THE Three-Jewel Eunuch of the Imperial Palace in Peking, Admiral Cheng Ho,
took command of 37 000 men in 62 ships to sail west in 1405. His was the first
of seven missions that allowed the Chinese fleets to assert their hegemony from
Java to Somalia over the next thirty years鈥攏o small achievement. Among the
prizes of these expeditions were giraffes, taken back for the edification of
Chinese naturalists.

Cheng Ho was poised to become a sort of Chinese Vasco da Gama and discover a
new trading route to the Mediterranean, but politics intervened. Before long an
imperial edict had successfully suppressed maritime commerce under the Chinese
flag.

But why was Cheng Ho stopped in his tracks? You won鈥檛 find the reason in
Servants of Nature, a compendium of science history put together by Lewis
Pyenson and Susan Sheets-Pyenson. Cheng Ho鈥檚 absence is somewhat perplexing, as
the book鈥檚 scope ranges from early Islamic and Chinese observatories to the
evolution of the German doctoral system and the reception of Einstein鈥檚 theories
in India.

The authors claim to fly no philosophical, political or methodological
colours, but simply to be motivated by a belief that 鈥渉istory may help us see
clearly today鈥�, drawing on a great tradition in French scholarship that
celebrates history as a craft based on facts. The lack of overarching theory
results in a kaleidoscope of historical instances assembled as part of an
inquiry into science as a social activity.

The wealth of detail in Servants of Nature is extraordinary, but it
sometimes assumes a breathless quality and on occasion stuns the reader with its
banality (鈥淕utenberg鈥檚 invention took Europe by storm鈥�). At times it seems like
reading an interminable article in an encyclopedia for young teenagers, an
impression compounded by whole paragraphs of names and dates of birth and
death.

In any area where the reader has specialist knowledge this book is unlikely
to add to his or her store, but bringing so much together in such a compact and
mostly very readable form is a considerable achievement. What we now need is the
book of theory based on this cabinet of wonders.

Jokes about economists, like jokes about lawyers, may be unfair but often
contain a grain of truth. But does this hold true for economists鈥� contribution
to one of the big issues facing industrialised societies鈥攈ow we value our
environment? I don鈥檛 think so. What economists do is seldom accurate, but is not
necessarily useless.

The issue has received particular attention in Britain and the US, where cost
benefit analysis (CBA) is a legal requirement in many types of environmental
decision making, and where debate over whether CBA is appropriate has become
polarised. One side says that the environment will implicitly be valued at zero
without CBA; better, they argue, to use CBA as a weapon in the armoury of the
environmental movement than to ignore it. The other side claims that the
environment is beyond price. And that once you give it a price tag, that value,
however carefully defined, is vulnerable to political manipulation that
ultimately renders it meaningless.

A recent dispute over the Kennet, a chalk stream in southern England, would
appear to support the second view. Here, the Environment Agency wanted to
restrict Thames Water鈥檚 licence to pump water from nearby aquifers to alleviate
the problem of perceived low flow. It estimated the river would be worth an
additional 拢13.6 million as a result. But the adjudicating inspector
rejected this, valuing the total net benefit of increased flow in the Kennet at
just 拢700 000.

Such wildly divergent figures make CBA look silly. But the case shows that
the cause of the problem was not so much a disagreement over the size of the
price tag individuals might place on 鈥渘on-use benefits鈥� such as the beauty and
general ecological 鈥渉ealth鈥� of a stream. Rather, the difference revolved around
how many people would be concerned. The agency thought most people in the upper
Thames valley; the inspector said it would be just those in the immediate
vicinity. The agency got its figure from a study in which the river was just one
of several affected by low flow, and where enhanced flow was only a part of a
basket of environmental benefits for which people across the country said they
would willingly pay a small increment. Had the inspector taken account of this,
he might have ruled in the agency鈥檚 favour.

My point is not that CBA provides 鈥渢he鈥� answers鈥斺�漴eplacing voting with
shopping鈥� as some critics contend. It can only ever be an imperfect part of a
larger and more complex decision-making process, though it may improve that
process. And it can provide useful information that is unlikely to surface
otherwise. Take the notorious case of the Wynchester bypass at Twyford
Down鈥攐ne of Britain鈥檚 most controversial roads. If a CBA had been done,
the road might have been sunk in a tunnel instead of gashed through an area of
outstanding natural beauty.

