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5.40 pm
Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test): My speech will be in shorthand. The hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) suggested that I had decimated the Government's arguments on the Waste and Emissions Trading Bill. I interpret that in the Roman sense—that nine of the 10 Government arguments stood after I had finished my speech.
Although the changes that the Waste and Emissions Trading Bill proposes are important and supportable in instituting a trading mechanism to decrease landfill, as matters stand, landfill will probably be replaced by incineration. The survey of local authorities that I conducted—it is on my website—suggests that by 2012, approximately 78 per cent. of the population will live in areas where waste disposal authorities undertake total or partial incineration. Incineration will double rather than remain the same if nothing further is done. There are several instruments, such as an incineration tax and separation of waste collection, that can deal with the matter.
However, I do not envy the task of my hon. Friend the Minister because it involves not only managing the waste mountain but reducing it radically. That will require radical measures. Even if incineration is avoided, a recent report by the south-east regional assembly suggested that, by 2025, approximately 192 large material recycling facilities—MRFs—and 92 new composters will be needed in the south-east alone. Will
they get planning permission? That they may not is due not simply to NIMBYism but to the use of brownfield sites for housing and industrial development. That is important in the south-east, but it removes the ability to place waste management facilities in those areas. Some form of assistance may be needed to ensure that local authorities get planning permission and find the sites for the facilities if incineration is to be avoided. I hope that the Minister takes that seriously into account in his future strategy.5.42 pm
Mr. James Gray (North Wiltshire): I congratulate the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) on being telegraphic and none the less conveying a couple of useful messages. The debate has been especially interesting, well informed and balanced, with interesting speeches from Members of all parties. I hope that hon. Members will forgive me if I do not refer to all the speeches but lump them together. One of the advantages of such a debate on a Thursday afternoon is that we can speak from knowledge and, to some extent, wisdom.
I congratulate both Select Committees on their excellent reports, which are timely, hard hitting, seminal and, in some respects, worrying. I look forward to the Minister's inaugural outing, at least in this part of his portfolio, and his response. I suspect not only that his speech this afternoon will be important, but that the Department's formal responses will constitute important documents. Sometimes such responses are lightweight, but I hope that the Department will take the opportunity of answering the points in both Select Committee reports in some detail.
We all agree that the Government's waste strategy is not working. That is not a party political point. The Environmental Audit Committee report states:
- "The UK's waste mountain, already large, is growing."
- "Until now, the Government has been too timid in its waste management policy . . . Despite warm words from Defra ministers, the Department does not seem to have a real sense of where it wants to go".
More and more waste is produced and far too little effort is being expended on its minimisation. There is no real commitment to recycling—lip service is paid to it, but there is no real financial commitment to it—and the landfill sites are overflowing. The truth is that the country is getting dirtier and dirtier.
I call on the Minister to acknowledge the scale of the crisis, and to acknowledge that the Government's waste strategy is, so far, clearly failing. I hope that he will come up with a few answers this afternoon and tell the House what they are going to do about this. After all, if we do nothing, we shall face large EU fines. I would rather see the taxpayer's money spent on achieving solutions than on paying out fines to the European Union for not doing so. Quite frankly, given the way that we are going at the moment, there seems little chance of achieving the EU targets.
The Government love targets, whether they are achievable or not. It is instructive to note, however, that the one target that they have not yet set is for waste minimisation. There is no point in working out wonderful strategies for getting rid of waste without attacking the root cause of the problem and doing something about waste minimisation. Most of the Government money made available for the national waste minimisation and recycling fund has gone into recycling; very little has gone into waste minimisation. We must find a way of persuading householders that they can do a great deal more to cut back on waste. Companies are doing that to a degree, although more education is needed, but householders have very little incentive to minimise the amount that they are putting into their dustbins. The Government must do more to encourage waste minimisation.
It is also important that we should do a great deal more recycling and recovery. The Government's record on recycling so far is a disgrace. The average increase in recycling of 1 per cent. per annum means that they stand absolutely no chance of achieving their target of 25 per cent. recycling by 2005–06. Like my hon. Friend the Member for Salisbury (Mr. Key), I congratulate Wiltshire county council on the work that it is doing, and on the very successful programme that it has brought in. A number of other county councils across the nation—controlled by all three political parties—are doing similar good work, and I congratulate them on that.
There is still not enough being done, however, and the Government are not giving people enough incentives or help in that area. We need to find ways of increasing recycling. I congratulate the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock) on getting her Municipal Waste Recycling Bill out of Committee more or less undamaged, and I hope that the Minister will reassure us that the Government will not put any blockage in its way when it comes back to the Floor of the House for its remaining stages.
A number of hon. Members have reminded us of the diminishing availability of landfill, and of the ever-increasing use being made of it. Of course we all approve of the landfill tax; it is a useful initiative. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Suffolk, Coastal (Mr. Gummer)—whose special adviser I was at the time—on introducing it. It was a most useful idea, and I am glad to be able to claim a tiny part of the credit for it.
David Taylor (North-West Leicestershire): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Gray: I fear that I do not have very much time. If I may, I shall rush through a few more points like a butterfly hoping to pollinate two or three of the flowers on which I land.
The landfill tax will only work, however, if it changes human behaviour. It will be no good if it simply becomes a cash cow for the Treasury and the money goes to hospitals and schools. It must be designed to change human behaviour, and that can occur only if the size of the tax goes up at a reasonably speedy rate. However, that must not be allowed to happen at the expense of small and medium-sized businesses, which might be unable to afford it. The Government have said that the
landfill tax is to be revenue neutral; they also said that about the energy tax. We want to know how they are going to achieve that, as we have yet to hear how they will change the tax system so that the increase in the landfill tax will become revenue neutral. I regret that the landfill tax credit scheme has disappeared. It was particularly useful for all kinds of splendid local environmental schemes, such as those involving village halls. Simply using the money for things that the Government and the taxpayer would normally fund seems quite wrong. I am a strong supporter of the landfill tax credit scheme.I want to hear from the Minister what he intends to do about hazardous waste. A real worry is that there has been a sharp increase in the number of things that are going to be counted as hazardous waste. Televisions, oil, fluorescent lights and discarded vehicles are among the 400-odd things shortly to be listed. However, the number of sites that will be allowed to be used for hazardous waste is to decrease from 184 to only 14 by the end of 2004. So there will be a sharp increase in what may be considered hazardous waste, but a massive decline in the number of sites that we can use. The animal by-products regulations will affect that to some degree, which means a sharp increase in agricultural waste going to landfill.
The Minister knows that, earlier this afternoon, we raised the issue of why the ash from the 250,000 tonnes of beef that will be burned as a result of the animal by-products regulations has to go to landfill when human ash from crematoriums can be scattered on gardens if that is what we want.
A number of Members spoke about the problems of incineration. My instinct is to be very worried about it indeed and to hope that some moratorium, or at least some limit on its increase, can be put on it. There is a natural incentive: if people do not want to use landfill, they will go for the next cheapest option, as the report says, which is incineration. That would be particularly worrying. It will be interesting to hear what the Minister has to say about that, although these remarks do not apply to energy-from-waste schemes, which are to be encouraged in every possible way.
The reality is that we face a severe crisis in our waste management strategy. The Select Committee said, in straightforward terms:
- "We are concerned that Defra still appears to lack the capacity, the vision, the sense of urgency and the political will to break the mould and bring truly sustainable waste management to this country."
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