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Mr. Gummer: Does the hon. Gentleman share my concern that it is all very well to say that we must not put waste down holes or decide to put sewage sludge in the sea or to spread it on the land, but not if we then say that we must not burn it either? The truth is that waste--some of which, such as sewage sludge, is unavoidable--has to be dealt with. Does he accept that it is not responsible to spread fears in such circumstances? He should be telling his constituents that if some form of waste treatment is necessary, he will insist, and try to ensure, that it is safe. He should not be frightening people, because we have to find a way to deal with the problem.
Dr. Turner: I do not disagree with the right hon. Gentleman. If he is under the impression that I wish to spread fears about the installations, I apologise, because that is not my intention.
No matter how successful we are in recycling waste, we also need to reduce it. We do not pay enough attention to that. We over-package to a vast extent, and that accounts for a large proportion of our domestic waste stream. None the less, however efficient we are in recycling waste, such as by making compost, there will still be a residue--perhaps in the order of 25 per cent.--that cannot be recycled, and needs to be disposed of in another way.
We are running out of landfill sites. It is unfortunate that policy guidance, which stems from the previous Government and has been continued by this Government, says that waste must be disposed of locally, because we cannot contain waste in that way. It is a regional and national issue, and we do not make enough use of our national landfill resources. For example, the enormous brick pits in Bedfordshire could take much more of the nation's rubbish than they do. The waste disposal authority in my constituency does not have any holes in the ground, and could not land-raise--which I would not want it to do anyway, because it is a barbaric practice.
We must find a way of disposing of the residuum, so we must consider incineration. I say that with reluctance, and before the public will accept it, we have to demonstrate its safety. That is my point. The Environment Agency has the main role there. It could do a great deal to satisfy people's understandable fears. It is not me who has put the frighteners on concerning waste incinerators. People are already frightened, and I am trying to address those fears.
Mr. Bill O'Brien: I am listening carefully to the incinerator scenario. Has my hon. Friend ever thought of recycling waste to generate heat and power? Surely that is the way forward.
Dr. Turner: That is precisely what we are talking about. I am not disagreeing that that process may have a legitimate role; that is not the point. The point at issue is that we must be sure that it does not result in emissions that are a danger to public health. That is the only point that I am trying to make.
Mr. Gray: I have been listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman and finding his comments very stimulating. However, I am puzzled by the position that he is taking. He seems to be saying that Brighton, Kemptown has no room for landfill, that land-raising is not possible there, and that he does not want the incinerator in his constituency--although he has slightly modified the latter point--but that Bedfordshire, or perhaps, my constituency, would be fine. "Not in my back yard, thank you very much." Given the perfectly sensible constraints that he is describing, such as ensuring that emissions are safe, it is surely up to his constituency to accept a jolly great big incinerator. Will he come clean by telling us whether he wants an incinerator in his constituency?
Dr. Turner: The simple answer is that nobody wants an incinerator, but it must go somewhere. Nobody wants a landfill site, but some residuum may have to go somewhere. I am not advocating that everybody immediately rushes their waste to Bedfordshire. I mentioned it only because it already has massive brick pits--which form some of the ugliest landscape I have ever seen--that are used for landfill.
Let us remember that if we recycle as much as we should, we are left with last-resort disposal. Even if we use incineration for disposal of the non-recyclable content of the waste stream, there will still be a residual ash that must be disposed of. We will never be able to avoid landfill totally. My point was that we have some
legitimate landfill resources. Some counties have it in massive quantities, while in other areas there is none at all. However, so long as we insist on excessively localised waste disposal, we can never as a nation make the best use of our opportunities. I am not saying "NIMBY", and that we should force things on somebody else, but we must approach the issue from a rational point of view.I return to the main thesis of my speech. The Environment Agency is the body in which our best expertise rests. It is the body to which we should be able to look to provide a rationale for our approach to many of our environmental problems. To ensure effective environmental protection, we need to do more than we are doing at the moment to clarify its role and its relationships with other agencies.
11.23 am
Mr. Andrew Rowe (Faversham and Mid-Kent): One of the most interesting elements of this debate is that the Government have hardly been mentioned. Yet, if one looks at the limits on the Environment Agency's capacity to become the champion of the environment, one must also look at its relationship with the Government. I have taken three points from the Government's response to the Select Committee's report.
First, the Government state that, in fulfilling its role as the champion of the environment and sustainable development, the Environment Agency must
- have regard to guidance from the Government.
The second point from the Government's response is that any disagreement with them must be discussed before the agency takes a public stance. In other words, before the Environment Agency says that it thinks that some element of Government policy is misguided, it must be subjected to all the arm-twisting of which the Government are quite capable. I wonder again how independent a champion that would make the Environment Agency.
