24. The Welsh Affairs Report
When in Canada, I was concerned that I might miss the publication of the Welsh Affairs Committee’s report on ReChem. It had been five month’s since the Committee’s meeting with ReChem and Torfaen Council in Parliament. Fortunately, I didn’t miss the report and when I returned home in the middle of May there was still no confirmation of its publication date, although many things had moved on. Amongst the developments had been Gwent County Council’s own drive against waste imports, which led to letters going out from the Chief Executive to the embassies of the Netherlands, Eire, Belgium, West Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy and Portugal.The initiative was taken just before the European Parliament held the anticipated debates on the evolving directives for PCBs and waste shipments, and when the question of applying the major hazard regulations was moving closer to a European decision.
Something else I didn’t miss, because I’d seen it the day after I arrived in Montreal, was the South Wales Argus headline saying: “PCBs show record levels”. Ken Caldicott faxed me the newspaper’s coverage of Torfaen’s latest test results, which I immediately copied onto acetate sheets for my press conferences and public meetings in Quebec. The PCB test results were the first to come from the joint monitoring exercise conducted by the Council and Rechem following the lifting of the injunction against the Council. The samples had been taken in November 1989 and the Cardiff analyst reported new record levels of PCBs in New Inn.Foliage results from the Caldicott’s field reached 1,765 parts per billion and soil from Pontyvelin Lane showed 1150 ppb.
In routine fashion, the analytical findings were disputed by ReChem, who reported soil contamination at only 45 ppb, twenty-five times lower that Torfaen’s results. The company’s explanation was that different sampling and preparation systems invalidated comparisons. The gap between the two sets of scientific data was, like so many other aspects of the controversy, tended to be put-aside as a difference of opinion but the Argus editor posed an obvious question. He asked that if Rechem actually found high levels of contamination, would we ever know about it.The always inquisitive Argus journalist Genevieve Loxton then took it upon herself to investigate the difference between the opposing sets of results. She spoke to Barry Sanders, the analyst employed by Torfaen, and he gave possible reasons for the disagreement. One explanation was that different blades of grass from the same location might well have different amounts of PCBs. I doubted whether that would explain such striking differences across so many tests and I preferred another of his ideas, which could be a more systematic cause of discrepancies. He proposed that different methods of drying the samples could produce the observed variations in results. In his laboratory he dried Torfaen’s samples naturally, whereas ReChem appeared to use an oven. Another possible variable lay with the reference standards used to calibrate the concentrations of PCBs in the samples. In the continuing confusion, Genevieve’s Loxton’s title for her article on chemical analysis cleverly summed up the position with: “Soil testing’s an exacting science.” and not for the first time the Welsh Office stayed out of the argument, on the convenient pretext that they didn’t yet know the inconvenient results. My hunch was that they did know the results but didn’t know what to say about them.
The new, disputed, unofficial, record-level contamination figures made no impact on burning and a few weeks later at the beginning of June ReChem proudly announced that the company’s own test results had been vindicated by the government’s research establishment at Harwell, a sub-contractor of ReChem.This announcement drew Public Analyst Barry Sanders back into the argument. He used the not-so-scientific terminology in saying that the company was talking nonsense, whilst Torfaen’s Environmental Health chief David Thomas spoke in terms of ReChem’s counter-claim being meaningless. The clearest conclusion available to anyone was that the opposing sides were equally confident of their findings, but in assessing the value that the latest figures might have for me, I feared the High Court would put the testimony of the Welsh Office, ReChem and Harwell way above the opinions of the Council, the Public Analyst and the South Wales Argus.
