Letter: UK takes lead in ozone regulations

Sir: Your report on the latest Nasa data on the ozone layer ('Ozone layer over Britain shrinks', 23 April) has led to letters expressing a range of opinions, including a misleading one from Chris Smith (26 April). Let me explain the Government's position.

Monitoring ozone layer depletion and interpreting the observations is an important but complex task in which the UK is fully involved. The Government funds two UK monitoring sites, whose observations are pooled with those from other countries to provide global assessments of the state of the ozone layer. The readings from those sites in January and early February, which were the observations referred to in the parliamentary answer that Chris Smith quotes, were still within the previously measured range for the winter.

The particularly low February ozone levels for the northern hemisphere as a whole became clear from the analysis of all ozone site data coordinated by the World Meterological Office (WMO), and this was announced by them on 5 March. The Nasa data, which also relies on the ground-based measurements for validation, give an even wider global picture revealing a trend back to the middle of 1992.

The WMO and Nasa reports both stress the uncertainty over the cause of the low ozone levels and point to a possible important role of the Mount Pinatubo eruption. Any such effect would be transitory and this needs to be included in assessing the adequacy of our current policy. My department's Stratospheric Ozone Review Group will be publishing an assessment of all the data collected in 1992/93 later this year.

This emphasis on careful scientific analysis should not be taken as meaning that the Government is complacent. The UK's role in securing the global action needed to tackle this global problem is recognised internationally. David Maclean and I played a leading role in the negotiations that led to the significant tightening of international controls in Copenhagen last November. And we have been pressing hard for the European Community to agree even tighter controls since then.

The Environment Commissioner said at last Friday's Energy and Environment Council that he hoped to submit a new regulation on HCFCs and methyl bromide in the next few days.

We shall be doing all we can to ensure that that regulation is adopted quickly, and that it incorporates the tightest possible controls that can be agreed.

Yours faithfully,

MICHAEL HOWARD

Secretary of State

for the Environment

Department of the

Environment

London, SW1

26 April