Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140-155)
MR DIRK
HAZELL, MRS
LESLIE HEASMAN,
MR DAVID
O'CONNOR, MR
JIM MEREDITH,
MR ANDY
RYAN AND
MR GRAHAM
WATSON
17 JANUARY 2006
Q140 Mrs Moon: I assume that before
this was all rolled out there was a consultation process. Did
you take the opportunity to highlight your concerns during the
consultation process with Defra, so that before we got into what
appears to be quite a mess really you were highlighting the inconsistencies
that were there and the possibility for you, as operators, to
comply? Was that something you did?
Mr Hazell: Mr Chairman, would
it help the Committee to have a written schedule of our various
contributions to Defra and the Environment Agency over the years?
Q141 Chairman: Surely, it would be
very helpful. Thank you.
Mr O'Connor: Chairman, if I could
say that I feel there is a very positive way forward, so that
these template conditions are satisfactory, to operators and the
environment and to public health and to the Environment Agency.
SPGs, the Strategic Permitting Groups, from henceforth, that is
from January of this year, have been given the full role of determining
PPC permits, so they should be getting up now an expert team,
who have had this experience since 2003, to do a decent job. With
regard to the conditions, Mrs Heasman said there are over 100
appeals, that is not 100 conditions being appealed, it is probably
more like 6,000 conditions being appealed, by doubling up with
different people appealing the same condition. At ESA, and I have
led this, as Chairman of the Landfill Group, we have had a series
of four meetings with a specialist group, at very senior level,
from the Environment Agency, who have listened to our concerns
regarding these conditions and have agreed that 60 of them must
be changed. If only we had spoken earlier and been engaged with,
like the `energy from waste' and the physical treatment, we would
not have been in this position. I know, if you go to an eight-day
appeal on a site and an eight-day appeal on another site, you
are talking £400,000, that is the operator's cost; that does
not mean all the senior Environment Agency, who are tied up for
weeks. It just does not make sense. We must have more engagement
and I think, now that we have got this lot sorted out and the
SPGs are doing the job, we should go forward. That is my hope
and I will be doing everything to make sure that happens, and
I think the EA would as well.
Q142 Mrs Moon: In relation to fly-tipping,
if I can move you on to that issue, away from licensing, you describe
it as a major problem and certainly it is a major problem for
all representatives, it is one of those things that there are
always complaints to us about. There are two levels, in a sense;
you have got the individual perpetrator who abandons a sofa in
a country lane but also we talk about being scrupulous waste producers,
and these are people who highlight themselves as actually removing
waste and who then are illegally fly-tipping. You talk about the
need to have a national culture of zero tolerance and I would
certainly endorse that, but what do you think both the Environment
Agency and Defra should be doing to foster that, what would be
your recommendation, what would be your advice about raising the
zero tolerance level?
Mr Hazell: There has been a helpful
change in the law: the status of fly-tipping has been changed
by law, which is helpful. We are quite clear that the top priority
and the top funding priority of an environmental regulator ought
to be to secure the conviction of environmental criminals. It
is difficult for the Environment Agency to make that its top priority
because the Environment Agency is asked to do three different
things, which are not always mutually consistent. It is asked
to be a general advocate for the environment, it is asked to do
public works, notably flood defence, and it is asked to do environmental
regulation. One of the effects of that is, I think you heard it
from the other witnesses and I would agree with what I believe
the CBI said, for example, that there is not a great deal of transparency
in the Agency's operations when it comes to getting focus. Certainly
we are of the view, as it is essential to protect an environment,
human health and, indeed, to enable our industry to invest in
infrastructure, that instead of this emerging culture of organised,
or nearly organised, crime and local authorities all over the
place have really serious problems often with hazardous waste
being dumped, it has got to be nipped in the bud, if you call
this thing a bud, before it gets even worse. That must take as
much money from public funds as it needs because, at the end of
the day, it is going to save money to deal with it now rather
than to deal with the consequences, in terms of environmental
damage and more claims on the NHS, if we do not do it. What ESA,
and I think it was the CBI who alluded to it, has strongly supported
is that the BREW money, which is basically hypothecated landfill
tax, should be used to the fullest extent necessary to give the
Environment Agency the resources to be an effective detector and
then prosecutor. When you interview the Environment Agency, I
think you will find that where they have put in relatively small
resources actually they have achieved quite good results, but
you have got to have enough of an impact for this to be seen as
a country where you do not get away with it. One example, just
one example, is that instead of always just recruiting new graduates
because they are cheap, if you are going to be really serious
about this, then have a national hazardous waste flying squad,
really tough, experienced police officers, former police officers,
recruited into the Environment Agency, to give the signal that
they mean business.
