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Norman Baker: I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman intervened to make a party point, because I have scrupulously tried not to be party political in my speech. I could give the House examples of Lib Dem authorities that have extremely high recycling rates as well ones where the rates are lower. It all depends on when contracts were changed, on the direct labour force and on the rate support grant and the finances available to the council. A combination of factors is involved, as the hon. Gentleman will acknowledge. The fact remains that it is cheaper to landfill than to recycle, and that is part of the problem.
Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle): The hon. Gentleman is being uncharacteristically modest about his constituency. A large part of his constituency is, like a large part of mine, run by Conservative-controlled Wealden council, which has an excellent recycling record.
Norman Baker: Yes, it does. Furthermore, Lewes's record is considerably better than it was. Again, I am sorry that the hon. Gentleman made a party intervention. I am happy to accept that Wealden council has a good recycling record. Equally, I am happy to accept that the London borough of Sutton led the country on recycling. All parties can offer good and bad examples. It does not profit us in this important debate to pick on particular councils. The point is that the Treasury must ensure that the economic indicators are right, and it has not yet done so.
I have some comments about incineration. The Government are bringing in legislation merely to meet EU directives. The Waste and Emissions Trading Bill, which should be about delivering a sensible waste strategy, in line with the Government's policy, is actually the EU landfill directive implementation Bill. The Government are running after all the EU directives, saying, "What do we have to do meet this target from Brussels?" instead of getting properly involved. One of the criticisms made by the Committees was that the Government did not pick up on EU directives and targets quickly enough.
The Government have to cut drastically the amount of landfill. They are going to up recycling a bit, although not as much as they might—their targets are modest. What will fill the gap? Incineration. The Minister's predecessor constantly told us that the Government were not in favour of a massive increase in incineration. Well, they may not be in favour of it, but they are going to get it. The logical conclusion of the Government's policy of capping landfill at 35 per cent. and increasing recycling to 35 or 40 per cent. is that everything else will be incinerated. Local authorities are currently taking decisions to meet the Government's targets and they are opting for the simple solution: incinerators.
Unless the Government quickly get their act together on recycling, reuse and waste minimisation, a chain of incinerators, approved by local councils and the Government in accordance with their waste plans, will cover the country. We shall replace landfill capacity with incinerator capacity. The Minister will have to deal with that problem unless he wants incinerators all over the country. It is no good his shaking his head. Those are the facts. I suggest that he talk to his colleague, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test (Dr. Whitehead), who decimated the Government's arguments on that point on Second Reading of the Waste and Emissions Trading Bill.
I congratulate the two Committees on their work. They have made some pertinent points and the fact that they both considered the issue shows that a major issue is facing this country, and I very much hope that the Government will take on board the points that they have made. The Minister's previous comments and those of his predecessors demonstrate that they are committed, but we have not yet seen the action to realise their commitment.
Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. Very little time is left for the remainder of this debate. I cannot expect hon. Members to cut their speeches to ribbons, so I suspect that some will be disappointed, but I hope that they will nevertheless try to bear it in mind that we want to get in as many speeches as we can.
5.15 pm
Mr. Robert Key (Salisbury): On behalf of my constituents, I thank both Select Committees for their excellent reports. There is much to be learned from them. In particular, I refer to the report of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, which has been quite harsh in its judgment of the Government. In paragraph 20 of its report, it says that
- "Defra still appears to lack the capacity, the vision, the sense of urgency and the political will to break the mould and bring about truly sustainable waste management in this country."
I was very attracted by the fact that, in paragraph 56 of the report, the Committee said that it agreed
- "with the Local Government Association that variable charging for household waste collection should not be regarded as an additional source of revenue for local authorities but primarily as a means of changing householders' behaviour."
Before I go any further, I should like to remind the House that none of this esoteric discussion in which we are indulging this afternoon would make a hap'orth of difference if it were not for the men and women of the refuse collection services who go out in fair weather and foul, summer and winter, doing a filthy job. Whatever the weather, they are among the most cheerful, loyal and hard-working people who vote for us—or not—and they serve the whole community so well, and I give my thanks to them.
Something else that matters—the hon. Member for Lewes (Norman Baker) referred to this—is the fact that there are huge variations across the country, often depending on the sort of authority or council that collects and gets rid of the waste. The county council does so in my case. In countryside areas, such as Salisbury and south Wiltshire—which covers an enormous area, 400 square miles, with 48,700 domestic properties and 114,000 people—it is very difficult and expensive to organise waste collection and transport. In fact, that is an absolute doddle in the inner cities or for many of the unitary authorities, which are just a couple of miles square, and that is very important to bear in mind.
