Examination of Witnesses (Questions 1-19)
2 DECEMBER 2003
MARGARET BECKETT
MP AND MS
LINDSAY CORNISH
Q1 Chairman: Secretary of State, thank
you very much for joining us. You are no stranger to this Committee
and we are, once again, grateful to you for your time—we
appreciate that there is not a lot of that! I do not know whether
you want to make any opening remarks.
Margaret Beckett: Not particularly,
except, if I may, welcome you to your new responsibilities. As
you say, we do not have a great deal of time, so it is better
if the Committee has it.
Q2 Mr Savidge: Secretary of State, your
departmental report refers to waste as a "beacon area".
"Can you say a little bit about what that means?
Margaret Beckett: It means that
we regard it as one of our priorities for action, partly because
of its importance in itself, and partly because of how much we
still feel we have to do in order to achieve the breakthrough
on waste that we are all looking for. What we also mean by it
is that we are now putting a considerable amount of effort in
the Department into bringing about a change in what we have been
doing hitherto in development of the Waste Implementation Programme
and the new delivery structure in the Department, bringing in
someone who has a lot of experience of programme delivery in the
public and private sectors to head it, and so on. This is rather
a new departure for us, and an indication of the priority to what
we think is a very important subject.
Q3 Mr Savidge: Do I understand that the
delivery team and the steering group for the Waste Implementation
Programme are now fully up and running?
Margaret Beckett: Yes.
Q4 Mr Savidge: The programme budget is
£30 million. Is that up to 2005-06 or some other identified
period; and is the £1.3 million referred to for administrative
resources additional to the £30 million, or is it included
within it?
Margaret Beckett: The 30 million
is not a figure I am familiar with. The figure that I have got
in my head is 92 for 2005-06 and for the following year; so I
have a figure for the Waste Implementation Programme itself, its
budget, of somewhere in the order of £174 million to £184
million.
Q5 Mr Savidge: A larger sum.
Margaret Beckett: That is going
forward. There was a budget of about 82, from memory, for this
year. Maybe the 30 is what was able to be allocated.
Q6 Mr Savidge: We have a programme budget
of at least £30 million allocated for new programmes, which
would look at local authority support.
Margaret Beckett: I am looking
at the overall budget, but, yes, that is within it. The local
authority support programme is one element. There are several
elements of what the Waste Implementation Programme does. Local
authority funding is one area and local authority support is another.
Q7 Mr Savidge: It is really encouraging
news; it is considerably more than we thought. Of the seven new
work programmes within the WIP, are there any that you have given
particular priority to?
Margaret Beckett: They are all
important, or else they would not be in there. Would I single
out one more than another? I suppose it depends on whether you
are looking at the medium or longer term, or the short term. Getting
through the funding for improving our recycling and composting
and so on is important; but if one is looking at the longer term,
in many ways the provision of data and research for a sound evidence
base for the longer term are very much priority areas, if you
are looking at that rather than the short term.
Q8 Mr Savidge: How will you ensure that
the resources of the Waste Resources Action Programme does not
constrain its core work of delivering stable and efficient markets
for recycled products and materials?
Margaret Beckett: I regard that,
to some extent, as an issue for the management of the programme
itself. WRAP assured us that they feel able to tackle these different
issues, and we have no reason to think that that is not the case.
Q9 Mr Challen: After the Committee published
its report and the Government gave its response, the industry
and local authorities do not seem to be terribly impressed with
the way the Government is developing its policies. I will give
you an example. The Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee
states: "There is considerable reliance in the Government
response on the analysis of the Government Strategy Unit report,
and yet almost a year on from the publication of this report there
has been little meaningful progress on many policy issues discussed
in that document, leaving waste far from the hands of government."[1]
Does the pessimism and frustration of these bodies cause you any
concern?
