Huw
Irranca-Davies: Subject to a full impact study, we would
anticipate it to be sometime in 2010, but I cannot be more specific
than
that.
Mr.
Jack: Was 2010 for the completion of the process
or, to put it crudely, when next will the Council of Ministers decide
the matter and what is the timetable for the European Parliament to
consider it? I am not clear on what is happening when, particularly in
the light of the Minister’s observations about the consultations
that he has been
having.
Huw
Irranca-Davies: Let us not get ahead of ourselves. We
anticipate that a proposal can be brought forward in 2010 and then the
real work starts, so we are a little way away from the greater detail
that the right hon. Gentleman
seeks.
The
Chairman: If no more hon. Members wish to ask questions,
we shall proceed to the debate on the
motion. Motion
made, and Question
proposed, That
the Committee takes note of European Union Document No. 12832/08 +
Addenda 1 to 3, Commission Communication on completing the phase-out of
substances that deplete the ozone layer; and supports the
Government’s aim of securing simplified legislation which
reduces unnecessary administrative burdens, ensures compliance with the
latest adjustments of the Montreal Protocol and addresses future
challenges in order to ensure the timely recovery of the ozone
layer.—(Huw
Irranca-Davies.) 5.8
pm
Mr.
Benyon: As we have heard, the Montreal protocol has been a
fantastic success story and will perhaps be a guide in our thinking on
climate change if we can resolve the problem. I was still relatively
young for a debate on such matters when it was being talked about. It
seemed an insolvable problem at the time, but it was resolved by
countries getting together on a global scale and tackling a very clear
problem. We must all rejoice at that. Following that success, any
refining to improve on it is certainly welcome in principle.
However,
I share some of the concerns expressed by the European Scrutiny
Committee about the absence of any form of impact assessment for the
proposals and, in turn, the consequences of giving the Commission
potentially far-reaching legislative powers that could have a real and
as yet unquantified impact on UK industry. Lord Hunt, who is the
Minister responsible for sustainable development, climate change
adaptation and air quality, has said that he would like an obligation
placed on the Commission to carry out a full impact analysis after the
regulation has been adopted but before any new obligations have been
passed. That seems entirely counter-intuitive. It merely pays lip
service to what an impact assessment should be. Surely the key reason
for carrying out an impact assessment is to inform the content of
regulation as well as to give member states an insight into the wider
ramifications of the regulation to which we are signing up.
Furthermore, insisting that the Commission carry out an impact
assessment after the regulation has been adopted places absolutely no
condition on the Commission to take heed of that analysis when
introducing new obligations on our businesses.
It would be
far more effective to push for an impact assessment before the
regulation is adopted, allowing us a clear view of the economic and
business feasibility of the proposed measures. Failing that, I would
like some reassurance from the Minister that, at the very least, his
Department will carry out its own impact assessment. He has given us an
indication of work in that direction, but I hope that he will be more
specific in his concluding
comments. I
am equally concerned by the extent to which the Commission will be able
to legislate on the mandatory recovery and destruction of certain
products, as well as the potential for the regulation to allow the
Commission to add new ODSs to its list of substances that should be
subject to controls. It is unclear whether the Commission will be free
to do so without consulting member states on its impact on industry.
That uncertainty needs to be cleared up.
The potential
impact on global warming of ODSs contained in building materials is
undoubtedly huge. As I said, it could be seen as the equivalent of more
than 500 million refrigerators. For that reason, it could be argued
that excluding demolition waste from the implementation of the
regulation represents a severe inconsistency with the Montreal
protocol’s achievements, which the Government and the Committee
have welcomed, to reduce the impact of ozone-depleting
substances.
I am not
advocating an extra burden on the construction industry, particularly
at this time, but it is undoubtedly an inconsistency that must be
ironed out if we are to have a level playing field. I certainly do not
dispute that ozone-depleting substances are a key issue, but I believe
that we must be a lot clearer about the cost and business implications
of the proposed legislation, which could place a significant burden on
UK industry for many years to come.
