Clause 8
Energy Bill
2:00 pm
Martin Horwood (Shadow Minister (Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Cheltenham, Liberal Democrat)
I am a little concerned about subsection (2). It may be following standard legal wording, for all I know, but I will be grateful for clarification on it. It says that
“it is a defence for the person”—
which I now understand can mean a body corporate—
to prove that due diligence was exercised to avoid committing the offence.
That becomes important because of the issue that I have raised before of the long timescales over which this is operating. If we are talking about decades, it is plausible that evidence of environmental damage or public health risk may only emerge over time. We are talking about serious issues: gasses that may prove very toxic to wildlife or potentially or mixtures of methane, butane and propane, I am not a chemist but if that was bubbling to the surface, I would not put a match near it. If we had a serious explosion or another environmental disaster resulting over long term from the operation of these facilities, and the body corporate was able to say that 15 years ago a completely different management operation had done due diligence at the time, what is the consequence of that? Who picks up the tab? Who picks up the liability for any damage done, for the clean up operation or for whatever would be necessary? Would it be the taxpayer? Would there be a giant loophole that allowed the company responsible to get away with the environmental disaster, if it were to happen?