Ian
Lucas: I do not have the information that the hon.
Gentleman requests to hand. Additional investment in a particular
method of disposal—Germany is perhaps the best example of
this—often leads to higher recycling rates. Of course, that is
not always the case, and we want to make the whole process as efficient
as possible. We want to assess the additional burdens that will be
imposed on business and on consumers by the proposal, and try to work
towards the most cost-effective way of upping the disposal of
electrical and electronic equipment in the
UK.
John
Penrose: I take the Minister’s point that
additional marginal investment might raise overall average costs. It is
entirely possible that Germany, because it is achieving a higher
outcome already, has invested more and therefore has a higher-cost
system purely because of that. However, I ask him to take away and
consider the potential problems of investing all this extra money, as
proposed by the Government, or as proposed by the measures on which the
Government are consulting—I will put it that way round—if
we raise our average cost of recycling each additional kilo, or overall
number of kilos, and come out with a system that is in some way less
cost-effective than the German one. If we increase our investment and
end up with a system that is more cost-effective than Germany’s
for the same outcome, we might achieve a better competitive
position—following the earlier questions—in spite of the
additional investment required. However, the Government need to be able
to point at firm figures in due course to illustrate whether we will be
on the right or the wrong side of that
line.
Ian
Lucas: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for his
observations. I want to be absolutely clear that it is not my role to
impose additional burdens on business at additional expense. I want to
create a system that is successful in achieving its environmental
goals, but takes into account the relative cost of the process and the
relative burden on business. We are receiving representations from
business and from the wider community on the directive. We will be
looking at those extremely closely and then reaching an informed view
at that stage. However, I take what the hon. Gentleman has to say on
board.
Mr.
Todd: This is my last shot. The most efficient means of
recycling these items—although not all of them; we cannot
recycle a light bulb very easily in this way—is to recondition
them and reuse them. Substantial white goods and other kitchen items
would be much more efficiently used in that way, rather than stripping
them down to their components and recycling their individual elements.
Yet, of course, that runs counter to the interests of the companies
that are being taxed in this way and that wish to sell new goods to
consumers, rather than to sell reconditioned products that have been
placed out for recycling. How is that conundrum to be addressed, so
that value can be maximised in terms of recycled benefit from the
process, rather than simply incentivising the stripping-down of a
product into its individual components to apparently satisfy the
recycling process, which will also consume a great deal of
energy?
Ian
Lucas: My hon. Friend makes a very interesting and, in a
sense, difficult point, because reconditioning is often a more detailed
and technical process than manufacturing. Certainly, for the past few
decades, the tendency has been to move away from reconditioning towards
disposal and the manufacture of new goods. We need to look again at
whether reconditioning can be reintroduced to the process
because, as he rightly points out, it is a very effective way of
assisting the recycling process. We need to consider that. I cannot
produce a pat or simple answer to my hon. Friend at this
stage.
Mr.
Todd: I will just follow up by saying that a market survey
of my parents that was done some years ago, in which they were asked to
give the ages of various items that they had in their kitchen, revealed
that they had a washing machine that was 40 years old and a fridge that
was about 25 years old. Such longevities of use within a household have
been dramatically reduced over time to the disbenefit of our planet in
terms of the amount of energy generated when new products are produced.
Changing the business model, so that someone continues to use a
perfectly functional item and then recycles it by passing it to a
consumer who is satisfied with it, is a complete inversion of how this
kind of manufacturing industry currently
operates.
Ian
Lucas: My hon. Friend is right. My parents’ house
is of a similar vintage and their attitude is perhaps of a similar kind
in that they are much more likely to be repairers than I am. We should
aspire to rediscover that
course.
The
Chairman: On that pleasant note, as no one else is eager
to rush to tell us what the lifespan of their parents’
electronic equipment is, we move on to the
debate. Motion
made, and Question
proposed, That
the Committee takes note of European Union Document No. 17367/08 and
Addenda 1 and 2, draft Directive on waste electrical and electronic
equipment (WEEE); and supports the Government's aim to work with the
European Commission and other Member States to further reform the
existing Directive.— (Ian
Lucas.)
