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House of Lords

Wednesday, 15th May 2002.

The House met at half-past two of the clock: The LORD CHANCELLOR on the Woolsack.

Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Rochester.

Household Electrical Waste: Disposal

Baroness Wilcox asked Her Majesty's Government:

    What preparations are being made for the coming into force of the proposed Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive (COM(2000)347) which requires the recycling and safe disposal of all household electrical waste.

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the proposed directive is in draft. Major policy issues still need to be agreed between the European Parliament and the Council of Ministers through the conciliation process. Detailed preparation will commence once a final text is available towards the end of this year.

The first formal consultation was undertaken by the DTI during autumn 2000. There has subsequently been significant informal discussion, and specific small and medium enterprise and retailer focus groups have been established. A series of 20 awareness seminars across the United Kingdom are planned for the summer. We are also monitoring implementation plans in other European Union member states to help to ensure a broadly level playing field.

Baroness Wilcox: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that helpful reply. However, does he agree that last month's vote by the European Parliament to remove a time-limited exemption of five years for the micro-businesses to which he has referred from the financing of collecting, recycling and treating electrical waste will cause great, and sometimes insurmountable, difficulties for many of Britain's smaller businesses unless the conciliation committee reinstates its exemption? If he does agree, will he tell the House what efforts Her Majesty's Government will make to reinstate the exemption?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, we generally support the directive, but our support is for the common position taken up by member states rather than for the amendments introduced by the European Parliament. So my answer to the noble Baroness's first question is: yes, we agree with her that the amendments are unhelpful—although, of course, they are well meant. In the conciliation process we shall be working hard with the governments of other member states to ensure that we return to a point as close to the common position as we can.

Lord Greaves: My Lords, does the Minister accept that some of the amendments by the European Parliament were passed by huge majorities? For

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example, the amendment to compel producers to provide up-front guarantees for the financing of the future disposal of their products was passed by 525 votes to nine, with two abstentions. In view of the overwhelming weight of opinion in the European Parliament, will the Minister accept that the conciliation process will have to be a genuine compromise, and that some of what I consider to be the excellent amendments strengthening this much-needed directive will have to be accepted?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, that is why I said that the European Parliament's amendments were well meant. Some of them are perfectly acceptable and manageable. However, there are particular problems for this country—for example, in the amendment requiring compulsory separation of waste by consumers. It is easier in countries that have fewer personal household-to-household collection systems than we have. The European Parliament has set rather high recovery targets: 90 per cent for white goods and automatic dispensers. We are pretty close to that and it is not too much of a problem for us. However, other member states will find it difficult to achieve those targets. Again, the problem of individual producer responsibility for financing waste extraction, except where that would be uneconomic, presents difficulties. These are genuine differences. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, rightly says, they need genuine compromise.

Lord Berkeley: My Lords, whether or not the common position is adopted, what will it mean for disposal? There is presently a "fridge mountain" in this country. European directives came in apparently without any means being available for the disposal of refrigerators to comply with them. Are we to have an electrical waste mountain, or will proper facilities be built before the directive comes into force?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: No, my Lords, the situation is entirely different from what my noble friend refers to as the "fridge mountain". That was a regulation, not a directive, and it had to be enforced immediately. The technology simply did not exist for the recovery of hazardous materials from refrigerators. In this case, this is a directive. There are 18 months for it to be brought into law, and the technology already exists.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, does the Minister believe—

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, may I ask—

The Lord Privy Seal (Lord Williams of Mostyn): My Lords, both noble Lords have subsided. Perhaps we should hear the noble Lord, Lord Pearson, first.

Lord Pearson of Rannoch: My Lords, does the Minister believe that the British people would have voted in 1975 to stay in what was then the Common Market if they had known that this sort of ruinously

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expensive nonsense and thousands of similar regulations were to be forced upon them by what has become the European Union?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I simply deny that this is a "ruinously expensive nonsense". This is a genuine attempt to improve environmental quality. It has to be done on a European-wide basis rather than on a national basis, because environmental pollution is no respecter of frontiers. Although we have difficulties with some of the provisions, this is a thoroughly desirable directive.

Lord Campbell of Alloway: My Lords, accepting that the Minister's exposition is totally right in terms of the Government's attitude, will he none the less accept that this vast directive is an obvious manifestation of the idiocy of the pretence that the Commission pays any attention to subsidiarity?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I have already answered that question. Environmental pollution does not respect national boundaries, so action has to be taken at European level. That has been the case not just for this directive, but for many environmental directives in the past—and I hope that it will continue to be so in the future.

Lord Stoddart of Swindon: My Lords, what is the status, if any, of the United Kingdom Parliament in considering these measures? Will Parliament be able to refuse consent to matters that have been agreed in Europe and which will be very costly for British firms and British people? Will it be possible for the United Kingdom Parliament to throw them out?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, a directive has to be complied with by national legislation, so the matter will come before the Parliament of this country. If your Lordships feel strongly about it, no doubt the European Union Committee could look at the issue.

Lord Glentoran: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the Conservative Party supports the directive? Does he agree—and he probably does not—that the Government have got to the start line somewhat late in preparing for it?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, you could have fooled me. I do not know on what basis the noble Lord, Lord Glentoran, says that the Government are late at the start line. As I said in my original Answer, we have been consulting on the issue since 2000, soon after it was first raised.

Government Expenditure

2.44 p.m.

Lord Barnett asked Her Majesty's Government:

    What is their policy on underspend of public expenditure by government departments.

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Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, the public spending system introduced in 1998 provides three-year budgets for departments and allows underspends in one year to be carried over to the following year. Budgets are linked to targets for results set out in public service agreements. This encourages departments to plan their budgets over a longer time-frame and reduces the incentive to spend wastefully at the end of the year.

Lord Barnett: My Lords, I thank my noble friend for that Answer, I think. Does he accept that there is a serious issue here? We are not talking about petty cash. As I understand it, the underspend in departments in the year to April last year was approximately £6.2 billion. In those circumstances, is it the Treasury's policy to ensure that departments underspend and do not rush to spend in March each year, as has happened in the past, not necessarily in the best possible way? Are departments worried that if they underspend for any length of time, that underspend will be transferred to other departments?

Lord McIntosh of Haringey: My Lords, I am more grateful to my noble friend for the timing of his Question than I am for the accuracy of his supplementary question. The timing is excellent because last Friday we published the public expenditure statistical analysis, which gives the figures for this year, not the figures that he quoted. The up-to-date figures show that total underspending on public services—what we know as departmental expenditure limits—over the past three years has been only 1 per cent of the plans. I call that pretty accurate for any business or government.


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