APPENDIX 6
Memorandum submitted by the Environmental
Services Association (G9)
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
— ESA welcomed the establishment of
DEFRA and the appointment of Margaret Beckett as the Secretary
of State after the General Election in June 2001;
— furthermore, we welcomed the leadership
displayed by the Secretary of State in convening the Waste Summit
and announcing the Waste Study by the Performance and Innovation
Unit;
— however, DEFRA's Aim and Objectives
gave no priority to delivering the Government's National Waste
Strategy, or to developing more sustainable waste and secondary
resources management;
— ongoing delays—notwithstanding
regular offers of assistance from ESA and our Members—in
drafting the regulations implementing the Landfill Directive have
resulted in ESA's Members and the Environment Agency operating
in a regulatory vacuum;
— ESA believes that this is symptomatic
of the UK's poor record in implementing EU legislation relevant
to the industry we represent;
— ESA believes that some of DEFRA's
difficulties are self-inflicted and that the Environmental Protection
Group in DEFRA is under-resourced at a critical time in delivering
the various national and international obligations on waste and
the environment.
BACKGROUND
1. ESA is the sectoral trade association
representing the UK's managers of waste and secondary resources.
Our industry accounts for 0.5 per cent GDP and would, if HMG created
the right framework, be investing up to £1 billion annually
in infrastructure for the indefinite future to enable the UK to
comply with the EU Landfill Directive and other relevant EU law.
2. ESA wants to build the industry's future
not on rising quantities of waste but on managing more waste as
a resource by returning more of the materials and energy contained
therein back to the productive economy. To ensure compliance with
the UK's existing legal duties, ESA's Members are willing to invest
very substantially in infrastructure. This would help to convert
waste management into resource management, thereby contributing
towards the UK's Sustainable Development Strategy and a more resource
efficient economy.
3. ESA was encouraged by the words of the
Prime Minister at the CBI/Green Alliance conference in 2000, when
he said he wished "to push green issues back up the political
agenda . . . and do it in constructive partnership [with] government
and business." He also outlined the "need to use environmental
resources more efficiently and to become a low-carbon, recycling
economy." ESA immediately—and publicly—supported
this vision.
4. Furthermore, the PIU report, Resource
productivity: making more with less, identified waste policy as
the next biggest environmental challenge facing the UK after climate
change. The generation and disposal of waste is closely linked
to resource productivity. Recycling, composting and energy recovery
displace the use of finite primary resources and are alternatives
to landfill as a means of managing waste.
5. As DEFRA is the lead Department in delivering
the Sustainable Development Strategy, it is essential that the
sustainable management of waste is given due profile within the
new Department. This can only be achieved by ensuring full funding
(which does not necessarily mean public funding) of the National
Waste Strategies to ensure their delivery and the timely and effective
implementation of EU legislation governing waste management.
SPECIFIC COMMENTS
6. Historically, waste has never had a focus
within the Government which properly reflects the UK's role as
a leading Member of the EU or as a Country with ambitions to be
a global player in environmental services. Until the appointment
of the current Secretary of State, there had been too much unhelpful
posturing rather than genuinely concerted effort to deliver more
sustainable management of wastes. ESA had hoped that the publication
of Waste Strategy 2000, in May 2000 by the then DETR, would lead
to the step change necessary to enable the UK to extract more
of the material and energy contained in waste. However, ESA has
since been exasperated by the paucity of achievement of deed relating
to a strategy which was long on aspiration.
7. The creation of the DEFRA after the General
Election in June 2001 appeared to provide a greater focus within
the Government for environmental issues, and ESA welcomed the
appointment of The Rt Hon Margaret Beckett MP as Secretary of
State.
8. The new Secretary of State signalled
her intentions when speaking to the Green Alliance/ERM conference
in October 2001. As well as the announcement of the Waste Summit
and the Performance and Innovation Unit's study into waste strategy,
ESA was particularly encouraged by the Secretary of State's realism
in identifying the need for an integrated strategy for managing
waste, and her acknowledgement that the Government's leadership
is an essential component of delivering greater sustainability.
The key driver for the evolution of the industry represented by
ESA is, after all, regulation.
A VISION FOR
DEFRA
9. ESA believed that DEFRA's Aim and Objectives
did not have the correct balance between the different functions
of the new Department.
10. In September 2001, ESA responded to
the consultation on DEFRA's draft Aim and Objectives. We agreed
with some of what was contained in the document, but our response
expressed disappointment and a feeling of déja" vu.
Given the imperatives of EU law and our industry's critical role
during the Foot & Mouth emergency—work which had involved
intensive co-operation with both MAFF and DETR—it was a
particularly remarkable lacuna that waste management was so strongly
de-emphasised. For clarification, our response to that consultation
is attached at Annex 1.