Another announcement during the time I was in Canada was that of ReChem’s final results for the financial year. As in the forecast, profits were down and though it was only slightly so I read a lot into the reversal. A permanent downward trend in profitability then became a realistic prognosis when, on June 7th, by far the government’s most encouraging announcement to date on the future of waste imports, was suddenly made. Environment Minister David Trippier said “I see no reason why developed countries should not provide their own facilities” and jointly with his EEC counterparts he agreed that there would be restrictions on waste movement, at a time to be decided.The groundbreaking if tentative decision was reported from Luxembourg the next day in the Daily Telegraph. It could mean an eventual end to the Treaty of Rome’s protection of the right that waste had to move freely from country to country. The difficulty was that the necessary Directive would need to cut across EEC plans to create a fully-fledged free market but there were indications that, at last, waste was being understood as something different from normal goods and services. My pleasure in reading the news from Luxembourg was mixed with anxiety from knowing only too well that if the proposed restrictions weren’t watertight, then formalised flaws would be set in stone. I would have a lot of reading and writing to do to help ensure the regulations were prescriptive enough to eliminate loopholes and to thwart arguments for exceptions. It was quite fitting that the Daily Telegraph’s report was jointly written by Boris Johnson since it was his father Stanley who, at the request of Llew Smith, presided over the Cwmbran conference on ReChem back in 1985 and helped put our issue on the international stage.
Only days after ReChem had relied on Harwell’s prestige to give the company the upper hand on PCB analysis, some anxiety may have crept beneath the company’s confident exterior when a new leak came through. Extracts of the long-awaited, unpublished report of the Welsh Affairs Committee suddenly found their way into the media. The selective items of information said that the Welsh MPs had found grounds for fear over ReChem in New Inn and were recommending to David Hunt, the Secretary of State for Wales, that he should instigate an independent monitoring program. Soon after the media leak, on 6th June the Committee’s complete report was published in private and it was then made publicly available on 13th June, 1990, which was nearly a month after I’d returned from Canada. It was entitled the “Welsh Affairs Committee, Second Report, ReChem International Limited Incineration Plant, Pontypool”.The media coverage of it was illuminating and the actual report even more so. Its main recommendation confirmed the press leak that an independent investigation would be needed to settle the argument over contamination.News reports also told of the Committee’s conclusion that the public weren’t confident that the plant was being safely operated and that there was confusion about the responsibilities of the various regulatory bodies.This was all good news for my defence. The establishment of a public inquiry, which numerous petitions had called for, was deemed not to be immediately necessary, but it would take place if the proposed independent investigation found that there was a serious risk to health.ReChem’s MD said he welcomed the report and was happy that a public inquiry was not imminent. Torfaen Borough Council talked of its claims being vindicated and I was delighted with what the tone of the report would do for my defence. The downside was that nothing was to happen overnight and once again it meant a continuation of waste importation and PCB burning in Pontypool.
The Welsh Affairs Committee’s chairman was Gower MP Gareth Wardell (Labour). One of its keenest members was the knowledgeable Alan Williams, MP for Carmarthen East and Dinefwr (Labour), who had a first class Honours in Chemistry from Oxford and a PhD in Protein Synthesis. The report detailed the MPs’ stern challenge to ReChem’s management during the parliamentary session. When reviewing the background to the whole ReChem controversy it briefly mentioned the company’s unsuccessful attempts to re-establish the local Liaison Committee where representatives of the Public, the company and the regulatory authorities would have sat together. Such a forum had existed when I first started out in 1984. After learning of it, I quickly formed an opinion of its futility. In my early discussions with the company I was asked to participate in that committee but I said I just wanted answers to a few specific questions. I wanted to know the range of materials processed and their sources, together with technical drawings and the specification of the plant. That information wasn’t forthcoming and I knew it wouldn’t have been given to a liaison committee, so I saw little point in discussing generalities when I could spend my time outside the committee becoming more informed. Moreover, I didn’t want to be seen as a public representative who would relieve the company and the authorities of their responsibility to respond to complaints. Furthermore, I certainly didn’t want my participation in such a forum to be regarded as a stamp of approval for the plant. My stance turned into a crucial tactical decision since, in future waste shipment propaganda, the existence of the Southampton plant’s surviving Liaison Committee was perversely used as evidence of the public’s approval of ReChem.
