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Mr. Challen: The hon. Lady has not really talked about nuclear energy. What are her party's policies on that issue? Its history, when in government, was to support nuclear energy with what I call a nuclear tax of 10 per cent.—otherwise known as the non-fossil fuel levy. That gave our competitors in Germany and Denmark a great opportunity to advance on us in terms of the engineering and technology required to develop wind power, for example. Would the Conservatives go
back to such an approach, which would set back our renewable energy prospects? Do they have a policy on nuclear power yet?
Mrs. Spelman: The hon. Gentleman would expect the environmental spokesman for the Conservative party to state the blindingly obvious on this issue, which is that until an adequate environmental solution is found to the problems of waste from nuclear energy, nuclear power is not an option that can enthusiastically be embraced. So far, such a solution has not been found. I think that that answers the hon. Gentleman's question.
To return to the mountains of fridges, the arguments over whose fault that was—the Government's, for failing to read and understand the implications of the ozone-depleting substances directive, or the European Commission's for not making the implications explicit—have been rehearsed many times. In June 2002, the Commons Environment Sub-Committee concluded that DEFRA and not the European Commission was primarily to blame for the situation. The Committee, of whom eight members out of 10 are Labour MPs, said that clearing up the problem would cost taxpayers £40 million. In particular, the report said:
- "While the European Commission must accept some blame for lack of clarity, the overwhelming responsibility for mishandling the implementation lies with the Government."
- "We find it deeply disturbing that the Government signed up to the regulation whilst still suffering 'knowledge gaps' about its full impact."
One consequence of this lack of preparation is the increased problem of fly-tipping, which blights urban and rural areas throughout the country. That problem is likely to be exacerbated with the closure of 290 of the 300 landfill sites that currently take hazardous waste, just months before the hazardous waste directive takes effect. Perhaps the Minister will clarify the position on that.
Mr. Morley: Yes, I will. The sites will not be closing. The directive ends co-disposal, but they will continue as landfill sites. Some of them, if they so choose, will be able to continue by installing a separate cell for hazardous waste on the site; indeed, a number have already put in a planning application to do so. The vast majority of the sites do not take hazardous waste anyway, so the hon. Lady's figures are really quite misleading.
Mrs. Spelman: I tabled a written question on this subject. It is of the utmost importance to know the
pattern of sites to which hazardous waste will be able to be sent. Given the combination of the increase in landfill use and the costs involved, if there are to be restrictions on the type of material that can go to such sites, those who try to avoid those costs will be tempted to deposit certain materials in the countryside.Fly-tipping presents similar problems to those of litter, graffiti and, to some extent, urban water course pollution, which are also symptoms of ineffective law enforcement. Litter costs local authorities in the region of £342 million each year. I am not convinced that measures contained in the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003 will reverse the fall in the number of prosecutions and convictions for depositing litter and the fall in the number of fixed penalties issued to offenders. More policing will be a far greater agent for change than more legislation.
Another grave concern among Conservative Members is the inconsistency within the Department. Last Friday, I went to Stansted to meet campaigners opposed to the construction of a new runway. They, like me, are bewildered at the lack of an environmental impact assessment before the Government announced their plans about where to expand. This view is shared by the Environmental Audit Committee, which stated:
- "The opaqueness of the appraisal process means that it is not possible to evaluate . . . the cumulative impacts at both regional and national levels, and the relative balance of economic, social and environmental benefits and disbenefits."
- "We regard the absence of concise, transparent and strategic integrated appraisals as a major weakness in the consultation documents. The Department's failure in this respect conflicts with its own guidance."
At each level of environmental awareness that I identified at the outset—global, European, national and local—there are clear failings by DEFRA. It would be disingenuous of me to suggest that Britain was alone in being without a joined-up approach to dealing with the environment. I am sure that we can all name one country whose failure to ratify Kyoto should be a cause of grave concern to us all, which the Prime Minister would do well to use his much-vaunted transatlantic influence to remedy.
