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Clean Neighbourhoods

5. Mr. Siôn Simon (Birmingham, Erdington) (Lab): What information she has collected on the use local councils are making of the powers granted to them in the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005. [57023]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): There is considerable variation in the performance of local authorities in using their powers to improve the local environment. We intend expanding the local environment quality survey to all local authorities in England, and we will publish the results.

Mr. Simon: I thank the Minister for that answer. Birmingham city council is proving very good at levying fines under the new Act, and proving very bad at chasing up their collection. Given the obvious limited deterrent effect of fines that do not have to be paid, and notwithstanding the notable incompetence and dithering of the Tory-led and Liberal-assisted leadership of Birmingham city council, can my hon. Friend suggest any ways in which councils such as Birmingham might put a bit of substance behind their sound and fury and collect fines rather more effectively than purely vigorously?

Mr. Bradshaw: I hope that they will be partly persuaded by my hon. Friend's intervention. He is quite right to point out that there are huge variations in local authority performance. Some local authorities do not levy any fixed penalty notices at all, whereas others issue hundreds. It is important that local authorities such as his own in Birmingham use the extra powers that the Labour Government have given them to tackle environmental crime—powers, I might add, that were opposed by the Conservative party.

Mr. Andrew Robathan (Blaby) (Con): Under the Act do local councils have the power to instruct parked vehicles to switch off their engines? If Westminster city council does not have that power, will the Minister
 
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instruct all ministerial drivers in the Government car service to switch off their engines, because they are among the worst offenders in Westminster, polluting the local environment while they wait for their bosses with their engines ticking over?

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Jim Knight): Not in our Priuses.

Mr. Bradshaw: Not in our Priuses, indeed. I agree with the hon. Member for Blaby (Mr. Robathan). As someone who uses the bicycle as his usual form of transport I, too, am annoyed by motorists who leave their vehicles idling for no reason. Obviously, they may have a reason to do so if they are waiting in cold temperatures for a long time for a Minister who is delayed at a meeting, but I join the hon. Gentleman in urging people not to allow their engines to idle unnecessarily.

Andrew Gwynne (Denton and Reddish) (Lab): The Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act has indeed introduced a number of substantial powers for local authorities to tackle environmental problems in their areas. One of the main complaints that I hear is about antisocial behaviour and criminal activity in passageways. What progress is being made to allow the introduction of gating orders under the Act, as that would greatly improve my constituents' quality of life?

Mr. Bradshaw: The provisions on gating alleyways to which my hon. Friend refers come into force on 6 April. I hope that his local authority in Denton and Reddish will use them to tackle the problems that he has rightly highlighted.

Meat and Poultry Imports

6. Ann Winterton (Congleton) (Con): What recent developments there have been in Government policy on illegal meat and poultry imports to the UK. [57025]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): Since November, Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs has doubled the number of staff who check passengers, freight and post from H5N1-affected countries. We are also launching publicity campaigns on avian influenza on top of existing campaigns on illegal imports.

Ann Winterton: Avian flu receives a great deal of publicity, but will the Minister reflect on the increasing danger of illegally imported meat and meat products into this country? On average, up to 12 tonnes are imported a year, a percentage of which is infected with foot and mouth, so will he improve considerably defences against those illegal imports? Ten sniffer dogs for 110 points of entry and increased baggage X-ray facilities are simply not good enough. Will he give higher priority to this important issue, which may adversely affect both human and animal health?

Mr. Bradshaw: The hon. Lady is right to say that we should not slacken our guard against other threats because of the high level of vigilance against avian flu.
 
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However, we are not slackening our guard—we have provided £25 million of new money over three years to tackle the problem of illegal imports, and we have vastly increased resources for Customs and Excise, which has improved its checking, as there have been more seizures and prosecutions. There is no such thing as 100 per cent. security, but I am satisfied that we are doing as much as we can with the very generous resources that the Chancellor has made available.

