Dalgety Bay

Debate between Gordon Brown and Thomas Docherty

Tuesday 17th December 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Gordon Brown (Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath) (Lab)]

I am grateful to you, Mr Speaker, for agreeing to this debate, but I regret having to come back to the House and subject it to a fourth debate in less than three years about a single issue in one constituency—radiation contamination in the Dalgety Bay area of Fife.

It is now more than half a century since contaminated materials containing radium-226 were dumped on the Dalgety Bay foreshore by people on behalf of the Ministry of Defence. It is now just under a quarter of a century since the Ministry accepted that the contamination existed and posed a potential safety risk. It is now three years since the discovery of large amounts of contaminated particles that, as a result of coastal erosion, had risen to the surface, with some particles having a level of radiation that is judged to be a risk to health and thus completely unacceptable. It is now nearly two years since the Ministry of Defence committed itself to a plan that required the polluter to clean up the area. It is now six months since the Committee on Medical Aspects of Radiation in the Environment and Public Health England, the relevant health body advising the Ministry, called for the clean-up to be agreed and to happen as soon as possible.

Despite more than 50 years of contamination, nearly 25 years of the Ministry of Defence knowing about the risks, two years of knowing the seriousness of the risk and the likely escalation of such risks, and two years in February since a plan was agreed with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, there has been no clean-up, no agreement to fund a clean-up, no agreement on a plan for a clean-up, no agreement even on the options for such a plan and, as yet, no presentation of the options for a clean-up plan or the promised consultation on those options. Indeed, the Ministry of Defence has yet to agree to what it promised in February 2012 to do by May this year—publication of the options for remedial action, acceptance of responsibility by the polluter for the pollution and a plan to fund the clean-up.

It is sad to report that despite all the evidence proving the Ministry of Defence’s responsibility and all the evidence of its admission of responsibility as long ago as 1990, the Ministry is even now—months after a report this spring named it as the polluter—refusing to accept that it has responsibility in this area. That is despite the clear promise made in a letter from Mark Hill of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, dated 21 December 2012, which stated:

“In the event that MOD is found to be an Appropriate Person in accordance with the statutory regime for contaminated land”—

the MOD was of course named as the appropriate person a few months ago—

“the Department will fulfil its legal obligation to meet its portion of the liability and carry out voluntary action including remediation where appropriate.”

All this is yet to happen.

There has therefore been a failure to make progress on three important issues—publication of the options for the clean-up, agreement on the funding of the clean-up, and acceptance of responsibility as the polluter. Those issues of deep concern locally have brought me back to the House today to ask the Minister—I know that he has visited the area and, as he will reply to me for a second time in the House, he is fully aware of the issues or, at least, he should be—to use his influence to end the delays, to end the failure of the Ministry of Defence to accept responsibility and to end what I am afraid to say is a lack of consideration for the people of Dalgety Bay that is now strongly felt in the local community.

The issue of the contamination and its significance cannot be wished away. Dalgety Bay is already the first and only area of the United Kingdom where a radiation risk assessment has had to be done to measure the extent of the contamination. It is also the first and only area of the country to be the subject of what is called an appropriate person report—a report under the legislation dealing with radiation contamination—which has been produced through very detailed research by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. It has concluded that, without any doubt in the matter, the polluter of the area is indeed the Ministry of Defence.

Dalgety Bay is therefore not only the first area subject to such a risk assessment and to the naming of a polluter, but it is still at risk of being named by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency as the only radiation contaminated area in the United Kingdom, which has never happened to areas where there are nuclear weapons, nuclear power stations or nuclear waste storage. If it had to be imposed on the area, which is a scenic part of the Fife coastal walk, such a decision would blight the foreshore, harm the environment and cause difficulties for the town that would last well into the future or, at least, for as long as we can see ahead.

We therefore cannot gloss over this matter. For 13 years, starting in 1946, decommissioned military aircraft were scrapped and then incinerated. The resulting ash, which included radiated particles, was dumped in the area of Dalgety Bay.

