 House of Commons |
Session 2007 - 08 Publications on the internet General Committee Debates Climate Change |
Climate Change Bill [Lords] |
The Committee consisted of the following Members:John Benger, Sara
Howe Committee Clerks †
attended the Committee Public Bill CommitteeTuesday 8 July 2008(Morning)[Mr. Peter Atkinson in the Chair]Climate Change Bill [Lords]10.30
am Ordered,
That the
order of the Committee [24th June] be varied as follows: in paragraph
(3) leave out “7.00 p.m.” and insert
“11.59 p.m.”—[Siobhain
McDonagh.]
Schedule 5Waste
reduction
schemes Amendment
proposed [3 July]: No. 108, in schedule 5, page 69, line
3, at the end to insert the words—
‘(d) the authority proposes to collect
residual domestic waste at least once in every seven days,
and (e) the authority proposes
to collect all recyclable material, including tetrapak materials,
polystyrene and all plastics.’.—[Gregory
Barker.] Question
again proposed, That the amendment be
made.
The
Chairman: I remind the Committee that with this we are
discussing the following: amendment No. 109, in
schedule 5, page 69, line 32, at
end insert ‘but no
charges for residual domestic waste can be imposed unless the authority
has made provision to collect all other materials not less than once
every 14 days, including, (i) all plastics of whatever type, (ii)
polystyrene, (iii) paper and card of all descriptions including
tetrapak, (iv) glass and (v) metal and
aluminium.’. Amendment
No. 110, in
clause 70, page 33, line 9, leave
out subsection
(2). Amendment
No. 107, in
clause 70, page 33, line 19, at
end insert— ‘(c) does not
include a power to create a criminal penalty on any householder for
non-compliance with any aspect of a waste reduction
scheme.’. New
clause 18—Waste authority’s power to reduce amount of
council tax
payable— ‘After
section 13A of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 (c. 14) there is
inserted— “13B
Power to reduce amount of tax payable in relation to household
waste (1) Where a person is
liable to pay council tax in respect of any chargeable dwelling and any
day, any waste collection authority or waste disposal authority may
require the billing authority for the area in which the dwelling is
situated to reduce the amount which he is liable to pay as respects the
dwelling and the day to such extent as it thinks
fit. (2) The power under
subsection (1) may only be exercised in connection with measures to
reduce the amount of residual domestic waste produced in the
authority’s area. (3)
The power under subsection (1) may be exercised in relation to
particular cases or by determining a class of case in which liability
is to be reduced to an extent provided by the
determination.
(4) Where an authority exercises the power under
subsection (1) the authority must pay or allow to the billing authority
if requested an amount equivalent to the total reduction in the amount
of tax payable each year as a result together with the reasonable
administration costs of making such
reductions.”’. New
clause 22—Waste reduction
incentives— ‘(1)
A waste collection authority whose area is in England may make a waste
reduction scheme, the objective of which is to provide an incentive to
recycle more domestic waste and accordingly to reduce the amount of
residual domestic waste. (2) A
waste reduction
scheme— (a) must provide
for the incentive to be a payment of monies worth an amount which the
authority considers will be effective to achieve the purposes of the
scheme, and (b) may, in
particular, permit a person to be supplied with a voucher which may be
exchanged for goods or
services. (3) A waste
collection authority may make a waste reduction scheme only if
arrangements for the collection of recyclable domestic waste from
premises separately from other waste are available to the occupiers of
premises to which the scheme
applies. (4) A waste reduction
scheme— (a) may cover
the whole or any part of the area of a waste collection authority,
and (b) may apply to all
domestic premises, to domestic premises other than those of a specified
description or to specified descriptions of domestic
premises. (5) An authority that
has made a waste reduction
scheme— (a) must publish
the scheme in such manner as it considers appropriate,
and (b) may amend or revoke the
scheme. (6) Where a waste
collection authority that operates a waste reduction scheme is not also
the waste disposal
authority— (a) the waste
disposal authority may pay to the collection authority contributions of
such amounts as the disposal authority may determine towards
expenditure of the collection authority attributable to the scheme,
and (b) the collection
authority must supply to the disposal authority such information as the
disposal authority may reasonably require for the purpose of
determining amounts under this
section. (7) In this
section— “domestic
premises”
means— (a) a building or
self-contained part of a building which is used wholly for the purposes
of living accommodation, (b) a
caravan (as defined in section 29(1) of the Caravan Sites and Control
of Development Act 1960 (c. 2)) that usually and for the time being is
situated on a caravan site (within the meaning of that Act),
or (c) a moored vessel used
wholly for the purposes of living
accommodation; “domestic
waste” means household waste from domestic
premises; “recyclable
domestic waste” means domestic waste that is capable of being
recycled; “recycling”
means recycling, re-using or
composting.’ Steve
Webb (Northavon) (LD): I look forward to hearing what the
right hon. Member for Penrith and The Border has to say about the
amendments that he tabled, when he has had chance to work it out. This
group of amendments is different from that which we debated previously
because, since our sitting on Thursday,
two more measures have been added: amendment
No. 110, which we tabled, and new clause 22. For the benefit
of members of the Committee who might not have had chance to look at
amendment No. 110, it questions the decision to restrict the number of
pilots under clause
70(2). Our
approach is to allow 1,000 flowers to bloom, not five. There are big
variations among local authorities. Urban, rural, and multi-tier
authorities have different waste streams and structures for dealing
with waste. In light of that, there is a huge amount of learning to be
done. While I would not dream of accusing the Department of doing this,
the present Prime Minister has a tendency to want to control things.
