usually set up to advise the Secretary of State whether or not to permit the proposed development. Any 'interested' parties may present evidence to the inquiry, which is presided over by an inspector and (if the evidence is likely to be highly technical) one or more assessors.

The Thatcher administration considers that too much time and money is being spent on public inquiries. To that end, it decided to limit their terms of reference so that basic issues (such as the desirability of the project) cannot be raised. Thus, the Dounreay inquiry, which opened in April 1986 to consider the Atomic Energy Authority's application to build a reprocessing plant for spent fuel from Britain's future fast-breeder reactor programme, had its terms of reference limited to a consideration of planning and purely technical issues. The government declared that it did not wish to see the Dounreay Inquiry become a "trial for nuclear waste" in the same way as the Sizewell Inquiry has become a 'trial for nuclear power'.

For many people, the government's decision to limit the Dounreay inquiry merely confirmed a long-held suspicion that public inquiries are little more than PR exercises. Certainly, the government's refusal to provide funds to the objectors makes a mockery of the claim that inquiries are open, objective and democratic. At both the Windscale and Sizewell inquiries, the objectors had to raise for themselves the money with which to put forward their case, sometimes without the benefit of a lawyer.

In sharp contrast, the expenses of both BNFL and the CEGB - amounting to several million pounds - were paid for by the taxpayer, since both are state-owned companies. If inquiries are really intended to be open, democratic and objective, surely the objectors should also be funded by the state?

The Windscale inquiry itself had all the hallmarks of a rubber stamp. The report of Mr Justice Parker, the Inspector at the inquiry, not only ignored the evidence of several distinguished objectors - notably Professor Radford, chairman of the US National Academy of Sciences' Committee on the Biological Effects of Ionizing Radiation - but also distorted the evidence of others. As The Ecologist commented at the time:

Parker has a way of twisting the argument so that the objectors' case seems to support BNFL's. Thus he manages to argue that instead of increasing the chances of proliferation, reprocessing actually reduces them; instead of incurring a greater threat from radioactive waste, it diminishes it; and instead of leading to a greater drain of energy resources it actually increases them.

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Notes