Labour Policy Watch: Environment

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	The Tories' bias in favour of business and its light-touch regulation left local habitats at risk from development. Most waste was sent to landfill and Britain lagged behind others in recycling. Radioactive waste left the Irish Sea the most polluted in the world and leukaemia clusters around many nuclear installations. Environmentalists claimed that Britain harmed foreign environments too, e.g. see the Pergau dam or the timber trade. On the other hand, they took threats to the global environment (especially the greenhouse effect) seriously, and had better targets for CO2 reduction than most countries and fuel taxes to help achieve them.
	Labour policy was:
	1	More habitat protection, for hedgerows, the coastal zone, etc.
	2	To reduce waste disposal to landfill by 30% in 5 years and promote recycling
	3	To require larger firms to report on their environmental performance and strategy
	4	To help British industry seize global opportunities for clean and green products
	5	To reduce acid rain gas emissions, e.g. sulphur emissions by 90% in 10 years
	6	Radioactive waste?
	7	To make sustainability "the cornerstone of trade policy"
	8	To reduce CO2 emissions by 20% by 2010
	9	To use the tax system to reduce pollution
	10	To help green groups mount legal challenges to environment-damaging developments
	In fact under New Labour:
	1	Loss of greenbelt land has increased and companies are granted exemptions so routinely that the European Commission is taking Britain to court
	2	Landfill use has ...(?) and the main alternative is the damaging incineration of waste but recycling rates are rising
	3	?
	4	Support for green industries has increased but still lags behind other countries
	5	Acid rain emissions have fallen but mainly as coal use drops, (target?)
	6	Thorp and MOX will add to radioactive pollution (though reductions are promised by 2020) and to plutonium stocks
	7	Even after further scandals (Ilisu dam, Tanzanian air-traffic control) the government opposed a sustainability test being added to export controls
	8	CO2 emissions have actually risen since Labour came to power
	9	Environmental taxes are at their lowest level since 1993
	10	The government actually stopped Greenpeace taking an oil company to court
	In addition:
		The government has strongly supported GM technology, playing down evidence of harmful environmental effects
		The Competition Commission will no longer consider the environmental impact of mergers
		All government departments must now explain how they are helping sustainability
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