Nitrate Vulnerable Zones
Philip Dunne initiates a debate about the impact on the agricultural economy of new regulations governing nitrate vulnerable zones.
11 am
Mr. Philip Dunne (Ludlow) (Con): It is a great pleasure, as always, to serve under your chairmanship, Sir Nicholas. I am grateful for the opportunity to raise this issue, which relates to amendments that the Government will introduce shortly to the regulations governing nitrate vulnerable zones. Those amendments could cause significant harm to this country's agricultural economy, particularly in certain sectors that are least well equipped to cope with the increased regulatory burden proposed by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I should remind you, Sir Nicholas, and the House of my entry in the Register of Members' Interests.
The Government's proposals for those sectors affected are potentially extremely significant, particularly for the long-suffering dairy sector. It is good to see the chairman of the all-party group on dairy farmers, my hon. Friend the Member for Shrewsbury and Atcham (Daniel Kawczynski), in the Chamber today; I hope that he will have an opportunity to catch your eye, Sir Nicholas, as the debate progresses. However, the proposals have much wider ramifications for farming practice and enterprise viability across much of the livestock and arable sectors in England. Indeed, the Minister for the Environment has indicated in a parliamentary answer that, if the 70 per cent. NVZ proposal is implemented, approximately 139,500 farmers will be affected and, if the action programme covers the whole of England, approximately 195,500 farmers will be affected, as could each of the 272 Members of Parliament with a farm in their constituency.
Before commenting on the proposal in detail, I should like to dwell for a moment on the objectives and evolution of nitrate vulnerable zones. According to DEFRA, nitrogen discharge from agriculture accounts for 60 per cent. of diffuse nitrate pollution of the aquatic environment. In layman's terms, nitrogen pollution leaching into the watercourses stimulates algae growth, which damages water quality, in respect of both human activity-from the quality of drinking water to swimming in the sea-and biodiversity within our rivers and oceans. I accept that nitrogen can contribute to water pollution, but we have to ask ourselves whether draconian, new and costly regulations are the right answer to a problem that seems already on the way to being solved without them.
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire) (Lab/Co-op): I am a member of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is true that farming has reduced its nitrate footprint over the past 10 years or so by about 25 per cent. The hon. Gentleman mentioned aquatic levels. The River Trent forms part of my constituency boundary, and there has been a significant reduction in nitrate levels over the past 15 years-approaching a quarter-so there is substantial progress. I hope that the Minister will take that progress into account when looking at the costs and impact of the suggestions that we are discussing at the moment.
Mr. Dunne: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Indeed, I was going to mention the great progress that has been made in respect of the River Trent in his constituency.
How did we get to where we are today? The current proposals for extending and revising NVZs do not result from any new European Union directive; rather, they stem from DEFRA's need to abide by commitments originally entered into under the 1991 nitrates directive, which was agreed as part of the EU Environment Council in June 1991 and adopted in December that year.
Mr. Tim Boswell (Daventry) (Con): Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Dunne: I give way to my hon. Friend, who was probably there at the time.
Mr. Boswell: I am not quite sure that I can claim that, but perhaps I could remind my hon. Friend that I had ministerial responsibility in the mid-1990s. Will he accept my assurance that at all times Ministers then, regardless of their party colour, were anxious to ensure that the European regulations were operated in a way that had minimal impact on United Kingdom agriculture?
Mr. Dunne: Indeed. My hon. Friend pre-empts precisely what I was going to say. From my research through the history books into the development of NVZs, it is clear that the original intent was to maintain regulation at the bare minimum. The 1991 directive required member states to designate areas as NVZs where nitrate levels in water were at risk of exceeding 50 mg per litre and where the water was or might become eutrophic. I am sure that I do not need to tell you, Sir Nicholas, that the word "eutrophic" describes water that is rich in dissolved nutrients, photosynthetically productive and often low in oxygen during warm weather. Member states could implement an action programme either for an entire territory or within discrete NVZs.
The Conservative Environment Minister at the time accepted that the aim of the 1991 directive was to improve water quality by reducing nitrate pollution from agricultural practice. He thought that the zone could cover up to 2 million hectares, but crucially said that the precise area would be based on necessary monitoring and other studies by the Government and the then National Rivers Authority. Any additional measures were envisaged to take into account their cost and effectiveness. Those two critical tests of cost and effectiveness should be the guiding principles applied by the Government today in responding to the consultation and bringing forward their final proposals.
It took until 1996 before the initial 66 NVZs were designated, covering a mere 600,000 hectares-just 8 per cent. of England-and focusing on protecting drinking water sources. In 2000, the European Court of Justice found that the UK had failed to protect surface and ground waters and was relying only on protecting drinking water. So DEFRA consulted in 2002 on two options for full implementation in England and received some 13,000 responses. The Government on that occasion wisely decided to take the least regulatory approach to comply with the Court and, in October 2002, designated 55 per cent. of England as an NVZ, including the original 8 per cent. Much of that territory was in the west midlands.
