Examination of Witnesses (Questions 80-86)
JOHN HEALEY
MP, MR GRAHAM
DUNCAN, JOAN
RUDDOCK MP AND
MR DANIEL
INSTONE
17 DECEMBER 2007
Q80 Mr Olner: In your original letter
to the Committee you mention effective communication and consultation
with local residents to counteract misapprehensions. What does
that mean in practice?
Joan Ruddock: The sort of thing
perhaps that you have just suggested. They are not going to be
taxed but they are going to have to pay for normal rubbish collections.
The fact is they are not going to pay for normal rubbish collections.
They are going to be charged in some schemes if they fail to do
what is the norm in terms of recycling. Remember of course also
that any of the money that is taken in, in charges, has to be
redistributed which is another very significant difference from
a taxation system.
Q81 Mr Olner: Surely if a householder
does not recycle anything and puts everything in the bin, they
will get penalised and they will see that as an additional tax?
Joan Ruddock: You may suggest
that they may see it as a tax. It is definitively not a tax. The
communication strategy of the local authority will be very, very
important because it will be saying to people, if we are in a
rebate and charge scheme, "If you do what we would expect
any normal citizen to do, you will be okay. You will not be having
a charge. Maybe if you do very well you are getting a rebate.
Those of you who fail to do this will get a charge. There will
be no general taxation involved and anything that the local authority
takes in you will see returned to your community." That will
have to be transparent. People will have to be able to see how
the scheme works so the local authority will be able to prove
to people that this is not a tax.
John Healey: If they are chucking
away a lot more or recycling a lot less than their next door neighbour,
it is true that their next door neighbour is likely to be paying
less than them. However they see it, what we want them to do is
to concentrate their minds and say, "Perhaps we should be
doing more to recycle just like our next door neighbours because
it is in our interest to do so."
Q82 Mr Olner: Can I just ask this
tongue in cheek, perhaps a little cynically: will the local council
taxpayer be blaming government for these initiatives or will they
be blaming their local authority who will be administering it?
I do see a real dilemma between what the local authority want
and need to do and what we as a Government are trying to encourage.
Joan Ruddock: Many local authorities
are just as ambitious as central government is. Many local authorities
want to drive up their recycling rates. Some of them have done
spectacularly well. At the end of the day, I think we really ought
to remember—which you have already seen in evidence before
you—that most people believe it is fair to charge people
who do not do what is expected of them in terms of their waste.
If people will not do these simple tasks of separating their waste
and recycling, the public do think that they should have a charge
imposed upon them. I do not think this question of fairness and
unfairness needs to come up if the schemes are very properly explained
and people at local authority level are able to give this information
to people about the intrinsic fairness and the behaviour that
is expected within any community. It will depend a lot on the
communication strategy and again that is what we can see or not
see in the pilots. I have just been told, by the way, that technically
these charges are considered by the Treasury as a form of tax.
My understanding is that this is not taxation. For the record,
I am being told that I may be mistaken. I do not want to mislead
the Committee.
John Healey: I am not sure that
is entirely helpful to the Committee.
Joan Ruddock: I know it is not
but I do not want to be incorrect.
John Healey: It is the Office
of National Statistics that independently makes a judgment about
what should be treated as a tax for the purposes of national accounting.
It will be the ONS, not the Treasury, that makes that sort of
judgment. Your basic argument to Mr Olner that this is not a tax—it
has the potential for charging to be an element of the pilot schemes—is
absolutely right. Mr Olner is right. We face this dilemma generally
of whether it is central or local government and who gets the
blame for these things that people may not like. What is clear
about this proposed incentive scheme is that no one is forcing
any local authority to come forward with pilots, but we expect
those proposals. In the end, it will be a permissive power if
we choose to trigger it. It will be for local councils to decide
whether or not in the long run, after the pilots, they may want
to introduce their own incentive scheme.