Q143 Mrs Moon: I was going to ask
you about where you thought the money was coming from as well.
I think I am quite happy with the answer we have had.
Mr Ryan: If I may just add a remark,
there is a concern from the industry as well about exempt waste
activities, which is not fly-tipping as the public might imagine
it, with a deckchair and three mattresses in a lay-by. These are
permitted activities, legal activities, but exempted from having
a licence or permit, so it is on-farm composting of green waste,
or landscaping with waste materials for a golf course or an acoustic
bund, and so on. I would simply make the point that if I were
an unscrupulous person trying to cheat I would put my material,
which is not as I am describing it, where I know the Environment
Agency would be extremely unlikely to be looking. I think that
the regulation of exempt activities, or equal attention to exempt
activities, is important if we are to have security that the wastes
are going to the correct facilities.
Mr Hazell: I can offer another
figure which might be helpful. Between 10% and 50% of construction
and demolition waste is managed through exempt sites, so between
nine and 47 million tonnes of this waste a year is simply not
being monitored.
Q144 Chairman: After that helpful
observation, Mr Hazell, can I take you back to a point that you
made in your evidence to us, where you drew our attention to the
Environmental Audit Select Committee, who found that Defra's Grant
in Aid to the Environment Agency used for policing and enforcement
of illegal waste activity had been cut by £4 million. Did
you ever get any idea, from your privileged position in the industry,
as to why that cut had taken place?
Mr Hazell: We certainly did not,
Mr Chairman, and it is extraordinary to have a context where environmental
regulation, quite rightly, is pushing us towards a more sustainable
economy and therefore, for our sector, more expensive waste management,
on the one hand, and a reduction in the enforcement budget, on
the other. It is very difficult more generally on funding of the
Agency, it is very difficult to comment because, and this is what
the earlier witnesses were saying, there is such an extraordinary
lack of transparency. For a body like ours, we see the amount
of money the Environment Agency has and ask why cannot they spend
more on prosecution? It is very difficult for people like us to
form any sort of a view on that, because the Environment Agency
has these three distinct functions without the transparency or
disaggregation of its funding.
Q145 Chairman: If you had a free
hand, could you give us an example of how you would like that
transparency to be improved?
Mr Hazell: We would like to see,
I think, complete disaggregation of the funding of the regulatory
work of the Environment Agency, because that would give you immediately
very clear headings. There are assertions about the number of
officials which the Environment Agency has working on waste; we
do not recognise that figure of 1,800 officials, from what we
see as an industry. We want risk-based regulation. We think that
the Environment Agency, by international standards, is pretty
good at making sure that facilities that are operated are run
to pretty good standards, but there is an immense opportunity
now for this Select Committee to drive towards a modernisation
of environmental regulation which is much more output-based, risk-based
and process-oriented. For the people in the Environment Agency
who want to do their job as well as they possibly can, that needs
a complete disaggregation of the regulatory function, and if you
speak to the officials privately some of them will admit that.