5.13
pm
John
Penrose: As has become clear from the contributions of all
hon. Members during the question and answer session, the proposal has a
noble target. Clearly, I suspect that everyone in this room would be in
favour of the aim of reducing, reusing and recycling increased amounts
of waste electrical and electronic equipment. I am sure that we
have a unanimity of aim and view on that.
I am
concerned not about the aim of the measure, but the means proposed to
achieve that aim. The Minister has gently given hints that his
Department is also concerned about that. In fact, in a letter of 3
June, the Minister’s predecessor
states: “The
estimates we produce suggest that the proposed separate collection
target for WEEE may be ambitious. There are also issues regarding the
proposals in relation to producer financing and how these compare, in
terms of efficiency and effectiveness, to more effective monitoring and
enforcement to achieve a greater separate collection and recycling of
WEEE in the
future.” So,
without putting words in a Minister’s mouth, it looks very much
as though the Department is alive to the problems with how the draft
directive is currently framed and that there are clearly some issues
that need to be urgently ironed out before the measure comes out of
Brussels and is back here for further consideration and passage into UK
law.
That is also
amply demonstrated by some of the questions and answers on the impact
assessment. Clearly, when pollution and waste are involved, the
external costs must be assessed. I am talking not of direct market
costs, but of the effect on all of us through the environment. The
questions illustrated that point strongly. It is essential and expected
that a large proportion of the benefits laid out in an impact
assessment will arise from reduced external costs, such as the reduced
amount of carbon dioxide being emitted into the environment. That is
mentioned in the existing impact
assessment. If
the external costs have been properly assessed, as the Minister says
they have been, one would expect them to be substantial. After all, we
all agree with the aim of the proposals because we believe that the
benefits are essential and that they will be substantial. However,
according to the impact assessment, the costs are far higher than the
benefits. Either the benefits are not as great as hon. Members of all
parties assumed or this approach to achieving our noble aims is far too
costly, bureaucratic and
over-engineered. The
Government’s analysis in the impact assessment shows the
differences between the UK’s patterns of usage and of reducing,
reusing and recycling of waste equipment and the European average. The
practicality of achieving some of the targets, though not all of them,
will be difficult. By the previous Minister’s admission, they
will be “challenging”, which I am told is Whitehall speak
for, “Do your best mate, but my goodness me, this is going to be
impossible.” Given all that, it strikes me and many others that
this proposal might be taking a sledgehammer to crack a nut. It is an
important nut to crack and we all agree with the aims, but this might
be the wrong
approach. This
country has what is reckoned to be one of the more efficient methods
for dealing with the WEEE directive. It is not necessarily the most
effective method, but it is pretty efficient and low-cost. As the
Minister
said, Germany leads the pack. Of course, we all want improved
performance and an increase in the amount of equipment that we reduce,
recycle or reuse, but we must find the most efficient way of doing
that. My concern is that in imposing these one-size-fits-all targets on
every EU country, the EU may be pushing us down a road that does not
suit the UK, does not fit with our patterns of usage and that could
unnecessarily drive up the costs of achieving a desirable aim. That
could be avoided if we chose a different
approach. I
hope to hear a commitment from the Minister—which he hinted at
gently during the question and answer session—that the
Government are alive to my concerns, share some of them and will take
them back to Europe to ensure that they are factored into the further
development of the draft directive. I hope that by the time the
directive is ready to come out of Brussels, issues such as the mismatch
between the unnecessarily large cost and the inadequate benefits, and
the one-size-fits-all approach, will be dealt with
properly. 5.19
pm
John
Hemming: I take a different position. It is recognised in
paragraph 65 of the impact assessment that the benefits analysis looks
only at the shadow price of carbon and at no other benefits. The
benefit is for the community as a whole, whereas the costs are producer
costs. There is a substantial argument that when somebody buys a
product, they should pay for the whole cost of it, including not just
the cost of making it, but the cost of disposing of it. That is not
unreasonable. The Committee was given an introduction on the basis of a
cost-benefit analysis, but that is clearly flawed. It contains only
part of the benefit and the benefit is to the community as a whole,
whereas the costs are effectively to the goods. If we are concerned
about economic activity, the fact that an item costs a bit more means
more economic
activity. In
essence, the impact assessment is basically flawed, because the key
driver that people are looking at in the cost-benefit analysis to
assess whether something is right or wrong is not something that I
would use were I in business. However, I support the concept of the
directive, because, from a business perspective, one wants a stable and
level playing field where stupid things generally do not happen.
