Contaminated Land (England) Regulations 2006

rose to move, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 23 May, be annulled (S.I. 2006/1380). The noble Lord said: My Lords, in rising to move this Motion for an humble Address, I hope that the Minister will be able to resolve my concerns over certain parts of these regulations. We accept the need for proper control of contaminated land and the necessity of preventing water pollution, if at all possible. That said, there are one or two matters about the way in which these regulations are drafted that require clarification. I shall first raise two relatively small matters about the drafting. On page 1, there is a list of the sections of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Contaminated Land (Enabling Powers) (England) Regulations 2005 that authorise the contents of the regulations. That is completely understood and is a normal and helpful clarification. My problem relates to paragraphs 4(1)(i) and 4(1)(j) on page 4 that state that guidance is issued under Section 76(F) and Section 78(F), which are not mentioned at the start of the regulations. It may be that that is not necessary because of the context, but I ask the Minister for an assurance that there is no problem with that. The second drafting question arises in Regulation 5 on page 5—it is interesting how the numbers run together in this. Paragraph (2) reads: "““Where it appears to the enforcing authority that the contaminated land in question is in such a condition by reason of substances in, on or under it that there is imminent danger of ""serious harm or serious pollution of controlled waters being caused, the enforcing authority must send any copies of the notice pursuant to paragraph (1) as soon as practicable after service of the notice””" My view is that that is tautology. If that is not written into the Act, I would be very surprised. It does not really matter whether it is there—that may be a peccadillo, but it seems very peculiar to me that that should be written in the regulations when I would have thought that, in these circumstances, it was absolutely standard procedure and did not require to be stated in the regulations. The questions of substance that I want to raise are, of course, more serious. On page 2, in Regulation 2, we are dealing with land that is required to be designated as a special site. Sub-paragraph (l) deals with land that is adjoining or adjacent to land which is contaminated land by substances which appear to have escaped from designated land. As far as it goes, that is absolutely fine and I can understand the problem. The real question is: how far does ““adjacent”” go? In Essex, about five years ago, we had rainfall that was a one in 800-year event, as described by our local people responsible for rivers, river basins and flooding. The consequence of that was—I merely mention it as a statement of how severe it was—that six inches of water fell in three hours and buildings were flooded that had never been flooded in the500 years since they were built. That is the case. It has nothing to do with the issue here, but the issue here is that if you get that sort of precipitation on a contaminated site, it is almost certain to leach out of the contaminated site, properly designated, into the adjacent area. Then the question is: how far can the designation be extended, bearing in mind that the pollution is likely to be relatively slight and possibly temporary? I know that it was an extreme event that brought this to my mind—it is difficult when you consider extreme events, but extreme events happen. Regrettably, pollution is a movable commodity in particular circumstances, especially if it is soluble. So there is a question there. If the Minister could give me some reassurance that any extension of the contamination designation would be temporary, on the basis that the pollution would be likely to be temporary and that the designation would last only as long as the pollution could be identified, that would help. On page 3, Regulation 3 deals with the pollution of controlled waters. Sub-paragraph (a) deals with waters being used for human consumption and refers to where they are affected by the land and, as a result, require a treatment process or a change in the treatment process. My concern is whether that argument could be used as an argument against nitrate run-off from agricultural land, which would of course have profound implications, which the Minister will understand as rapidly as I do. The difficulty is that concentrations of nitrates above a certain level are properly required to be removed from the water before it is supplied to the mains system. The question then is: because that requires a particular process, could the argument be reversed so that it is said that because of the particular processes required, the land should therefore be designated as contaminated? I hope that the Minister will tell me that there is absolutely no intention that that could possibly be the case or that the argument could possibly be turned around in the way that I suggested. Given the present state of agriculture, a farmer faced with such a proposition would be on a very quick road to ruin. I look forward to the Minister's reply and hope thathe will give me the assurance that I seek. I beg to move. Moved, That an humble Address be presented to Her Majesty praying that the regulations, laid before the House on 23 May, be annulled (S.I. 2006/1380).—(Lord Dixon-Smith.)