Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20-39)
20 OCTOBER 2004
ELLIOT MORLEY
MP, MS LINDSAY
CORNISH AND
MS SUE
ELLIS
Q20 Mr McWilliam: Therefore, there will
be a lot more contaminated soil to get rid of?
Mr Morley: It is possible, yes.
Q21 Mr McWilliam: Since that is being
produced in the southeast, I actually have the number of sites
you have in the southeast and the north. You have one in the southeast,
none in London; you have four in the northeast, seven in the northwest,
three in the southwest, none in Wales, three in the West Midlands,
two in Yorkshire and Humberside and one in East Midlands. That,
to me, sounds like an awful lot of lorry movements into my constituency
because it is one of the ones that has a lot of waste disposal
in it because it was a major centre for sand and gravel extraction.
Mr Morley: Sure, but I think you
will find in the breakdown of existing sites before July last
year that there was a concentration of them, and in fact that
concentration, although it has changed geographically, it has
not changed that much. I come back to the point that I made earlier
on, that we want people to get away from the remediation from
brown field sites to have a dig and dump solution. We have to
get away from that. It is not sustainable, it is not the best
solution and there are well-established technologies in terms
of dealing with contaminated soil on site, and I have given the
example of one in the East Midlands, where 400,000 tonnes is being
remediated on site. I do not doubt that we will see a great deal
more of that and that is exactly the kind of thing that I would
want to encourage. In fact in the southeast, given the very high
potential developments, again from brown field sites, the cost
of remediation—although I would not want to belittle it
or it to say it is not insignificant—is a very small part
of the actual development.
Q22 Mr McWilliam: Can I take you back
to your answer about using cells within the existing non-hazardous
sites for hazardous waste? You seem to be quite relaxed about
asbestos. I am quite relaxed about asbestos as well; it is just
what happens to it in 50, 60, 100, 1,000 years' time? It is not
going to break down and it is only dangerous when it hits your
lungs.
Mr Morley: You have touched upon
the key issue. Generally speaking—it depends on the kind
of asbestos—the bulk of asbestos which is dealt with tends
to come from building construction. That tends to be stable and,
as you quite rightly say, unless you start sawing it up or doing
something with it, it tends to be low risk. It lends itself very
well for separate cells in relation to landfill sites because
it is a very stable waste, and I suspect a lot of the separate
cell applications which are coming in were probably designed for
asbestos.
Q23 Mr McWilliam: But some of them are
not and where you have an area like mine, where there are lots
of sites—and I mean lots of sites—the idea
of introducing a cell into any of those sites is causing great
concern to my local authority because it is not able to object
to those cells, despite the fact that those cells are adjacent
to areas where children play.
Mr Morley: But in some ways this
is an improvement on what the situation was. The situation was
before that basically the vast majority of landfill sites had
a hazardous waste licence. That is why some people erroneously
thought that there was going to be a major crisis because there
was a very large number on paper—it looked like there was
a very large number of hazardous waste sites—when in reality
they were basically general landfill sites that also had a hazardous
waste licence but did not take very much hazardous waste. But
the local authority could not stop them, if they had that licence,
putting asbestos in a normal landfill site, and indeed people
did. It was very uncontrolled compared to what we now have whereby
asbestos will go into particular licensed sites in a particular
cell and therefore it will reduce so that there will be less asbestos
going in the general landfills. I am also pretty sure that in
most cases where a separate cell application has been made for
a waste like asbestos, that site probably always held that licence;
so therefore there is no change in relation to what goes on the
site.
Q24 Joan Walley: On that issue, could
I ask what talks have taken place between yourself at DEFRA, the
DTI and the Environment Agency, looking at alternative processes
for dealing with asbestos material which, through processes, could
prevent it from being necessary to be disposed of in a site of
the kind that you have just talked about?
Mr Morley: There are talks between
ourselves in relation to asbestos, although there has been more
attention on substituting asbestos over the years, and quite successfully
so—you do not see asbestos roofs any more, they are long
gone because there are many alternative products that can be used.
