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To lie upon the Table.
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Mr. Ross Donovan
Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Gillian Merron.]
8.57 pm
Alistair Burt (North-East Bedfordshire) (Con): I am grateful to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, for the opportunity to raise in the House the case of my constituent, Ross Donovan, who I believe has lost his business as a result of negligence and carelessness by the Environment Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I am pleased that the Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment is in the Chamber because he has taken a personal interest in the matter and has met my constituent and me. I hope that he will be in a position to shed some light on my remarks.
Ross Donovan is a chartered engineer by profession and he is 45 years old. He has a degree in mechanical engineering, a masters degree in manufacturing management and is a member of his professional body, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. I suggest, therefore, that he is a man of some competence and reliability.
Ross Donovan's work in industry has taken him to several different businesses, but some years ago he worked for Silver Spoon on an energy recovery system and developed a specialty in such matters. Aware of legislation such as the Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) Regulations 1997, the climate change levy and landfill tax, together with the rising cost—in all senses of the word—of fossil fuels, he was persuaded that a new market existed for alternative heating systems. He believed that some businesses with heating needs could use their cardboard packaging, otherwise treated as waste, as a fuel. As many businesses used baling machines to achieve volume minimisation of their cardboard waste, it made sense to design a system that could process such standard sized bales. The system would not be a substantial size, but modest and small scale.
In simple terms, Ross Donovan set out to design a machine that would burn bales of cardboard and use the heat generated to warm a space that required it. Accordingly, he raised money from sponsors to back up his idea and constructed a prototype.
Aware of the regulatory nature of incineration issues, Mr. Donovan sought the advice of the Environment Agency in Brampton, Cambridgeshire. On 14 February 2001, he wrote to it and said:
"Further to our recent conversations I wish to confirm that it is our intention to site a prototype"
"plant at the above location. The plant is fuelled by packaging waste such as paper, cardboard and possibly wood and is designed to have a maximum net thermal input of 395 kW. I have now studied Statutory Instrument 2000 . . . The Pollution Prevention and Control (England and Wales) Regulations 2000 and believe that the above plant is outside the scope of this document. Please can you confirm this is true?"
"Additionally is there any other legislation that the"
"is required to comply with? Your prompt attention to this matter would be appreciated."
On 28 February 2001, Mr. Donovan received a reply. It mentioned the need to comply with the Environmental Protection Act 1990, the Pollution Prevention and Control (England and Wales) Regulations 2000 and the Waste Management Licensing Regulations 1994, and Mr. Donovan was invited to complete a form to return to Brampton under the latter regulations so that
"The Agency will note your details on the public register".
There was no mention of something called the waste incineration directive. Based on the letter and the legislative requirements of which he was aware, Mr. Donovan constructed a prototype system. It burned bales of cardboard and provided cheap heating for about 6,000 sq m of glasshouses in a horticultural nursery.
The Environment Agency was approached a number of times to seek guidance on different issues regarding the operation of the system. Mr. Donovan keeps meticulous notes, as we would expect from his background and qualifications, and believed the Environment Agency was well aware of what he was testing and developing—after all, he was on a register. Indeed, in June 2002 the system was consuming so much cardboard that he needed a new source of supply and he approached the Environment Agency, as it was likely to be aware of where he could source it, and it duly obliged.
In November 2002, Mr. Donovan visited a trade show at Olympia and met a Scottish company dealing in woodchip-based energy systems. During their conversation, the company raised the waste incineration directive. Mr. Donovan looked at the website of the Scottish Environment Protection Agency. From that site, he felt reassured that the waste incineration directive applied only to larger incinerators than his, but he decided to double check and spoke to the Environment Agency. He was told not to worry as his system was below the threshold limit—in effect, too small.
By July 2003, the system was good enough to be marketed and after all the time and effort Mr. Donovan put in, after applying for and being granted five patents, he received firm orders for two machines, but only, said the purchasers, if the system was waste incineration directive approved. On 24 July 2003, he had a meeting with Environment Agency officials. He took with him all the specifications and technical details and the matter was discussed between experts in some detail. He left that meeting with a verbal assurance that, as previously advised, his system was outside the scope of the directive because it was too small. As his purchaser wanted that advice in writing, the Environment Agency said that it would write, checking with its policy unit based in Bristol.
On 13 August 2003, the Environment Agency wrote the letter that has cost Mr. Donovan his job, his savings and his business. It said that directive 2000/76/EC on the incineration of waste did indeed apply. What were the practical consequences of that? In effect, it required modifications to be made of such scope that the economics of his small-scale business went out the window. For example, the system used a manual firing process. Colloquially put, someone put their hand in, lit a handful of waste paper and, when up and going, the cardboard fuel could be fed in. The regulations
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indicated that that was not possible and that an expensive gas-firing system should be fitted instead. There were other such modifications.
Compliance with the directive would make Mr. Donovan's small-scale incinerator uneconomic and he faced ruin. He contacted the Environment Agency again, trying to seek clarification. Was this true? How far did he have to comply? Was there any leeway for this system, so much smaller than the major incineration systems, presumably the target of the regulations? The Environment Agency in Cambridge, with which he had been in contact throughout, had little firm knowledge of the situation and was unsure whether the regulations were in place, but the policy unit had told it that there was no de minimis rule, so no system was too small to be covered.
My constituent came to see me. He could not understand why the Environment Agency had given him no notice of the likely impact of the directive. After all, he was on a register at its insistence. He was also keen to discover whether there was a way out. Were the rules final, and was there anything that the Government could do for him? He sought help from the Environment Agency and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, which had become involved as it had issued the guidance on applying the policy. However, he did not receive any; he was simply told that the directive must apply.