5.12
pm
Martin
Horwood: I, too, regard the Montreal protocol as a
success. It is a hugely important measure historically, environmentally
and politically. I think that the Minister echoed the words of Kofi
Annan, the former Secretary-General of the United Nations, who called
it “perhaps
the single most successful international agreement to
date”.
I do not think
that that claim is exaggerated. In environmental terms, between 1989
and 2007, reductions in ozone-depleting substances have been
extraordinary, at 99 per cent. in the EU, 95 per cent. among the 191
parties to the Montreal protocol and 80 per cent. even among developing
countries, which is surely an encouraging signal for negotiations on
climate change and perhaps for future negotiations on biodiversity. It
sets an enormously encouraging precedent for the
future. It
also underlines—perhaps the Conservative party should take note
of this—the importance of taking action on environmental issues
at the international level, particularly at EU level. It is difficult
to imagine how European treaties or constitutions, whatever one calls
them, could make progress without provisions on the environment being
part and parcel of action at the European and international level. As a
result, we are significantly reducing the amount of ultraviolet
radiation penetrating the ozone layer, which has cut the amount of skin
cancer and probably saved millions of lives already. As the Minister
said in reply to my question, it would be interesting to know exactly
how many. It has also prevented incalculable damage to ecosystems and,
as we heard, contributed to tackling the greenhouse effect, almost as a
sideshow.
However, we
must be careful that we do not get complacent. The documents contain
warning signals. There is a warning in the fact that the restoration of
the ozone layer is proceeding much more slowly than we expected from
the earliest projections—some 10 to 15 years more
slowly. That is a great concern and it is right that we seek to take
action at European level to accelerate and clear up those final areas
of production of ozone-depleting substances, and that we look at the
exemptions for ozone-depleting substances, which exempt some 20,000
tonnes per annum. That needs to be significantly reduced. Perhaps if we
had followed the original injunction of Greenpeace in the early 1990s
that called for an immediate ban on all production and use of
ozone-depleting substances, that loophole—which has become quite
significant—might have been avoided. There is a risk of new
ozone-depleting substances and, as the right hon. Member for Fylde
pointed out, there is also new production of old ozone-depleting
substances in developing countries. His questions were very well
placed.
We have a
problem of stores, or banks, of existing ozone-depleting substances
that are tied up in existing materials. There are 200,000 tonnes of
those gases. In the UK, 100,000 tonnes seem to be entirely made up of
blowing agents in insulation and building foams. There are probably 3
million tonnes globally and that significant risk to the ozone layer
remains in the wider environment. It is 10 times the amount of
ozone-depleting substances that are present in refrigeration, and
represents a huge greenhouse gas impact if it is ever released. The
equivalent CO2 figures would be 240 million tonnes in the UK
and 10 billion tonnes worldwide. Those are large numbers and would have
a high impact, but according to the papers they do not even seem to be
included in the UK’s greenhouse gas inventory. That is a major
concern; these are hazardous waste products, as the letter that the
hon. Member for Newbury read out indicated. In many cases, they contain
many times the hazardous-waste threshold of ozone-depleting
substances.
Her
Majesty’s Government are worried by some of the things in the
document and some of the actions proposed, such as the impact on the
construction industry,
the mandatory recovery and destruction of those banks, and the
ozone-depleting insulating foam in all buildings under demolition or
redevelopment. It is true that no impact assessment has been done, so
it is difficult for us to assess that properly in economic terms,
regarding the impact on jobs and so on. However, there is a much larger
environmental issue at stake, as well as the question of
accountability. Hon. Members
worry about “undue impact”, “unjust economic
impact” or “disproportionate impact”, but it is
difficult to measure those kinds of things against the enormous impact
on people’s lives and the potential risk to the environment that
is represented by these substances. Over 20 years, the potential saving
of millions of lives has to be one of the factors brought into any
impact assessment or cost-benefit analysis. That is important, because
we must not give in to complacency on the environmental
impact.
