Landfill Sites (PE541 and PE543)
Item 4 is petitions. I welcome Mark Ruskell, who will attend for the item. We will deal first with PE541 and PE543. Do members have any comments?
I have a suggestion. The paper on the petitions says that petition PE541 asks us to investigate
The Health Committee said that if we wish to conduct an inquiry, it will give us a reporter. It has not expressed a view on whether we should have an inquiry or on whether it would do anything to assist us, other than to appoint a reporter. There is no indication from the Health Committee that it is prioritising the matter in its work load.
I am just not minded to dismiss the petitions or refer them on. We need to collate the information. There is so much of what people might call scaremongering, nimbyism or general concern about the effect of landfill sites. We have a responsibility to review the evidence and bring together information on the four strands that we are asked to consider; otherwise I see no basis for referring the petition on.
I understand the strong feelings that are held by those who live in communities that are close to landfill sites. I have experience of such a situation in my constituency, where people in one small village have lived with landfill sites on their doorstep for years as a result of the quarrying that had gone on around them. I know what it is like and I know people's concerns. Whether the health issues are real or perceived, the situation is a worry for people who live near landfill sites.
I seek advice on dealing with a petition through an inquiry. If we agreed to hold an inquiry and the Health Committee appointed a reporter, would that enable us to address the health questions? If so, I would be keen to argue that we should do that. To argue that we should ignore the issue because it is low down on another committee's agenda could be seen as a double insult to the people who lodged the petitions.
I was not arguing that. We have been asked to consider the planning elements of the petitions. If an inquiry were to be held, we would need to do an awful lot more than simply have a reporter from the Health Committee come along, because we would be looking at the planning bits. It is for the Health Committee to determine what priority it gives to the health aspects. I am not dismissing anybody's concerns. We could not include the health issues in an inquiry; we could do that only in liaison with the Health Committee.
What is the function of the Health Committee's reporter participating in our inquiry?
Perhaps in our discussion of the planning issues we would flag up health issues that the reporter would report back on.
I was going to make that point. I presume that the Health Committee has decided that, if this committee considers the aspects of the petition that relate to this committee, the reporter will report back to the Health Committee on any concerns for it. However, the letter from the convener of the Health Committee does not indicate whether, if we decided to purse the matter, it would take up the health issues. I do not see the point of the Health Committee appointing a reporter only to report back to it what has been said at this committee. If we decide to have an inquiry, the situation will be complex because the Environment and Rural Development Committee has already considered the petitions and concluded its consideration of them because it believes that it has examined the issues in its national waste plan inquiry.
My proposal is on the same lines. Provided that consideration of the planning bill is months rather than years ahead and provided that we can give a guarantee that the people involved in those two communities will be invited to come to give evidence when we carry out pre-legislative scrutiny of the planning bill, we should pursue the issues that have been raised then. Although that involves a delay, the petitioners will get a better kick at the ball than they would if we rushed through an inquiry, which might not be terribly satisfactory.
The message that the committee wants to give is that we take the issue seriously and understand the concerns of local communities. We can best help them by informing ourselves of their views when we deal with the planning legislation. If, by the time of our away day, we are getting signals that the planning bill will not be before us until much later, we could put one of the suggested courses of action into the forward plan for the following year. At this stage we can give a commitment not to let the issue lie. Our preferred option is to address the issues in our consideration of the planning bill but, if we cannot do that, we can explore our options when we come back after the summer recess.
Yes.
We have drawn those concerns to the attention of the Health Committee and we can do so again.
Members indicated agreement.
Terrestrial Trunked Radio Communication Masts (PE650)<br />TETRA Communications System <br />(Health Aspects) (PE728)
I should mention that a letter from the Deputy Minister for Communities was received yesterday and has been circulated to members. It sets out the Executive's response to a letter that was sent to the Minister for Communities by the Transport and Environment Committee in March 2003, a copy of which is attached, seeking comments on work carried out earlier that year by that committee in relation to telecommunications development. The exchange is relevant to our discussions on the terrestrial trunked radio petitions because it indicates that national planning policy guideline 19, on radio telecommunications, which also applies to TETRA masts, reflects the Transport and Environment Committee's concern that local authority moratoria on applications for mast development could prevent the optimum siting and design solutions from being achieved. The letter from the deputy minister points out that legitimate public concerns about the siting and design of masts are material planning considerations that can be taken into account when determining applications. I hope that that is of some help to members.
