Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-159)
DR JANE
BEASLEY AND
MR CHRIS
MURPHY
WEDNESDAY 22 JANUARY 2003
140. When you say you think DEFRA is under-resourced,
do you mean DEFRA or do you mean the Environment Agency?
(Mr Murphy) No, I mean the waste section within DEFRA
is under-resourced.
141. If they had more resources what would you
like them to do with them? I understand your frustration that
documents are slow in coming forward and so on. If you had Mrs
Beckett here this afternoon, what three things would you ask her
to do?
(Dr Beasley) The first thing we would be looking for
is a strengthening in terms of the staff and the expertise there.
The diversity of legislation that is coming through from Europe
does call on an awful lot of different skills for those personnel
to get the regulations through quickly. We would be asking for
additional staff to try and speed up the regulations coming through
and the guidance that goes out to the industry. This is where
one of the big delays is, the uncertainty that sits within the
industry as to how to act on the interpretation of European legislation
that is coming through and the subsequent guidance that is issued
on how that can work effectively on the ground. We would look
for a strengthening of the waste remit within DEFRA itself because
obviously DEFRA covers so many different areas and waste is just
one small part of it, but it is a fundamental part that we feel
has been under-resourced in the past.
142. I am getting the impression that your concerns
are more about the implementation of practice than about policy,
is that right?
(Dr Beasley) Essentially, yes. The biggest problem
with the legislation coming through has been how we can enact
that legislation on the ground.
143. Do you think the problems that everyone
knows about that happened with fridges occurred as a result of
under-resourcing?
(Dr Beasley) The fridge issue was a very unfortunate
issue in terms of the fact that there was a lack of understanding
of what the regulations actually meant and it was a very last
minute response by DEFRA in that suddenly it went much wider than
what they first interpreted the legislation to be. Perhaps if
they had found more time to spend on it and more expertise we
might have avoided that issue.
144. They had four years.
(Dr Beasley) We do have notice of these things coming
through from a European level, but their interpretation right
up to the last minute did not go as far as the insulation foams.
Chairman
145. Is this lack of resources in DEFRA something
which has occurred since the creation of a new department or has
it been something of fairly long standing?
(Mr Murphy) I think it has been highlighted since
the creation of the new department. Waste is a small part. MAFF
is now DEFRA and waste disposal is a very small part of that,
but it was an issue previously as well.
146. We get the impression that when it was
the old Department for the Environment obviously environmental
issues had a higher status, perhaps had better resources, a higher
profile in terms of personnel and so forth and received better
treatment.
(Mr Murphy) Yes, that is probably very true and it
has been highlighted more now it is a smaller part of a larger
department.
Mr Chaytor
147. You have argued that the solutions to commercial
and industrial waste minimisation will be driven by market forces.
If so, why do we have such a waste crisis? We have had a market
economy for as long as any of us can remember, but we have also
had increasing mountains of commercial industrial waste. Why has
the market not delivered a solution?
(Dr Beasley) One of the problems has been—and
it covers all waste streams but it is particularly pertinent for
commercial and industrial waste streams—that it is very
very cheap to dispose at the moment and it has been so for many
years. Whilst you can put your waste into a landfill site and
pay very low gate fees or pay a very low Landfill Tax comparatively,
that is what commercial industrial operators will do, they are
generating the waste and going for the cheapest possibly option,
understandably. Whilst the Landfill Tax came in to try and produce
a more level playing field and bring about that diversion, it
was not set high enough compared to recycling and other treatment
options. So they have always been driven by market forces.
148. That is to do with waste disposal. What
about waste minimisation or reducing the volume potential of waste,
can the market work to reduce the volume?
(Dr Beasley) I think essentially if you start at the
end point and if you are increasing the cost of final disposal
then more and more companies will look in-house and at how they
can reduce their component of the waste streams. The larger companies
are doing this, they are driven very much by the bottom line,
they are looking at how much money they are spending on waste
management full stop and then looking at what other initiatives
they can do in-house. The problem arises within the smaller companies,
your SMEs, where perhaps they have not got the expertise, the
time or the resources to have a look at their waste streams and
look at what they are doing and they will adopt their normal practices
which will have been to do with disposal in the main.
149. Other than taxation, are there other forms
of regulation that are necessary to reduce the volumes of waste?