Simplification
of regulations is welcome, and acceleration of action is certainly
welcome, even when, as in one case, it is from 2020 to 2019, which is
not much to be proud of. Proper questions about the accountability of
the whole process must be put not only to this Parliament but to the
European Parliament. We must ensure that any cost- benefit analyses or
impact assessments properly treat all ozone-depleting substances as
very serious hazards to the environment, people and the planet. They
are not just average waste products that can safely be disposed of in
landfill.
5.19
pm
Mr.
Jack: I want to draw on the document before us and make
some observations about the scrutiny process that we are invited to
support at the conclusion of the debate. This subject is of such
importance that some comment must be made.
First, I
concur with my hon. Friend the Member for Newbury and the hon. Member
for Cheltenham, who both spoke about the importance of the Montreal
protocol and what it has achieved. As I said when I picked up on the
observations of the hon. Member for Nottingham, North, the Environment,
Food and Rural Affairs Committee carried out an inquiry into round one
of how we deal with such materials, when we investigated fridge
mountains. The overriding lesson of that inquiry was about the
importance of attention to detail at the earliest possible stage.
Ironically, we got into trouble partly because UK officials argued
about whether foam in the doors and walls of refrigerators came under
the regulation of the proper recovery of CFCs in relation to defunct
fridges. Today, we are talking about banked substances, on which
everybody would agree that action has to be taken. If the question of
what the regulation covers is being sorted out, an important lesson has
been learned from the inquiry into fridges.
The European
Scrutiny Committee has the enormous task of looking at the detail of
all Council decisions and Commission work. I do not know how it gets
through all the documents with the speed with which it does to
recommend documents for this Committee to consider. Thus I do not mean
to criticise it, but it lacks the ability, as does a Select Committee
inquiry, to ask
the “trade” for its views. The Minister alluded to the
fact that he is talking to the trade, but if we are to decide whether
to support the Government’s stance, the documents ought at least
to contain a statement or two from the industry about what it thinks.
In the absence of a cost-benefit study, or any indication in
DEFRA’s explanatory memorandum, we do not know what investment
UK industry—there are some very good people in that industry in
the field of recovery of materials—will have to make, and over
what time scale, to meet the timetable that the he outlined for
achieving the regulation’s
objective. To
be honest, to expect the scrutiny process of the House of Commons to
agree a carte blanche resolution, such as the one before us, without
providing the basic information on how UK industry should deal in
practice with such substances, is to put the cart before the horse. It
makes a mockery of our scrutiny of whether the Minister has conducted
himself properly in preparing the UK Government’s position. That
is not made any easier by the front page of one of the documents, which
reads:
“Regulation
of the European Parliament...on substances that deplete the ozone
layer...Recast...Text with EEA
relevance”. As
I said in my point of order, there is then a series of crossings-out.
DEFRA has provided no explanation of the status of the document. If we
are being invited to put a tick next to the Government’s
position, it would be helpful to know to what we are supposed to be
agreeing. Most of the questions have come out of the
Commission’s working paper, but that is not the draft of the
regulation before us. It might be crystal clear to the Minister, who
has been to the Council and had to deal with such matters, but the
Committee is owed an explanation of the status of the text before
us.
The Committee
has been presented with a document some 235 pages long without any kind
of overview. The only overview that we get is DEFRA’s
explanatory memorandum, but it provides no contextualisation. The only
context-setting information is the rather general work done by the
Commission on the Montreal protocol and what has happened. However,
that does not give us a blow-by-blow account of what is going on in a
UK context. If we are to do a good job of scrutiny, we need more
information, instead of having to pick through such difficult texts.