Pontypool’s own Liaison Committee had folded in recognition of the early protestors’ inability to make any headway on issues of increasing concern. HMIP and the Company desperately wanted the Committee to reform and Torfaen Borough Council were also behind the idea until, with ReChem’s increasing reliance on libel law, the Council also went cool on liaison.This conflict was clear in the new Parliamentary report, when it reproduced the long dialogue about the stalemate which took place between MP Keith Raffan and the Council’s representatives. Although a Scot, Keith Raffan was Conservative MP for Welsh Constituency Delyn, though he later became a Lib-Dem member of the Scottish Parliament and hit the headlines for topping the SMP expenses charts with the £100,000 plus he claimed in the year before he resigned on ill-health grounds. In the Welsh Affairs Committee hearing, he complained about the tone of the Committee’s interrogation of ReChem’s management but then took ReChem to task for opposing a Public Inquiry.He also tended to attack the Council’s handling of things and he disapproved of the Council’s attitude towards the idea of a Liaison Committee. In response, the Council’s solicitor Chris Tindall provoked the MP by saying:
You, presumably, think it is unreasonable to ask what we will be discussing on such a liaison committee. There is also another problem
I don’t know whether Chris Tindall intended to bring up ReChem’s litigation record in relation to Torfaen’s reluctance to liaise, but he didn’t get the chance, since Keith Raffan returned with the broadside:
Excuse me! Why do you not just get on the liaison committee and then discuss the agenda. You are making preconditions. Mr. Gorbachev does not even do this. Eastern Europe is making faster progress than you are. We shall have a United Europe before you lot get together with ReChem. You are making preconditions. It is absurd and I think you are undermining your own position. That is my view.
Torfaen’s Environmental Health Chief David Thomas joined in, replying that he was not prepared to be a member of a meaningless committee. Then it was Council leader Brian Smith who brought up the fears of litigation, by colourfully announcing the tally of ReChem’s outstanding legal actions in saying:
The local authority told us that: “this company is involved in litigation currently against the following organizations; Express Newspapers, Cardiff Broadcasting Company, Western Mails and Echo, a Mr. David Powell who is member of a local protest group, Greenpeace itself, Madeleine Cobbing an official of Greenpeace, the British Broadcasting Corporation, Channel Four and The Guardian. If I want to go on a Committee like that, I am afraid I am not a Jeffrey Archer or an Elton John. I want to be protected and to receive an undertaking from the Committee that anyone joining the Committee will be free from threats or actual prosecution, that they will be able to express open and honest opinions. That is a matter that the Company is currently considering. And it does not seem to me, that in the background of those matters, to be unreasonable.
Produced for the inquiry, ReChem’s own Memorandum of Evidence recycled the extensive official support for the company and in doing so it implied a challenge to the justification for public concern. In that evidence, the Company used the Pollution Inspectorate’s approval as a tool to diminish the complaints of local residents:
The fact that HM Industrial Air Pollution Inspectorate (now part of HM Inspectorate of Pollution) were satisfied with the standards of the ReChem operation at Pontypool, and publicly said so on several occasions, seemed to do little to calm the concerns of the local population.
The Committee, however, looked below such platitudes and placed ReChem’s reliance on the Inspectorate in this perspective:
HMIP was finding it difficult to fill vacancies. It also had problems in retaining staff. In October 1989 it was 45 staff short of a complement of 240. HMIP therefore finds it difficult to respond quickly of effectively when incidents take place. HMIP told us that they visit the plant monthly and sample the flue gases twice a year, carrying out the simpler end of the stack tests. They claim that 99.9999 per cent destruction of PCBs is achieved in “trial burn” conditions. They do not themselves test for PCBs, dioxins or furans in the flue gases but accept the results provided by ReChem.
When the inquiry took place at Westminster on Wednesday 13th December 1989, the media in South Wales provided an instant flavour of the discussions. Evident in that coverage was the contribution of Alan Williams, who took pride in his qualifications in chemistry. He was one of six MPs for Welsh Constituencies, in addition to Committee chairman Gareth Wardell, who questioned the five members of ReChem’s management present in parliament. Gareth Wardell opened the proceedings and then, after Malcolm Lee had introduced the members of ReChem’s team, the chairman immediately steered the committee towards the subject of contamination. A long and detailed discussion took place, mainly between Gareth Wardell and ReChem’s Dr Peter Jones, before Alan Williams joined in. The questioning went deeper than the test results. It delved into ReChem’s interpretations of the Pontypool data and queried the company’s choice of comparative locations. ReChem’s Dr. Jones reiterated the company’s claims that levels of PCB and dioxin contamination around the plant were comparable with more general background levels. After mentioning a new HMIP report on background contamination levels in Britain, and showing a good understanding of statistical inference, Committee Chairman Gareth Wardell referred to contradictions between ReChem’s portrayal of the company’s own PCB results amongst environmental background levels. Moving onto dioxins, he made his suspicions even more transparent by suggesting that:
. . . the base levels we are using for comparison had been deliberately manipulated to show that the very high levels of OCDD at ReChem looked as if they were relatively low?