To give an understanding of the scale of the pollution, I want to draw the House’s attention to a memo of 14 December 1990, which was sent by Her Majesty’s inspectorate of pollution to the then Minister at the Scotland Office. The official’s report stated:

“I attended a meeting with the MOD to discuss the possible origins of the contaminated material and to consider how best to proceed. MOD confirmed that some 800 aircraft were scrapped during 1946 at the nearby…HMS Merlin and that the aircraft would have contained instruments and equipment luminised with radium.

There is evidence that the debris from demolition work at the…station was used for infilling purposes between 1946 and 1959.

This information, together with the nature of the contained debris which has been found leaves little doubt as to the origins of the contaminated debris which has been found…and is likely that there is more material buried in the area inland from the beach.”

He said:

“I am glad to report that”

the MOD

“seem willing to help both with further monitoring and with any remedial action which might be necessary.”

In the last debate on this matter, the Minister told me:

“We have found no evidence to corroborate claims that 800 aircraft were destroyed in 1946 through burning, and the resultant waste material—including ash—deposited on the beach or within the headland prior to 1959.”—[Official Report, 9 July 2013; Vol. 566, c. 335.]

I take that one contestation of the report to mean that everything else was correct: that the dumping did take place, that it was authorised by the Ministry of Defence, that the waste is a potential risk, and that the Ministry of Defence does and should take responsibility. It is only the precise number of aircraft that he cannot confirm, but he cannot deny the figure either.

In 1992, there was a report in which the Ministry of Defence accepted that Dalgety Bay was a polluted area. Again, after 2000, Mr Fred Dawson, the head radiation protection officer dealing with the safety officer at the MOD, advised that the Ministry of Defence would be found liable and that there was significant reputational damage involved in denying liability in this area. More recently, the community council, under the chairmanship of Colin McPhail MBE, whom I congratulate on the work he has done to expose this matter, solicited statements by former and present residents about the scale of what happened in the ’40s and ’50s. I understand that the leader of Fife council, Alex Rowley, has assembled a mass of evidence that is available to the Ministry.

It is hardly surprising that the Scottish Environment Protection Agency states:

“The total number of radioactive…particles…that have now been recovered since the beginning of our investigation in September 2011 is over 1,000. Of these sources, five had a radioactivity content of greater than”

the accepted level of radium-226. After that report, we cannot doubt that the dumping of materials was done by the Ministry, that those materials have radioactive content or that, because of coastal erosion, the particles are being brought up to the surface in greater numbers. Action must now be taken. The discovery of radiation particles on the surface is not an historical problem that is diminishing the further we move from the time of the dumping and that is likely to disappear over time; contaminated particles are being discovered all the time. That is aggravated by winter storms and rising coastal erosion. Such particles are being washed up or found on the foreshore at the rate of 100 a month.

Let us be clear what the Ministry of Defence promised us would have happened by now. In February 2012, the Ministry agreed to an “Investigation Plan”, which listed the stages of work that would be undertaken. The Ministry promised that in the second part of stage 3, which was due to happen between February and May this year, it would outline management options for the clean-up of the site:

“MOD will set out within the investigation report outline management options which may include remediation.”

That was supposed to have happened seven months ago. The report also stated:

“The options should be distinct and range from the ‘do minimum’ to the ‘maximum possible’.”

It recommended an holistic approach and said that the listing of the options was to have happened seven months ago. It then said:

“It may be appropriate to sift the outline options…to whittle the number down to a manageable size”.

That has not been done either.

It said that stages 4 and 5 were then to be progressed by the appropriate persons. Stage 4 should

“comprise the long-term management/remediation solutions”,

with consideration of

“source removal, pathway disruption and receptor protection…to reduce the level of uncertainty.”

Stage 5 should then be delivered by the appropriate person, meaning the polluter, the Ministry of Defence.

Not one of those promised actions has yet happened. Seven months on from the deadline agreed by the Ministry, there has been no option study published and no narrowing of the options. Although the Ministry has been named as the polluter, none of the options has been costed and none of the clean-up has yet been agreed. None of the work has been planned or gone out to contract, far less any clean-up done. Work that was supposed to have been completed on a timetable from February to May this year has not been done, and we are still waiting for the options paper to be published and the consultation entered into.

