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New clause 11
Strategies for incineration: Wales
'.—(1) The National Assembly for Wales must have a strategy for assessing the environmental and health impacts from incinerators.
(2) The National Assembly for Wales will set out in legislation:
(a) that all currently operating incinerators will begin continuous monitoring of dioxin emissions;
(b) that waste disposal authorities must produce waste strategies that do not require the building of new incinerators.
(3) Before formulating policy for the purposes of subsections (1) and (2), the Assembly must—
(a) consult the Secretary of State, the Scottish Ministers, the Department of the Environment and the Environment Agency,
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(b) consult such bodies or persons appearing to it to be representative of the interests of local government as it considers appropriate,
(c) consult such bodies or persons appearing to it to be representative of the interests of industry as it considers appropriate, and
(d) carry out such public consultation as it considers appropriate.
(4) The Assembly must set out in a statement any policy formulated for the purposes of subsections (1) and (2).
(5) The Assembly must, as soon as a statement is prepared for the purposes of subsection (4), send a copy of it to—
(a) the Secretary of State,
(b) the Scottish Ministers, and
(c) the Department of the Environment.'.
New clause 12
Strategies for incineration: Northern Ireland
'.—(1) The Department of the Environment must have a strategy for assessing the environmental and health impacts from incinerators.
(2) The Department of the Environment will set out in legislation:
(a) that all currently operating incinerators will begin continuous monitoring of dioxin emissions;
(b) that waste disposal authorities must produce waste strategies that do not require the building of new incinerators.
(3) Before formulating policy for the purposes of subsections (1) and (2), the Department must—
(a) consult the Secretary of State, the Scottish Ministers and the National Assembly for Wales,
(b) consult such bodies or persons appearing to it to be representative of the interests of local government as it considers appropriate,
(c) consult such bodies or persons appearing to it to be representative of the interests of industry as it considers appropriate, and
(d) carry out such public consultation as it considers appropriate.
(4) The Department must set out in a statement any policy formulated for the purposes of subsections (1) and (2).
(5) The Department must, as soon as a statement is prepared for the purposes of subsection (4), send a copy of it to—
(a) the Secretary of State,
(b) the Scottish Ministers, and
(c) the National Assembly for Wales.'.
New clause 32
Moratorium on new municipal incinerators
'The Secretary of State shall introduce a moratorium on the building of new municipal waste incinerators until—
(a) each responsible local authority, either directly or indirectly by cooperation with other stakeholders, can provide for the separation and recycling of domestic waste where it is economically viable;
(b) all local waste management strategies conform to standardised national waste management criteria, which will be specified by the Secretary of State, which can be met through various ways according to local conditions, which should ensure:
(i) extraction or recycling of metal;
(ii) removal of organic and other green waste to produce compost;
(iii) recycling of paper and card;
(iv) recycling of wood;
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(v) recycling of colour separated glass, or, where colour separation is impossible, recycling as cullet for road building etc.;
(vi) recycling of certain plastics;
(vii) minimal transportation of waste to keep traffic and pollution levels down;
(viii) recovery of energy from those forms of waste which it is economically nonviable to recycle, given the inferior quality of the recyclate;
(ix) lower energy costs to the locality for energy supply from the local recycling plant—probably only viable with new developments;
(x) high quality and regular monitoring of the facility to ensure continued safety to the local community; and
(c) the Government has introduced fiscal measures which act as a disincentive to incineration and encourage reuse and recycling.'.
Mr. Wiggin: That Division was a mere squeak, Mr. Amess. It is a shame that we did not manage to persuade the Government to accept the helpful waste hierarchy. The amendment seeks to crystallise the waste hierarchy by the addition of the word ''or''. It is not a huge amendment but it seeks to separate materials and energy recovery from biogas reduction, composting and recycling. In that small way it seeks to raise the lower echelons of the waste hierarchy. It would have been better if waste minimisation and reuse had been inserted before recycling, but that would have merely completed the plan. What I seek to do is clear from the small amendment, and I hope that the Minister will accept it.
Norman Baker: I thank the hon. Gentleman for attempting to insert the word ''or''. As he will have noticed, it fits in nicely with amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 and is essential to their success. Without that word my amendment would be incomplete. I thank him for working together with me on that.
