Lead-free solder and lead-free UKIP

The indispensable Richard North has highlighted the EU's move towards lead-free solder. His piece is well worth reading in full. Essentially the EU pushed through a Directive with no idea of the costs and benefits. The UK's Energy Minister, Malcolm Wicks, then played a shabby walk-on part by signing off a UK Regulatory Impact Assessment that was nothing of the kind.

Since the Directive was enacted, empirical evidence has come in - not from the EU, but from the US - where evidence has shown that lead in landfill sites causes no leaching problems at all. Furthermore, environmentally conscious campaigners claim that lead-free solutions are actually environmentally worse.

...evidence indicates that soldered lead, once inside landfills, does not leach out into drinking water, said Laura Turbini, a materials science faculty member at the University of Toronto.

Turbini has studied and tried to help diminish the impact of industry on the environment since the days of CFCs in refrigerators. Her presentations declare "humanity is off course" environmentally. She also strongly advocates recycling electronics. But she does not support lead-free.

"From cradle to grave," Turbini said, "lead-free soldering is not better for the environment." Replacements for lead solder cost more to mine and require more energy to use and produce.

Fern Abrams, director of environmental policy at IPC, praised European efforts in many environmental areas, but she raised similar points about lead-free solder. "It's an alleged environmental switch that doesn't have many environmental benefits," she said. In its overall impact on acid rain, strip mining and other concerns, Abrams claimed that lead-free solder gets worse grades in every area.

IPC's official position statement says: "All available scientific evidence and U.S. government reports indicate that the lead used in U.S. printed circuit board (PCB) manufacturing and electronic assembly produces no significant environmental or health hazards."

Furthermore

Ironically, though the EU initiated these worldwide changes, it lags behind other parts of the world in switching over. "Research within the EU has thus far remained fragmented and uncoordinated," says the EU's Web portal. "Japan, by contrast, is well advanced in its search for viable alternative technologies, and the USA is also making rapid progress."

Many European firms, said IPC's Hilvers, either don't understand the new regulations or are convinced they will get waivers.

Indeed, reports Richard North, "there are still many serious doubts about the reliability and suitability of lead solder substitutes, so much so that military equipment has been exempted". So that's one law for them, then.

For the rest of us, though, courtesy of this utterly mad EU legislation, we are to pay more for less reliable equipment, with an overall greater harmful impact on the environment.

Now it's only a couple of weeks since we noted Gunter Verheugen trumpeting his intention to roll back regulation. If that meant anything, he should be stopping this schoolboy legislation in its tracks.

Indeed, Commissioner Verheugen also pointed out that the EU can set standards for the world - and it seems to be Japan and the US who will benefit this time.

A UKIP colleague confirms that

The move to lead-free solder has been going on for years. Ten years ago, companies in the US and Japan were making the move to using lead-free solder for production soldering. It wasn't popular in the electronics industry, because it involved developing new fluxes, new solders, and special treatment for chip pins, shelf life for components was reduced, and the joints were less reliable. The Japanese were fast off the mark and patented most of the more obvious developments straight away. Part of the reason at the time was noises being made in the EU to curtail the use of lead solders. It was seen as part of a general trend for the electronics industry to be more environmentally aware. I'm not sure that there was any fundamental reasearch done into the problem it was supposed to solve anywhere, more an assumption that had to be gone along with.

In the case of the EU directive, the main intention is to stop high volume production electronics with lead content entering landfill. There are all sorts of exemptions for equipment that is low volume and really has to have sound joints, such as medical and military electronics.

The lead-free (geddit) party that is UKIP should grab this issue and publicise the sorry mess. Sadly all they managed on the party web site last week was a couple of announcements of UKIP rallies, which sound strangely old-fashioned events where a series of speakers emote at the converted and presumably everyone feels good afterwards. How much of this leaches out into the wider electorate? Probably less than the lead from a landfill site.

This is but one - if outstandingly appalling - regulation. The Business this week draws attention to British Columbia's successful deregulation programme.

By June 2004, there were 237,604 regulatory requirements in British Columbia, a decrease of 38% from the June 2001 total. The current target is for no net increase in regulatory requirements until 2007. This, again, is more than being met. By the end of 2005, there had been a further reduction of around 10,000 from the June 2004 amount. Britain can only imagine such success in meeting targets.

The writer compares the British experience.

Since 1997, the UK has seen a Better Regulation Task Force, a Regulatory Reform Act providing for Regulatory Reform Orders and Regulatory Impact Assessments, a Hampton Review of regulation, a Better Regulation Commission, a Better Regulation Action Plan setting out a “risk-based” approach to regulation, and now the Legislative and Regulatory Reform Bill. Countless millions have been spent on these initiatives.

But despite these grand ideas, regulation continues inexorably to increase. The Federation of Small Businesses notes that almost 900 new regulations have been introduced since 1997. The British Chambers of Commerce’s latest annual Burdens Barometer, published on 1 March this year, found that the cumulative cost to business of major regulations introduced since 1998, excluding the minimum wage, was £50bn (E73.4bn, $93.8bn). This means that new regulations alone have cost the average business an astonishing £11,750.

Want to know how to do it? The British Columbia Regulatory Reform Office helpfully lay it all out.

This is a natural issue for UKIP, the only party which can oppose EU regulation. Small businesses are particularly affected - and 99% of businesses in England have fewer than fifty employees.

But UKIP's present structure makes it hard to get new policies and initiatives adopted (Power Report, anyone?), and UKIP lacks specialist spokespeople on individual policy areas. Most of the pronouncements seem to be a couple of paragraphs from (inevitably) generalist MEPs, who then - a few weeks later - move on to something else. So themed campaigning is just a dream.

These are strategy issues. UKIP's titular leader has proved incapable of grasping them, and his colleagues in the leadership have not filled the gap.

UKIP is a political party waiting to happen - which this blog is trying to help. But no wonder the membership is leaching away.