Economics and CBA can help rationalise the means to achieving our ends, if
not the ends themselves. While seeking to shape wider social and environmental
values, greens should not altogether discard such a methodology. Rational
judgments can only be made on the basis of sufficient information. With
environmental issues the uncertainties will always be large but they will not
always be insurmountable. Environmental protection bodies need to have the
resources to be able to quantify in physical terms the benefits from a given
investment in environmental protection. It may not always be possible to make
credible monetary valuation of those benefits, but these bodies should be
prepared to undertake such valuations where, in their judgment, they would
clarify the issues involved.

Transport is now the fastest-growing source of CO₂ worldwide, and
about half of this pollution comes from cars. Road transport鈥檚 contribution to
CO₂ emissions in Britain increased from 14.8 per cent (23 million
tonnes) in 1985 to 20 per cent (30 million tonnes) in 1995.

There are two ways of dealing with this problem: use cars less, or ensure
that they run farther for each litre of fuel. With all countries predicting a
large growth in road traffic鈥擝ritain expects a rise of more than a third
over the next thirty years鈥攖he obvious way to stem emissions is to improve
the fuel efficiency of cars. Sharp increases in global petrol prices in the
1970s and early 1980s forced car makers to develop more economical engines. But
over the past decade, fuel efficiency has hardly improved at all
(see Diagram).

Car manufacturers admit that there is no technical obstacle. In most cars,
less than a quarter of the energy from the fuel is used to actually move the
vehicle. A study published by the OECD in 1993 concluded that with the best
available technologies, fuel consumption could be reduced by around 25 per cent.
鈥淎 stricter target is technically feasible,鈥� concedes Giovanni Margaria,
emissions director of the European Automobile Manufacturers Association (ACEA).
But to apply it to all new cars in Europe 鈥渋s unaffordable and unfeasible鈥�, he
says.

One for all

Most aspects of transport policy within the EU are decided individually by
member states. But the European Commission wants to tackle vehicle efficiency on
a European level. It is seeking a voluntary agreement with car manufacturers and
in December 1995, it proposed a target for reducing CO₂ emissions from
new cars that would lead to improvements in fuel efficiency of 40 per cent on
average. It took until last month for the manufacturers to agree on a target of
their own鈥攁nd it is less ambitious than the Commission鈥檚. The issue is
high on the agenda of European environment and transport ministers, who are
meeting in Chester this week.

The most serious obstacle to improving fuel efficiency is purely commercial.
Many manufacturers prefer to sell large and lavishly equipped cars because they
bring in higher profits than small, economical models. Few companies have tried
to promote fuel efficiency as a reason to buy a new car. Indeed, features that
increase fuel consumption, especially acceleration, often loom large in car
advertising.

Safety first

Another stumbling block is safety. Surrounding a car鈥檚 occupants with steel
can help to protect them in a crash. Some manufacturers have argued that
lighter, more fuel efficient cars are less safe. But Malcolm Fergusson, a senior
fellow at the Institute for European Environmental Policy in London, says new
designs mean that reducing the weight of a car does not necessarily make it less
safe. 鈥淏esides being far less fuel efficient, heavier, more powerful cars are
more dangerous to others.鈥�

A recent study by the OECD shows that most car buyers are not very interested
in fuel economy. In the US, consumers ranked it 15th in a list of criteria they
looked for in a new car. The Japanese were more likely to consider it before
buying, with Europeans somewhere in-between.

But this attitude could change with the price of fuel. Fergusson says that
consumers respond to fuel price rises by buying more efficient cars. In many
European countries, fuel costs less today in relation to people鈥檚 disposable
income than it has for years. Britain has been increasing tax on petrol by 6 per
cent a year since 1993. If this is maintained until 2002 it should result in a
roughly 4 per cent improvement in fuel economy, according to the Royal
Commission on Environmental Pollution. Steeper price increases have been
recommended by the Royal Commission and by the German Green Party, but
governments have shied away from introducing them, fearing they would be too
unpopular.