Mr Meredith: I guess that what
I would like to say is in support of that but I am not sure that
I agree necessarily with the areas of the Agency as Mr Hazell
has described them. I see it as technical adviser, enforcement
and policy, whether it is the interpretation of policy, or whatever,
and I think sometimes we see, from the inspectors at the front
end, some clashes there between where they are advising or they
are enforcing. It comes back, to me, to the establishment of what
is the functionality of the Agency and how it disaggregates itself
internally. One could argue quite strongly that there are other
analogous organisations out there, like the police force, which
actually police very well, and they are very clear about who sets
the policy, it is the law, how it is then implemented, how there
are safeguards built into it, in order that people can go through
proper processes with checks and balances, and you employ people
with the skill set to do the policing, not necessarily technical
guys, who are attempting to do the policing and attempting to
interpret at the front end as well. That would also give you some
clarity about the ability to have a technical advisory group within
the Agency for a sector and I think would match to some of what
the previous witnesses said, that maybe you would not be crossing
the boundaries of enforcement to technical advice if they were
separated within the Agency. On top of that, you would then have
some transparency in the funding arrangements. It is not for me
to say that the Agency needs to rip itself apart and rebuild but
it must be very difficult with what is meant to be a holistic
organisation to generate the sort of Chinese walls internally
to make those functions appear very clear.
Q146 Daniel Kawczynski: I very much
like the idea of a fly-tipping flying squad and I think I shall
be raising that with Margaret Beckett. If somebody, say, dumps
asbestos in your consistency, do you think that the local authorities
actually have enough powers to deal with it, or is it a lack of
financial resources as to why not enough is being done to prosecute
these people?
Mr Hazell: The powers have changed.
If there were a stronger national squad in the Environment Agency,
they would be better placed to give local authorities, who have
a lot of other things to do, the specialist resources to help
to detect and prosecute what is going on. We gave some evidence
to the Greater London Assembly, about a year ago, or it may be
longer than that. It was heartbreaking, listening to some of the
enforcement officers in London's local authorities, being physically
attacked for trying to deal with industrialised dumping of materials
like asbestos in a London street where you get children playing.
You have got to have a tough squad somewhere, so you are going
to have it in either the police, because the local authorities
are not going to be able to do it, or the Environment Agency,
and probably the Environment Agency, with properly-skilled staff,
would have the right skill sets.
Q147 Sir Peter Soulsby: Can I just
be clear what Mr Hazell and Mr Meredith between them are saying.
Am I right, in summarising what you have just said, that you would
argue for a clear disaggregation of the budgets within the Environment
Agency and a much clearer separation of the roles that those operate
in the Agency; is that a fair summary?
Mr Hazell: It is definitely what
we would argue for; we have been arguing it for some time and
it is very much as a constructive friend. There is another side
to it. Last year, the fees for charging for Waste Management Licences
went up by 210% to 2,200%, and we are simply not in a position
to say whether we got value for money for those increases. It
works both ways, but if you have an environmental regulator, which
is what we are primarily concerned with, focused simply on regulation,
I think you will find that within the space of a Parliament they
become a more effective regulator. You would not dream of asking
the Financial Services Authority to sell mortgages or proselytise
for the financial community as a whole, and there is no reason
either why those functions should be together in the Environment
Agency, because you would get the same conflicts.
Q148 Sir Peter Soulsby: I want to
change tack slightly and ask about the definition of waste. In
their written evidence, a number of those who have submitted to
us have talked of difficulties in the way in which waste is defined.
One of the particular examples given to us was the definition
of gravel and the way in which gravel can be removed from a river
behind an intake, it could be used more usefully but has to be
defined as waste. Can I ask you to comment first on that specific
example, on that specific issue, and the rather more general one
as to whether there are issues about how waste is regarded?
Mr Hazell: The definition of waste
is contained in the Waste Framework Directive. Immediately before
Christmas, the European Commission released a draft new Waste
Framework Directive which we believe, rightly, has not amended
the definition of waste, so basically waste is anything that you
are required to, or intend to, or do discard, and since that original
definition has come up nobody has been able to find a better definition.
The European Commission gave a briefing meeting both on the new
draft Directive and on the relevant two thematic strategies yesterday;
there is clearly no intention and no appetite for changing that
basic definition of waste. What is going to be a struggle in Brussels,
and this is where it is going to be decided, not by the Environment
Agency, in the next two years, is where in certain cases something
stops being waste, and perhaps in one or two very narrow cases
is not considered to be waste in the first place but is a by-product.
