No Welsh in nuclear waste consultation may breach international convention

1 February 2012

01 Chwefror 2012

The Environment Agency (EA) could be in breach of an international convention that protects the rights of all people to contribute to decisions that may affect their environment.
 
Friends of the Earth Cymru has refused to respond to the recent EA consultation on environmental permits for radioactive waste to be discharged into the sea from a proposed new nuclear power station at Hinkley Point in Somerset. Instead, the environment group asked that the EA ensure all future applications that affect Wales are bilingual.
 
But earlier this week the EA confirmed they will take no steps to fully include the Welsh public in consultations that affect Wales. Friends of the Earth Cymru have today submitted a complaint [1] to the Compliance Committee of the Århus Convention [2], claiming that the consultation was flawed because all application documents were in English only [3].
 
The EA had already extended an earlier deadline for a consultation response by ten weeks, because Friends of the Earth Cymru held them to their legal obligations under the Welsh Language Act [4].
 
Gareth Clubb, Director of Friends of the Earth Cymru, said:
 
"The Århus Convention was put in place specifically to ensure that all people can contribute to decisions that may affect their environment, and the UK government, along with 40 other countries, signed up to it in 1998.
 
"Yet more than a decade later, we still have to make it clear that application material must be available in Welsh if it is to comply with the Convention. There are over 1,500 pages in the application and not one word of Welsh. Not only has the Environment Agency not lifted a finger to put that right, it's perfectly happy to breach an international convention by allowing all future applications that affect the environment of Wales to be in English only.
 
"These fundamental rights to have a say apply to all the people of Wales, regardless of their language. This is particularly important for an issue like dumping radioactive waste in the sea, just off the Welsh coast that is home to more than a million people."

NOTES

1. The Complaint can be read in full online
2. The Århus Convention on access to information, public participation in decision-making and access to justice in environmental matters
3. Public documents relating to EDF Energy Hinkley Point Environmental Permit Consultation
4. The Environment Agency's original deadline for responses to its consultation was 6 October 2011. The deadline was subsequently extended to 15 December 2011 when Friends of the Earth Cymru pointed out that the Environment Agency had failed to implement its Welsh Language Scheme.
5. Email from Gareth Clubb to Chris Mills, Director of Environment Agency Wales, 1 September 2011:
   "I'm just looking at the Aarhus Convention. The UK Government is of course party to the Convention.Article 2 of the Convention sets out definitions - I'd say that the Agency comes under the definition 'public authority', and people in Wales would come under 'the public concerned' for the purposes of Hinkley. Could I recommend you take a look at Articles 6 and 7 of the Convention as they relate to public participation? (You will note that applications are specifically mentioned under Article 6 2. (a))".
   Email from Gareth Clubb to Chris Mills, 6 October 2011:
   "I'd be grateful if you could point me in the direction of the person responsible for making sure that the EDF documents are accessible in the Welsh language. Is that yourselves, as the consulting body, or EDF as the developer? As I have already made clear in my email to you of 1 September, the Aarhus Convention makes it quite clear that applications are covered under the Convention:
   "2. The public concerned shall be informed, either by public notice or individually as appropriate, early in an environmental decision-making procedure, and in an adequate, timely and effective manner, inter alia, of: (a) The proposed activity and the application on which a decision will be taken";
   This is important. I should not like the consultation procedure to become bogged down in legal proceedings determining whether or not yourselves and/or the developer are acting in accordance with the Convention when translating the material would clearly relieve everyone of the potential for legal challenge on this point".

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