Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80
- 87)
TUESDAY 24 OCTOBER 2000
MR PHILLIP
WARD, MR
CHRIS MEGAINEY
AND MS
CATH SHAW
80. Are we going to get an EU Directive on composting?
(Mr Ward) Personally I hope not. It is very difficult
to see what an EU Directive would achieve. We believe the European
Commission do have ambitions in that direction, although they
have not yet made it clear what they think it might do, so we
are awaiting developments there.
81. I think Peter Jones suggested to us that
the Landfill Tax Credit needs to be £27 to give people a
kick up the back side. Is the Government giving any consideration
to giving this sort of long-term warning? The Strategy gives us
targets over the next 20 years. Would it not be logical to give
people a warning that the Landfill Tax Credit is going to get
to something significant over that same period of time?
(Mr Ward) That was part of the thinking in terms of
the introducing of the escalator.
82. That is pathetic, is it not, up to £15?
(Mr Ward) I do not necessarily agree with that, but
I do know it is certainly a common view in the waste industry
that a much higher level of Landfill Tax is necessary in order
to promote recycling. There is a dilemma buried in all of this,
which is, of course, that at the moment one of the sectors who
get most hit by the Landfill Tax are the local authorities. A
number of authorities represent to us that the cost of paying
the Landfill Tax is actually removing the resources they need
for promoting recycling. There is a sort of tension there, and
I flag that up. It is something that we obviously need to consider.
83. It is all right you flagging it up, but
we want the answers.
(Mr Ward) I hope to be able to give you one, but not
today, if I may. On the question of whether the Landfill Tax ought
to go up more significantly, we have asked the Advisory Committee
on Business and the Environment to consider this and make recommendations,
and I believe they have taken evidence from a number of people,
including Peter Jones. It may well be that their recommendations
will point in that direction. We look forward to their report.
84. Can I take you back to this target, or your
expectation that domestic waste will increase by 3 per cent? If
we were actually moving towards factor 4 and factor 10 and the
manufacturers really were significantly reducing the amount of
material in it, ought that not to be working in the opposite direction?
(Mr Ward) I absolutely agree. We are now trying very
hard to engage businesses in discussion about this. Indeed, the
Prime Minister is speaking this morning on the environment and
part of his speech, I believe, will address this question of resource
efficiency and the importance of industry getting to grips with
the factor 4 and factor 10 debate.
85. So what sort of target have you got for
that minimisation then?
(Mr Ward) We do not have an explicit target. We are
talking about reversing quite profound economic trends. The growth
in GDP has been more or less continuous since the war. There have
been one or two blips in recent years, but generally speaking
the trend has been upwards. What we have not done is found a way
of breaking the link between growth and waste. That is something
which we are starting to do. We published last week a number of
recommendations from the Advisory Committee on Consumer Products
and the Environment, which is beginning to get us into the debate
about how we take up with industry the question of life-cycle
costs of the products they make, and how products can be designed
so that they can be recycled more easily. I think we are at the
very early stages of this. Clearly, long before 2020 we have to
be making significant progress, otherwise the numbers become incredible.
It is difficult to see how we could cope with that level of waste.
86. It is all right saying "significant
progress." What is "significant progress"?
(Mr Ward) We have not formally turned our attention
to that.
87. Perhaps we can pursue that by letter. There
are one or two other questions I think, at this stage, we could
do with pursuing, but I think time means that we should finish
now and we will drop you a note. Thank you very much.
(Mr Ward) Thank you.
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