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Avian Influenza

11. Mr. Nigel Dodds (Belfast, North) (DUP): What discussions she has had with devolved Administrations on protecting the UK against an outbreak of avian influenza. [57030]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): Avian influenza is regularly discussed with colleagues in the devolved Administrations. The main legislative controls to protect against an AI outbreak apply throughout the UK.

Mr. Dodds: I thank the Minister. What measures has he discussed with officials of the Department of Agriculture and Rural Development in Northern Ireland, given that Northern Ireland shares a land frontier with the Irish Republic, and have any consultations taken place with the Government of that jurisdiction?

Mr. Bradshaw: Yes, and officials in Northern Ireland work very closely with officials across the border in the Republic to co-ordinate any response to avian flu. Northern Ireland officials had input into our contingency plan, which was most recently updated in December, and they will play a full part in the contingency exercise that we plan to hold next month.

Mrs. Madeleine Moon (Bridgend) (Lab): Has the Minister considered holding discussions with the Association of Local Government Ecologists, whose members are in close daily contact with all the local bird recorders and local communities, to make sure that there is a network of local information and contacts, as that would ensure that local authorities were at the forefront of tackling avian flu if it came to local areas?

Mr. Bradshaw: I am not aware that we have had any specific discussions with local government ecologists, but if we have not, I shall suggest that it sounds like a very good idea.

Batteries (Recycling)

12. Dr. John Pugh (Southport) (LD): Whether further steps are planned to encourage the recycling of batteries. [57031]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): The draft EU batteries directive is likely to be finalised later this year. In anticipation of that, the waste and resources action programme will pilot collection schemes for household batteries in England.

Dr. Pugh: I do not want to accuse the Government of having a recycling strategy and package with batteries not included, but with 600 million going into landfill and only one in 100 household batteries being recycled, is not there a phenomenal amount still to do?

Mr. Bradshaw: Yes.
 
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Climate Change

13. James Duddridge (Rochford and Southend, East) (Con): If she will make a statement on the Government's progress in meeting its climate change targets. [57033]

14. Mr. Jim Cunningham (Coventry, South) (Lab): What progress has been made by the UK on its Kyoto commitments on greenhouse gas emissions. [57034]

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Margaret Beckett): The Government expect to exceed by about 7 percentage points our Kyoto protocol commitment to reduce the UK's greenhouse gas emissions by 12.5 per cent. below 1990 levels by 2008–12. We have today published the UK's demonstrable progress report, which has recently been sent to the secretariat of the United Nation's framework convention on climate change, confirming our progress towards our target. A copy is available on my Department's website.

James Duddridge: I thank the Secretary of State for that reply, but given that Sir David King, the chief scientific adviser, has stated that the 2010, not 2012, target will be "a very tough target" and that longer-term targets are perhaps more critical, what assessment has the Secretary of State made of a 60 per cent. reduction by 2050? Is that now more of an aspirational than an achievable target?

Margaret Beckett: I am talking about the Kyoto targets, which are for greenhouse gases as a whole, whereas I think that the hon. Gentleman's reference to Sir David King may have been about our CO ₂ targets for 2010 and 2050. They are very tough targets. That is why they were set: there is a great deal to do. In the not-too-distant future, we will publish the climate change review, to which we committed ourselves in 2000, to show how we can get closer to those targets; but of course, no one has yet drawn out the path to 2050. Work is continuing on that, and I can assure the hon. Gentleman that we will keep the House informed of that work.

Mr. Cunningham: Can my right hon. Friend say what the British Government are doing to assist other countries in achieving their climatic targets—for example, with projects, technology and so forth?

Margaret Beckett: My hon. Friend is quite right to suggest that not just the Government but the private sector in the UK can do a great deal to help others. Developing countries do not have such targets, but they can certainly make a substantial contribution towards solving or exacerbating the problem, as the case may be, and now that we have the Kyoto protocol enforced, since the earlier part of this year, there is increasing scope for projects to be developed under the clean development mechanism, whereby sometimes Governments but sometimes private companies can invest in technologies in developing countries to help them towards a low-carbon economy. Indeed, I rather take the view that that may be a big spur towards the transfer of technology, which has been sought as a development goal for so long.
 
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John Hemming (Birmingham, Yardley) (LD): The Secretary of State will be aware that the Kyoto targets do not include emissions from international aviation, which is obviously good news for any Minister who wishes to jet off to international conferences on carbon emissions. However, how will the Secretary of State resolve the discrepancies between her Department and the Department of Trade and Industry over aviation? Unless we repeal the second law of thermodynamics, we cannot have the massive increase in aviation specified in the aviation White Paper and reduce carbon emissions? How will she resolve that discrepancy?

Margaret Beckett: Of course I am aware that aviation is not included. At the time, it was thought to be much too difficult and the belief was that, if people tried to include aviation, the project would never get off the ground—sorry for that. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman knows that, during our EU presidency, we got agreement from the European Commission to consider including aviation in the EU emissions trading scheme. There is what one could call a slightly theoretical commitment from the global aviation organisations that emissions trading is the way to tackle the impact of aviation but no concrete steps have been taken towards that. If we can get the matter agreed in the EU, that would be a hugely powerful step towards global action. As for Ministers travelling to discuss climate change, the hon. Gentleman reminds me of a question that I was asked at a meeting for the Gleneagles dialogue in London. One journalist asked why no Minister had arrived by bike. I explained that it was a little difficult to get here by bike from Latin America.

Waste Incineration

16. Angela Watkinson (Upminster) (Con): If she will make a statement on the Government's policy on the incineration of waste. [57036]

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mr. Ben Bradshaw): The Government believe that incineration with energy recovery is a better solution than landfill for residual waste that cannot be reused, recycled or composted.

Angela Watkinson: Most waste collection authorities are doing their best to educate people about the virtues of waste reduction. The Under-Secretary knows about the huge amounts of waste required to feed a hungry incinerator and all the associated lorry movements in transporting that waste from collection to disposal points. Does not he understand that incineration is incompatible with waste reduction?

Mr. Bradshaw: No, it is not necessarily. We must be careful during our review of waste policy that we do not introduce incentives into the system that increase incineration at the cost of recycling. We do not intend to do that. However, there will always be residual waste after recycling, reused to the point of minimisation. For
 
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the first time, we reduced waste last year. However, all the other European countries that do much more recycling than we do turn more waste to energy. That is why we envisage having more incinerators but not as many as we believed would be necessary in 2000.

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