The community council chairman was promised in a letter from Mr David Olney of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation, dated 26 March 2012:

“MOD experts are already in regular contact…in order to ensure the successful completion of the investigation by May 2013.”

That has not happened. The effect is that work that should have been commissioned in the autumn and completed by the winter has now been delayed. The likelihood is that we will face another winter of coastal erosion, with more particles being brought to the surface, and that a summer and autumn of delays will be followed by a winter of further delays, about which I want to ask for answers today.

The consultation that was promised has ground to a standstill. The last meeting of the Dalgety Bay particles advisory group was held on 22 May and the last forum meeting on 30 May. A meeting of stakeholders was promised before the end of the year, but none will take place until the beginning of next year, which means that work is unlikely to start before next summer, if then.

The Minister must also consider the fact that the delays are all the more regrettable because nearby, in Almondbank in Perth, at another ex-Ministry of Defence site where contamination was discovered, the clean-up was agreed and carried out within six weeks. It appears that that was because the remedial work was a condition of sale, with penalty clauses included. It looks like the Ministry is willing to act with speed only when there is a legal obligation to do so.

Machrihanish, where there are far lower levels of radiation, was also cleaned up without anyone having to come to Parliament to beg for it to be done. Again, that was because of a condition of sale in a commercial contract. Must we really accept that the Ministry of Defence will move only when there are commercial obligations and stall when it feels it has only a moral obligation to act? Have we to wait for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency to impose statutory obligations on the Ministry of Defence, which it is entitled to do?

The delay is galling because, as I understand it, the Ministry of Defence will announce in the next few days that it will break up submarines at Rosyth, next door to Dalgety Bay. For months it has been consulting on a plan, one of the options in which is to store not only low-level but intermediate radioactive material there. In that case, it would be nuclear waste.

The Minister has accepted responsibility not only for the DIO but for Scotland as part of his work in the MOD. As any visit he makes to Scotland will prove, the Ministry cannot command any public confidence when it seeks to guarantee safe long-term storage of either low-level or intermediate radioactive nuclear waste in Rosyth if it cannot even reassure the people of the nextdoor town that it will take responsibility for the safe disposal of the long-standing radiation waste at Dalgety Bay. Would the Minister be happy to accept the storage of even more radioactive waste in his constituency if he had no assurances about the safe storage of the existing waste?

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I am grateful to my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Does he agree that there is no way in which my constituents in Rosyth or his in Dalgety Bay will accept for a second that waste being stored at the site or in the wider West Fife area?

[Mr Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It seems that one part of the Ministry of Defence has no clue what another part is doing. It wants to store waste at one place in that part of Fife but refuses to clean up the mess left by previous waste in another part. It is shocking that there is no co-ordination within the Ministry, and I believe that people who work on the nuclear programmes in the MOD are unhappy with the state of affairs that the Minister and his colleagues have left us with.

I come now to the delays. When replying to the previous debate, the Minister said we should take into account the views of Public Health England, which he said had not exactly given a “ringing endorsement” of the report produced that showed the risk and named the polluter. The letter sent to SEPA from Public Health England stated on 28 June:

“I am writing to provide comments on the…risk assessment …Regarding your contaminated land assessment, we agree that radium-226 contaminated objects recovered from Dalgety bay include objects that could give rise to radiation doses that exceed the relevant criteria for the Radioactive Contaminated Land (Scotland) Regulations 2007; specifically the effective dose criterion of 100 MSV.”

Whether or not that is possible, it is important that such objects are removed from the beach and disposed of appropriately.

On 10 July Public Health England wrote:

“It is clear that there is a level of radioactive contamination that requires further investigation and appropriate action.”

The response stated:

“You also asked about the extent that risk mitigation is required. It is clear that doing nothing is not an option and as noted above, it is important that agreement is reached by all of the interested parties on the best way forward.”