I read the Official Report of Mark Ruskell's members' business debate on this matter and, if there is one thing that is conclusive, it is that evidence about the health risks is inconclusive. Iain Smith, for example, said that we should stick to the facts and the evidence rather than scaremongering. It was a responsible and well-balanced debate but, at the end of the day, we still do not have the facts that would enable us to say that the public should not worry.
The central point is whether, while we are waiting for that information, the masts can continue to be erected—I understand that there are still some in the pipeline. I would like us to take any action possible to support the petitioners. If we know that some research is due to be published soon, it seems reasonable that there should be a postponement of any pending applications.
Clearly, this issue relates to the planning system as the planning system is approving TETRA masts across Scotland. However, the planning system relies almost exclusively on the guidelines that have been established by the National Radiological Protection Board, which cover the health issues that Mary Scanlon was talking about. The concern that the petitioners have with the NRPB guidelines is that those guidelines do not acknowledge that TETRA masts pulse, despite the fact that scientists have recorded them pulsing. Further, despite the fact that there have been more studies that show that TETRA masts could have health effects than there have been studies that do not, the guidelines do not acknowledge that there could be health effects.
I take seriously what Mark Ruskell said and I agree with what Patrick Harvie said earlier. The briefing says that the Scottish Police Federation's conclusion is that
We obviously have to pay attention to the Executive's research, which comes out on the unhelpful date of 2 July.
We are saying that we want planning authority to be refused while the masts are investigated further, but we do not have the authority to do that. It would also be misleading for us to say that if we held an inquiry, that would be the effect, because it would not. Given that, at best, the jury is out on the evidence, I do not think that it would be appropriate for the committee to make that decision at the moment without having more information. It is the same old argument about planning authorities not being able to stop telecommunications masts from being put up in response to perceived fears about health because that issue is dealt with elsewhere. Planning authorities can deal only with the planning criteria.
We cannot really do anything else, given that the report will be published very soon. I am not usually minded to keep continuing petitions, because I do not think that it is fair to the petitioners, who might think that we are discussing a petition and keeping it live because we do not want to do anything about it or do not know what to do. In this case, however, I do not think that we have any other choice, given the imminence of the report. If we continue our consideration until our first or second meeting back after the summer, that will be a fair way of proceeding, given that we are not in possession of the full facts and given that a report will be published in the next couple of weeks.
Scott Barrie has just said what I was going to say. We cannot make a decision because we do not have enough evidence. We are getting evidence on 2 July and the only decision that we can make, as responsible parliamentarians, is to examine that information and make the matter an agenda item at our away day.
However, it would be reasonable to alert the petitioners to the fact that, if health issues emerge from the evidence, they cannot be dealt with by this committee looking at the planning aspects of the matter. That dialogue would have to be opened up again. However, we should, as a minimum, make a commitment to examine the evidence when we are preparing our forward work plan at our away day.
That is something that the petitioners could reflect on. The previous petition on landfill had four elements to it, which covered the remits of four committees. That can raise difficulties. These petitions on TETRA masts have two elements—health and environment. As we do not control the Health Committee, perhaps future petitioners should submit separate petitions relating to specific aspects of their concern.
That is a reasonable point to make. We could say that those are issues for another committee, but it is entirely a matter for that committee to decide its own priorities. Although petitions are an important part of the process, it is legitimate that the committee should decide itself what it is going to look at. I would contend that this committee has to steer a course according to what we consider to be the big issues. We should remain flexible enough to take on petitions at certain times, but we should not always feel obliged to move with the agenda of the petitioners as against the other agendas that the committee has developed. It is always a difficult balance to strike, but it is still reasonable that we should try to do that.
I understand the difficulties that members have in identifying specific actions that we can take that will be effective. I would like to suggest that, at the minimum, we should write to the Executive and explain our concerns about being unable to take a position on the petition because of the lack of evidence and the imminence of evidence becoming available. We should ask the Executive to consider what actions it could take to achieve a postponement until evidence is available to judge those questions.
To me, that would be going a step further than has been suggested. We could not make that judgment until we had seen the evidence.
That is the problem.
Even if the evidence were with us today, we would not be able to consider the matter seriously and make a decision about it today. We would need to be a bit more thorough than that. If the evidence had been published yesterday rather than being published on 2 July, we would not be making a decision today anyway, although we might have a bit more of a focus about how to take the petition forward.
Members indicated agreement.