11. None of DEFRA's proposed seven draft
High-Level Objectives referred to waste or secondary resource
management. While one of the seven Objectives did refer to promoting
sustainable management of natural resources, this appeared to
envisage primary rather than secondary resources. ESA's remit,
0.5 per cent of GDP, was covered by 29 words in one note to one
Objective.
12. DEFRA's proposed definition of sustainable
development made no reference to resource efficiency or developing
the use of secondary resources, unlike the definition adopted
by the Department of Trade and Industry.
13. The document contained no reference
to implementing the Landfill Directive!
14. There was no reference to the Government's
own National Waste Strategy!
15. ESA was not encouraged by the draft
Aim and Objectives document to hope that the internal balance
of power within DEFRA would cause sufficient resources to be devoted
to developing waste management into resource management.
16. It's document signalled more "New
Department, Old Agenda" rather than the "New Department,
New Agenda" claimed in the consultation title.
17. The omission of our industry and the
delivery of sustainable waste management from DEFRA's document
also matters because the consultation document made it clear that
DEFRA's money will follow DEFRA's Aim and Objectives. Although
there was a subsequent announcement of the PIU study into waste
strategy, this omission was potentially serious at a time when
Government Departments were preparing their bids to the Treasury
for the forthcoming negotiations on the three year Public Spending
Round.
18. The UK leads the way in tackling climate
change, which is the most important environmental challenge facing
the planet. However, despite waste rightly being identified as
the second most pressing challenge after climate change6, the
UK recovers less of the material and energy contained in waste
than comparable EU Member States. This is unacceptable for a Country
with the fourth largest economy in the world and is a source of
intense frustration to our industry which wants to be enabled
to do much better and whose leading Members have for some time
been doing better in other EU Member States.
TRANSFER OF
THE ENVIRONMENTAL
PROTECTION GROUP
TO DEFRA
19. Little seems to have changed since the
transfer of the Environment Protection Group from DETR to DEFRA.
Both the Waste Policy and Waste Strategy units remain under-resourced
to deliver the diverse and complex work programme surrounding
the management of waste and secondary resources. This has manifested
itself—to give just one example—in chronic delay in
preparing the Landfill Regulations to implement the Landfill Directive,
which was effective from July 2001. At the time of writing the
Regulations have just been laid before Parliament and will be
implemented approximately a year late.
20. Some requirements of the Directive take
effect on 16 July 2002. The regulated industry represented by
ESA and the Environment Agency as regulator have been operating
to the requirements of the Landfill Directive for the last year
in the absence of implementing regulations.
21. Ours is an unusual industry in that
we fully recognise that rigorous environmental regulation is the
primary driver to help us to move the emphasis of our industry
from linear waste management towards closed loop resource management.
To be compelled to operate in a regulatory vacuum at such a crucial
time is extraordinarily perverse. While we have good relations
at the most senior levels of DEFRA, at operational levels we have
detected no evidence of comprehension of the commercial havoc
wreaked by DEFRA's modus operandi. We have repeatedly tried
to help. For example, we agreed in January to seek to broker suitable
secondments to DEFRA: as at the date of this paper, we still await
DEFRA's guidance on the procedure we should follow to ensure that
the Secretary of State could demonstrate that both parties are
seen to comply with appropriate standards of probity.
22. Again, ESA's Members are willing to
invest in the infrastructure necessary to deliver the UK's national
and international obligations. However, this investment has been
stifled in the absence of the implementing regulations for the
Landfill Directive: it could be reckless to invest without regulatory
certainty. Regulatory uncertainty surrounding the implementation
of the Landfill Directive has resulted in the closure of two of
the UK's four high temperature incineration (HTI) plants, one
as recently as March 2002, reducing UK HTI currently operating
annual capacity from 165,000 tonnes to 105,000 tonnes. Again,
this is an extraordinarily perverse outcome to inflict on an industry
which is exceptionally willing to help the Government to deliver
compliance with relevant legal duties.
23. Five of the leading waste management
companies in the UK operate elsewhere in the EU as well as in
the UK. The regulatory climate in these countries typically provides
far greater certainty than does that in the UK. Therefore, they
have been able to invest in new treatment technologies. For example,
Germany has a far more prescriptive approach towards the management
of hazardous waste: this enables their hazardous waste management
industry to determine capacity requirements and to programme investment
with far greater certainty.
24. It is essential that DEFRA takes the
responsibility of creating the right framework in which our industry
can operate and invest. We do take on trust the current Secretary
of State's positive indications. It is not her fault that the
National Waste Strategies remain essentially unfunded, and that
regulation is still, if anything, pushing waste management down
rather than up the waste hierarchy.