Public Health England then wrote formally to all parties on 21 August saying that it has

“consistently called for a management strategy to be developed and implemented at Dalgety bay.”

It concluded:

“We agree that the…criterion on effective dose could be exceeded for ingestion.”

There is no doubt about where the health authorities stand on the issue.

I understand that the MOD is worried about creating precedents, and that 15 sites with similar waste have been revealed by the MOD, including Dalgety Bay. I know that a radioactive waste inventory of 2010 suggests there are many more sites that are not under the control of the MOD but may have radioactive waste. However, I have always argued that because of coastal erosion on a site beside the sea, there is a special case for action in Dalgety Bay that the Ministry of Defence should now accept. Nothing excuses it for refusing to act on the incontrovertible evidence now available.

In the past few months, all the facts have been produced, researched, documented and published in forensic detail. We know that without doubt the MOD was responsible for dumping the waste, and that it knew for nearly 25 years without telling us that there were safety issues and risks that should have been dealt with. We also know that if it does nothing to fund the clean-up, it will have legal obligations that it will eventually have to meet. It is surely time to bring this sad saga to a conclusion in the only way possible, and I hope I will not have to ask you, Mr Speaker, for a fifth debate before the responsible course of action is pursued. That responsible course is for the MOD to own up to the damage, to pick up the bill to get rid of the waste and clean up the area, and to do so as soon as possible. The patient and long-suffering residents of Dalgety Bay deserve nothing less.

Dalgety Bay Radiation

Debate between Gordon Brown and Thomas Docherty

Wednesday 6th March 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

I will come to that. It is incontestable—indeed, nobody disputes this fact—that about 50 years ago, radiation-contaminated materials were dumped in the Dalgety Bay area. Nobody disputes the fact, either, that in the past few years, 3,400 particles of radiation-contaminated materials have been collected in the Dalgety Bay area by scientists and others, who have seen coastal erosion bring many of these materials to the surface. Nobody disputes the fact that the safety risks associated with some of the finds are at a level that has made radiation experts increasingly worried. Indeed, five finds were above 76 megabecquerels, which, according to all radiation experts, constitutes a hazard that has to be dealt with.

The problem is that, even though we have all these finds and materials, the action that we have expected to be taken on Dalgety Bay is still to happen. Does the Minister agree that we need action and that the Ministry of Defence and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency should now agree that the previously identified programme of work should proceed as quickly as possible? The medical evidence says that action should be taken as quickly as possible, but the process of dealing with this radiation contamination has slowed down to the point where people are increasingly worried about whether the agreed timetables will be upheld.

As I have said, the reason why I have called for this debate is the medical evidence. If the Minister examines the medical evidence that has been provided to him and the residents of Dalgety Bay, he will see that the committee looked carefully at the health risks involved. Fortunately for the people in Dalgety Bay, the committee discovered that, although the radiation material was most likely to cause head or brain cancer, there was no higher incidence of those conditions in Dalgety Bay. It is also fortunate that, although rates of liver cancer are higher in the area, it is not usually identified with these radiated materials.

The committee said that there are three reasons why action should be taken as quickly as possible, however, and recommended the quick implementation of a remediation action plan. One reason was the long life of the discovered materials, which means that they will have a substantial life if nothing is done about them. Secondly, the committee was worried about the dynamic process whereby, as a result of coastal erosion, the materials were coming to the surface in Dalgety Bay and posing a health hazard to the population. The third reason is the size and scale of the materials. Not only have 3,400 materials been discovered and examined, but such materials are coming to the surface at a rate of about 1,000 a year. I suggest to the Minister that he must now take seriously the size, dynamic nature and long life of the materials located in Dalgety Bay.

I think that it was because of those things that the Ministry of Defence agreed in February last year to what was called an investigatory plan. The Defence Infrastructure Organisation agreed a timetable for action to be taken in the Dalgety Bay area. There was to be a review of the historical situation and of coastal processes. Then there was to be an investigatory report on the physical elements that made up the problem in the area. Then there was to be an assessment of that report, after which there was to be a review of the risks entailed. Then there was to be a set of options, which would be laid before us, on what needed to be done to remove the contamination. Then it was foreseen that there would be a plan that would deliver the area from the contamination.

