Examination of Witnesses ( Question Numbers
400-419)
RT HON
JANE KENNEDY
MP, MR DANIEL
INSTONE AND
MR ROY
HATHAWAY
24 NOVEMBER 2008
Q400 David Taylor: A final observation,
Chairman: should the Government be doing more to promote a positive
perspective on the changes that it would like to see local authorities
make?
Jane Kennedy: The Government does
encourage local authorities to promote—
Q401 David Taylor: Yes, but go direct
to the newspapers that are at the root of the problems that we
see nationwide when significant changes are mooted by local authorities?
Jane Kennedy: Mr Taylor, if you
could suggest a way that we could persuade the Daily Mail—
Q402 David Taylor: You are the Minister!
Jane Kennedy: If you could find
a way of persuading the Daily Mail to report in a way that
we would believe would be responsible—
David Taylor: You get omniscience and
omnipotence with your position.
Chairman: Mr Taylor was simply volunteering
to be an incentivised person to re-use his rubbish! Paddy on the
same point and then back to David.
Q403 Paddy Tipping: To be fair, Jane,
you have taken powers in this Act to promote waste incentives.
You have got a good record with local authorities, and let us
not minimise what has been achieved, but I do not think you are
showing leadership as a Department on, as they say, "pay
to throw". Five pilots really is not an adequate way of going
forward.
Jane Kennedy: It was either the
Chairman or Mr Lepper who said such schemes can cause an enormous
amount of controversy locally, and given that, the people who
quite rightly need to weigh that in the balance are the local
representatives of those communities. It is for local communities
to determine what is the best way forward for them. If you looked
at Merseyside, the Merseyside Waste Authority is doing very very
good work in improving recycling rates, but there would be a very
wide range of very strongly felt opinion if some of the incentives
that are now in the Bill, and are powers that local authorities
can take were being proposed locally on Merseyside. It is a matter
very much for local people to determine and that will be reflected
in how local politicians decide how they are going to take it
forward.
Q404 Paddy Tipping: But there is
a national principle here and the national principle is if you
create waste you ought to pay for it. I think the tone of the
discussion in the Committee is that the Government is putting
all the emphasis on local authorities and I think there is a case
for stronger, firmer leadership from the Department.
Jane Kennedy: I hear what you
say. I think taking the powers in the Bill has demonstrated that
the Government was prepared to take that leadership. Taking it
further than that would be wrong and it would be trying to impose
a national view on local people. I think it is very much a matter
for local authorities.
Q405 David Lepper: Just before we
leave that aspect of it, Chairman, I just wonder whether Defra
has undertaken any research, either in this country or elsewhere,
about the impacts on the amounts going to landfill and on recycling
and so on of different patterns of household waste collection.
Most of us are used to the weekly collection from the doorstep
of residual waste. Has Defra undertaken any research as to whether
that is the most effective way of doing the job? If so, is it
doing anything to publicise the results of that research?
Jane Kennedy: In preparing for
today there were two projects that I looked at because I am interested
in this element of the work. One was a study on the Health
Impact Assessment of Alternate Week Waste Collections of Biodegradable
Waste and the other one was one written jointly by Enviros
Consulting Ltd and the University of Birmingham, a Review of
the Environmental and Health Effects of Waste Management: Municipal
Solid Waste and Similar Wastes. Because we have not got the
bids in and we have not got the pilots up and running, it is far
too early yet to say what the impacts of the pilots might be but,
as you say, there are a number of local authorities that are running
alternate week collections. I do not know if my colleagues know
of specific research along the lines that you are suggesting and
whether these are public documents.
Mr Instone: What is true is that
WRAP has undertaken various pieces of analysis about the best
and most cost-effective ways in which local authorities can collect
waste. Alternate weekly collection is just one part of that. They
provide an on-going service to local authorities through their
organisation which provides such advice with the acronym of ROTATE.
Q406 Chairman: Can you tell us what
that stands for?
Mr Instone: I cannot tell you
exactly but that is what it is commonly known as.
Jane Kennedy: I am not going to
duck this one as Minister because I have found this perhaps one
of the most challenging aspect of our policy and I have been following,
even before I came into the Department, the debate about the impact
of alternate weekly collections on local communities. I have debated
with officials the impact on fly-tipping and whether the allegations
about increased flytipping are true. One of the findings of the
research on the Health Impact Assessment said that: "There
is no evidence in the literature"—this is a review
of the available literature—"to suggest that rodents
or flies will necessarily increase with an alternate week collection,
provided the waste is stored in an appropriate container."