In my constituency, the district council, which is small but covers a huge area, has certainly done very well, but it still has huge and growing volumes of waste. Last year, 39,420 tonnes of household waste went to landfill. Kerbside collection recovered 4,361 tonnes of paper and cardboard for recycling, and 2,847 tonnes of mixed
recycled materials were recovered at the 41 mini recycling centres throughout the district. Some 16 per cent. of household waste is recycled. The targets are achievable for our local authority. We are determined to achieve them. We will do it. We will go right up to the 36 per cent. recycling target by 2010. That is pretty good, and I suspect that the target will increase to 45 per cent., as it is on the district council's wish list to aim high.One of the big problems is the expense of specialist recycling and collection, particularly of refrigerators. Some extraordinary activity has occurred over the past couple of years—I will not go into it, because the Government know very well what I am talking about—but meeting the increase in the disposal of refrigerators is costing my local authority at least £11,000 a year. In relation to fly tipping, my district council has spent a further £11,000 this year on keeping three or four regular—in the irregular sense—sites clear, and it has spent more than £30,000 in the past year on removing fly-tipped waste, which is a huge additional cost. In 1998, it had to deal with 170 abandoned vehicles, and in 2002, 598. Two members of staff are engaged full-time in investigating those incidents and administering the procedure for abandoned vehicles. Incidentally, one of those staff is a dog warden who has been taken off dog warden duties and put on abandoned car duties, which has upset quite a lot of dog walkers. Just dealing with abandoned vehicles has resulted in a huge additional cost of £86,000 a year.
A lot of good has also come from this policy, however, and the community projects are very important locally. Talking about Government policy is one thing, but what is really important is changing the mind of the local community. The St. Edmund's ward in Salisbury comprises about 1,200 households. In June last year, it formed a community association to tackle some local problems, one of which was lack of facilities for local waste recycling. It therefore started work with the district council's waste minimisation and recycling officer. It organised a mini recycling centre, a free-to-use community notice board to allow for exchange of unwanted items, a community recycling directory distributed to all households, composting bins, dry receptacles for recyclable goods, reusable kerbside waste paper collection bags, and so on. A great deal can be done, and is being done, at local level.
I want to commend the work of the Wiltshire wildlife trust because it too has a recycling officer who has been working with the district council in an innovative way. There is a home composting officer, as well as 22 volunteers who advise local households on how to set up proper composting bins at a reduced price of £6 a bin, and they organise shredding events, country and garden shows and goodness knows what. Community composting is therefore a serious part of the agenda.
The county council too has been working hard, and I wish to commend its policy. Although it does not do the collection, its forward planning and waste programme is absolutely crucial, because without it none of the desired results will be delivered. It has a pooled recycling system and a pooled recycling target with the district council, and is one of only six waste disposal authorities to be granted a target to achieve 33 per cent. recycling by 2005-06. It is also looking at waste-to-energy programmes, reuse and above all reduction, because
time and again the onus is put back on individual households—on you and me, Mr. Deputy Speaker—and education and awareness are part of that.I do not want to continue at greater length, except to touch on a serious waste issue on which the Government have been consulting: chewing gum, and whether it should be regarded as waste. As the Minister will know, his Department is consulting on whether it should legislate to define chewing gum as waste in these circumstances. It does an enormous amount of harm to our environment, to streets, to pedestrianised shopping areas and even, I notice, to the colonnade between Portcullis House and this House, which is now spotted with chewing gum, which is an expensive problem. A month or two ago, I sought the advice of the Wrigley Company, with which I had a heated discussion. I was told that I had it all wrong, and that it was not the fault of the chewing gum because
- "chewing gum is no different from any other kind of litter".
English Heritage told me that chewing gum causes an expensive problem in several of the properties that it manages. My district council says that it causes an expensive and time-consuming problem in our historic city because only a short time is available to get the slow and cumbersome machines that deal with the problem on to the streets before businesses open. We must pursue a solution—I know that the Government intend to do something about it.
I was most disappointed by the Wrigley Company's attitude. It has 90 per cent. of the market in this country—Cadbury Schweppes has only a small market share because it has been at it for only a couple of years. The companies cannot ignore the problem that they are creating and for which we are paying. I accept that we are grateful to the Wrigley Company for providing employment in Plymouth, but the impact of the pollutants that it produces is out of all proportion compared with the benefits for our economy. It is no good for the company to say, "Well, biodegradable chewing gum is very difficult and nobody's going to like it." We had better find out about that, because the House will otherwise have to consider more seriously whether chewing gum is a desirable product at all.
I am not against chewing gum—I chew gum myself. I think that it is quite a good idea to chew gum in the car to maintain one's concentration. However, I do not throw gum out of my car window. I wrap it in a nice bit of silver paper and put it in a receptacle when I reach my destination.
I ask the Minister to take the issue seriously. I know that people sometimes laugh about it, but chewing gum causes a huge unsightly problem that is expensive to deal with. Speaking on behalf of managers of the centres of historic towns such as Salisbury, I hope that the Government will consider the problem in the wider context of the future of waste management.
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