Those designations must be reviewed every four years, unless the action programme applies to the whole country. Having completed their four-yearly review, the Government concluded that there had been some increase in nitrate pollution in certain areas of England and that the current action programme had not had a significant impact on nitrate pollution. Those findings have not been universally acknowledged, as I shall mention in a few minutes.
In August 2007, the Government published a further consultation paper inviting comments by 13 December, so that they could be in a position to respond shortly, with the stated intention of laying a statutory instrument before the House to come into force from 6 April 2008. I should be grateful if the Minister in summing up confirmed whether he is still working to that timetable.
So what is proposed and what are the implications for English farmers and the environment? The measures currently proposed fall under seven main headings: controlling where, when and how much nitrogen is applied, how manure is stored, requiring cover crops in place of bare stubble and requiring detailed records of manure storage and nitrogen applications to be retained for five years. I should like to describe those measures briefly.
DEFRA proposes to control where nitrogen is applied by increasing the designation of either a further 15 per cent. of farmland to take the NVZs up to 70 per cent. of England's farmland or incorporating the whole of England in an action programme, as Ireland did in 2003, joining Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands.
Interested observers, such as the National Farmers Union, do not feel that such a major increase in designation is justified. The NFU claims to have provided evidence repeatedly to DEFRA over the past two years analysing Environment Agency data that has shown nitrate levels reducing in many rivers, including in the River Trent in the constituency of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor). But we do not have to take the NFU's word for it, since DEFRA itself admits in its NVZ consultation that
"Analysis of surface water concentrations for the years 1999 to 2004 shows that 77 per cent. of sites had a declining trend".
First, DEFRA may consider an analysis over only five years too short to be reliable, but why does it refuse to recognise the validity of the Environment Agency's calculations of nitrate levels in several rivers, which show that they have been declining steadily for 15 years since 1990? In addition to the River Trent, which we have talked about, other rivers have had a 10 per cent. to 20 per cent. decline in nitrates, including the River Nene at Peterborough, the River Thames at Goring Weir, the River Aire at Sneath-I could go on-where Environment Agency monitoring of nitrate as nitrogen is used.
As recently as 17 December 2007, in answer to a parliamentary question from my hon. Friend the Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson), the Minister himself said:
"My Department worked closely with the Environment Agency during the recent review of Nitrate Vulnerable Zones in England. The EA regularly monitors nitrate concentrations in waters and this monitoring data played a fundamental role in informing the recent review."-[Official Report, 17 December 2007; Vol. 469, c. 1010W.]
Could he explain, then, why the evidence should not be used to allow a more refined designation, so that areas that have improved to an acceptable level can be de-designated? According to the refined method used to define NVZ designations in 2007, some 6 per cent. of England within the existing NVZ should qualify for de-designation. Areas that qualify should at the very least not be required to implement the new, more stringent action programme. That would save farmers a significant and wholly unnecessary capital investment.
A 100 per cent. designation would also exacerbate existing boundary anomalies on the edge of NVZs-for example, along the Welsh border, where NVZs are proposed to increase to only 3 per cent. of Welsh farmland, and in Scotland, where it is planned to increase them to only 14 per cent.
Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD): I congratulate the hon. Member for Ludlow (Mr. Dunne) on securing this debate. His constituency neighbours mine, and we share the River Teme as a constituency boundary. It seems strange, if the designation depends on science, to take different approaches in Wales and England.
Mr. Dunne: I am particularly grateful to my constituency neighbour, the hon. Gentleman. I was not going to personalise my contribution by getting into the minutiae of water systems in my constituency, but it is true that a river such as the Teme could be subject to an NVZ in England but not in Wales. Similarly, my farm is divided by a watercourse. The water flowing into the River Lugg will be subject to the regulations, but the water flowing into the Teme will not. That seems peculiar, and it will have some impact on how we conduct our farm and business.
Mr. Boswell: I am most grateful to my hon. Friend; I appreciate that he has already given way once. I wish simply to put on record an administrative principle that I hope he accepts. If Ministers are considering expanding the zones, they must not, under administrative law, close their minds to the possibility of reducing a zone if the objective indications argue for that decision.
Mr. Dunne: I am grateful to my hon. Friend; I hope that the Minister will take note of his intervention. The increased costs on those within the zone, to which I shall come shortly, put them at a considerable competitive disadvantage compared with those engaged in similar enterprises in neighbouring areas outside the zone.
The proposal's second impact concerns when nitrogen applications can take place. DEFRA plans to ban spreading slurry and poultry manure for up to five months during autumn and winter. It will extend the current ban of two to three months, which applies only to that 10 to 20 per cent. of NVZ land with sandy and shallow soil, to a ban for all land within the NVZ of between three and five months, depending on average rainfall, soil type and whether the slurry is being applied to arable or grassland. That is likely to have the perverse effect, even according to DEFRA's own figures, of increasing the ammonia emissions from manure spreading by up to 9 per cent. Ammonia is a potent pollutant that other EU directives are targeted to reduce. It is a further irony of the proposal that, according to the NFU, the environmental damage caused by the extra emissions will cost up to