In the end, says Roger Higman, transport campaigner with the environmental
group Friends of the Earth in London, measures to restrict emissions from cars
are inevitable if CO₂targets are to be met. 鈥淥therwise Europe will have
to meet the shortfall through even stricter limits on traffic levels than are
now envisaged.鈥�

Technology could yet come to the rescue. In December, Ford in the US
announced that it was investing $420 million in an alliance with
Germany鈥檚 Daimler-Benz and Ballard Power Systems of Canada to produce up to 100
000 cars a year powered by hydrogen fuel cells by 2004. The companies intend to
derive the hydrogen for the cells from natural gas. This would reduce overall
emissions of CO₂ from vehicles by 60 per cent, and cut out most other
pollutants, including particulates, completely. 鈥淚 am convinced that the fuel
cell will leapfrog over gasoline and diesel vehicles,鈥� says David Hart, who
researches energy and environment policy at the Centre for Environmental
Technology at Imperial College, London. 鈥淔ord and Daimler-Benz don鈥檛 throw that
much money at things for public relations purposes.鈥�

If engine manufacturers are forced to accept CO₂ targets, more such
projects are sure to follow. The Commission鈥檚 proposal envisages that by 2008,
emissions from new passenger cars will average 120 grams of CO₂ per
kilometre. This equates to fuel consumption of no more than about 5 litres per
100 kilometres for petrol and 4.5 litres for diesel. New cars in Britain consume
around 8 litres per 100 kilometres, so this would be an improvement of 40 per
cent. The European Parliament and others have called for stricter targets or
faster action.

In its negotiations with the European Commission, the car industry has been
playing for time. Just before the last meeting of European environment ministers
in March, the ACEA made a last-minute offer to reduce CO₂ emissions
from new cars to 140 grams per kilometre by 2008. Environment commissioner Ritt
Bjerregaard, who had earlier threatened mandatory targets, welcomed this as
鈥渃learly an improvement鈥� over previous offers. The EU鈥檚 Council of Environment
Ministers is likely to agree targets and other measures when it meets again in
Luxembourg in June.

Critics of the European Commission鈥檚 strategy claim that improving fuel
efficiency does not necessarily lead to reduced emissions. They point to the US,
where the Corporate Average Fuel Economy scheme (CAFE) played a central role in
doubling the fuel efficiency of new cars between 1978 and 1985. Yet it failed to
achieve its ultimate goal of cutting oil imports because people were driving
more. Between 1973 and 1992, the number of cars on American roads rose from 126
million to 200 million. The average distance driven in each car also
increased.

CAFE, say the critics, has done nothing to influence overall consumer choice
towards more fuel-efficient vehicles, and the European Commission could be in
danger of making the same mistake. Making cars more efficient is one thing.
Getting people to buy them is quite another.

But the image is illusory. For the boats that catch the shrimps also unwittingly kill large numbers of baby marine turtles, which get sucked up in the catching funnels. The turtles are an endangered species, so to satisfy conservationists at home the US government has banned the import of shrimps from Thailand until the country forces its fishermen to fit their boats with turtle excluders-simple devices that filter out the reptiles.

But the excluders are expensive for local fishermen and the Thai government claims the US is restricting free trade. It has taken its case to the World Trade Organization (WTO), which was established on 1 January 1995 under the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) to settle trade disputes between the 103 signatory countries.

The so-called new world order has been dogged by such clashes. Countries that want to restrict trade practices that threaten the environment are being thwarted by others who claim the restrictions infringe their free-trade rights under WTO rules. There is now concern that even multilateral environmental agreements with provisions for trade bans, such as the Basel Convention on hazardous waste and the Montreal Protocol on ozone-depleting substances, could be undermined by the WTO.

Richard Sandbrook, executive director of the International Institute for Environment and Development (IIED), a research group in London, says: 鈥淚f country X wants to raise environmental standards, and those standards are ruled by another country in the WTO to be anti-trade, then country X must reduce those standards. There are not the forces at the moment to solve these very fundamental problems.鈥�

Next week some attempts will be made to resolve the conflict between free trade and environmental protection when politicians and environmentalists meet at a special session of the UN General Assembly in New York for a review of what has happened since the first Earth Summit in Rio in 1992. 鈥淔ive years ago trade, aid and the environment were off the agenda because of the upcoming Uruguay round [of GATT negotiations, which ended in 1994],鈥� says Sandbrook. 鈥淣ow they are on the agenda.鈥�

There are, in theory, provisions in the GATT for countries to make exceptions to free trade on the grounds of environmental protection. For instance, countries can ban the import of products that will harm their own environments, providing the standards applied do not discriminate between countries or between domestic and foreign producers. The WTO鈥檚 Committee on Trade and Environment was set up in 1994 to 鈥渋dentify the relationship between trade measures and environmental measures, in order to promote sustainable development鈥�.