This group of amendments deals with incineration, and I suspect that, in many ways, most members of the Committee feel uncomfortable about where the Government are going. I have little confidence that the Government strategy, as set out at present, will limit incineration. I believe that it will lead to an inexorable rise in the number of incinerators across the country, which I, and most people in the Room, would wish to avoid.
Amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 seek to delete ''or energy recovery'' from subsection (3). My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford and I tabled them simply because we do not wish energy recovery to be put on the same level as the other listed alternatives—recycling, composting, biogas production, materials recovery and so on. The Government have a hierarchy, as we discussed before we adjourned for half an hour. The Minister said that the hierarchy need not be mentioned in the Bill. He said that it exists outside legislation. He said that there is a strategy. Yet when it comes to referring to alternatives, which he must do when he refers to a strategy, he does not explicitly put those within a hierarchy. They are lumped together.
The way that the Government strategy is unfolding and the way that the Bill will operate, both through the implementation of the landfill directive and the existence of the landfill tax, will make landfill the
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least attractive option. I hope that the hon. Member for Stroud is interested in this point. He raised it on Second Reading and elsewhere, but I do not think that he is. I am quite happy that the Government have rightly taken action to put landfill firmly at the bottom of the waste hierarchy, but one must ask what steps the Government have taken to make waste minimisation the most attractive option, reuse the second most attractive option, recycling the third most attractive option, and incineration the least preferred option of the four.
Gregory Barker: Zero.
Norman Baker: The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle is right. I have seen no attempts by the Government to seek to minimise incineration, although the Minister makes the point regularly when pushed. When I asked him about incineration he said:
''I have already said that the Government do not support any significant expansion of incineration.—[Official Report, 6 March 2003; Vol. 400, c. 945.]
That is his policy, and it is one with which we all concur. Unfortunately, it is not the reality. Only four days later, in a parliamentary question, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test asked
''how many waste incinerators are planned by waste disposal authorities; what the capacity is of each incinerator planned; and what information she collates on the contractual arrangements for waste disposal.''—[Official Report, 10 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 6W.]
That is a thoroughly proper question. The Minister, who had said beforehand that the Government did not support the expansion of incineration, listed a page of incinerators that were coming on line. Clearly, his wish to minimise incineration is not borne out by reality—there are incinerators all over the country. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test, in his excellent, forensic analysis on Second Reading, gave a clear indication of why it is almost inevitable that incinerators will pop up and down across our land. I hope that he will speak in this debate.
6 pm
Mr. David Kidney (Stafford): A company in my constituency is very successful in making energy converters—small engines that burn biomass very efficiently with gasification and pyrolysis. The hon. Gentleman refers to incineration as though it is one process—he seems to have in mind the giant, static incinerators of which there are a few in the country. Does he draw any distinction between those and the energy converters of the kind that I have described?
Norman Baker: That is a very relevant point and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it. There is a case for small-scale incinerators for specific local purposes. For example, incineration might be appropriate for farms, which face particular difficulties. Incineration is the flower that will grow and cast a shadow over everything else. It will extinguish the sunlight from other options and ensure that they do not see the light of day. That is because a waste disposal authority, in considering its options, is limited to 35 per cent. landfill. It has to make up the huge gap.
Recycling in this country is, as the Minister said, pathetic. The Government set strong and difficult
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targets for recycling in ''Waste Strategy 2000''—33 per cent. of household waste and a waste recovery target of 67 per cent. by 2015. They were right to do that in the context of the country's generally pathetic performance in recycling, reuse and waste minimisation.
As a consequence of the Bill, local authorities will be obliged to meet strong targets at an early stage or face penalties. I do not disagree with the philosophy—they should face penalties if they cannot meet targets—but what are they going to do? Are they going to say, ''We agree with this; let us try to meet our targets by recycling, reuse and waste minimisation. There is a scheme involving one small firm here and a voluntary organisation there''? They will not do that. They will say, ''We have a major problem in meeting the target in the short time before a penalty kicks in. The only way to do it is by incineration.''
That will be the logical conclusion of authority after authority around the country. Many are reaching it now. They are planning for incineration in East Sussex, in Surrey and elsewhere. As soon as recycling is mentioned, authorities opt with their feet and their cheque books for incineration now. That is what is happening. I am afraid that an explosion in incineration is inevitable.
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