I think our view is that we want whatever best protects the environment,
and as long as something protects the environment I do not think
anybody is going to make unreasonable claims. That said, it seems
to us that every single producer industry in this country suddenly
has got the idea into its head that whatever it is producing now
is not waste, and that has been a dangerous escalation of expectations
because the Brussels machinery, quite rightly, is not going to
deliver on that. If there are products which quite simply can
be got to a standard that is safe and then can be put on the market,
yes, of course, they should be and we should not be too bureaucratic
about that. We make our living from regulation but we do not want
to bring down the whole of the economy to produce good environmental
standards.
Q149 Sir Peter Soulsby: On this occasion,
it is not a matter of the way in which Defra and the Environment
Agency are defining waste, it is a more general issue, as you
describe it?
Mr Hazell: It is very important
that it is defined consistently across the European Union. I do
not think any of our authorities can be properly criticised for
implementing, not gold-plating but properly implementing, European
law, but there is an issue if other regulators do not properly
implement European law.
Q150 Chairman: On a technical point,
you may not know this, but in terms of a lot of the detailed technical
work that working groups within the European Union, the Commission
arrangements, undertake, from what you are saying the Environment
Agency do not have a seat at the table?
Mr Hazell: We would say that perhaps
they have a little bit too much of a seat at the table, in the
sense that I recognised at least one of their officials at the
briefing meeting yesterday.
Q151 Chairman: Which briefing meeting
was that?
Mr Hazell: The European Commission's
briefing meeting yesterday in Brussels. We would say very much
that it is for the Government to govern, and I agree strongly
with the evidence you heard earlier this afternoon, ESA strongly
agrees with it, that the Agency should indeed have an expert contribution
to make to Defra's formation of policy but the Environment Agency
should not itself be the Government. The Minister is accountable
directly to you. Barbara Young can be interrogated by you but
she is not directly accountable to you. A lot of people are affected
by these laws and your job, as elected Members of Parliament,
is to scrutinise and you can only do that if it is the government
department that forms the policy. We have consistently invited
Defra to try to co-ordinate, not by compulsion, representations
that we, the Environment Agency and others make in Brussels, because
there is a distinctly British perspective that adds value in Brussels,
which is aligning economic and environmental sustainability.
Q152 James Duddridge: I am going
to skip ahead, because I think we have covered a number of issues
around funding and transparency and also we have covered risk-based
analysis and approach, which I was going to query with you. I
would like to ask about data collection by the Agency. In particular,
in what ways have ineffective systems within the Agency devalued
the information collected by waste operators and what improvements
can be made in relation to that data use?
Mr Hazell: David is going to answer
that more fully but, in very simple terms, an awful lot goes in
and not very much comes out.
Mr O'Connor: I would agree with
that. Chairman, for some years, before the Environment Agency,
with the waste regulatory authorities, there was a requirement
under the old Waste Disposal Licences, which then became Waste
Management Licences, which are now PPC permits, to send in monthly
returns to the regulatory authority for the characterisation of
waste, the quantities, the type and its origin. When we have a
dearth of statistical information on waste streams, one does wonder
what has been happening to this information that has been collected
since 1976. We have also got pollution inventory reporting, where
200 individual parameters, emissions to air and water, are recorded
and sent to the Environment Agency. We have got monitoring data
on emissions from sites, from landfill sites, to air and water.
We have got the LATS quarterly reports on MSW that is accepted
at landfill sites so that diversion targets can be calculated,
and we have got separate returns for reporting on hazardous waste
volumes and the nature of them. One thing we have got is that
all of this information goes out but we see very little coming
back out of there, and effective environmental regulation can
take place only if you have got good supporting data on waste
types and quantities. It was a surprise that up to 50% of construction
and demolition waste is not going through licensed sites. You
need to know where wastes are going and in what quantities. Just
to give you an example where accuracy is fundamental, if you have
got a 10% inaccuracy on LATS returns, this is the diversion of
biodegradable waste from landfill, that can cost English local
authorities £35 million. Ten per cent on the low side, they
have got a debt of £35 million; 10% on the high side, they
have made £35 million. When you are being charged £150
as a penalty for every tonne that you fail to meet your target
by, if you have not got accurate data then the local authority
which has got these targets, you and I will be paying for it.