But critics claim that these provisions have not worked. Charles Arden Clarke, a senior policy analyst with the World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) in Gland, Switzerland, says that the WTO is too secretive and panders to the interests of its most influential members. Its power to adjudicate on questions that it deems to be within its remit is almost absolute, and it makes crucial decisions affecting environmental protection without having the necessary expertise.

Meanwhile, he says, the management of international environmental affairs is confused and incoherent, with a dozen UN agencies, the secretariats of various treaties, the World Bank, regional political groupings and 180 countries trying to coordinate their various responsibilities. Making environmental protection compatible with sustainable development is one of the goals of the UN Commission on Sustainable Development (CSD), set up at the 1992 Earth Summit and charged with implementing its aims. But, says Arden Clarke, 鈥渢here has been no political will and no resources for the CSD to act鈥�.

At next week鈥檚 Earth Summit II, the WWF will lobby for the creation of an independent panel of experts on trade and sustainable development to fill what it sees as a vacuum of expertise on these issues within the WTO. The WWF has already set up a panel of academics, supported by nine governments including Japan, Norway and Sweden, as well as the European Commission which it says could be used as a model for the new body. The panel has so far produced two reports on the international trade in timber and textiles which analyse, among other things, how foreign investment and technical assistance affect sustainable development.

The politics of protection

Disputes over environmental barriers to trade-such as the Thai shrimp impasse-often pit developing countries against the industrialised world. The reasons are as much political as commercial. The GATT was set up after the Second World War to prevent governments from adopting short-sighted 鈥渂eggar-thy-neighbour鈥� trade policies that would benefit small, special-interest groups at the expense of everybody else. The key was free and open trade, but despite much rhetoric, many countries pursued elaborate strategies to protect domestic producers.

The most conspicuous abuses, say analysts, were by rich, powerful OECD countries. GATT negotiations became highly politicised, with many developing countries suspicious of any proposal put forward by an OECD nation. So when in the 1980s rich countries started demanding anti-trade measures to protect the environment, developing countries saw these as just another form of protectionism. They pointed out that industrialised countries achieved their economic prosperity when there were few, if any, environmental restrictions, and to deny developing countries the same opportunities would be hypocritical.

One area of concern to developing countries is eco-labelling. Some countries, in particular India and Egypt, claim that eco-labels in OECD countries-which single out environmentally sound products-could become significant barriers to trade and disadvantage their small and medium-sized companies.

Although some environmentalists claim that free trade and sustainable development are mutually exclusive in poorer countries, others say the two goals are perfectly compatible. A study on the greening of trade by the IIED and the UN Department of Policy Coordination and Sustainable Development, published this month, shows how producers in developing countries can benefit from sustainable consumption 鈥渙ften ahead of regulations or consumer demand鈥�.

For example, following a German ban on certain azo dyes, which contain chemicals that may cause allergies and skin cancers, Century Textiles in India has started producing azo-free fabrics and has won certification from Eco-Tex, a research group whose eco-labels are recognised by retailers in Germany, Austria, Denmark, Sweden and Switzerland. Eco-Tex labels have increased the value of Century鈥檚 products by 10 to 15 per cent in these countries. Overall sales have grown by 15 per cent in a year.

Meanwhile in Swaziland, the company Fridge Master has linked its phase-out of ozone-depleting substances with a green marketing campaign and has trebled sales of its improved refrigerators in South Africa. And in Chile, which is the largest fruit exporter in the southern hemisphere, a consortium of fruit farmers has started to use organic production methods, increasing its foreign sales 400-fold between 1992 and 1995.

Nick Robins, a lead author of the IIED report, says there are plenty of other examples 鈥渙f goods already being made by developing countries that have broad environmental advantages鈥�. The potential for employment and prosperity, he says, is clear. 鈥淭he seeds of a long-term vision of change in production, consumption and trading patterns have emerged.鈥�

Crossing the barrier

There is some cause for optimism that multinational environmental agreements can be made to work under the WTO. For example, the experts who drafted the Montreal Protocol went to great lengths to build the treaty around the GATT鈥檚 keystone principle of non-discrimination between domestic and foreign producers. Countries that failed to sign the protocol and lacked the technology to use non-ozone depleting substances were not automatically subject to sanctions. Instead, a fund was set up to aid technology transfer to less advanced countries.