Margaret Beckett: It does yes,
of course, because their views are playing into the field and
into the minds of those who are charged with delivering in this
area. I do not think I would accept that the degree of pessimism
is particularly justified. If I can give you some examples of
the work that has been undertaken of late—bearing in mind
that we have had to set up this new delivery structure, which
includes a little delay—some £55 million is being allocated
to local authorities that are working in partnership through the
Challenge Fund, and will be allocated in early December for the
coming year. In the last year, three PFI projects have been signed,
and we have seven waste PFI projects, local authority projects,
which have had their outline business cases approved. A lot of
other work is going on to identify barriers to performance, to
collecting new data and so on. There is work going on in relation
to other issues like research that I referred to earlier. It seems
to me that a lot is underway, although of course we would all
like results earlier.
Q10 Mr Challen: We know we are going
to have some results by July next year, because by that time the
country will be sorting its hazardous waste from its non-hazardous
waste; and there will only be 15 places where hazardous waste
can be taken to outside of in-house units. In talking to a lot
of companies in my own constituency, I know that there is considerable
confusion about how the Government proposes to deal with the problems
that might arise if, for example, we have a huge bottleneck in
the disposal of hazardous waste. Indeed, the very definition of
what is hazardous is of concern to a particular company that does
a lot of recycling of lead, car batteries, and things of that
sort, which I think are not really waste at all.
Margaret Beckett: This is something
that the Hazardous Waste Forum is looking at on our behalf. Again,
I am not familiar with the figure you gave of 15 apart from in-house
units. Our understanding is that although we obviously expect
a considerable diminution of the facilities that now handle hazardous
waste, which is what people are trying to achieve, there will
be 37 facilities that we expect.
Q11 Chairman: The figure of fewer than
15 was a figure given to the Committee by the Environment Agency.
Margaret Beckett: That is interesting!
We will have to follow that up, because that is not our understanding,
as I say, from the Forum. We understand that there will be quite
a change in what is now available. It is not just a matter of
the number of sites, it is also an issue of how much room there
is on those sites. The anticipation is that there will be 37.
Having said that, that was our indication from the Environment
Agency; so clearly we need, as a matter of urgency, to follow
up why they told us it would be 37 and they told you 15.
Q12 Mr Challen: Are you convinced that
there will be sufficient capacity to deal with the situation?
Margaret Beckett: I was, yes.
We encourage the Hazardous Waste Forum to look at this as a matter
of urgency, to give us advice on it. Their advice has been that
they do believe that there will be sufficient provision. It is
just possible, I suppose, that there may be a distinction being
drawn between sites which will only take hazardous waste and this
potential use of cells within sites that take non-hazardous waste,
and maybe that accounts for the difference in the figures. I assure
you that we will be pursuing them as a matter of urgency, and
I will be very happy to write to the Committee once we have had
some reconciliation.[2]
Q13 Gregory Barker: I apologise for arriving
a little late, Secretary of State. I just want to draw you back
to the £30 million that has been allocated to the Waste Implementation
Programme. I am particularly interested in the new technology
and research that it is earmarked for. Can you tell us more about
what specific new technology this money is going to be targeted
at, and how you anticipate that being deployed and coming to fruition?
Is that recognition of the undesirability of the current waste
technology that most alarms people, namely incineration, and particularly
the alarming prospect for many people of the proliferation of
large-scale incinerators that are in the planning process at the
moment? Is this investment in new waste technology a Government
response to proliferation of incineration?
Margaret Beckett: I do not perceive
any particular proliferation, although I accept that people have
concerns about it. "Not really" is the correct answer
to your question: it is not just a response to concerns about
incineration; it is much more a response to the general input
that we have had from the industry, first at the Waste Summit
and then the work that has gone on since then. Some of the answers
to some of the difficulties we all have in understanding how to
manage and deal with waste, could come from innovation in technology;
so it has been more, I think, a response to that expressed concern
that this is an area that we ought not to overlook because it
provides some of the answers that we do not presently have. I
cannot give you details of the areas that will be pursued, but
if I can, I will write to the Committee.[3]
However, I can give you an indication of the process and the timescale.