25. Notwithstanding the efforts of the PIU
study into waste strategy, we fear that, without a stable group
within DEFRA to maintain and enhance the political weight given
to the management of waste and secondary resources, the current
unsatisfactory state of affairs will continue. ESA is concerned
that the Environmental Protection Group is under-resourced and
also that staff turnover is high and that vacancies within the
group are extremely difficult to fill. For example, it has been
brought to our attention that there was not a single applicant
for the last senior post dealing with waste within the Environmental
Protection Group, and that in recent weeks two further key members
have left the team. Quite apart from the fact that ESA and our
Members deserve better, this state of affairs simply does not
reflect the obligations to which the present Government has committed
the UK within the EU.
DELIVERING THE
UK'S FUTURE
OBLIGATIONS
26. The UK needs DEFRA greatly to enhance
the political weight attached to waste management, and again,
we have repeatedly and warmly welcomed the leadership demonstrated
by the Secretary of State since taking up her position. Waste
and secondary resource management is a national challenge requiring
responsible political leadership from all partners and political
parties and we support any political leaders who rise to this
challenge.
27. However, the obvious under-resourcing
within DEFRA has been further demonstrated by the difficulties
now being faced by local authorities in managing end-of-life refrigeration
equipment following the Government's failure to anticipate fully
the implications of the European Council Regulation No. 2037/2000
on substances that deplete the ozone layer. It is clear that there
remains a lack of strategic focus within the Government where
the management of waste and secondary resources is concerned and
problems will continue to arise if DEFRA fails, in the secretive
way inherited from its predecessor Department(s), to rise to the
challenge.
28. The EU is overwhelmingly the waste management
industry's primary legal driver to higher rates of recovery from
waste, and over the next decade more EU laws will impact significantly
on the UK's managers and producers of waste.
29. Notwithstanding DEFRA's recognition
that it is one of the most internationally oriented of Government
Departments, DEFRA has not reflected changes in EU law in terms
of its engagement with an economic sector such as that represented
by ESA. The industry we represent became the subject of Qualified
Majority Voting under the previous Government and of Co-Decision
under the present Government. This very substantially impacts
on the EU balance of power but DEFRA's culture remains aloof and
uncommunicative. While there are initial signs of willingness
to try to change, presumably in response to signals from the Secretary
of State, and while DEFRA's officials are usually courteous and
make time available when this is sought, the timeliness and quality
of what officials are willing to disclose falls short of the engagement
of other Government Departments with other important sectors of
the UK economy. For a politically sensitive industry driven by
regulation such as the industry represented by ESA, this is a
particularly acute source of difficulty standing between us and
delivery, on HMG's behalf, of the UK's compliance with the Landfill
Directive. Driven by the EU, the context in which our industry
operates is changing rapidly: we believe we are some steps ahead
of DEFRA in recognising the type of partnership needed to make
a success of the UK's compliance.
30. Producer Responsibility is now the framework
around which the majority of EU environmental legislation is now
designed. Thus far this framework has delivered the Packaging
and Packaging Waste Directive and the End of Life Vehicles Directive.
In the future the UK will also be subject to obligations to recycle
and recover Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) and
batteries. Furthermore, there are firm EU plans to legislate for
biodegradable waste and PVC. More widely, initiatives on waste
recycling, the sustainable management of resources and Integrated
Product Policy are planned.
31. The European Court of Justice is in
the initial stages of taking action against the UK for non-implementation
of the Waste Framework Directive requirements for agricultural
waste. Again, we believe this to be indicative of the UK's approach
to implementing EU legislation in this area. We are where we are:
ESA and NFU are now discussing possible schemes to meet the requirements
of the Directive relating to agricultural waste, and although
time is short there is a real opportunity for DEFRA to show joined
up thinking across its different constituent parts. We would be
delighted if DEFRA is seen to succeed.
32. It is these policy frameworks that will
shape future legislation governing the management of waste and
resources across the EU. The UK must be a success at the forefront
of delivering these changes, not a delinquent perpetually up before
the European Court of Justice. It is essential that the UK has
a Department which can lead responsibly on these issues to ensure
compliance and that the opportunities offered are not squandered.
33. Many of these aspects in the evolution
of environmental policy will be the responsibility of DEFRA as
the lead department in the UK. Each represents an opportunity
for the UK to deliver some of the aspirations of the UK's own
Sustainable Development Strategy, such as increased resource efficiency.
Furthermore, they also offer opportunities to the UK's environmental
services industry, components of which are already world leaders.
May 2002
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