That was set down clearly in a document that the Minister must have before him this evening: the investigation plan of the Defence Infrastructure Organisation. Unfortunately, that plan has not been observed. The coastal processes report, which was promised in October, did not arrive. By the time I called this debate, there was no indication that it would arrive. I understand that it was sent to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency on Sunday of this week, but it was five months late, at a time when we are asking that action be taken immediately because of the health risks in the area.

Work on the investigatory report itself was to have been finished in November; again there is work to be done by the Ministry of Defence, but that report is not yet available, even though it was promised by the end of January. The investigatory assessment has obviously not been done, because the investigatory report has not been completed. Many other promises have been made. We were told that between February and May, we would have the study of the options and the risk assessment work that had been done. We would then have the summary of what needed to be done as a whole, and an agreement on that. That timetable has now been completely disrupted by the failure to produce the initial reports.

I have to say to the Minister that it is the Ministry of Defence that is responsible for these delays. The coastal processes report is a Ministry of Defence report that is going to be put to the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. I see him looking at his civil servants. They will confirm that that is the case. It was agreed that the Ministry of Defence should do the investigatory report, not the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. Again, that has not been produced. It is now long delayed because of the Ministry of Defence’s failure to complete its work. The investigatory assessment was also to have been done by the Ministry of Defence and, as I understand it, that has not been done either. Next Monday, we have a meeting of the review group, the Dalgety Bay Forum, yet none of the reports except the coastal processes report seems to be available at this stage.

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

I congratulate my right hon. Friend not only on securing this debate but on the leadership that he has shown on this issue in his community. He will obviously be aware that Helen Eadie and Fife council are backing his calls for action. Does he think that the Ministry of Defence should listen not only to him, as a Member of Parliament, but to the council and to the local MSP, who are all backing his call?

[Mr Gordon Brown]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. This is a real problem.

I have a letter from the Minister of State, Ministry of Defence, the right hon. Member for Rayleigh and Wickford (Mr Francois)—not the Minister who is replying to the debate—in response to my raising the question of radiation. In his letter, the Minister says:

“Correspondence should be addressed to SEPA as the Agency, and not MOD”.

The Ministry of Defence has failed to produce the report. It has failed to produce the investigation. It has not yet produced the investigatory assessment. At the same time, many people regard it as the initial polluter. For that Minister to say to a Member of Parliament that correspondence should be addressed to SEPA as the agency and not to the MOD is an abrogation of the Ministry’s responsibility in this matter.

I put it to the Minister that if he was writing to the chairman of his local council or to a constituent who had raised questions about the health of constituents as a result of contamination identified with the Ministry of Defence, and if the Ministry had not produced the necessary reports, he would have to be very careful about telling the chairman of his council or any other representative official that correspondence on such a matter should not be addressed to the Ministry of Defence. I hope that he will apologise for that when he speaks this evening.

The problem is deeper, however, and that is why I have had to come back again to raise the matter in the House. What has been omitted over the last 18 months is this fiction: the Ministry of Defence has refused to accept responsibility for the contamination of the area. The Ministry has persisted in saying that it does not yet accept that it was the original polluter in the area. We have evidence on the website of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency:

“It is thought that the contamination originates from the residue of radium coated instrument panels from military aircraft…The radium used by the MoD was primarily in luminescent paints.”

Then we have the letter sent to me by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, which states:

“Works to identify other potential polluters at Dalgety Bay is continuing. However, to date, our investigation has not identified any other persons whom may have introduced the radium to the location.”