The de minimis issue, however, remained open, as no one was prepared to confirm that it was completely out of the question. That gave him hope, and he made repeated requests for DEFRA or Environment Agency officials to come and see his system. They did not do so until November, and Mr. Donovan tells me that that was only after I had made some phone calls on his behalf. He says that the officials seemed unaware of the commercial implications of their delay. While they equivocated about advice on a directive to which he had drawn their attention, he was trying to sell an energy system that was flawed, although no one could tell him just how badly. Regrettably, I can confirm my constituent's complaint. I spoke to officials, and afterwards understood why he was concerned as they could neither give a clear answer as to whether his system was covered by the regulations, nor tell him when they might be certain.
I wrote to the Minister for the Environment and Agri-environment on 23 October 2003 questioning what had happened and looking forward to efforts to find a way out for my constituent. I received a holding reply, then a further reply on 16 November saying that a full reply would follow once officials had visited the site. The Minister finally gave a reply on 1 January 2004. This is not a case in which time did not matter. Mr. Donovan's business was at stake, and I was regularly in touch with the Minister's office seeking a reply. I think that they could all have moved faster.
The Minister was good enough to agree to a meeting with my constituent and officials on 29 January 2004. To his credit, Mr. Donovan was less concerned about how we had reached the current position than with trying to find a way forward. We expected the Minister and his officials to be as helpful as possible. Could UK officials for once interpret a directive as helpfully as possible for UK manufacturers, rather than find reasons to say no? Mr. Donovan took with him an environmental
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consultant, Simon James, who asked if virgin cardboard could be used as a fuel without being subject to the regulations. He was informed by officials and the Minister that it could. He then asked whether, if that same cardboard had been previously used or if virgin cardboard was unsuitable for its intended use, it would be allowable as a fuel outside the regulations. He was told that if the intention was to discard the cardboard, it would be waste and thus subject to the regulations. Mr. James suggested that there may be no intention to discard the cardboard, but to segregate it specifically for the alternative use of energy production. As it was intended to be used for energy production, it should fall outside the definition of waste. The Minister agreed to look at the proposal and said that he would seek advice. To reinforce the case, on 27 February Ross Donovan sent the Minister a copy of a letter from Simon James restating his argument.
We heard nothing from officials or the Minister for a month. On 26 February, I tabled a series of written questions; on 3 March, I wrote to the Minister again, forwarding a copy of Simon James's letter. On 15 March I faxed to the Minister a copy of a letter from Caroline Jackson, MEP, with an idea on the subject. I was faxed a copy of the Minister's reply to her, but I did not receive a reply to my own letters. To date, Simon James has not received a considered opinion on his proposed solution, and Ross Donovan has not received a reply to his letter of 27 February. Yesterday, four and a half months after my letter of 3 March, I received a faxed copy of the Minister's reply—conveniently, a day before this Adjournment debate, and after the Minister had been notified of it.
During that official silence, Mr. Donovan could not sell his system. Sponsors withdrew funding and took the intellectual patents from Mr. Donovan. He lost his business, his idea and his savings. It is now time to ask the hard questions that have been avoided while my constituent struggled to keep his business going. Why was he not told by the Environment Agency at the earliest possible stage that the directive might affect him? His letter of February 2001 was a clear request for information from those who might have been expected to hold it. It was not as if they did not have such information. According to the Minister's letter to me of 1 January 2004, the consultation on the directive was launched in July 2002. We know that those consultations do not come out of thin air. The directive in draft had been around a good length of time, and the Environment Agency knew of Mr. Donovan's interest and had registered it.
As for the de minimis point, the Government, according to the Minister at our meeting in January 2004, were discussing de minimis with Commission officials in 2001, and arguing for it, I believe. If that was the case, why was my constituent not made aware of the issue under discussion when he raised a general query in February 2001 or when he made a more specific inquiry in November 2002? Why were such high hopes placed on the argument?
I spoke last week to Karl Heinz Zirrock in Directorate C, Environment and Health, of the European Commission. He told me that the discussion had gone on for years. There had never been any intention of a threshold, small incinerators had always been a target of the regulations, and the Commission wanted to close
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them, leaving open for research only experimental testers burning less than 50 tonnes of material a year—a long way from even Mr. Donovan's small-scale commercial system. Mr. Zirrock said that all officials in member countries should have been well aware of those discussions. So why was my constituent not told?
There are three aspects to this shambles. First, there is clear evidence to suggest that the Environment Agency or DEFRA or both were at fault in not informing my constituent of the likely impact of the waste incineration directive at a time when he could have taken a completely different course of action from the one that he took. Secondly, when he tried to get information from officials to help him move forward, or even some clear decision when the problem of the directive had been made clear, he did not receive it. He found officials slow, indecisive and unhelpful.
Thirdly, when matters came to the Minister, there were extraordinary delays in letters, despite faxed messages emphasising the need for speed of response as a family's livelihood depended on it. There was a failure to reply to suggestions on a way forward and a general lack of enthusiasm from DEFRA or the EA even to try something sensible as a way forward, in terms of a redefinition of waste and fuel, which might have been of benefit to Mr. Donovan and would have made a difference to the way in which cardboard packaging is dealt with in an environmentally advantageous manner.
I am not arguing for special dispensation for my constituent or, tonight, for a redefinition of the directive that would have suited his system, although I think there is more than common sense in the proposal from Simon James. There may have been nothing that could be done to amend the directive, but my constituent, fatally, was not told until it was too late. The impact on him has been dreadful and unacceptable. It is with some regret that I initiate this debate. I have been a Minister and I know that errors and problems can occur, but this appalling catalogue of error, delay and indifference, which has cost a professional man dearly, cannot be swept under the carpet without explanation or apology. I call on the Minister to provide both.
9.13 pm
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