Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
60-75)
DR PAUL
LEINSTER AND
MS LIZ
PARKES
15 OCTOBER 2008
Q60 Mr Drew: Unless I am wrong, I
think part of the problem with the whole pfi process to try and
deal with the threat is that in a sense everybody is working in
their own silo. You have your device. Defra have to make some
decisions on whether they make the pfi credits available and then
local authorities have to role this forward. There is a whole
series of case studies of delay and obfuscation. Is it not better
that we get much more joined up thinking and certainly joined
up action to evolve strategies? I do not want one size fits all
but you cannot have one authority in one place with an incinerator
and another authority saying, "We are not having incineration
at all." They could be dishonest and send their stuff, dare
I say it, to the incinerator next door which of course is not
unknown. Where are we going to? Are you part of the solution or
do you see yourselves as perhaps part of the problem unless we
can grapple with this really successfully now, because an awful
lot of local authorities out there, I would allege, do not know
what they are doing.
Ms Parkes: Our role on municipal
waste is fairly limited. We are the reporting and monitoring authority
for the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme but a lot of the dialogue
that you are talking about, as I understand it, does happen between
local government and Defra. Certainly Defra have been looking
at how to remove those barriers to joining up the creation of—
Q61 Mr Drew: Are you saying you would
welcome being part of the tripod rather than being a short leg
of the two legged stool?
Dr Leinster: One of the places
these discussions should be happening is at the regional technical
advisory boards so within each region there is a discussion about
what the strategic approach is. If you go to certain parts of
the country, local authorities, both the waste collection authorities
and waste disposal authorities, are getting together and jointly
coming up with solutions, but the responsibility for municipal
waste disposal does sit with the local authorities and they need
to get their heads around this using the advice which is available.
Q62 Mr Drew: Have you got any powers
at all if you think either this process is not being carried through
properly or successfully?
Dr Leinster: No.
Q63 Mr Drew: So you just monitor
it once it has happened?
Ms Parkes: It is a monitoring
role in relation to meeting the Landfill Directive targets. Our
only real role in relation to municipal waste is that we permit
the sites that receive the waste, and we are very keen to make
sure that we do not cause any delay, and, if we can help both
the local authorities by providing data and we can help the public
in terms of public confidence, then we do that. As Paul said,
it comes back to the RTABs (regional technical advisory boards)
to do that joining up at a regional level because, as you say,
they need to get out a strategy as to what is actually happening
on the ground and making sure that the facilities are actually
coming forward.
Q64 Miss McIntosh: I will resist
your invitation to mention the local applications, because I think
we will be here all afternoon. Perhaps I can send a sample t-shirt
of each one! You have expressed your concern about the potential
for increased crime from particularly the increased cost for landfill
and the pilot on variable charging for household waste. Do you
believe that you have the tools to tackle this and what do you
believe to be the cost of tackling this? Can I make it clear,
representing probably one of the most deeply rural areas of anybody
on this committee, that this is a very real issue. It does seem
very unfair that a private landowner has to pay for the illegal
substance to be removed off their land, whereas a public landowner
has it removed at public expense.
Ms Parkes: We spend between £100-150
million each year with local authorities, on tackling fly-tipping.
We are under no illusion that this is a problem for urban and
rural communities and that, as regulatory controls tighten and
costs go up, the incentive for people to do the wrong thing is
ever growing. What we have been doing in recent years is working
even more closely in partnership, not just with local authorities
but other enforcing bodies, not just the police but others—the
Vehicle Licensing Agency, for instance—to really target
those areas where we think there is organised crime. We focus
on what we call the big, the bad and the ugly, or nasty, I should
say, fly-tipping activities, so that local authorities deal with
the smaller incidents, we deal with large-scale organised crime,
and we have built up, through our fly capture database, a much
better picture of what is happening which has allowed us and local
government to better get on top of this problem. I think the better
recording of fly-tipping has meant that the picture looks like
it is getting worse, whereas in actual fact it probably just is
improved reporting at the moment, but we have really been targeting
our action. We take a large number of prosecutions now. In fact,
you have got something like a one in four chance of being prosecuted
by the Agency at that top end of the scale. Fines have been going
up, which is good news, but are still too low. We have been working
very closely with government on improving the range of sanctions
available to us—things like fixed penalty notices—and
we are confident that we have the right type of tools available
to us, or available to us shortly with the new Bill coming forward.
