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Mr. Michael Fabricant (Mid-Staffordshire): Does my right hon. Friend agree that, just a few years hence,
political historians will look back to this day and say, first, that it was a landmark day, and secondly, that the Labour party was a group of Luddites? Labour criticised my right hon. Friend's announcements and doubted his integrity in communicating with private companies. Does he agree that it is marvellous that, on this very day, the Cable Communications Association has announced that schools will be able to give access to the Internet to all their children for just £1 per child per day?
Mr. Freeman: The House will welcome not only what BT has done, but what the cable companies have done in terms of supplying modern IT to schools. The more primary and secondary schools that are connected, the better.
Mr. Edward Leigh (Gainsborough and Horncastle): I welcome the statement, but a problem during the past five years has been that every hon. Member has been inundated by people whose lives have been wrecked by the inflexible computer technology and bureaucracy of the Child Support Agency. What worries me is that the very people who want to come into contact with government--an old-age pensioner at a local post office, a distraught ex-wife trying to get a CSA payment or a young labourer thrown out of work--are the very people who find it difficult to cope with these systems.
At the same time, government is being farmed out increasingly to agencies, there is a lack of parliamentary control, and all agencies are now required to have strict performance guidelines. I fear that, whatever my right hon. Friend has said, we will have fewer humans facing the public and more computers providing more inflexibility and bureaucracy, with the result that more people will be denied their basic human rights.
Mr. Freeman:
I am sure that my hon. Friend is wrong. He referred to the Child Support Agency, which I am afraid has, in its past practice, relied on several different sources of information. Computers have not been talking to computers--in other words, those affected by the legislation have received conflicting information at different times, without having someone to talk to personally. In a number of cases--particularly where the work of the agency has been removed to remote parts of the United Kingdom--ordinary citizens have been unable to talk to someone about their problems. We can and should embrace modern information technology without depersonalising it. Frankly, we can reduce, not increase, bureaucracy if we do it sensibly.
Madam Speaker:
I will allow the hon. Member for Mid-Staffordshire (Mr. Fabricant) to make a point of order to correct what he has said.
Mr. Fabricant:
I am grateful, Madam Speaker--you have anticipated my point of order. It was a slip of the tongue; the charge would be £1 per pupil per year.
Packaging Waste
4.14 pm
The Minister for Construction, Planning and Energy Efficiency (Mr. Robert B. Jones): I beg to move,
- That the draft Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997, which were laid before this House on 29th January, be approved.
I should start by putting the regulations in context. We need to obtain better value from our waste, in the interests of the environment, of United Kingdom competitiveness and of the consumer. That is the central objective of the Government's waste strategy. Our strategy, however, is particularly relevant to packaging waste.
Each year, we create 8 million tonnes of packaging waste, and--although it is the largest recyclable element in each of our dustbins--about 2 to 3 million tonnes of it goes to landfill. That practice is simply not sustainable. We cannot continue to divert ever more of our countryside to providing more landfill capacity. Landfill generates methane, which is a major contributor to global warming. Moreover, I think that all hon. Members know that the process of finding and planning new landfill sites is extremely difficult. I am particularly aware of that difficulty, because it is covered by one of my ministerial responsibilities.
Above all, it is important to harness the long-term economic benefits available from treating waste as a secondary raw material rather than simply as a costly liability. Therefore, the system that we are proposing has two principal objectives. The first is to implement the Government's challenge on producer responsibility for packaging waste. The second objective is to enable the United Kingdom to implement recycling and recovery targets in the European Community directive on packaging and packaging waste.
The producer responsibility challenge is about using the market to deliver an environmental objective, and requires that the price that the consumer pays should reflect a contribution to the costs of dealing with a product as waste. Producers have obligations to recycle and recover waste in proportion to the number of goods that they place on the market. In packaging, that obligation would create an incentive, first, to minimise the amount of packaging needed for the purpose; secondly, to ensure that one reuses packaging whenever possible; and, thirdly, to find more efficient and cost-effective methods of recycling and recovery--for example, by finding new markets for recyclate.
Broadly, by 2001, we are aiming to double the amount of packaging waste--paper, glass, plastic, steel and aluminium--that we recycle or recover. We are currently achieving about 30 per cent. recovery of packaging, and we need to increase that to 50 per cent.--the minimum
target set by the EC directive. As the United Kingdom has relatively little waste-to-energy capacity, we expect most of the recovery to occur through materials recycling.
Our initiative will bring real benefits to local communities, local authorities, voluntary bodies and everyone concerned with recycling. By 2000, we aim to have convenient and close-to-home recycling facilities for eight out of 10 households--in some cases through new kerbside schemes, and elsewhere through a big expansion in bank systems. The principal means of achieving that goal will be through collective business schemes, of which the prototype--Valpak--is well advanced. Valpak reflects a substantial commitment by more than 100 leading businesses which have subscribed to its start-up costs.
Mr. Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield):
Is not there a concern in the industry--which the Minister must have heard expressed very loudly in the past couple of months--that Valpak is okay, but that it is not yet up and running properly? It seems that some of the key players, especially those in the retail sector, are already leaving the Valpak framework, thereby threatening it. Unless those retailers can be persuaded to come back into the scheme and to support it strongly, it will not be possible to secure the objectives desired by the Minister, by myself and by everyone who is interested in the subject.
Mr. Jones:
I understand what the hon. Gentleman is saying; it is important to keep the retailers on board. There is every incentive for them to stay on board, because they could not deliver their part of the recycling targets on their own. They have to work co-operatively with someone. In view of the administrative overheads and the need to have the system up and running, it makes much more sense for them to stay in the Valpak framework, or whatever alternatives come forward, rather than to try to go it alone.
Mr. D. N. Campbell-Savours (Workington):
I have no doubt that the Minister has received correspondence from the Paper Federation. One thousand jobs in my constituency are wrapped up in the industry. The federation says that although it supports the scheme and wants it to work, it is worried that if things go wrong, there will not be an adequate review procedure. The federation says that it cannot necessarily wait two years if employment in the industry generally is being threatened. Can the Minister say something today that is helpful to the industry and which reassures it that the Government, of whatever persuasion--obviously my own people have views on these matters as well--will keep an eye on the industry and on employment within it, to ensure that the scheme is working properly and is not damaging areas of it?
Mr. Jones:
This is pioneering legislation, as no doubt the hon. Gentleman and the industry recognise. It is extremely important, therefore, that we keep the matter under close review and if necessary, make alterations. That is why the review process, about which I shall say something later, is part of the overall package. The hon. Gentleman talks about a period of two years. He should remember that we are talking about 1998 and that we are already almost three months into 1997. Bearing it in mind that 1997 is the year for the collection of statistics and
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