On the vexed question of the Environment Agency's recommendations, especially about the danger of building in areas that are liable to flooding, the Government state that an
- appeal may reach a different view on the balance between flooding and other material considerations.
Although in many ways I am happy to allow the consideration of the Lamberhurst farm application for a land-raising site in my constituency to remain undecided for as long as the authorities like, because it is an obscene proposal, we have nevertheless been waiting for the decision for months and months, and it might be time for them to say one way or the other. I know which way I hope the decision will go.
The relationship between the Environment Agency and farming has been raised in several different contexts. I have no clear picture of the Environment Agency's powers in relation to farmers' growing habit of ploughing into their fields the plastic with which they have covered their strawberries or other crops. Unless that is done extremely well and very deeply, fields are littered with little bits of plastic, which blow everywhere and are very unattractive. It would be interesting to know whether the Environment Agency feels that it has powers in that respect.
Mr. Gummer: Is my hon. Friend aware that there was a scheme to collect and recycle such plastic, but that it collapsed? Should not we have asked the Environment Agency why it did not play a more proactive part in ensuring that something was done about that? The question is not one of damage, but that the material could properly, and without too much difficulty, be recycled.
Mr. Rowe: I am grateful to my right hon. Friend, who knows far more about this subject than I shall ever know. I agree that the Environment Agency needs to look carefully at the growing use of plastic in British farming.
As is sometimes said, I have seen the future and it sucks. I sat next to a farmer at the Marden fruit show. He is developing hydroponic horticulture at speed and with a degree of success. The flavour of the strawberries, herbs and so on that he gave me to taste was wonderful. I, who had always thought that hydroponics meant flavourless produce, was dumbfounded. Although that gives enormous hope to an industry that is otherwise on its knees and about which, as far as I can see, the Government care very little, it means huge expansion in the use of plastic in agriculture. If the Environment Agency does not take the matter on board and deal with it properly, we shall all be losers.
One issue that has arisen from this debate, about which I feel strongly, is that the Environment Agency should have strong views on the design of new houses, to which we should pay a great deal more attention. Let me give one, rather trivial, example. If, in the plethora of rebuilt or brand-new kitchens that are created every year, there is only one, undifferentiated waste bin, a busy housewife--or householder--will, in the preparation of the evening meal, scoop all the waste into the same bin. If the presence of three bins in the kitchen units made doing so easy, it would be perfectly possible, without much effort, to differentiate the waste. A great many people in Britain would like to do more to differentiate their waste, but not if they have to create three separate heaps of plastic bags and carry them out individually in the pouring rain. The idea that one should build on a flood plain the sort of house that one would build in Bromley or Chislehurst is absurd. It is time that builders took seriously the notion that the danger of flood damage can be designed out of some of the houses that they build.
The report is extremely useful and I congratulate the Committee and its Chairman on it. One of the implications of the report and in the speech of the hon. Member for Denton and Reddish (Mr. Bennett) is that there is a conspiracy among householders to conceal from potential purchasers the fact that the house might flood, and that such risks must be made clear to such purchasers. There is little sympathy for householders. Fortunately, the worst of the flooding did not occur in my constituency,
but that does not mean that I do not acknowledge the human misery that it caused or that I am unsympathetic to those who suffered it.My constituency borders on that part of the Maidstone constituency that has suffered flooding five times this year, three times in the past two months. Yalding, which has always been known as the sump of the Weald, has appeared on every television newscast as one of the places where houses have been flooded repeatedly this year. The people who live in those houses have to suffer not only the great misery of flooding, but huge anxiety about their insurance and their insurance status. I read that the big insurance companies, such as Norwich Union, are being leaned on by the Government and are spontaneously deciding not to create a welter of uninsurable properties, but there is no doubt that the premiums that they will demand and the way in which they will handle the problem are a major issue. I hope that the Government will provide strong assurances that people whose houses have been flooded repeatedly will not be made pariahs by the insurance industry. It they are so treated, the Government should give serious consideration to schemes of the sort operated in Florida and California, in which the Government take some share of the liability.
The vast majority of the houses in Kent that have flooded are not brand-new houses built by idiot builders on flood plains; many date from the 17th, 18th or 19th centuries and stood for hundreds of years without sustaining serious damage. All the changes about which we have heard so much in the debate--changes in agricultural practices and the creation of enormous areas of hard-standing which means that water cannot run off or does so far too fast and cannot be safely channelled--have made older houses vulnerable in ways that are no responsibility of their owners. Householders in that position are not only to be pitied for the horror through which they have passed in the past few months, but for the great damage that has almost certainly been done to the value of their largest asset.
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