When this matter kicked off 18 months ago, the Ministry of Defence asked the Scottish Environment Protection Agency for a report and asked who was responsible. The agency was very clear indeed about who was responsible—the Ministry of Defence. The MOD chose not to accept this advice and it has been looking for landowners, developers, builders, residents and other participants in the area who might have been responsible for its pollution, but there is absolutely no doubt about it. It comes back not just to a legal responsibility, as I will show later, but a moral responsibility for the MOD to accept that it dumped the material in the first place, that the material is there because it came from MOD aircraft and that the pollution is the direct effect of having dumped it there. Refusing to accept responsibility is angering people in Dalgety Bay, with good cause.

Let me give a final reason why the Minister should stand before the House now and say that he will work closely with the Scottish Environment Protection Agency to get a remediation action plan under way so that work is completed by the end of the year. It is an irony that just at the time that the Ministry of Defence is refusing to accept responsibility for the contamination that exists in Dalgety Bay, a mile away at Rosyth dockyard, the MOD launched a consultation exercise two years ago and is examining whether the seven decommissioned submarines, four of them Polaris submarines, should be cut up and stored in the Rosyth area for years upon years. How is the MOD going to persuade the residents of Rosyth a mile away from Dalgety Bay that it should be entrusted with the safety and health of the local residents in decommissioning, breaking up and then storing submarines in Rosyth, when it cannot persuade the people of Dalgety Bay that the safety and health needs of the residents there are being taken seriously and it even refuses to admit its responsibility for the contamination while at the same time delaying the necessary remedial work?

I urge the Minister to be very careful in what he says to the House this evening about what the Ministry of Defence is going to do on this matter. He will say that the Ministry has tried its best, spent money on investigations and is monitoring the work. I well know the speech he is going to make, but the fact is that it has not produced the reports in time, not admitted responsibility for the pollution, not agreed the options for cleaning it up and not yet agreed to fund the remedial work.

The people of Fife county, whom I represent, have for years been servants of the Ministry of Defence. Rosyth dockyard and Rosyth naval base were set up 100 years ago, and 15,000 people work there. They refitted the ships and the submarines in war time and in peace time, and they have been loyal in support of the defence needs of this nation. They have done well by the Ministry of Defence; it is time that the Ministry of Defence does well by the people of Fife.

Dalgety Bay (Radiation)

Debate between Gordon Brown and Thomas Docherty

Wednesday 30th November 2011 Commons Chamber

[Mr Brown]

That was in 2010. I shall come to that.

I have had to call this debate because, despite a succession of approaches to the Ministry of Defence—letters, phone calls, a chance conversation with the Secretary of State for Defence, whom I acquainted with the issue—the Ministry of Defence has yet to instruct the necessary actions and agree that a plan for remedial work is prepared, funded and implemented.

Since 1983 I have been the Member of Parliament representing the community of Dalgety Bay. It is near where I grew up and went to school, and near where I live and where my children go to school, so I have been aware for many years of the history of the site and of the past dumping of materials there by the Ministry of Defence. Those came from Donibristle airfield, which was created in 1917, was opened, closed and then opened again, and when reopened became, like the nearby Royal Navy base, vital to the second world war effort. Even as late as 1959, when it was announced that it would be closed down as an aircraft repair yard, it employed 1,400 industrial and non-industrial staff.

In that time, disused aircraft, including aircraft dials, materials used for painting dials and other instruments, were broken up and dumped at Dalgety Bay. On that land houses were built and the sailing club was established. Since 1990 materials with some radioactivity have been detected at Dalgety Bay. In June that year, after environmental monitoring by Babcock, the owners of Rosyth dockyard, elevated radiation levels including the presence of radium 226, were found. At that time particles were removed. As was reported later, they were removed “as far as possible”, but since 1990 and at regular intervals, I and the local community council, headed by Colin McPhail, have pressed for regular monitoring of any potential threat to the safety of local residents and to reassure locals that we have consistently asked for surveys to be done, tests to be carried out and investigations to be made.

Until 17 October this year, no investigation that I have seen has yielded evidence of substantial pollution or danger. In fact, at the request of local people, the National Radiological Protection Board—now the Health Protection Agency—carried out surveys during May and June 1991, as it monitored the beach, and then in 1992, 1993 and 1994. It reported that it found only low-level contaminated material buried below a layer of soil.

