Petroleum Leakages (Health And Safety)

EDM number 587 in 1998-99, proposed by Kerry Pollard on 27/04/1999.

That this House, following the recent leak of up to 50,000 litres of unleaded fuel at a TOTAL filling station in St Albans, urges the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions to urgently revise the regulations requiring garage fuel storage tanks to be tested only after 20 years and to introduce a new quality standard for such tanks of a test after five, 10 and 15 years and annually thereafter, to review the Environment Agency's regulatory and legal powers so that they can recommend and enforce changes to poor management procedures and inadequate policies discovered in companies or statutory bodies where these put at risk the public's health and safety, to give greater power to the overall statutory agency responsible for co-ordinating remedial action, public relations and on-going monitoring of any such petrol station, to strengthen the guidance for petroleum licence holders as to whom they should inform and within what prescribed time limits once the existence of a leak is known or reasonably expected and to bring to an end the situation where there is no statutory obligation for the petroleum licence holder to inform the local health authority.

This motion has been signed by a total of 23 MPs.