Why I'm taking my campaign to protect the public from pesticides to Europe

Britain controls pesticide use to protect animals, wildlife and the environment, but not for people. This has to change

Georgina Downs
guardian.co.uk, Monday 25 January 2010 11.22 GMT

For nine years I've been campaigning to get the government to take action to protect public health from pesticide spraying. Last July, the court of appeal overturned my case, making it only one of six court decisions to go in the government's favour. It did so as a result of bizarrely substituting my case, arguments and evidence with the conclusions of a government-requested and -funded report from 2005. That meant the majority of my witness statements were ignored by the court, and the judgment was not based on the same evidence that had led to my earlier landmark victory in the high court.
By substituting my evidence, the court of appeal judges fundamentally misrepresented my case. Their only explanation for ignoring my evidence was that I had "no formal scientific or medical qualifications". Yet this is completely irrelevant, and it would effectively mean an end to any citizen taking a judicial review case in the UK if the courts will not take any notice of the evidence presented by that citizen because he/she is not a qualified scientist or doctor. This is a highly prejudicial approach.
I have attempted to right this by appealing the judgment, but the supreme court refused me. That leaves me now with no option but to take my case to the European courts, as having come this far then I fully intend to exhaust all possible legal options in my attempt to get justice for those poisoned by the UK government's own policy.
To set the record straight, last week I published online the six witness statements that I produced for my legal case. Now anyone can see for themselves the true extent of the government's scandalous failure to protect the public from pesticides. My factual evidence, which is based on the government's very own documents, findings and statements, shows that the government has continued to allow adverse effects to occur in residents and others exposed, has knowingly failed to act, has continued to shift the goalposts, cherry picked the science to suit the desired outcome, and has misled and misinformed the public over the safety of pesticides sprayed on crop fields throughout the country.
Here's one example. In 2002, the government's advisory committee on pesticides (ACP) asked the government's pesticides safety directorate (PSD) to undertake new pesticide exposure estimates as a result of having recognised the realistic scenarios I had presented regarding exposure for residents living near sprayed fields. The result: the PSD, which receives around 60% of its funding from the agro-chemical industry, found 82 examples of safety limits being exceeded. Did the government take these results and change its policy and approach? No. Environment ministers, the PSD and ACP, all just carried on publicly asserting that the system was "robust" and provided "adequate protection".
The government has conditions of use for pesticides regarding the protection of animals, wildlife and the environment, but absolutely nothing for the protection of residents and communities. This has to change. How many more people have to suffer at the hands of this government's failure to protect its citizens?
The evidence I obtained for my legal case showed that the reason the government has so far refused to introduce mandatory measures for health protection is the costs of change to the industry and government. I am sure the general public would much prefer to see their money going on protecting human health than on fighting a six-year legal battle against a young woman who is simply trying to get the Government to protect its citizens, which is what the government should've been doing in the first place.
The government needs to get its priorities right regarding the protection of public health from pesticides, and fast.
• Georgina Downs runs the UK Pesticides Campaign