Marine and Coastal Access Bill [HL]

Clause 104 is to do with the power of the licensing authority to test—and charge for testing—certain substances. My amendment suggests that we should include any nanosubstance. I believe that this amendment is necessary to probe what is happening as far as regulating nanosubstances is concerned. Your Lordships may wonder why we specify "nano"—would that not fall under the chemical regime? I do not believe it does. The regulatory regime as it stands does not cover nanosubstances; indeed, back in 2005 Defra showed foresight in commissioning the Central Science Laboratory to undertake a scoping study into the manufacture and use of nanomaterials in the UK. The development of these materials is very quick, while our regulatory and legislative response is very slow in comparison. Defra recognised the urgency of this; as the Minister will remember, in 2006 Defra’s R&D budget suffered a serious number of reductions, but nanotechnology research received an exemption from the moratorium that year. I do not have the latest research figures—perhaps the Minister will tell me—but I think that it was intended last year that £450,000 would be spent on research in this field. I would be grateful if the Minister would update us on where that research has got to. Why is this important for the marine environment? Nanomaterials have a completely different way of being toxic to the ecosystem from the substances from which they come. One of the examples that I could give of where a substance has a different form in its larger life, so to speak, is silver, which is a well known substance. When you reduce it to its "nano" form, it performs a completely different function. We will probably all be using it in our washing machines in the next decade or so, as apparently it is one of the ways that you can clean things. I will not go into much more detail on that now. The ecotoxicity of any material such as silver when used in that way is something that we should be concerned about with regard to the marine environment. If it is used in a washing machine, for example, it will go out into the water course, through the sewer system and eventually into the marine environment, where it could bioaccumulate in fish, in shellfish or in anything. We do not know what the effect of that will be, nor what the effect on us will be of eating those fish or shellfish when we are lucky enough to do that. I do not want to be alarmist, as there may be no ill effects at all; I am simply saying that at the moment we do not know the effects. I realise that the clause containing this is very specific and is really talking about oil spills and so on. Equally, though, nanotechnology may have lots of applications in that area. I am not sure that the Bill as drafted would cover these substances, because it refers to "chemicals"—nanoparticles may well be not chemical but mineral, although they have been re-engineered to produce a quite different effect, such as accumulating in shellfish, as I have explained. The amendment probes where the Government have got to in their research and what they have commissioned and received in terms of the aquatic, particularly the marine, environment with regard to this technology, and to check with the Minister if he thinks that the regulatory regime has anticipated the force with which nanotechnology is going to hit it and whether this is a legislative gap that needs to be filled. I beg to move.