It is crucially important, not just in hazardous waste but where
you have got penalties such as the ones I have described, in not
meeting the target of diversion from landfill, it is going to
cost a lot of money if there are any inaccuracies in the system.
We have mentioned exempt facilities. There is no data whatsoever
on that, except what Defra have collected, and the construction
and demolition waste is a figure that Defra has provided for us,
so you are talking 47 million tonnes that are not accounted for.
It is crucially important that the Environment Agency has good,
sound, accurate, computerised technology and systems so that at
least we know where we are and where we are going.
Mr Hazell: One of the main problems
for local authorities is on the failure to apply the European
Waste Catalogue, so municipal waste is still, some years I think
after it was supposed to come in, currently grouped collectively
and it should not be.
Mr Watson: A comment on a few
of David's points really, but there is a clear need for mature
and robust data-handling systems within the Agency and, one of
the peculiarities, the Agency has done very well in respect of
capturing information on pollution inventory by allowing direct
electronic submission of information, but on a regional basis
you see there are discrepancies between requiring information
sent on, either bespoke templates, electronic submissions or even
good old-fashioned paper, and then sent into regional offices
to be scanned to be put onto the public register. I think, with
the data capture systems that most companies are using now, it
would be a very simple process to align industry with the Agency
and actually submit data directly to the public register and cut
out a whole tier perhaps of administration and bureaucracy.
Q153 Chairman: Just help me to understand
one thing because, going back to when the new disposal arrangements
came in for dangerous substances, I can remember ESA talking about
the missing millions of tonnes of material. I hope my memory has
not let me down on that. I can remember also Elliot Morley standing
up in the House of Commons pooh-poohing all of this criticism:
"Yes, we can account for it all; it's just industry talk."
In other words, there is not somewhere sitting there vast quantities
of material which could not be accounted for, seemed to be the
Government's line. You have been calling for the Environment Agency
to have better data handling and yet the Government took a very
defensive position that they knew where all of this material was.
I just wonder, once the proverbial new dust had settled, was there
ever an analysis carried out by these interested parties to establish
with clarity and accuracy where these different perceptions came
from, because clearly the Agency are reliant on other people's
data to collect and your assertion was that there was not a proper
collection to account for the materials that were being disposed
of? Unless you can solve the fundamentals of that line of thinking,
you will not get the accurate database which both parties before
us have suggested is needed. Is that a fair assessment?
Mr Hazell: There still is not
enough data collection. If Graham's advice was adopted, and it
is advice that other operators have made as has ESA, you would
have a form of double-entry book-keeping that at a stroke would
eliminate a great deal of fraud which undoubtedly exists in the
system. No company, I think, suffered more probably than did Onyx
when liquid hazardous waste was banned from landfill and the liquid
hazardous waste did not then go to their new treatment infrastructure.
The volumes of waste for solid hazardous waste, if you believe
in miracles then perhaps the Minister was entirely accurate in
everything he said to the House, but miracles hardly ever happen
and we have some reason to believe that hazardous waste has not
disappeared completely from the United Kingdom with the new regulation.
Obviously there has been some minimisation, obviously there has
been more careful categorisation by responsible waste producers
of some waste streams, but we simply do not believe that the volumes
of hazardous waste have fallen to the extent that they appear
to have fallen and probably there are waste producers all over
the country who are hoarding things that would be a lot safer
if they were not hoarding them.
Q154 Chairman: One of the issues
which have come up in all the evidence that we have heard, not
only today but in other inquiries, that have affected the work
of the Agency, is the question of specialist staff. It would be
very useful to have your collective opinions as to whether, in
fact, you adjudge that the Agency has the right people and whether
they are paying the right salaries to ensure retention whilst
they build up their experience, so that they do not end up being
poached by others who can offer better salaries and therefore
denude the Agency of continuity and quality at the same time?
