Public Access To Environmental Information

EDM number 995 in 1994-95, proposed by Alan Simpson on 19/04/1995.

That this House believes that it is in the public interest to have as much public access to environmental information as possible and regrets that there is no public access to information held by industrial operators; notes that the public have no legal right to see information held by the operator of a waste incineration plant or cement kiln about its emissions or the results of the monitoring of the environment in the neighbourhood of the plant; and further notes that the Royal Commission on Environmental Pollution in its 17th report entitled Incineration of Waste recommended that there should be a requirement on the operator of a plant to disclose information about the chemical composition of the wastes incinerated and that the disclosure should in any event cover all the information available to the operator on emissions and on levels of contamination in the environment irrespective of whether this information is held by the regulatory authority to which the public has access under existing statutory powers.

This motion has been signed by a total of 103 MPs, 1 of these signatures have been withdrawn.