The point, however, is that there is no good reason why we should not be one of the pioneers of environmental policy and good practice. It is an uncomfortable reality that without many of the EU-originated regulations, Britain would not even now be adopting environmental good practice in many crucial respects. Britain is a bold, entrepreneurial, creative country with a natural instinct for conservation and protection, and it is the Government's duty to harness that instinct. Britain could and should become a beacon of environmental progress among industrialised
nations. If we fail in this, we will certainly be in no position to try to influence the environmental practices of the developing countries that otherwise will surely follow in our footsteps.2.33 pm
Mr. Colin Challen (Morley and Rothwell) (Lab): I very much welcome this debate. Given the importance that the Liberal Democrats attach to it in their motion, I am surprised that it is only a half-day debate. It seems that the ice caps could melt before we move off the subject of a local income tax, but that is their order of priorities.
The motion calls for an annual debate on this subject, and we should give it a regular slot. Perhaps it could be tied to regular debates on reports from the Environmental Audit Committee, on which I sit. The EAC, as Members on both sides of the House will know, has produced some highly critical reports, to which reference has often been made this afternoon. Its reports deserve a wider audience. The Committee was one of the key creations on the parliamentary environmental scene that arose from the Labour party's 1997 manifesto, and it has firmly established itself as an authoritative voice on the environment and sustainable development.
My main concern with the nature of the political debate on the environment and sustainable development is that it does not engage the public as widely as it should. We know that politicians of all persuasions are reluctant to go too far down the road of radical change because a swift and debilitating electoral consequence would follow. Sustainable development, if we take it seriously, implies that those living in the most developed countries will have to make some sacrifices. Our pattern of consumption is clearly unsustainable, but it is our solemn duty as politicians—in all parties, I hasten to add—to tell voters at election time that we will make their quality of life better, which is always understood to mean their material quality of life. Our whole economic model is based on the presumption that we must pursue economic growth, and that we must emulate countries such as the United States, which has experienced the longest sustained growth rates in the western world. The fact that the US does that by consuming more resources per capita, at a rate that simply could not be replicated around the globe, is the kind of argument that is compartmentalised in discrete packets of worthy thinking labelled "the environment", "climate change" or whatever, which are not allowed as yet to challenge the assumptions of economic growth.
How do we square the circle? It will be very difficult. The first party that dares seriously to challenge those assumptions will be laughed out of court. Unless a major disaster forces our hand, we will inevitably have to take an incremental approach, which runs the risk of not doing enough fast enough to make much difference. I applaud this Government's early and urgent efforts to get the world to agree on the Kyoto protocol, but it is still not yet in force, and, even when it does come into force, it is such a modest measure that some doubt that it will have the desired impact.
Nations will therefore have to take more unilateral action to get things done, but even that will cause howls of protest from those such as the CBI, which would prefer simply that the climate change levy would go
away, because it says that it damages our competitiveness. That is the same argument used by George Bush, who wants a purely voluntary approach to climate change, which I am not sure he really believes exists anyway. He wants to prevent the American economy from suffering. He has already caused enough unemployment; he does not want any more.Such short-term attitudes will ultimately be self-defeating, as the costs of climate change mount. Those costs will hit us with higher insurance premiums, more flooding in some areas, more drought in others, food and water shortages and high levels of human migration causing civil strife. The Government have made some very useful steps in the right direction: the climate change levy, the renewables obligation, and the Energy Bill, which clearly has set some stiff targets in sourcing energy from renewable sources—10 per cent. in only six years' time and 15 per cent. by 2015. Some people say that we do not have the engineering capacity to meet those targets. I hope that we address that criticism by putting more resources into our energy strategy from Government funds, and that we seriously increase our research and development resource in other areas, apart from wind, which is now a fully fledged technology. How is it that we spend less on R and D in wave and tidal energy or other renewables than we use to prop up British Energy and its outdated nuclear technology?
Most of what the Government have done so far has addressed major players in the environmental field. They have addressed corporations' use of energy, for example, and they have introduced market mechanisms, which take a while to filter through, such as the renewables obligation. What we lack is a way of engaging the public in this debate, such as mechanisms that encourage individuals to make pro-environment choices in their lives. That is the real test, because, unlike businesses, individuals have votes, and if, for example, we told individuals that they could not drive their cars our popularity would evaporate faster than a cloud of carbon dioxide. Nor, as we have seen, can we easily introduce more taxes, since the fuel protests put paid to that. No doubt it is the memory of those events that makes the Government reluctant to tax aviation fuel. What, I wonder, is the Liberal Democrat policy on that? I do not think we have had an answer to that important question.
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