So what has happened in this country is that there has been a
major move away from asbestos, and what we are left with is the
legacy issue of a lot of asbestos cladding and asbestos used in
building. The alternative ways of treatment are complex because
of the point that John made, in that it becomes dangerous when
you start to mess about with it, when you try to grind it up or
when you try to use a facility. In some ways the safest option
is to leave it alone because it is stable and inert, and to make
sure that it is disposed of in a safe way. There is always discussion
on new approaches, but I am not quite sure that anything major
has come through on that.
Ms Ellis: There are not a lot
of alternatives, basically, to landfill, although vitrification
is a possibility. But the Agency have told us that even that is
likely to be uneconomic at present because there has been about
a four-fold increase in the landfill costs which means that asbestos
disposal can reach about £100 a tonne at the moment. Even
at that rate landfill is a lot cheaper than alternative technologies.
Q25 Mr McWilliam: A tonne of asbestos
is a very large quantity—it is very light.
Mr Morley: It bears out what I
was saying before, Chairman, that my impression was the cost will
go up quite a lot.
Q26 Chairman: I think we need to move
on to fly-tipping, but before we do can I just remind you, Minister,
that this Committee produced a report to your department on fly-tipping,
fly-posting, litter, graffiti and noise, back in July and we are
looking forward to receiving a response. Can you give us an idea
of when?
Mr Morley: I shall make it a priority
to find that out for you, Chairman.
Chairman: Thank you very much indeed.
Colin Challen.
Q27 Mr Challen: The Flycapture
programme has been up and running for about six months now. Has
it brought out any evidence of an increase in fly tipping?
Mr Morley: Not so far, Chairman,
because we will need to have a longer period in relation to statistics,
and they should give us an idea of what is happening on fly tipping.
In fact it has been a problem that the statistics have not been
very reliable, and I think the Flycapture introduction
is a major step forward. Incidentally, we are also embarking now
on a consultation on a new programme of collecting statistics
on all forms of waste to improve our data capture. This is something
that we do need to do to give us an idea of what is going on.
You might be interested to know on what we do know is that there
was some concern that the changes to hazardous waste might lead
to an increase in fly tipping of hazardous waste, and I do have
a letter which I received this morning from the Agency, in which
it does appear that there is no evidence of that at all, and that
the incidents of hazardous waste fly tipping—mainly building
material containing asbestos—has not really changed over
the last three years in relation to the stats that we have. But
we do need to improve our data capture and we are in the process
of doing that.
Q28 Mr Challen: Specifically with hazardous
waste. We heard earlier in the session that there is perhaps now
a bit of a hiatus, whilst people who got in before the deadline
dealt with their stuff and now there is maybe a bit of backwater
behind the damn wall building up. Are you prepared for that or
are you simply going to wait for things to happen?
Mr Morley: We are not going to
wait for things to happen. As I say, this significant drop was
predicted by the industry and was it expected by ourselves, so
there is no surprise in that, and I would not expect to see arisings
to go back to their original level because of the changing costs.
But we must not be complacent—and we are not complacent—and,
as I was saying to you, Chairman, I have been talking to the Agency
about some high profile exercises, really designed to drive the
message home to people that we are not going to tolerate fly tipping.
Of course we do have enhanced powers now as well, which include
stop and search for local authorities; it also includes confiscation
of the vehicles which are involved in fly tipping; and we shall
encourage the courts to use those powers and to use them in a
way that will send a very clear signal to those people who are
thinking of doing this.
Q29 Mr Challen: Given the difficulties
we have already heard about today, about communicating with small
businesses, will our efforts be primarily focused on the SME sector
or particular sectors within it?
Mr Morley: It will be risk based.
What we do know from both the data and the prosecutions, that
there are certain hotspots in this country for fly tipping—and
Greater London is one of them actually—but there are quite
marked differences in the instance of fly tipping in different
parts of the country.
Q30 Mr Challen: So more resources will
be available in the next year or so to deal with this, if we anticipate
it is likely to happen?
Mr Morley: Obviously it is the
Agency's decision in relation to how they marshal their resources
and how they apply them. We have been talking to industry about
the possibility of having some special high profile targeted campaigns
and actually making some additional resources available, possibly
through the Landfill Credits, for example. Not as a substitution
for the work that the Agency does but as part of a high profile
targeted campaign with the intent of making it very clear to people
that fly tipping will not be tolerated, particularly the poorer
end of the market, shall we say—the white vans which are
sometimes involved in this sector. We can deploy those resources
where we know that there are particular problems.
