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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,
(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
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(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;
(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;
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(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. David Drew (Stroud): I am delighted to serve under your chairmanship, Mr. Griffiths. I shall be brief, because my hon. Friend the Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead) summed up neatly most of what I wanted to say.
I should like to add a couple of points about the moratorium on incineration, which is favoured by both Opposition parties. I do not understand the logic of the moratorium. I believe strongly that the move towards incineration is wrong; it arises for two reasons that are outside our control. First, it is the line that most of our fellow EU states have chosen. Being a tinge Eurosceptic, I am uncertain as to whether the desire to prioritise incineration over landfill exists because the majority of states have chosen to go along that route. If they had gone along the landfill route, we would have a different perspective on the most unacceptable way of getting rid of waste. I am sceptical when landfill is portrayed as the worst of all evils—it is an evil, but it is put over as the worst because that is helpful to other EU states, which find that position beneficial in the short run.
If my hon. Friend the Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) were here, he would be able to comment on the investigation of the Select Committee on Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, during which Committee members went to Denmark where, pleasingly, they have a differential tax system. They tax landfill most heavily, but they also tax incineration, which is something that we could learn from.
Norman Baker: I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman, who seems to be saying two things. First, he is saying that incineration should be even further down the hierarchy, in which case there would be greater justification for a moratorium. Secondly, he supports a tax on incineration: does he share my disappointment that such a tax was not included in yesterday's Budget?
Mr. Drew: I would like to go further in that direction. Until a strategy is put in place, however, it will be difficult to implement a tax regime. We have learned from the gruesome experience of the climate change levy that it is necessary not only to implement the tax but to win the arguments. Although I support the CCL, we must change people's consciousness, which has been difficult.
The obsession with incineration, which could be seen as the easy, simple solution in this country, has come about through decisions taken outside our control. I do not want us to go down that route. In Denmark, the great evil is landfill, and people's mindset is such that they do not want it near them and are happier to have an incinerator. The mindset in
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this country is very different. With the best will in the world, we can take a national position, but our devolved planning system makes it impossible to get planning permission for incinerators. It may be possible further to increase capacity where there is existing landfill, but, as I argued on Second Reading, landfill is an urban solution. It may have limited merit in urbanised communities, where, unless waste is exported, it is hard to remove the most difficult waste from the waste stream.
In conclusion, I believe that waste has must be dealt with at the level at which it occurs, which means households and, more particularly, local authorities. As long as the resources are made available, I would return the responsibility to local government, which has the planning means to exercise its right to oppose incineration. We do not therefore need a moratorium. Local government should also take responsibility for leading people to find better ways to dispose of rubbish or encouraging them not to create it in the first place. I feel very strongly about that.
Moratoriums do serve their purpose, and there is always a suspicion that they will make things better; but I do not think that a moratorium will make things better. It will simply delay our reaching the point at which we decide that we must use methods other than landfill and incineration to reduce and to remove waste.
I am not very happy with the various new clauses that have been tabled, although I understand why they have been. The Minister kindly came to my constituency, where people who are against incineration lobbied him. We should be honest and open with them and say that incineration is not the preferred method. Local authorities should be encouraged not to go along that route, which should be a clearly stated national strategy that is picked up locally.
Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle): I am delighted to follow the hon. Member for Stroud (Mr. Drew) and sympathise with several of his points. However, I did not follow why he could not support the new clauses tabled by the official Opposition and the Liberal party. I did not understand why he could not vote with us on this occasion for a moratorium on new municipal incinerators.
To summarise why we tabled the amendments, there is a signal lack of ambition in the Bill and that is a wasted opportunity. The Minister has made great play of the fact that the Bill is relatively narrowly focused—it does a specific job to do with landfill. I am sure that in its narrow focus it will be a good Bill, and all the better for having been considered by the Committee. However, the Bill lacks the drive, purpose and vision that are all too wanting in the Government's policy on the environment. As a member of the Environmental Audit Committee, I tell hon. Members that that is a recurring theme throughout the Government's approach to the environment.