Mr. Roger Williams (Brecon and Radnorshire) (LD): Recent estimates suggest that 15 million of the 30 million pheasants reared in this country for shooting are imported from France either as eggs or as young poults. Given the outbreak of H5N1 in France, has the Department undertaken any risk assessment of that trade, which will start in earnest in the next couple of months?

Mr. Bradshaw: Yes indeed, we have done so. The assessment is that there is no risk as long as the pheasants do not come from an area where there has been H5N1 infection. Our vets have written to their French counterparts asking for extra reassurance. If we had to curtail those imports, there would be serious repercussions for our shooting industry, which makes a huge contribution to the economy of rural areas.

Bill Wiggin (Leominster) (Con): The European Food Safety Authority's recent report on foot and mouth disease found that between 1 and 5 per cent. of travellers bring into the EU about 5 kg of animal products from foot and mouth disease-infected areas. The promised meat disposal bins and extra staff do not seem to have materialised. There have been only eight prosecutions, of which one was custodial, since the disease was in Britain. As 97 per cent. of the foot and mouth disease risk is in passenger baggage, why have we only 10 meat detector sniffer dogs to cover the whole UK? Between 2,800 and 17,500 tonnes of illegal meat is imported annually into the EU. How hard is it to train more dogs to sniff out that much meat?

Mr. Bradshaw: There have been nine prosecutions, in fact. We have 10 sniffer dogs—10 more than we had under the Conservative Government. We will soon have 14, which will be 14 more than any other EU country.

Recycling

7. Mr. Graham Allen (Nottingham, North) (Lab): What steps she is taking to ensure that the Government target for 25 per cent. of household waste to be recycled will be met this year. [57026]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): We are confident of meeting our 25 per cent. target for household recycling and composting this year. I congratulate local authorities and the public on their tremendous achievements in trebling recycling and composting since Labour came to power in 1997.

Mr. Allen: I congratulate the Minister and the ministerial team on the great progress that has been made. However, our league position in Europe is probably more akin, sadly, to that of Nottingham
 
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Forest, or perhaps even Exeter, than to Chelsea's. Will my hon. Friend consider introducing annual increments in household waste recycling so that we can continue that important task?

Mr. Bradshaw: My hon. Friend is right to highlight both our progress and the fact that we are still a long way behind most other EU countries. I invite him and other Members to study the draft consultation document on the review of our waste strategy, which contains new targets for recycling that are considerably more ambitious than our 2000 targets—up to 50 per cent. by 2020. If we can hit that, it will put us in good company with some of the best performers in the rest of Europe.

Tony Baldry (Banbury) (Con): The Minister will be aware that Cherwell is the best-performing district council in the south-east of England for recycling household waste and one of the 10 best in the country, at well over 50 per cent. That has not been particularly difficult, however. If we can get the rest to the level of the best, we can meet the target in a straightforward way. Any hon. Member who would like to see how it is done is welcome to come to Banbury, and I will take them on a tour round the various coloured wheelie bins that have been used so effectively by the district council.

Mr. Bradshaw: I am sure hon. Members can hardly wait. The hon. Gentleman is right, though, and I congratulate his local authority on its performance. He is also right to highlight the huge variation in the performance of local authorities, with some up as high as 50 per cent. plus, as his is, and some down in single figures. That shows that it can be done, and we want the poor performers to learn from the good.

Dr. Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test) (Lab): Does my hon. Friend consider that the production of energy from waste is compatible with the recycling targets that he mentioned? Is the suggestion in the waste review that energy from municipal waste might rise from 9 per cent. at present to 27 per cent. by 2020 an aspiration or a target? Has he made an estimate of the energy production capacity that that increase might represent? Does he agree that it would represent the capacity of three or four nuclear power stations, and if he does, will he communicate that idea—

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Sir Alan Haselhurst): Order. There were a good three questions there.

Mr. Bradshaw: We do think that energy from waste has a role to play, and think, as do all the green non-governmental organisations, that it is preferable to landfill. The figure in our review document is not a target, but an assessment of where we think we are likely to be, which is considerably higher than we thought in our 2000 review—we thought we would be at 33 per cent. by 2020—because we have done so much better on recycling and expect to do better still.

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