What we need to do is to look at what are the reasons why people
do not comply. As we have said earlier, we need to make it easy
for small businesses to do the right thing, we need to target
the really illegal elements, and we have certainly been doing
that around things like hazardous waste and illegal sites, as
opposed to illegal incidents. We have got very tough targets internally
on tackling illegal sites and closing them down, but this takes
time. In the most recent prosecution we took, sentencing happened
last week. It has actually taken four years to bring that, and
that is not because anyone has been slow, it is because these
things take time and if you are going to go after some, frankly,
very challenging people to deal with, very dangerous people to
deal with, it takes time and it takes a lot of co-operation. In
that case we saw a 32-month prison sentence, which is good news
that the courts are actually starting to give custodial sentences
that in some way reflect the seriousness of the crime but in many
cases still do not reflect the avoided costs. So there is more
to do. We are working with magistrates, we are working very closely
with local authorities, but we think it will continue to be a
challenge.
Q65 Miss McIntosh: Earlier Dr Leinster
did say that, for example, some of them—and, let us face
it, they are crooks—actually are charging people a fortune
for removing building materials. These people are probably paying
that money in good faith, but these people, so-called merchants,
are probably not even considering applying for a licence. They
have got no intention of applying for a permit. Could we, at the
very least, not have a public awareness campaign so that the people
paying these crooks should ask to see the permit, so at least
at the front end they are not encouraging them?
Ms Parkes: One of the things we
have been able to do recently with money from BREW (the landfill
tax funding) is to put our public register of registered waste
carriers online. So, again, it goes to the heart of making it
easier for people to do the right thing. We are looking at this
and Defra are consulting—they have finished consulting now—on
reforms to the whole duty of care and waste carrier system, because
we think we need a system whereby using a registered carrier is
the same as you would do as using a Corgi registered gas fitter.
We need to get it in the public consciousness of doing the right
thing; so we are calling for things like vehicle registration
to be displayed to make it easy to increase that awareness. Local
authorities are doing a lot to increase awareness in their locality
on doing the right thing, but we do think it will continue to
be a challenge. We also work very closely with legitimate business
and we have got some very good examples where we have worked to
tackle illegal vehicle dismantlers. For instance, in the Midlands
we closed down 60 sites working in co-operation with legitimate
business that can tell us where they are being undercut, and we
provide a phone number, so that people can call us in confidence,
so that we can get away from just talking about the generality
to dealing with specific activities that are happening.
Q66 Chairman: Do you think we need
the equivalent of the "proceeds of crime" approach,
where these really serious people who are illegal dealing with
sometimes very dangerous substances, not just get fined but lose
every possible gain, in a business sense, from their bank balance,
like we do with the proceeds of crime?
Dr Leinster: We have scored two
successes in this last year. One was where we had the first extradition.
We had somebody extradited from Southern Ireland back across and
successfully prosecuted them, and the other one was, we used the
Proceeds of Crime Act for the first time and had a recovery of
1.1 million against them. We have just brought in some additional
forensic accountants to assist with that sort of work so that
we are able to go after people with "proceeds of crime".
One other thing that we also would like to see, which will help
on the waste carriers, is waste carriers carrying a badge or a
licence so that you would know from the licence that they have
up whether or not they are a registered carrier. If they had that,
again, we could use that to publicise the whole approach. The
other one is we are looking at an automated system for phoning
up everybody who purports to be a waste carrier in Yellow Pages,
and we have just done a trial where we can do automated calls
to people. The people who really want to be waste carriers come
and register with us; those who do not do not and we can then
target action against them.
Q67 Miss McIntosh: Just to revert
to the point that I said right at the beginning of this series
of questions, that you believe there is the potential for this
type of crime to increase. I think you said that you think the
courts are recognising the severity of the crime, but if it is
going to increase, because of the increased landfill tax and because
of the variable charging, should you not be able to use those
revenues to help defer your costs in this regard?
Dr Leinster: Yes. We have actively
said all along that we believe the Environment Agency should get
additional funding from landfill tax as a means of protecting
the landfill tax. You always get leakage from tax regimes and
you always have a means of protecting the income, and we believe
that that should be done in this situation as well.
Q68 David Lepper: You have mentioned
the extradition from Southern Ireland and you have given us a
case involving a million pounds plus. When you talk of organised
crime, is that predominantly organised on a local level, or nationally,
or even internationally? What is the balance there?
Dr Leinster: All of those. Just
to put it in context, in terms of fines, when it comes to a fine,
the average fine was £2,800. If you are running a tyre disposal
scam in which you charge people to dispose of tyres at maybe three
pounds a tyre, whereas the going rate is five to six pounds a
tyre, and then all that you do is leave them in some nearby lay-by,
you can quickly raise money. We have got evidence. There were
some cable burning activities and other activities in the Manchester
area and we squeezed that activity there. The same people turned
up in the North East doing similar activities.
