Examination of Witness (Questions 220-226)
1 DECEMBER 2004
MR ELLIOT
MORLEY, MP
Q220 Alan Simpson: What
feedback have we had so far? Did anyone see it? Has there been
any attempt to measure whether it has had an impact or not? Did
we just throw the money out of the window and hope? What have
we got back?
Mr Morley: It has
been put together very carefully and it has been put together
with the advice from professional consultants. The strategy has
been carefully planned and there is going to be an evaluation
of the impact of the campaign by NOP which is part of the overall
commissioning so that there will be an NOP study about whether
people have seen it, whether it has affected people's attitudes,
so we will get some proper evaluation of the impact of the particular
campaign which I am very keen on actually. I think if we are going
to spend money on TV advertising, I think it is certainly worth
doing a proper evaluation on the impact of that.
Q221 Alan Simpson: Would
that evaluation include your being willing to go back and revisit
some of your own assumptions? For instance, if the feedback is
that there is largely a willingness on the part of the public
to be part of this process, but their experiences of involvement
in recycling just identified lots of gaps, particularly funding
gaps, it seems to me that if we want to follow it through, then
those funding gaps have to be addressed. The most obvious one
for me, going back to Paddy Tipping's point, about whether there
would be a point at which we would accelerate the Landfill Tax
in order to say, okay, if the cycle is a funding cycle and we
know where we will be taking the money from, if we are actually
trying to push at an open door, but there is no money to push
the positive position there, how would you respond?
Mr Morley: Well,
there is clearly an issue of funding in relation to having the
facilities and the infrastructure, but large sums of money have
been made available. It is why we have now got something like
80% of authorities who have got doorstep collections now and that
is as a result of the money which has been made available through
the various funding streams which I have outlined to the Committee.
The actual evaluation is not so much linked to that, although
I do not dispute that there is an issue of funding, but the evaluation
is on whether or not people have seen it and whether or not it
has changed their attitudes. You can provide the infrastructure,
and that is one thing and that is an issue of funding, it is true,
but you have also got to get people to use it, you have got to
get people to have the commitment actually to look at their own
lifestyles, actually to separate waste themselves and to do that
as a matter of routine. Now, that is what the campaign is designed
to do, to encourage people to use the facilities which have been
put in place and the evaluation will be to see exactly what effect
the campaign has had on people's patterns of behaviour. That is
what the evaluation will be primarily.
Q222 Alan Simpson: Sure,
but in practical terms, Minister, this was brought home to me
in the brief hot spell part of the summer when people called me
out and said, "Look, we are really quite happy to have the
local authority waste separation scheme, but the bins are being
collected on alternate weeks and you come and stand at the bottom
of my garden when it is just getting close to the fortnight of
food waste sitting in there and not only does my bin stink, but
the whole street's bins stink and we can't stand it!" You
cannot have it such that you just split the existing collection
system and call one week one thing and one another. If you are
serious, then there has to be increased frequency of collection
and that is where the costs come in, so what if we identify a
public willingness to go down this path and at an accelerated
rate, but there is an inadequacy of the resources to actually
follow through?
Mr Morley: But
I do not accept that argument at all.
Q223 Alan Simpson: I wish
you had stood in this street and explained that!
Mr Morley: Well,
I will tell you why I do not accept it, because, first of all,
I fully understand it because I hear these kind of complaints,
particularly in local authorities who are introducing a twin-bin
scheme with alternative collections, but Scunthorpe, which has
pioneered many things in this country, including, I think, the
first dog wardens, has had a twin-bin collection for many, many
years. Now, when it came in, there was exactly that kind of response
from people, but part of having a twin-bin collection is also
persuading people and educating people about reducing waste and
what they can do and really a lot of kitchen waste can be composted
in the garden, for example. If you separate it out and even if
it goes into the brown bin scheme, which is to go to compost,
really you generally should not have a problem with smell. You
really should not get that unless it is very wet, or there might
be some handling issues in the way that is done. The main complaint
that goes with it is not so much the issue of smell actually,
but the main complaint is that one bin overspills because the
brown bin is being collected one week and the other bin is spilling
over, but that is also about if people take out the glass and
the tins and separate it, then it reduces the waste stream as
well, so there is a way of using that twin-bin approach and if
it is used properly, then alternate-week collections are appropriate
and a good use of resources.