Mr Hazell: We think that, at a
personal level, a lot of the people in the Agency in themselves
are good people. Our relationships at the top of the Agency are
very good. There are management problems in terms of getting the
policies at the top down to the operational level, and there are
issues both with the skills and the management structures of operational
staff. The law has been for some time that if you wish to work
in waste management you have to have quite prescriptive qualifications.
We would like the qualifications for our regulator to be at least
as demanding and we would like, and we have been offering this
for several years, to have joint training, because we think joint
training would be very helpful, for both the people who work in
our industry and the regulator. I think, to be fair to the senior
management of the Agency, they were very resistant to that when
the ETRA committee reported, I think they are more sympathetic
than they were, but it would certainly be very helpful if you
could press them on joint training and indeed on technical skills.
In the same way that it is very difficult for good waste management
companies to respond to bids from local authorities that are not
very well informed, it is incredibly difficult for the better-trained
staff of the better-run companies to deal with Agency officials
who have a great deal of local power but really are not trained
for the responsibilities that they have.
Mr Meredith: I would come back
to the point about the disaggregation, I think. You need to look
at the skill sets that are required for each group of people and
a lot of what we do is talk about the interaction of the technical
knowledge and the technical interpretation around risk and I think
that needs to be vested with a very, very trained group of specialist
people who are available almost at an arm's length to resolve
the sort of PPC type issues that we deal with. Then I think the
regulation is a separate issue in itself and needs a different
skill set. I think there are all sorts of anecdotal comments that
one could make. I do not have figures on turnover of staff and
I am not even sure that we have seen a massive turnover of staff
on the Agency side. What I do know is that the Agency was required
to expand its role and remit and as the complexity of what it
is trying to do in terms of PPCs has expanded they have needed
quite a significant injection of young blood just simply to take
up the reigns of, and cope with, the work that they have got to
do. I think that brings in an inevitability of an experience curve
that has to go up, it has to be going up at the same period of
time. I think that is something that we in the industry just have
to take on board and, as Dirk said, I think the ESA has been running
forward and WRG, we have been involved in it as well, I think
if it was brought forward, if we just keep going on the joint
training and try to get these people up the experience curve as
fast as we can, because that is what we want. We want good, strong,
robust regulation, a relatively level playing-field and we do
not want to have to spend hours of our time and resource and cost
arguing about things which effectively are trying to educate people.
It is absolutely no disrespect to anybody in the Agency. I think
it is their functionality, where they have come from and where
they are trying to get to and I think it is a very difficult job
they have got, trying to square that circle.
Mrs Heasman: If I can comment
on a point made by the previous witnesses, that there is a severe
technical skills shortage in the market out there, everybody is
fighting in the same pool, as it were. The universities, in NERC
funding, are cutting back on a regular basis on the specialist
courses, such as hydrogeology, geotechnics, chemistry, in favour
of the more popular, less technical, general environmental courses.
The numbers of graduates being generated with these specialist
skills are far too low and it is certainly not sustainable in
number terms and it is very difficult to get engagement on that
issue.
Q155 Chairman: Does that mean though
that there are many technical and demanding forms of qualification
which still command a lot of people to go and try to qualify?
Being a doctor or a vet is a long haul but, at the end of the
day, the rewards are there. Are you suggesting that, certainly
for those who might seek employment with the Environment Agency,
the rewards are not sufficient to attract people to do these more
demanding courses? I suppose, in the same sense, you are all fishing
in the same pond?
Mrs Heasman: Yes, we are. You
are right, the rewards are not adequate for those to go through
that training to identify a career. Also, they do not see necessarily
an organisation such as the Environment Agency as an organisation
that needs technically-qualified staff. People who work in the
Agency understand that, but the big view of the Environment Agency
is as a general protector of the environment and people who have
those specialised skills, or are considering acquiring them, do
not automatically consider a career in the Environment Agency
as one where they can use them, and they ought to.
Chairman: So there is a bit of a selling
job for the Agency to do about attractive careers. Thank you all
very much indeed for your contributions. If, as a result of our
line of questioning, you think of any further ways in which the
Agency's operations can be improved, or even further points that
you think this Committee should put to the Agency, please let
us know with all speed. Thank you very much for your contributions
this afternoon.
|