Q69 David Lepper: Is there an international
element?
Ms Parkes: Yes.
Dr Leinster: Yes.
Q70 David Lepper: Particular countries?
Ms Parkes: It is too difficult
to say, but that proves to be a real challenge.
Q71 Dan Rogerson: Turning to composting
and anaerobic digestion, which we touched on a little bit before,
in your evidence to us you have said that you certainly support
it as an important role in diversion but that we need to ensure
that activities are located, operated and regulated in a way that
minimises the impact on the environment and local amenity. What
do you think are the main factors which we need to look at in
order to make sure that that happens, that the local environment
and amenity are safeguarded?
Ms Parkes: I think that historically
people have felt that composting could be undertaken by anyone,
and we have said we think to do it at a scale that does the right
thing environmentally these do need to be professionally run and
properly located so that they do not give rise to lots of complaints.
Our experience is that if you do put them in the right place,
if you have the right impermeable pavement, if you have a competent
operator that makes sure the windrows are frequently turned, that
monitors the temperature and keeps a check, crucially, on the
input, because different types of waste will generate odours,
then these can be very good ways of dealing with waste, but it
means you have got to get the technology right and it has got
to be just in the right place really. We think there is growing
potential, but we have been working very closely with some of
the new companies and local authorities that are doing this to
try and make sure these are acceptable. We probably get more complaints
from residents about composting facilities than anything else.
Q72 Dan Rogerson: Existing composting
facilities?
Ms Parkes: Yes, and concerns about
new ones, but we do not see any real reason why, if they are properly
run, these should give rise to nuisance. Most waste facilities,
frankly, could be operated out as black box in a building with
emissions control, and apart from traffic movement they should
not really have an impact on local facilities, on local amenity.
Q73 Dan Rogerson: What do you think
waste collection authorities should be doing to ensure that the
quality of what is collected leads to a good quality product in
the end?
Ms Parkes: As with any waste recycling,
you have to get out what you put in, and we do think with some
of the concerns over the quality of material, and particularly
the quality of material that is being exported, if we want to
reassure the public that it is worth recycling, that their recyclables
are actually being recycled, then we will have a duty to make
sure that quality material is being collected, and if local authorities
want to do cost-effective recycling—we know now you can
secure quite high prices with increasing raw material costs for
recycling—then the better quality the material, better the
chances it is going to be recycled and the better the revenue
to be generated from doing it. So it makes good sense, and the
more the public thinks about what they are recycling and segregating,
hopefully, the more they will think about what they are buying
and, ultimately, what they are throwing away, which is what we
need to get to with this.
Q74 Dan Rogerson: That is why they
should do it, but what do you think they need to do? What are
the things that local authorities are not doing at the moment
that they could do? What is the best practice?
Ms Parkes: I think the biggest
challenge (and it comes back to that frustration and the point
that gets raised with us) is why are there so many different types
and different messages around waste collection? Local authorities
have to pick what is going to work for their local community,
recognising co-mingled collections makes it very easy for the
public. If you are starting from a zero recycling rate, then you
probably need to do that to get started, but once you have got
your public recycling, then the more the messages could be simple,
the more that one end of the street provides the same type of
service. It could be a different service, but if we could at least
widely adopt the common labelling, colouring systems that Defra
do recommend as best practice, and that is not just in local authorities
but across industry and commerce and, of course, across the public
sector, it just makes its easier for people to do the right thing.
I think there is such a plethora of different systems, different
messages, it is just very confusing, and that is certainly the
thing that I get challenged over the most.
Q75 Chairman: What are you doing
to address that issue? In my constituency we have a totally different
kerbside recycling regime than, for example, down here in London,
and when we went to the London Borough of Sutton's facilities,
again we saw different variations on the same theme. It must inevitably
affect the overall performance, particularly in the local authority
municipal waste sector, as to what can be done when you have got
all these different ways of doing it.
Ms Parkes: We have certainly flagged
it up to Defra. It is something I have personally flagged up at
the Waste Strategy Board. As I said earlier, we have no remit
over municipal waste at all, other than regulating the treatment,
or disposal, or recycling sites, but we have certainly been raising
that with government. We think it is something, going forward,
that we will need to look at: how do we get greater public engagement
on this? I think getting simple messaging, common colours, if
not common collection systems, is a pretty good way to go.
Chairman: I congratulate you on your
optimism in that. Let us hope we see some action on it. Thank
you very much indeed for your contribution this afternoon, as
I say, and for your written evidence. It was very much appreciated.
We will move on in a second to the Chartered Institute of Wastes
Management.
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