Q83 Chair: Can I just take up that
point? The more I listen to this, the more I am wondering why
the Government is going down this essentially incredibly cautious
route. I think Mr Instone pointed out that we are the only EU
Member State which does not permit local authorities to charge
for collecting waste. Surely by far the simplest thing would be
for central government to give local authorities that power, to
then allow 1,000 flowers to bloom so to speak, and local authorities
to then not have to ask permission to do pilots but just do pilots.
If the Government wanted to encourage them, it could indeed make
grants available for people who did something really interesting
that might then be a beacon to other councils. Then we would be
able to roll this out much more quickly because, instead of the
incredibly lengthy procedure of not getting all this tied up until
2009 and then having to wait and evaluate all these pilots before
permitting all local authorities to do it, if the pilots turned
out to be as wonderful as the Government appears to think they
would be, they would probably roll out quite quickly. Public opinion
would presumably be persuaded that this is an essentially very
sensible way to go because it would reduce the amount of waste.
It would reduce waste costs. It would reduce costs for everybody
who was being virtuous and the whole thing would be solved without
the Government having to take any blame or credit at all, just
leaving local councils to do it. Why have we not gone down that
route?
Joan Ruddock: Because of the evidence
that came back to us from our consultation and the need that we
feel we have to give real confidence to local authorities. This
has clearly created a great deal of controversial discussion.
We have just decided that this is the best way forward. It is
going to create certainty and we think that this is an appropriate
way to respond, bearing in mind, as I said and as John Healey
has said, there are many other tools out there for driving local
authorities away from waste to landfill, towards more recycling
and the fact is we are making progress. As progress continues,
it of course becomes more and more difficult. By having these
pilots, we may hit the very point in time where local authorities
need a boost and to create incentives in order to ratchet up recycling
rates further, because it gets more difficult as time passes and
that may come at the right time. I do not think we should be too
concerned about what is seen now to be a delay from where we started,
but one that we think will actually produce a better result.
John Healey: Very simply and very
shortly, it is not our policy purpose as Lyons recommended to
introduce an extra charge on local residents. Our purpose is to
try and add to the options available locally, to try and increase
recycling rates. The results of our consultation and our study
of what happens abroad give us the confidence that we can do so
through incentive schemes. We propose to pilot those in order
to demonstrate just that.
Q84 Dr Pugh: I am not enthusiastic
about this particular option but one pitfall might have been ironed
out on the Continent. Houses are very similar but households are
very different. In one house there may be one person by themselves;
in another house there may be a very large family. Have any of
the continental schemes been sufficiently sophisticated, the ones
you looked at, to make allowance for that factor? Secondly, you
say that in order to introduce a scheme like this authorities
have to have a fly tipping prevention strategy in place. My suspicion
is the only way you know how much fly tipping there is in an area
depends upon entirely what local authorities tell you. That is
to some extent a function of how vigorous they are in enforcement.
How satisfied are you ever that the statistics you are getting,
which you give back to MPs from time to time, for fly tipping
rates in an area are at all well formulated, based on real evidence
as opposed to what the local authorities prefer to tell you?
Joan Ruddock: On fly tipping,
there is no doubt that the reporting is getting much better. Enforcement
is getting much better. There are many more cases being taken—
Q85 Dr Pugh: You know this, do you?
Joan Ruddock: Yes, we know this.
Our collection of data is very recent but we have seen progress
and officials work very closely with local authorities, especially
local authorities where they see there are very big problems.
It is getting better and it is more certain. Many of the policies
we have done in government and many of the new procedures that
we have brought in are helping local authorities in their attempts
to drive down fly tipping. We have a long way to go. There has
been a small increase but we think a lot of it is down to better
reporting.
Q86 Dr Pugh: It is the local authorities
that give you the stats?
Joan Ruddock: It is local authorities
that report that they are getting better at it. We will help them
to do more and to get better and prevent more. On the other question
about the continental experience, given time I think perhaps it
would be appropriate if I undertook to write to you and to the
Committee on that point.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed.
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