A LEGAL opinion on whether the European directive on nitrates should be applied differently in different parts of the UK was eagerly awaited by the National Farmers' Union, members from the North were told.

John Seymour, parliamentary committee chairman, told the North Riding and Durham County committee that counsel's ruling on whether the Government should be allowed to treat Wales and Scotland differently from England was due soon.

"The last thing I would want to do would be to expand the zones in Wales and Scotland," said Mr Seymour. "However, we don't think we should have 100pc in England and a target approach in Wales and Scotland. It is a UK directive from Europe and we believe they have to apply it evenly across the board."

Members at the meeting at Croft Spa Hotel, near Darlington, on Thursday of last week were aware that most of them would probably be in the 20pc exemption category under a target scheme, which they welcomed.

There was some concern that many farmers had replied individually to Government consultation on the directive before the NFU had made known its views.

"There is concern that a majority of farmers in England will accept the 100pc application as their first response, which makes the NFU's job more difficult," said Mr Seymour.

The Government had been very clever, sending out consultation documents on the second from last working day before Christmas, which did not allow organisations much time to debate and draw up responses, he added.

There was also strong feeling about the way zones were designated. "Instead of designating a whole catchment because one bit fails, they should go further down the river and designate the upstream area as clean," said Mr Seymour. "The clean water from upstream dilutes the concentration of nitrates further downstream."

Most EC member states failed to implement the regulations properly and, where they did, it was already having detrimental effects on farmers. In the Netherlands and Belgium several had to de-stock because of the directive, the meeting was told.

Richard Betton said: "English rivers are cleaner than they have been for 100 years, so we can't have got it all wrong."

Some members thought that levels of other substances, such as oestrogen, were much more damaging to the environment than nitrates and that the EC directive was based on flawed science