Q31 Mr Challen: Is that a redeployment
or extra deployment?
Mr Morley: It could well be an
extra deployment.
Q32 Mr Challen: Briefly to return to
brown field and housing and the government's policy, 60% new housing
should be built on brown field sites. I imagine at the moment
that local authorities and developers look for the low hanging
fruit in terms of the cost of remediation and so on. When the
costs rise because the brown field begins to run out, do you anticipate
us having to do more to aid that process of remediating disposal
and so on, or is it simply going to be a flat lining level of
money devoted to the issue?
Mr Morley: I suspect in relation
to remediation, the technology is not new, it has been around
for a long time, and many other countries have not had the reliance
on landfill as we have had in this country, and brown field site
developments on the continent has generally involved on site remediation
for quite a long time really. But they knew about this. I think
that the costs of on site remediation will eventually come down
as it becomes more established, more people will have the equipment
and the competition and the market will do that. While it is true
that development of a green field site is generally cheaper than
a brown field site, it is often more difficult to get those sites
and they can be more expensive as well, so there tends to be a
bit of an adjustment. What I am saying is a generalisation, but
it does tend to even it out in terms of the costs.
Q33 Joan Walley: I would like to turn
to legal and sustainable timber and really see what progress DEFRA
has been able to make on this following the embarrassment of the
timber used, which was not, in the Cabinet office, and then with
the more recent disclosure that there are now lottery grants being
given out, particularly in Scotland, to major projects where again
legal and sustainable timber has not been used. I would like to
think that every single lottery grant, whether it is Wembley Stadium
or wherever, was able to use proper timber. What progress have
you made on it?
Mr Morley: We have made very good
progress in terms of the government estates and the Central Point
of Expertise on Timber is up and running, phase I; and I also
have the resources to go to phase II next year, which will involve
a pilot scheme initially where there will be staff so that people
can talk to people—phase I is simply Internet based. Now
that CPET is up and running I intend to write to all local authorities
about it, and that is an opportunity for raising this issue, and
my predecessor has done this once before. But I do accept that
we need to ensure that this moves out from beyond the government
estates. I include our Agencies; our Agencies are well aware of
the government's policy on the procurement of sustainable and
legal timber. What happened, of course, with these museum refurbishments
was that these were not government bodies; they certainly were
in receipt of Lottery funding, which is responsible to a government
ministry. I agree with you that we do need to ensure that we get
this very clear, that any form of government expense, or indeed
any form of public expense should involve the policy of procurement
of timber from legal and sustainable sources. We also want to
see the private sector do that, and I am very pleased with the
very strong support we have had from the Timber Trade Federation
in this process.
Chairman: That is the division bell.
We will have to interrupt the session but I hope that if we can
vote very quickly we can have another ten minutes of your time.
The Committee suspended from 15.39 pm
to 15.45 pm for a division in the House
Q34 Chairman: We can begin again; we
are quorate. I am sure that Joan Walley would like to ask you
a little more about timber but since she is not here can I veer
violently over towards the subject of GM crops? It is a year now
since we heard the results of the trial from the first three crops.
There is one outstanding. That trial was completed some time ago
but we have yet to hear what the result was and I was wondering
if there was any particular reason for the delay?
Mr Morley: No, no particular reason
apart from it was a winter-sown crop and because it was a winter-sown
crop it does put back the compilation of the data. I understand
that that is being done and we will make it public as soon as
it is available.
Q35 Chairman: We had understood that
the results would have been available some time ago. It is now
over a year since the results from the other crops.
Mr Morley: Yes, but the cycle
was completely wrong because of its sowing cycle.
Q36 Chairman: Do you have a target date
for publishing?
Mr Morley: I think it is pretty
imminent, Chairman; I do not have the date with me but I would
be very happy to send you a line on that.
Q37 We are talking oilseed rape here,
are we not?
Mr Morley: Yes, the winter-sown
oilseed rape.
Q38 Chairman: Have you received any indication
of what the results of that test might be?
Mr Morley: No, not yet.
Q39 Chairman: Nothing at all?
Mr Morley: No.
Chairman: Thank you very much. David
Chaytor.
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