Even though a black market in CFCs has emerged, on the whole the Montreal Protocol is judged to be a success. The same applies to the Basel Convention-although an agreement banning from 1998 the export for recycling of hazardous waste from OECD to non-OECD countries may prove contentious. So far no disputes over multilateral agreements have been brought before the WTO, and at its ministerial meeting in Singapore last December the organisation said a conflict was 鈥渦nlikely鈥�. However Douglas Brennan, senior environmental council with AMP Incorporated, the world鈥檚 largest manufacturer of electrical and electronic connection devices, says that 鈥渁 dispute is possible, [and] this uncertainty is unsettling to many鈥�.

Dan Esty, a professor of environmental studies at the Yale Law School, who was among the first to highlight the incoherence in the international management of environmental affairs, says: 鈥淭he WTO has proved itself to be relatively ill-equipped to deal with these issues.鈥� He believes his idea, first suggested in 1993, for a global environment organisation that would coordinate all international environmental affairs as part of a reformed and streamlined UN is now more relevant than ever. 鈥淭o manage the basic economic system you have to have a mechanism to manage the externalities.鈥� Without an environmental body to run in parallel with the WTO, he says, 鈥渨e risk having an incoherent economic system鈥�.

What is certain is that the scope of the WTO, with its narrow focus on the expansion of trade, must be widened. John Gummer, Britain鈥檚 former Secretary of State for the Environment, warned this month: 鈥淎 WTO that is not properly in the context of world environmental responsibility is an organisation for disaster, not for improvement.鈥�

Apart from the social implications of these figures, they create a practical
dilemma that is uniting builders, planners, environmentalists, local authorities
and politicians: where will the new homes be built? 4.4 million households will
need an estimated 169 000 hectares of land, an area larger than the county of
Surrey.

The government wants at least 60 per cent of the houses to be built on
derelict or polluted sites in towns and cities. Some claim that such a target is
unrealistic鈥攖here are simply not enough empty urban sites. Others believe
it is achievable, but only with financial and political incentives that the
government so far shows no signs of giving. The technologies to clean up dirty
sites and make them habitable do exist, but without encouragement planners may
choose cheaper options, such as building on virgin land, and a great industrial
opportunity will be lost, they claim. Tom Cairney, an independent consultant on
contaminated land, says: 鈥淯nlike the US or Netherlands, we have no government
support for field trials of new techniques of remediation for our soils, nothing
to prove bench-scale tests in pilot field studies.鈥�

The UK Round Table on Sustainable Development, a body of independent experts
who advise the government, has called for an even more ambitious target than the
government鈥檚 60 per cent. And environmental groups want stronger assurances that
the countryside will be protected from overdevelopment.

Tony Burton, head of planning and natural resources at the Campaign for the
Protection of Rural England, describes the government鈥檚 approach to the building
of new homes as 鈥渄isappointingly cautious given the startling new evidence of
the threat to rural England from new housing development. A much more ambitious
target for urban housebuilding is feasible and necessary.鈥�

The environmentalists have found allies among those local authorities,
particularly in the Southeast, most concerned about the envisaged scale of rural
development in their vicinity. But they have also found support in industry.
Peter Ellis, managing director of British Gas Properties, commissioned his own
research on England鈥檚 unused urban sites. 鈥淲e did a pretty thorough round of
academics, planners and others and concluded there was at least half a million
acres [about 200 000 hectares]鈥攅asily enough for the 4.4 million new
homes,鈥� he says. The government abandoned its own plans for a national register
of contaminated land in 1995.

Remediation of contaminated soil is a 鈥渞apidly developing technology and a
fast-growing market鈥�, according to RPS Consultants, an economics research
company. That market was worth 拢600 million in Europe in 1996, it says,
and is projected to increase to around 拢900 million by 2000. The Royal
Commission on Environmental Pollution, which advises the government, says the
proportion of land reclaimed with state grants that was converted for housing or
industry increased from 27 per cent in 1982鈥�88 to 44 per cent in
1988鈥�93.

