Friends of the Earth welcomes the establishment of the new Environment Agency but says the new organisation will be crippled under the present Government by the Environment Act which became law last night. FOE is calling on MPs who earlier promoted stronger powers for the Agency to pledge support to give it bite in the run up to the next election.

In July 1991 John Major promised to "create a new agency for environmental protection and enhancement". However, intensive industry lobbying led to moves by the Government to strangle the Agency at birth. Firstly through attempts to drop the duties"to protect and enhance the environment", restored after public outrage, and then, more cynically, by imposing onerous cost benefit analysis requirements that will force the Agency to concentrate on bureaucratic number-crunching instead of taking precautionary action to protect the environment. The cost benefit duty also leaves the Agency vulnerable to legal challenge by polluting industry.

However, and in spite of the Government's attempts to advance its deregulatory agenda,FOE is optimistic that the legislation creates scope for more progressive Administrations to crack down on polluters and protect the environment. Many MPs have strongly stated their wish to bolster the powers and duties of the Agency and FOE believes that they will be able to put muscle on the Agency's skeletal form after the next General Election. This could be achieved by amending planning and pollution control guidance,new Statutory Instruments and through a new progressive national waste strategy for example.

Tony Juniper, Campaigns Director at Friends of the Earth, said:

"Whilst the Government has sought to pander to industry by leaving the Environment Act rather vague, considerable scope remains for a new Government to deliver the goods without a complete rewrite. Plenty of MPs support tougher action to protect the environment and we will be working with them to achieve the necessary changes".

Friends of the Earth also points to a number of more specific failings in the Environment Act and says that the apparently constructive powers to cut urban air pollution are a public relations fudge.

Alan Watson 0585 374749 (mob)

Alan Watson, Industry and Pollution Campaigner,said:

"The general thrust of the Act is disturbing but many of the specifics are positively dangerous. People living on thousands of contaminated sites, for example,can expect little or no protection from the new laws and the protection of rivers from dangerous discharges has been further weakened."

Roger Higman, Air Pollution Campaigner said:

" The Environment Bill gives local authorities a whole series of new duties - to monitor air quality, to publish action plans etc. - without giving them the powers needed to combat the problem. On the other hand the Secretary of State is given a whole series of new powers with few definitive duties to use them."

" All in all the Bill does little to reassure us that the Government is prepared to do what's necessary to clean up our air."

Alan Watson 0585 374749 (mob)