Dr. Jones provided explanations, but he didn’t seem to convince Gareth Wardell of the integrity of ReChem’s procedures. The words “deliberately manipulated” had previously captured the imagination of the media and now those words in parliamentary print grabbed my attention, too, since I could find them useful if ReChem’s pursuit of the writ continued to include grounds that my BBC remarks had implied that the Company was untrustworthy.
Alan Williams was next to take the lead in proceedings, first asserting confidence in his command of chemistry. Then, before seeking answers from Rechem’s Dr. Jones, he launched a condemnation of ReChem’s response to Torfaen Borough Council’s report to the Welsh Secretary:
Quite frankly, I too, looked through your own analyses and, in particular, the letter you drafted last May and, as a scientist to scientist, I found it quite appalling. The way you tried to criticise Torfaen’s independent monitoring was quite beyond the pale and so over the top that it shows your firm belief that attack is the best form of defence.
After focusing on the extent to which ReChem was its own regulator for sampling and testing, the discussion led to an astonishing disagreement. It followed Dr. Jones’ demonstration of ReChem’s prominence in analysis by referring to the Company’s authorization to carry out work for the Swedish government. Alan Williams had quipped that such prominence arose out of the company’s incentive to analyse, because PCB burning risked dioxin formation and that meant the company needed to be on its toes scientifically. In a brief exchange which appeared to get personal, Dr. Jones contradicted Alan Williams, saying that PCB burning produces furans, but not dioxins. Alan Williams stood his ground, saying:
My chemistry is at least as good as yours – as is my environmental science – and I can promise you, my scientific integrity.
The conflict was diffused by Dr. Jones with the comment:
I am very pleased.
Much of the exchange between Alan Williams and ReChem focused on sampling and testing.The MP’s view on the increasing contamination levels revealed by Torfaen’s tests was refuted by Rechem so he used the disagreement to justify arbitration, adding:
May I say that what you have just said underlines the need for a massive independent environmental monitoring programme. We need a public inquiry into what goes on in your work, conducted by the Welsh Office, but as a background to that we need at least a £1-million environmental monitoring programme, conducted independently of you . . . . I am certain that what would come out of that would be detailed evidence supporting Torfaen’s claim . . . . I think there is cause for very serious public concern.
When Rechem’s Operations Director David Wheeler re-affirmed his faith in the company’s castigation of Torfaen’s report, it appeared to raise Alan William’s hackles sufficiently to end the discourse by encapsulating his contempt. His summary of ReChem’s retaliation to the Council’s report took some of the shine off the official halo that hung over ReChem.
I may say that I spent my weekend, the Saturday and the Sunday, in London working through your documents; and I had found your response to the Torfaen document the most appalling in terms of its tone and in terms of the doubts you try to cast, I though that this was really the worst document – with parts of it allegedly contributed by scientists - that have ever read.
Committee chairman Gareth Wardell then proceeded to explore the extent to which the company controlled information. The ensuing ongoing discussion revealed ReChem’s desire for the provision of stack emission data to remain voluntary, rather than become a condition of the site licence. The Chairman later elicited a similar attitude towards liquid effluent data, in a passage which I felt almost got to the core of the issue. Showing his concern about the PCBs from Rechem that were discharged to the sewers and therefore to the sea, and using the already high levels of PCBs in fish oil as an argument against further discharges, he was met with a stance sometimes used by the company to justify pollution in Pontypool. There was a certain truth in it which I always found hard to handle on global environmental grounds, though I had no difficulty dismissing it on moral grounds. I read into ReChem’s argument that even if the Pontypool plant might contribute to the burden of oceanic PCBs, the damage was nowhere near as great as that which could have occurred if ReChem had not taken so much waste from the rest of the world.As far as I was concerned, even if concentrating contamination in Pontypool was doing the world a favour, sacrificing one part of the that world for the benefit of the rest of it was unacceptable.