My sense is that there are some wards within some of our communities
where this sort of approach is not going to work or would only
work with a very high degree of support and encouragement. Here
I am not suggesting that financial incentives would necessarily
be appropriate. This is why I believe that if a local authority
wants to use some of the powers or a range of the powers that
we have now provided to them, they should feel free to do so,
and we would be willing to see a pilot run, but I do not think
it is something that we should and that certainly I as a Minister
should be enforcing from the centre.
Q407 Chairman: Let us move on to
commercial and industrial waste. It is noteworthy that the annual
progress report of the Waste Strategy does not appear to have
any information on key indicators as up-to-date information on
commercial and industrial waste is not available and it does not
seem to be there in a timely fashion. Given that those two types
of waste make up nearly a quarter of all wastes arising in England,
why are there so few specific targets and levers for tackling
waste from this section?
Jane Kennedy: The most recent
survey was done in 2002-03—
Q408 Chairman: Hang on, we are now
in 2008.
Jane Kennedy: --- which I accept
is quite some time ago.
Q409 Chairman: Why has it taken so
long?
Jane Kennedy: We have set targets
for certain sectors and certain waste streams. The Waste Strategy
proposed a target for halving construction, demolition and excavation
waste to landfill by 2012. There are also targets for packaging
waste.
Q410 Chairman: Has that now been
agreed because the actual words in the 2007 target were: "The
Government is considering, in conjunction with the construction
industry, a target to halve the amount of construction, demolition
and excavation." Is that now agreed?
Jane Kennedy: That has been agreed.
Q411 Chairman: When was that?
Mr Hathaway: It was agreed in
the Sustainable Construction Strategy published by the Business
and Enterprise Department earlier this year.
Q412 Chairman: So the Business and
Enterprise Department published it, not you?
Jane Kennedy: Yes.
Mr Hathaway: They published a
Sustainable Construction Strategy which is not just about construction
waste.
Q413 Chairman: When did that creep
out on to the bookshelves?
Mr Hathaway: It did not creep
out; it was well publicised.
Chairman: So well it has not reached
us, so there we are!
David Taylor: It is on notice boards
all over Whitehall.
Q414 Mr Drew: It is being recycled
at this moment in time!
Jane Kennedy: There are also targets
for packaging waste of 72%, which was published in 2008, rising
to 74% in 2010, so there are targets that have been published.
Q415 Chairman: You published the
target but you said in your opening response that the data in
this area went back to 2002, so what are you doing to get more
up-to-date data? When we walked the Waste Chain we were told that
people every day were busy filling in returns and sending them
off to the Environment Agency. I think they were basically saying
all of this data seems to be available about what business and
commercial waste is actually being disposed of. I appreciate from
the private sector point of view that there may be some difficulties
but if you are going to set all these targets and your data is
eight years out of date, it is difficult to know whether you are
getting anywhere near it or not.
Jane Kennedy: This comes back
to what I was saying earlier, there are some problems with current
administrative systems for collecting the data.
Q416 Chairman: So how are you going
to solve them?
Jane Kennedy: We are not complacent
about it. I do not know if you want to say one or two words about
what you are doing working with the Environment Agency and the
waste industry to improve and extend the data?
Mr Hathaway: Perhaps I could just
explain that the reason why there has not been another full survey
of commercial and industrial waste since 2002-03 is that that
survey was very costly and it cost about £3 million, and
it was also quite time-consuming for businesses because it asks
them questions about waste arising which they do not fill in as
part of their normal returns to the Environment Agency, which
are about—
Q417 Chairman: Hang on a minute,
there are all these people out there in the waste business recording
data, that is what they told us when we went.
Mr Hathaway: That is what I am
coming on to, Chairman.
Q418 Chairman: Good.
Mr Hathaway: There is a Waste
Data Strategy which is examining two possible ways forward. One
is to move away from five-year periodic surveys to get this data
on commercial and industrial waste towards using an on-line system
whereby when a company applies to the Environment Agency for a
licence to run either a landfill site or some sort of waste facility
that data will then be logged as part of the information base
on commercial and industrial waste. However, we have to recognise
that the data you get from just using the Environment Agency's
regulatory process only captures part of the story. It will not
capture all of the detail that you might want about waste arising.
Q419 Chairman: If you cannot capture
all the data, how on earth are you going to know whether you are
hitting the targets?
Mr Hathaway: As I think you said
yourself earlier on, Chairman, we have not actually set a numerical
target for commercial and industrial waste; we have only set the
numerical targets for construction and demolition waste where
we do have the data and for municipal waste where we do have the
data.
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