And the range of site-cleaning technologies has increased dramatically.
In the past, removing contaminated soils or capping them were the most effective
ways of dealing with them. But removal and capping have several disadvantages.
For instance, disturbing the soil may increase the risk of groundwater becoming
contaminated. Transporting it may be hazardous for workers or residents near the
site, and may cause damage at the final disposal site. There are now effective
methods of treating the soil in situ. On old landfill sites, for
example, engineers can trace the source of a methane leak by tracking carbon
isotopes. Pipes are installed to collect the gas, which is burnt.

The full treatment

Other methods include solidification, in which a binder such as cement is
used to secure the soil in a solid medium in order to reduce the solubility and
mobility of contaminants. This has been used successfully with soils containing
heavy metals. Other physical processes are used to isolate or concentrate
contaminants rather than destroy them. These include electrokinetics, in which a
voltage is applied to the soil and the contaminants are collected at the
electrodes. Bioremediation is increasingly used to treat organic contaminants.
Bacteria cultured to thrive in the presence of certain chemicals are used to
digest the pollutants.

Most of these technologies are readily available but are between two and 10
times more expensive than removal or capping. Critics say that they are not yet
being widely enough applied. Cairney claims the government supports only a 鈥渢iny
fraction鈥� of reclamation projects, and monitoring of the rest is minimal. Local
authority environmental health officers are expected to check that standards are
met but, says Cairney, many of them are not qualified for the job. As a result,
much is left in the hands of individual developers, and standards of reclamation
on neighbouring sites with similar levels of contamination often vary
enormously.

The Centre for Research into the Built Environment at Nottingham Trent
University agrees. It has warned the Royal Commission that the monitoring of
site remediation in Britain is 鈥渧ery poor indeed and would be considered
unacceptable in the US, Holland or Germany鈥�.

So, the risk that houses may be built on land that has not been properly
cleaned threatens to undermine the government鈥檚 ambitions for regenerating
derelict urban sites. To remedy this, it wants to give local authorities more
responsibility for ensuring standards are met. The 1995 Environment Act placed a
new duty on every local authority to inspect its area from time to time to
identify contaminated land, and take action to ensure that such land is made
鈥渟uitable for use鈥�.

The government says its aim is to prioritise remediation of the worst cases.
But critics say the 1995 Act fails to properly address other equally important
concerns. For instance, it defines contaminated land as that liable to cause
鈥渟erious harm鈥� to humans, habitats, buildings or livestock. But assessing and
demonstrating the risk of harm is notoriously hard to do. The Royal Commission鈥檚
1996 report on the sustainable use of soil stated that it can be 鈥渧ery difficult
to establish whether there is scientific justification for concern about health
effects in a particular case鈥�.

Consultants in the industry say local authorities also need more funding to
ensure that clean-up standards are met. At a conference earlier this month
organised by the Forum on Contamination in Land, which consists of local
authorities, developers, lawyers and academics, David Cuckson, a partner at law
firm Stephenson Harwood and a member of the UK Environmental Law Association,
told delegates that 鈥渢he effectiveness of the new contaminated land regime will
depend to a considerable extent on the resources available to the enforcing
bodies鈥�. Without proper enforcement, the clean-up would be hamstrung.

Tax incentive

There are other ways in which the government could encourage the use of soil
remediation technologies and thus help to make them cheaper. Lucy Findlay of the
London-based Environmental Industries Commission, a trade association of
Britain鈥檚 environmental technology industries, would like to see developers
forced to pay a landfill tax for dumping contaminated soil. 鈥淚f contaminated
soil were subject to the tax, developers would look toward using remediation
迟别肠丑苍辞濒辞驳颈别蝉.鈥�

There is disagreement over how much contaminated land is available for
building. Some experts claim the government鈥檚 60 per cent target is
unrealistically high. Peter Hall, chairman of the Town and Country Planning
Association and professor of planning at University College London, says most
cities will run out of recyclable land 鈥渟ometime between 2006 and 2011鈥�. And, he
adds, many residents of cities will object to their few green spaces being
filled in.

Environment secretary John Gummer says the predicted boom in numbers of
households should be seen as a chance to achieve higher quality, higher density
redevelopment in the inner cities. But without further incentives, such as in
tax concessions, that chance is in danger of being thrown away. 鈥淭he drafters of
the 1995 Act have done a remarkable and ridiculous thing,鈥� says Cairney. 鈥淭hey
have, by their own admission, left the meaning of many of the more telling
phrases, on risk assessment and liability and so on, open to interpretation by
the courts. They have given up the battle before they have started, and few
except the lawyers will benefit.鈥