The former MP for Eton and Slough who had a German-Jewish grandfather, the Baronet Sir Anthony Meyer, would have been an unlikely figure to be speaking on Welsh Affairs had it not been for his being MP for Clwyd North West. He had recently risen to celebrity status and said of himself, “One day I woke up and found myself famous”. Fame came to him when he became the stalking horse who stood against Margaret Thatcher in the Tory Party’s leadership election, an act which predicated her downfall a year later. He homed in on one of my obsessions with the Pontypool plant. It was-the incinerator door, which like the other MP’s had, he had encountered on a visit to the plant. In the Committee, he expressed his concern over the method of loading and unloading the furnace through the door, which he believed was conducive to blowbacks and spillages.In putting ReChem on the spot about this, he also provided a remark to compensate the company:
I am wondering whether you have any plans for improving that? Perhaps I might add, in view of the tone of some previous contributions, that this is a committee of inquiry and not a vehicle for expressing strongly held views.
I doubt whether he was satisfied with David Wheeler’s answer, which attempted to justify the incinerator’s low-tech technology.
Taking his own turn, Brecon and Radnorshire Lib-Dem MP Richard Livesey was simple in approach, referring to Lord Justice Garland of the Torfaen v ReChem nuisance trial and quoting the judge with:
If you know there is something very toxic going into the incinerator, you see and smell smoke coming out, you may have an uneasy feeling that something toxic might be coming out of it. But you are not trying this.
Then there began another long debate, on emissions and contamination, where Pontypridd’s MP Dr. Kim Howells helped make monitoring philosophy more transparent and began to unravel its essence. In general, Rechem didn’t approve of the monitoring over a wide area for environmental deposition or animal uptake of contaminants. The company’s reputation rested on not finding contamination very close to the plant. Absence of contamination near the plant must mean that none was being produced by the incinerator, so the logic appeared to be that looking further afield was unnecessary. I had fun with this form of reasoning for a while, by using ReChem’s figures to show that the small area around the plant was an environmental oasis and then facetiously implying that instead of emitting PCBs, the plant must be hoovering-up background contamination from land nearby. That paradox was presented perfectly well when Kim Howells appeared to appreciate the same untenable aspect of ReChem’s environmental beneficence. When answering questions about the dispersion of contaminants in the plume from the plant, Malcolm Lee insisted:
. . . as it comes out of the stack it still meets breathing air quality, so that the further away from the stack you get, it is even cleaner.
This gave the Pontypridd MP the opportunity to extrapolate and he did so with some irony.
But, from what you are saying, and you will correct me if I am wrong – the actual air that comes out of the top of the stack is breathable; and that the further away it gets from the top of the stack, the more breathable it becomes? And soon after: But the thing is this, are you saying that the air is purer? Should not all air, then, be funneled through your stack, so that people, wherever they lived, have the air further improved by a greater volume.
Following Rechem’s contribution to the inquiry, Torfaen Borough Council’s period under the questioning of the Welsh Affairs Committee provided a great insight into the stand-off between ReChem and the Council and it included a return to the Liaison Committee concept. Council Leader Brian Smith quickly related to ReChem’s part in the rift by quoting the company’s Q.C., from the application for the injunction against the Council on 1st September 1989. In justifying the action, ReChem’s Q.C. had claimed persecution:
The council is engaged in an unprincipled campaign of hostility aimed at the company with the intention of causing it to close down.