Although, in one sense, the provision is enabling and saying,
“Let there be pilots,” there must always be a
“but” at the end, which is that we can have only five
pilots. That is
unnecessary. The
Bill refers to five pilots, so if the Government invited proposals for
pilots and received 10 good ideas, they would be obliged to throw away
five of them because, under statute, they will not be allowed to have
more than five pilots. If the Government think that five pilots are all
they can cope with, they are perfectly at liberty to decide to do that
after receiving submissions, but to pre-empt looking at the pilots
before they have even seen them is wrong, which is why my hon. Friend
the Member for Cheltenham and I want to remove the
stipulation. Amendment
No. 108 would exclude from participation in the pilots authorities that
do not undertake weekly collections. As we said on Thursday, some
schemes could be pure incentive schemes; in other words, some pilots
need not be penal. Given that, at worst, they must be revenue-neutral,
they could be net beneficial. Authorities, for whatever reason, that do
not have weekly collections—that might be popular or accepted
locally—should not be precluded from taking part in pilots
whereby they could offer incentives to their residents to improve
recycling. There is a valid debate to be had on weekly or fortnightly
collections and whatever is appropriate in a particular area, but to
preclude whole categories of authorities from running pilots because
they opted in their particular circumstances not to have weekly
collections seems unduly restrictive. We do not therefore support
amendment No.
108. We
have a lot of sympathy with what amendment No. 109 is trying
to do, but it is over-prescriptive. It refers to polystyrene and
Tetrapak, for example, but we could find ourselves constantly amending
legislation to cover new materials. We could certainly have central
Government guidance and initiatives, but if we list specific individual
materials—“metal and aluminium” itself is an
interesting phrase—we would start to see some of the problems in
identification. At the moment, we think that amendment No. 109 is
somewhat
over-specific. New
clause 18, which was tabled by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle
on Thursday, relates to giving authorities the opportunity to cut
council tax by means of an incentive mechanism. In principle, we have
no problem with that. We are perfectly happy for local authorities to
have that freedom. It was not apparent to us that they could not do
that anyway under the Bill. If it is necessary to be explicit, we do
not have a problem with that. However, we would probably need further
legislation to make it happen. For example, imagine a council tenant on
benefit who is on 100 per cent. council tax benefit. My understanding
is that they do not pay the council tax and get the
money back from
the Government—they just never pay it.
Therefore, if we wanted to incentivise people who do not pay council
tax at all to cut their waste, it would be odd if their council tax was
reduced and they got council tax benefit in excess of the council tax
that they were paying. That would probably be illegal. Such an
amendment would have knock-on effects, but, in principle, we do not
have a problem with
it. Finally,
we would be interested to hear what is meant by new clause 22, which
has not yet been spoken to. It would probably be unhelpful for me to
start guessing what it means, so I will draw my remarks to a close, but
I might comment on that new clause once we have heard what it is meant
to
achieve. David
Maclean (Penrith and The Border) (Con): I am grateful to
my hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, who leads from the
Front Bench, for moving the amendment that I tabled last Thursday. I
apologise for not being able to be here, but I was on the Floor of the
House dealing with an equally important question as saving the planet:
MPs’ pay and
allowances. Where
am I coming from with the amendments? I would not seek to press them to
a vote or to delete the relevant measures, unless the Government
volunteered to do so. However, over the past few weeks we have had
important discussions about saving the planet. We have had discussions
on global warming, carbon emissions, the loss of biodiversity and the
destruction of the rain forest. We have been seeking to do incredibly
noble things with reporting targets for 2050. I am not sure that any
Committee, dealing with any legislation, has attempted to be so
far-sighted or far-reaching. Now, near the end of the Bill, we have
five clauses that are, literally, on garbage—on allowing
councils to come up with what, in some cases, are hare-brained
garbage-collection schemes or innovative recycling schemes. This could
discredit the main purposes of the
Bill. We
have already seen in the newspapers over the past few months stories
about some of the imaginative ideas that councils have had. We have
seen how some of the public have become cynical and disillusioned,
because they believe that the rubbish that they put out is being
recorded by spies or by cameras and microchips in their dustbins. I
believe that there is scope for recycling initiatives. I believe that
the Government should be running pilot schemes under fairly tight
control. However, I do not believe that such measures should be in the
Bill because that takes away from the glorious merits of the
legislation before
us.
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