That was followed in 1995 by a detailed risk assessment, commissioned from a multidisciplinary research team at the university of Aberdeen. Its purpose was to assess the implications of radiation contamination, to consider the level of risk to the public and to review the options for reducing the contamination, if that were necessary. The study found that the variations in the ambient radiation dose rate values were within normal levels and calculated that the highest ambient dose rate found at Dalgety Bay was only two thirds of that found naturally in the granite in Aberdeen.

When the inquiry team published their survey in 1998, they reported that radium contamination was present not as a layer in the sediment, but randomly distributed as particles. However, they found that the number of radiation particles found in the area surveyed was very small and, thus, the risk of coming into contact with such a particle was “very low”. They found that the risk of inhalation was also low and reported that skin contact with a particle for an extended period could produce a very small burn similar in nature and severity to a fire-ash burn, but concluded that the maximum fatal risk per year from inhaling or swallowing a radioactive particle to any user of the area surveyed was negligible; it was calculated as clearly

“less than one in a million”.

However, we rightly agreed that we would continue monitoring, and in 2006 SEPA compiled a report that concluded that further work needed to be done. It also highlighted the possibility of coastal erosion that might bring particles nearer to the surface, but said:

“The most probable effect of an encounter which lasts for a number of minutes is a skin burn. The chances of ingestion…is highly unlikely, around one in half a million per year”.

The common view locally was that during the break-up of some aircraft some of the redundant luminescent materials had been burnt, and it was likely that the resultant ash and clinker produced from burning were either buried or spread on the ground surface. It was reported:

“It is therefore possible that the action of burning of luminised dials can produce a diverse range of chemical forms”.

Since then, at our request and at the request of others, six monitoring surveys and three intrusive investigations were carried out by Entec over the course of 12 months, and they have found that the radioactive materials probably derived from a bed of ash material. But, as was reported,

“recontamination of the beach continued, indicating that either the ash horizon was not the only potential host material, or that”—

other—

“sources continued to be present…and continued to re-contaminate the beach.”

Of the 128 particles, 48 were recovered from investigations of the ash bed, 28 from clearance surveys of the beach and coastal path, and 51 from regular visits to monitor the area. These surveys made it clear that

“the data do not indicate a reducing rate of hazard recurrence…at the site.”

I should add that, also after our request, work was also commissioned over these years by the health board, whose study of data from 1975 to 2002 did not reveal any correlation between the location of the radioactive materials and the incidence of cancer. So until a few weeks ago none of these surveys revealed any substantial risk or out-of-the-ordinary levels of radiation. Many of them were carried out at the expense of the MOD, because it rightly recognised that this monitoring was its responsibility. But in mid-October, work done by SEPA dramatically revealed particles at a level of radiation 10 times that of any previous discovery and led to the decision by SEPA, after repeated contact with the MOD, that it had to take action in the weekend of 17 to 19 November to remove potentially dangerous items. This was work that, as the correspondence makes clear to me, the MOD was willing to instruct. However, unfortunately, it would not guarantee that it would immediately remove any items discovered or submit them for full investigation.

So on Saturday 19 November, without the help of the MOD, SEPA took action and removed what it reported to be

“a second potentially high activity source”.

It was

“five times greater activity than anything previously recovered”.

SEPA also reported that a

“second source was also recovered”

and that

“a third source was found at the surface”

and that required urgent action.

So the real issue here is that there needs to be agreement on a plan for remedial action, given what we know now about the radioactive materials on the site. In October, SEPA wrote to the defence industrial office asking for assistance in monitoring and for a plan of action to repair the site. On 10 November—I quote from its letter—the MOD said, astonishingly, that

“any suggestions that the Ministry should provide a plan of action is immature at this stage”.

On 24 November, SEPA again wrote to the MOD asking for a commitment to undertake appropriate remediation and

“the delivery of a plan”

with

“sufficient resources and funds to enable work to be undertaken”.

However, at the most recent meeting with the Dalgety Bay officials, the MOD was

“unable to commit to undertaking any remediation following site investigation”.