(Dr Beasley) One possible option and something that
we have been discussing within the Institution is the idea of
environmental reporting and enforcing environmental reporting,
to make companies move down a more Green route and be more aware
of the waste that they are producing and make recommendations
in-house. It is something that other European countries are doing
and they have moved towards mandatory environmental reporting
and it is something that our own Government has kind of hinted
at when they made the request for the FTSE-350 companies, to report
on their environmental performance. Moving into the regulatory
area targets that sort of thing, but it is not necessarily something
that we feel would be the most appropriate route to go down at
the moment and there are many reasons for this, one of them being
the data issue and trying to get a clear picture of what the baseline
data is and what the most appropriate targets would be set against
that.
150. Do you think the waste strategy with its
targets has had any effect whatsoever?
(Dr Beasley) On commercial and industrial?
151. Yes.
(Dr Beasley) No.
152. On household?
(Dr Beasley) I think it has had some effect. The recycling
rate has grown, no matter how slowly and you have to admit, the
statutory targets could be one of the contributing factors for
driving that forward and some local authorities have demonstrated
that that target can be met, they have had a push towards it.
In order to make the targets more effective the framework needs
to be there, the infrastructure needs to be there on a local level
and the capacity to be able to achieve it needs to be there, which
has been missing in some local authorities.
153. Where there are good examples either of
commercial and industrial waste or local authorities managing
household waste, whose responsibility is it to promote the best
practice? Is it yours or is it Government's or somebody else's?
(Dr Beasley) It is a combination for the promotion
of best practice.
154. Is it part of your brief?
(Dr Beasley) Certainly we do it, yes. One of our main
duties is the promotion of good practice and disseminating it
widely.
155. Can Government do more?
(Mr Murphy) I think there is a duty for all the stakeholders
to do more to highlight those areas of good practice and to identify
more and that goes all the way down from the Government, local
authorities, producers and organisations like ourselves. There
are plenty of opportunities out there. We should be making more
of them.
156. On the question of direct charging, your
organisation is in favour of a direct charging system. How would
that operate and what are the difficulties there between different
kinds of council taxpayer because some people pay directly and
some people do not? What sort of scheme would you envisage?
(Dr Beasley) There are two strands to it. The direct
charging element is actually removing the cost of waste disposal
out of council tax and applying it as a separate cost. It does
not necessarily have to relate to the quantity of waste that is
being disposed of, but that is certainly the first step that has
to be taken because at present most people are unaware of how
little money is actually spent on waste management at a local
level. The first step is to take it out and make that clear to
the householder; the second step is moving towards the variable
charging scheme where the best schemes are hybrid schemes and
where there is a baseline fee charged, like a standing order charge
that you will have your waste collected and then you have a variable
element on top of that that equates directly to how much waste
is being disposed of. The reason why we support it as an instrument
is because it is probably one of the most effective ways of minimising
waste and diverting waste, but it would be down to the local authorities
to administer it.
157. How do you deal with the argument that
leaving it to the authorities simply encourages people to dump
their waste in someone else's back garden?
(Dr Beasley) Research has shown that any fly tipping
is usually very very short term. There is also the opinion that
because you are monitoring for fly tipping you are actually identifying
fly tipping that may well have been going on previously but you
have got a better monitoring system in place to identify it now.
Generally speaking, even the very very high end of the spectrum
on costs has shown that is short lived because it is easier for
the consumer to separate the materials out for recycling, which
is generally a free element of it, than it is to drive down a
country lane and dispose of their waste there.
David Wright
158. Where did the research you are quoting
come from?
(Dr Beasley) There is a significant amount of research
from America that the Environmental Protection Agency has done
and there is also a wealth of research available in Europe producing
that information as well, ranging from academic papers to their
own regulatory bodies.
Mr Thomas
159. Can you just return briefly to the point
raised by Mr Chaytor on waste minimisation and your evidence to
us around market forces. Could you comment on the implementation
and the effect of things like the Packaging Directive on waste
minimisation and the re-use of materials as an example of where
regulation rather than market forces is bearing down on the commercial
sector, how you see those type of regulatory measures working
as well?
(Mr Murphy) I would not say we are particular experts
on the packaging regulations and other similar regulations, but
from looking at our evidence from members and others, it seems
that the packaging regulations were not entirely successful, they
had a difficult development and there was not a flow of material
from the PRNs back to the local authorities who could be involved
in the recycling of the packaging material. What we would like
to see is a greater emphasis on producer responsibility across
the board so that those who are at the manufacturing end have
a greater remit to look at life-cycle analysis and involve the
whole sector in a supply chain delivery.
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