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That lack is not due to a lack of trying on the part of the Minister, who is widely respected for his views and commitment on the issue. However, his reputation does not speak for the Government. During the Committee's proceedings the Minister has pressed us to trust his assurances that he is in earnest when addressing the problems of the waste hierarchy. However, the sad reality is that the Minister is unable to commit the Government in a way that many hon. Members and others would like him to. Although I do not mean it as a personal criticism, a totem of the Government's lack of commitment to the green agenda is the fact that this able Minister is not a member of the Cabinet. [Hon. Members: ''Hear, hear.''] I have flattered and embarrassed him and I am sure that that will not do me any good. If the Government were convinced of the need to put the green agenda at the heart of policy, they would have a Minister with such convictions in the Cabinet, yet they do not. Although I am sure that the Secretary of State is a safe pair of hands, she is better known for her love of caravanning than for her commitment to reducing carbon emissions. That must change.
When the Secretary of State last gave evidence before the EAC, she chided me for my youth, which I can do nothing about, although it will change over time. She said something like, ''When you were just a lad, Mr. Barker, I was, blah, blah, blah, working the system back in the 1970s.'' However, she had a point: our differences might be a generational thing. My generation and younger generations are more ambitious and want to see a more holistic commitment to the environment, but the Bill signally fails to live up to those hopes and ambitions. They are addressed in new clause 32, which proposes a comprehensive response to the need for a new, firm, statute-based hierarchy for waste. We need to minimise, reduce, recycle and compost more—there is cross-party support for that view. The issue boils down to whether we are prepared to give such a regime real teeth, statutory backing and resources.
Although the Minister has detailed several good initiatives and has worked hard over the years to bring forth various measures, a thicket of individual initiatives is no substitute for a single, holistic, thought-through programme, and it is unfortunate that we still do not have that.
The Minister has talked about new technologies and the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) mentioned new types of gasification and pyrolysis and exciting new technologies. They could create a new generation of incineration projects that will go a long way to dispel a lot of widespread and well-founded public fears about incineration. The reality, however, is that the Bill does absolutely nothing to address the need for those technologies or to incentivise their manufacture. Nor was there anything in the Budget yesterday to address the need to bring on such initiatives.
In responding to points about the huge incinerator building programme, which will double large scale incinerator capacity over the next few years, the Minister implied that the new generation of incinerators comprised only micro-projects,
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employing the very latest technology, but that is simply not the case. His own parliamentary answers show that the incinerators on the list would handle about 220,000 tonnes a year on average, resulting in increased capacity of 2.7 million tonnes a year. These are not small, community-based, cutting-edge technology plants; they are big, old-fashioned, large scale incinerators.
That is the situation in my constituency, and I have the same concerns and address the same problems as does the hon. Member for Lewes. The problem is that we must not only take people's rubbish from a long way away, but commit to doing so for up to 20 years, because of private finance initiative rules. Long after people in East Sussex will, we hope, have grasped the recycling and reuse nettle, there will still be a huge, insatiable demand for rubbish to burn in these huge plants. It may have to come from Kent, Surrey and London, and even from across the channel.
The Bill sends out the signal that we are starting to address the landfill issue, but that we are not prepared to do anything meaningful about the huge long-term threat of incineration. The 20-year contracts for huge plants make the issue urgent. We cannot wait for a review with no date attached to it or for the Treasury to get around to thinking about this; we need action now. New clause 32 gives us an opportunity to address the problem—here, today, in this sitting.
Nothing in the new clause should trouble anyone who is serious about the environment and who has thought through the problems of incineration; nothing in it should prompt profound concerns. It may not be perfect; indeed, I can vouch for the fact that it may not be, because I had a hand in drafting it. However, it is the best measure available. If the Government do not support it, perhaps they will support the relevant Liberal Democrat new clause.
There are two issues at the heart of new clause 32. One is the hierarchy—ensuring that everything that can be recycled or reused is removed from the waste stream before it goes to incineration. The other relates to fiscal measures; they are the most pressing issue and the most glaring omission from the Bill. The Bill will displace waste from landfill to incineration. The Minister can protest as much as he likes, but he is a lone voice on this issue. I doubt that a single major, credible witness in the environmental field would stand up and say that there will be no economic displacement from landfill to incineration as long as the Treasury fails to introduce new measures to address the economic imbalance.
It was, I think, the hon. Member for Stafford who took me to task for referring simply to fiscal measures, but I did so deliberately. I am not prescribing whether they should involve a tax, tax relief, a tax subsidy, a grant or an incentive, but we must address the fact that the new technology is making incineration cheaper, while landfill is becoming more expensive. Like flood waters, waste will not disappear. Putting a barrier on landfill will simply redirect a growing amount of waste towards incineration.
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