Chairman: Well, that is
a matter, as they say, of conjecture.
Q224 Joan Ruddock: I ought
to apologise to the Minister for taking him back a little bit,
but we were trying to ensure that we got some of those questions
I asked earlier on the record, so I have to jump back now to some
of the stuff we were talking about earlier in relation to enforcement,
the Environment Agency and so on. We always hear from witnesses,
and many of us feel this ourselves, that the Environment Agency
is not sufficiently resourced for all the vital tasks that we
want it to carry out. Is it still your view that the Environment
Agency has the resources to do the tasks which are so important
in terms of policing, particularly in terms of co-disposal?
Mr Morley: Yes,
I do believe it has adequate resources. Its budget has increased
significantly, although I would accept that a lot of the requirements
have also increased of what it has to do, so I understand that
very well. I meet with the Environment Agency regularly to talk
about their budgets and what they are doing. It is their choice
of course in terms of their overall budget as to how they allocate
it, it is choices for the Agency and the Agency Board, but we
have tried to help out with specific issues and the co-disposal
issue is one where of course there are risks, for example, of
fly-tipping and we want to address those seriously. As part of
the £43 million, which I mentioned, which goes into the BREW
fund, £2 million of that have been made available to the
Environment Agency for specific campaigns against fly-tipping,
stop and search, very high-profile campaigns, and in fact there
has been some very good press coverage on these. In fact there
was a story in the FT on 27 November about vehicles searched
in curbs on fly-tipping as part of the high-level campaigns they
do in co-operation with the police where in areas of known concentrations
of fly-tipping, they actually stop vehicles and search them. It
has been a very successful campaign, so that is an additional
£2 million that we have made available for that kind of campaign.
I think that, generally speaking, the Environment Agency use their
resources very well. There is always a case for more resources,
as we know, but I think that they are effective in what they do
and I think that given their budget has increased, they have the
choices in how they allocate it and I think they do so quite effectively.
Q225 Joan Ruddock: Well,
I smile at the Minister's reply about the good publicity because
I actually introduced those measures as a Private Member's Bill
many, many years ago, so the fly-tipping powers that they have,
I was very pleased I was able to introduce. However, I have to
say to the Minister on the £2 million that my local authority
alone spends an increasing amount, but the last time we had the
figures it was £½ million, one single local authority
spending £½ million on fly-tipping. It is such a huge
problem and unless we are able to arrest more and more of the
perpetrators and bring them to justice, then actually we cannot
solve this problem because just collecting the material repeatedly
is not a solution and we have to stop the criminals who are doing
it. I would say to the Minister that if the Environment Agency
had more people available more often for the sightings that people
themselves report, then I think a lot more could be done in this
area, so I say to him, it is good to have £2 million, but
I really do not think it is enough.
Mr Morley: Do not
think that £2 million is all that is being spent on fly-tipping.
That is additional for a specific campaign. The Environment Agency
has very large resources to apply to fly-tipping and local authorities
of course, as you quite rightly say, also have a responsibility
on this. We have also introduced new powers and new penalties
in relation to fly-tipping, particularly to deal with the organised
criminal element which is part of it, although an awful lot of
it, and we are analysing data on fly-tipping in more detail and
that will be made available in due course, but the vast majority
of it does appear to be domestic refuse which is just people tipping
stuff from their households. Now, again there is an issue there
of culture and people have to accept that this is anti-social
behaviour and is not acceptable and it may mean making examples
of some people in relation to the law, but a lot of it is really
domestic. I think we can deal with the criminal element, but it
would be a great help if people were a bit more responsible in
what they did themselves.
Q226 Chairman: Minister,
thank you very much indeed. There are one or two areas we would
have liked to have covered, dealing with PFI and new technologies,
which we will write to you about and hopefully solicit a reply
from you, but may we, as always, thank you for the candour of
your replies and the fullness of your answers. Thank you very
much indeed.
Mr Morley: It is
always a pleasure to be here!
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