Obviously, stupid things have developed in
processes. The
hon. Member for South Derbyshire discussed the nature of the disposed
waste. On fridges, okay, we have to deal with
chlorofluorocarbons and hydrochlorofluorocarbons—we will recycle
the lot and get the fluorocarbons out, although the fridges may not be
recycled. Batteries are a big problem, because of the nature of the
cadmium and so on that is found within them. How do we deal with them?
We really do not want them in incinerators, which is where all the
cadmium tends to
go. The
subtlety of the cycle of the whole process is important. I mentioned
earlier that we have the three R’s of sustainability. As the
hon. Member for Weston-super-Mare has said, “reduce” is
No. 1. The difficulty is that the directive does not look at
that. To
declare a non-pecuniary interest, from a local government perspective,
I am indirectly a member of the organisation Freecycle. People can
e-mail everyone in Birmingham—Freecycle is in many
cities—to say
that they have something, then somebody contacts them and says,
“I would like that,” whatever it may be. It could be an
old fridge. Some of my old computer equipment, which I thought would be
of no use whatsoever, has been freecycled, but such activity cannot be
quantified. The
sad thing is that “reduce” cannot be quantified easily.
The “reduce” example of the chargers that I cited earlier
is a good one. Yes, okay, the industry is responding to consumer demand
to reduce the pile of little chargers in the corner—people
should not have to get a new charger every time. That is a good
response from the industry, and, from a sustainability point of view,
it is absolutely key. Ideally, we want to have at the back of our mind
the concept of zero waste as a strategy. So, sustainability is there.
Certain things get consumed in a sustainable manner, but we should not
be trying to generate masses of kit and so on. That is perhaps what
concerns me most about the
directive. That
situation is the same as recycling green waste from the garden. Rather
than dump it on the compost heap in the garden, a truck is sent
around—chug-a-chug-a-chug—to move it a few hundred
miles.
The
Chairman: Order. It might be difficult for Hansard
to write that
down.
John
Hemming: I shall spell it, if necessary. In a world where
we have WEEEs with three e’s and Wiis with two
i’s—the Nintendo Wii, that is—things get difficult
for Hansard. Obviously, all these pieces of electronic equipment
introduce handling
problems. Therefore,
while I am sympathetic to the general principle, we really must focus
on two things: first, we have to get away from this silly, meaningless
cost-benefit analysis. We might as well not bother doing it, if it is
going to be done on that
basis.
John
Penrose: I want to clarify that. Will the hon. Gentleman
confirm whether he is saying that he is not opposed to the principle of
cost-benefit analysis, and that this analysis is flawed but could be
improved and made meaningful, or is he saying that he disagrees with
the principle
entirely?
John
Hemming: In part, I disagree with the concept of trying to
measure everything and being obsessed with numbers, but it is sensible
to conduct a cost-benefit analysis and use it as part of the guide for
setting public policy. If that analysis included all the costs and
recognised some of them as costs to the community—in fact, we
have not included all the benefits to the community—and some of
them as costs that are basically paid by producers, it would be worth
doing. From that perspective, if it were done properly, it would be
worth doing. If it is not done properly and it is cited by the European
Scrutiny Committee, we start out with an inherent
flaw. There
is another element, in that one cannot measure quality. If society is
run purely on the basis of quantity, quality is missed out. That is a
big management problem, because one cannot measure quality. The
Government must address the cost-benefit analysis, because there is an
obsession with numbers. One cannot measure quality, but the numbers
should mean something. The document is about benefits for the
community, but the costs are whole-life costs for the
project.
We must ensure
that we do not implement systems that are counter productive and
discourage organisations such as Freecycle from recycling and people
such as my parents, who have old equipment in their kitchen, from using
it. However, newer models of fridges and so on may be more
energy-efficient, so it may be more sustainable and energy-efficient to
buy a newer model than to continue using an old one that goes
chug-a-chug-a-chug, makes a lot of noise and therefore wastes energy
and heat. On those two points, we are sympathetic with the way
forward. 5.26
pm
| 