We had to get State Aid clearance to pursue this, but we anticipate
that at the end of January, we will be letting two contracts for
project management of a demonstrator project and a support project.
The first will be accepting bids between the beginning of March
and the beginning of May. I do not have a date for the later one,
but we will try and give you that. An advisory committee has been
established to look at the issues, and that committee has conducted
a workshop with the industry. Apart from that, a data centre will
be established by the Environment Agency. The contract for that
was confirmed by a memorandum of understanding issued between
the Waste Implementation Programme and the Environment Agency.
We are at the early stages of this work, but we are making progress.
Q14 Gregory Barker: What sort of projects
are they, and what sort of technologies?
Margaret Beckett: I do not have
the details with me.
Q15 Gregory Barker: Can you give me an
idea of how much of that £30 million is allocated specifically
to the technology aspect?
Margaret Beckett: We had a little
of this conversation earlier. I do not think that the £30
million is necessarily for technology. The overall budget of the
Waste Implementation Programme is closer to £90 million for
the coming year, and £90 million in the year after that.
From the conversation we had with Malcolm a few moments ago, we
clarified that we think the £30 million is more to do with
the local authority support work stream rather than the overall
budget.
Q16 Gregory Barker: If you could tell
us the technologies you are looking at, it would be helpful for
us to understand where it is going.
Margaret Beckett: I am sure it
will. All I can do is repeat my offer to you to write to you about
it, because I do not have any indication.
Q17 Mr Thomas: In your response to the
Committee's report, you stated: "Waste Strategy 2000 continues
to be the backbone of the Government's policy on waste management."[4]
Since then we have had the Strategy Unit report as well, and we
have just touched on the Waste Implementation Programme, which
has just been established within the Department. Can you say whether
the Waste Implementation Programme is focusing on implementing
the Strategy Unit report or the Waste Strategy 2000? Which is
the over-arching strategy?
Margaret Beckett: It is not a separation.
The Strategy Unit report helped us to reassess where we were on
the Waste Strategy 2000, and the intention is that the Waste Implementation
Programme will help us to implement the whole approach, the overall
strategy, and to follow up on some of the indications that the
Strategy Unit reported.
Q18 Mr Thomas: Is it the case that the
Waste Implementation Programme only concentrates on municipal
waste, which is just 7% of the waste stream? What are we doing
with the other 93%?
Margaret Beckett: It is true that
it is geared to municipal waste, not least because our targets
under the Landfill Directive are going to municipal waste. I referred
earlier on to our need for greater data, and this is one of the
areas where we need more data. The data on industrial and commercial
waste is only collected every few years; but this coming year
we are expecting an update. Our understanding, in so far as one
can judge, given that we do not have all the data yet, is that
we are on track to meet our targets of reducing our industrial
and commercial waste down to 85% of 1998 levels by 2005. If you
think about it, although initially one is sceptical, it does make
a certain amount of sense because, after all, from the point of
view of most businesses, reducing the waste they create is a money-saver
for them; so there is a much more direct incentive on industrial
and commercial businesses to reduce their waste than there is,
say, on a household.
Q19 Mr Thomas: I put it to you that the
tenor of your reply suggests that our initial criticism of the
Waste Strategy, which was that it was a waste strategy more to
do with European programmes than a waste strategy for the whole
stream of waste that we have to deal with in the United Kingdom,
still remains.
Margaret Beckett: Given what I
have just said to you about making progress on those other areas,
we are concentrating not just on the area where we have EU targets
but on the area where we have the greatest difficulty, and where
it is not easy to find the right levers.
1 Government Response to the Committee's Fifth Report,
Session 2002-03, on Waste-An Audit, p. 30. Back
2
Please see supplementary memorandum, Ev 10. Back
3
Please see supplementary memorandum, Ev 10. Back
4
Government Response to the Committee's Fifth Report, Session 2002-03,
on Waste-An Audit, p.10, para 42. Back
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