That has caused SEPA to say that unless there is a plan—not just agreed in principle but produced by the MOD—it will, in March next year, designate the site as contaminated and name the MOD as the responsible party

[Thomas Docherty (Dunfermline and West Fife) (Lab)]

My right hon. Friend is to be congratulated not only on securing this debate but on the dogged way that he has pursued this issue over a number of years. He will know that the beach is incredibly popular with his constituents and with mine. Does he agree that it is absolutely vital that the Ministry of Defence deals with this quickly so that our constituents can continue to enjoy this beauty spot?

[Mr Brown]

Yes.

We now have clear evidence that there is a radioactivity level higher than anything that has been seen before. We have a desire—indeed, a demand—locally for remedial action. The community council chairman, Colin McPhail, has said very eloquently that fears in the area need to be allayed. We have correspondence, which I have seen, between the two Government agencies, but it has failed to resolve the issues despite the urgency of the need for action. It is therefore necessary that I bring this matter to the House so that we can secure agreement on preparing and financing a remediation plan for the site.

Over the years, the MOD has funded work, including the removal of radioactive contamination from homes in the area, but the result of its work on those homes has never been disclosed. It has funded the permanent erection of signs to provide warning information to the public, but those signs now require updating. In 2009, the MOD undertook an investigation of the slipway area which recovered 100 sources of radium. The MOD analysed whether the inter-tidal area was itself the source of the contamination, but found that not to be the case. The MOD has agreed to fund three annual surveys and removal programmes at Dalgety Bay. However, SEPA believes that it has detected caches of contamination that MOD contractors may have missed. Through the re-monitoring that SEPA has done, significantly more sources of radioactivity have been found, and while the MOD contractor removed 33 sources, SEPA has removed 442 separate particles. Together with this large number of sources, the SEPA investigation has recovered four high-activity sources from the inter-tidal area of Dalgety Bay, and those are, at the highest levels, 76 times greater than anything previously reported. In the light of recent findings, SEPA now considers that any survey and removal at Dalgety Bay that was previously agreed is not enough. It believes that joint work is now required with the Health Protection Agency and that an urgent plan is required to repair the site.

The community that lives in Dalgety Bay and in the vicinity of Rosyth dockyard is a loyal and patriotic community whose patience and good will has been sorely tested. At one time, Rosyth dockyard and naval base employed 15,000 people and was the base for thousands of servicemen and women. Churchill rightly described Rosyth as the greatest defended war harbour in the world. Today, it is home to 1,500 workers who are building the new aircraft carriers, but the naval base that has been so important to the local economy has gone. The current proposal for Rosyth is that nuclear decommissioning work be done on nuclear submarines that are currently stored there. Ironically, at the very moment when the MOD is trying to persuade local people that their fears about any radiation from that nuclear source should be non-existent, it seems to be utterly slow to act on the removal of the other source of radioactivity, which is its responsibility. This is no way to treat loyal supporters of our armed forces and people who, having refitted the Polaris submarines at Rosyth, have lived with nuclear dangers for years.

It seems very strange that this country has been home to nuclear-powered and nuclear weapons submarines, nuclear power stations and experimental nuclear work at Dounreay, and yet we face the prospect, because of the inactivity of the MOD, that a small piece of land occupied mainly by a sailing club will carry the title of the only officially registered area of radiation contaminated land in the United Kingdom.

The damage to the area, the loss to the community, the disruption to local people, the reduction in property values, the loss of a public space where children can play and young people can sail are totally avoidable. That can be avoided by decisions of the MOD that should be announced today. I ask in this debate for a recognition of the Ministry’s responsibility to agree to develop and to fund a remedial action plan to clear up the Dalgety Bay site. The community council, among others, is right to demand nothing less, and, on behalf of the community I make their demands directly to the Minister this evening. I expect not only a full and comprehensive response but a decision to be announced this evening that the action that is necessary to draw up a remedial plan to clear the site at Dalgety Bay will be instructed by the Ministry of Defence immediately.