When I was a Minister in this field, I had to learn Euro-speak to
understand the nature of these documents and what they mean. If one
comes to this cold, that contextualisation is missing. If we are to
scrutinise such things properly, we need that
information. I
turn now to the motion that the Committee is invited to agree, and
which was tabled in the Minister’s name. It says that the
Committee “takes note” of the document and the addenda to
it. It gives a brief description of what the document is about. We are
doing this in the absence of any information on where we are in the
process. We do not know whether the Minister will come back to the
House and keep us posted on what is happening. We are in the process of
dealing with the parliamentary scrutiny reserve on this measure, but it
is merely a work in
progress. I
was disappointed that the Minister could not indicate the attitude of
even one member state towards the document. I certainly want to know
what the German position is, because Germany took a lead in developing
the reprocessing equipment that is required to deal with
refrigerators, and it could give us a hint about what we are all up
against. The Minister says simply that other member states agree. He
does not tell us which member states agree, in what way they agree and
whether they have any questions that they wish to
debate. If
the Committee is expected to scrutinise the proposals, it should be
afforded a more detailed commentary on what exactly other member states
say. The Minister has been to the Council and knows what it has said.
He could have shared that with us. Equally, co-decision with the
European Parliament is involved. There is nothing to tell us what the
European Parliament thinks about any of this or what remarks have been
made. The
second part of the motion
supports “the
Government’s aim of securing simplified legislation which
reduces unnecessary administrative
burdens”. Is
that consistent with paragraph 13 of the explanatory memorandum from
the Minister’s Department, which states that the
measure
“could lead to
significant new obligations for the construction industry and its
customers if it became mandatory to recover and destroy ozone-depleting
substances in insulation foam in all buildings in the UK when they were
demolished/redeveloped”? It
says that there could be significant additional costs, but we do not
know what those will be. The motion asks us to agree with something
about which the Government have raised a serious question. If it said
that the Government committed themselves not to overburden British
industry with costs it cannot afford when meeting the objectives, it
might have addressed the issue. This is a carte blanche motion that
ignores what that paragraph
says. Paragraph
14 of the explanatory memorandum states
that “the
Government takes the view that the Commission should be required to
carry out a more detailed
analysis”. In
fairness to the Minister, he referred to that. However, where does the
motion say to Parliament that the Government’s stance is that
before they tick the box, they want the Commission to do that work?
There is nothing at all about
that. The
explanatory memorandum goes on to
say: “At
the very least, the Commission should be under a duty not to propose
any new recovery/destruction obligations (after the regulation has been
agreed)”. Why
is there no reference to that in the motion? The Government want to
say, “Let’s have a look at this. This is what we think
about it and these are our reservations.” The paragraph
continues: “Further
consideration needs to be given as to whether creating a
recovery/destruction obligation would remove the ability to market
carbon credits for ozone-depleting substances destroyed, as there would
be no
‘additionality’.” The
Minister has not even mentioned carbon credits. We do not know what the
implications for those credits would be under the EU emissions trading
scheme. We ought to be informed about it as a matter
of economic worth and value to this country. We have no idea what the
numbers are, how it would affect our carbon trading position and so on.
A bland motion such as this is another example of our missing out an
important point in the whole scrutiny
procedure.
Paragraph 16
says: “The
Government will want to consider the more minor Commission proposals on
their merits, to see if they really do result in simplification or a
reduction in administrative
burdens”. The
Government are saying in that paragraph that they are not yet certain
whether the thing is capable of delivering a complete result on
simplification, but we are being asked to sign up to something to which
the Government are almost saying, “Yes, this is what we are
going to
achieve.” As
an exercise in scrutiny, so much has been missed out. If the motion
expresses a view from the House of Commons, there ought to be something
that says, “We have a few reservations.” However, the
bland, broad-brush approach, which does not tackle all the issues
raised by the scrutiny process, makes a mockery of the inquisition that
the improved process was supposed to generate. I suspect that there
will not be a Division, but if there were, I would certainly be minded
to abstain from providing my support, and I am someone who takes a
positive view about matters European. I concur absolutely with the
views expressed in Committee that this is exactly the kind of
trade-mark issue that demonstrates the worth of having a European
Union—27 countries acting in concert on something with worldwide
importance. However, as a way of demonstrating how good we are at
scrutiny in the House of Commons on such matters, this is a very poor
effort indeed and certainly does not command my
support. 5.32
pm
| 