Yet in the minutes of the Welsh Affairs Committee, I saw that it wasn’t the Council who were imposing impossible preconditions, it was the Company who appeared to be playing hard to get. From the beginning I had viewed a Liaison Committee as being of far more use to ReChem than to the public. I never believed the forum would hold the key to information about emissions and contamination, but I hadn’t realized how far ReChem would go in using a Liaison Committee for its own protection until I saw, in writing, the audacious and unashamed proposal for dealing with complaints about specific incidents. In a letter to the Council’s chief executive on 26th May 1989 ReChem’s M.D. Malcolm Lee used the Magna Carta in support of secrecy. I had always suspected that ReChem’s idea of liaising included the suppression of information, but when the company acquired the injunction against the Council’s publication of contamination data I had assumed that the Council’s main objection to the forum lay in the restrictions which could arise from fear of litigation. I didn’t, at that time, know about the earlier Magna Carta letter from Malcolm Lee which set the limitations on any dialogue. In the letter Lee wanted to put complaints on the back-burner and he invoked the ancient right to silence with:
. . . felt unable to consider joining a liaison committee that dealt with specific incidents within six months of them happening – because that is the time recognized as being the time in which prosecutions can be brought in most circumstances. I note your concern about the discussion of specific incidents. I am advised that it would be contrary to the rules of natural justice for ReChem to be expected to supply information to be used as the basis for possible prosecution or cross-examination. Although I want to co-operate and assist, because we have nothing to hide, nevertheless I am conscious that I would be in breach of my duty to ReChem shareholders if I voluntarily surrendered such a basic right which has been enshrined in the British Constitution since the time of the Magna Carta.
Basically, Rechem wouldn’t be giving away information which might be used to incriminate the Company. At this stage, the public knew that things were wrong but they couldn’t access the information needed to pursue action against the Company. The last thing people wanted to see was the Council extending Rechem’s control over information by condoning a pact on secrecy.
Many other aspects of the unsatisfactory situation that the Council found itself in were contained in the parliamentary report and included the requirement of the Government’s Waste Management Paper No. 4, which contained a licensing requirement that the Council should make a list of list the materials to be accepted at the plant. This seemed to be sensible until a higher authority, the Inspectorate, held that materials storage and handling, including PCB transformer processing, was beyond Torfaen’s remit. In contrast to the general confusion about responsibilities there was one area where the Council did have clear control and I was pleased to see Welsh Affairs Committee Chairman Gareth Wardell being alert to this distant, and long-forgotten, aspect of the impact of waste incineration in New Inn. The Council ran the tip on the old colliery site in the valley at Tirpentws where trucks dumped the material that was dragged out of the incinerator. Often called ash, I’d had witnessed much more than ash coming out of the skips at the tip. Following Brian Smith’s opening of the Council’s share of the proceedings with his presentation of the tirade of criticism launched by ReChem over the Council’s Second Memorandum to the Committee, Gareth Wardell brought the tip into the discussion and quoted the National Rivers Authority in saying that Tirpentwys site “. . . . can hardly be described as being in the highest class.”When asked to tell the committee of the results of recent testing of the ash, Torfaen’s David Thomas had to admit there hadn’t been any recent sampling, but he referred to earlier satisfactory tests and reassured the Committee that the tip was not a problem. That didn’t coincide with my memory of long days spent watching the tip, of the chemical smell, of whole capacitors being dumped from the skips, of the BBC TV “Newsnight” analysis showing high PCB levels in capacitors at the tip and then of the Council bulldozing coal waste over the area.It wasn’t the only return to the history of the plant which came from the Committee’s chairman, for when ReChem gave evidence to the inquiry earlier in the day he uncovered another relic previously laid to rest unsatisfactorily, by drawing attention to the September 1987 fire and explosion. He quoted a comment from the first annual report of HMIP which actually came close to being a criticism of the incinerator’s technology. It said:
. . . . an incident happened which may hold lessons for the construction and operation of incinerators designed to take large solid items such as drums and scrap electrical components contaminated with toxic substances when an explosion and subsequent fire outside the body of the incinerator occurred . . . .
I was glad of Gareth Wardell’s understanding that it wasn’t just that the incinerator failed internally, but that the leak of molten aluminium caused an external explosion, an event which supported my view of the risk to materials in storage.
The minutes of a committee do not normally provide the most gripping of reads but I found this day in the life of the Welsh Affairs Committee riveting, though I have to admit that my concentration was challenged when Torfaen’s solicitor Chris Tindall gave a 10