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Baroness O'Neill of Bengarve: My Lords, I thank the Minister for her reply. I have listened carefully and, on that basis, it should be possible to work something out that would provide a degree of comfort and information which would be useable by students and their families, not merely by the finance departments of universities and HEFCE. These are vital figures for students, and quite vital politically. On the understanding that this is one of the objectives of the exercise, I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
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Baroness Ashton of Upholland moved Amendment No. 17:
"section (Review of decisions made by relevant authority), so far as relating to England;"
On Question, amendment agreed to.
Baroness Ashton of Upholland: My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill do now pass. In moving the Motion, I wish to say a few words of thanks to noble Lords who have given so much time to the Bill and have spoken during its passage through your Lordships' House. I am particularly grateful to my noble friend Lord Triesman, whose detailed understanding of the higher education sector has been immensely helpful.
I want to say to the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth, that while I regret the circumstances of the absence of the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, it has been a pleasure to work with him. I have been impressed by the noble Lord's knowledge and understanding of the issues and, while we have differed in our views in some respects, we have shared a genuine commitment to the autonomy of the sector, with a special regard to academic freedom.
The noble Baroness, Lady Sharp, has, as always, played an important part in our debates, and I thank her for her constructive approach. I am particularly pleased that we have been able to accommodate a number of the amendments of the noble Baroness, where she has characteristically been supporting the views of groups such as the RNIB and SKILL, and also dealing with part-time student matters.
Sometimes we have disagreed on the Front Benches, but debate has never been less than thoughtful and courteous. Other noble Lords have contributed greatly, and I will resist the temptation to name them all at this time. I am extremely grateful to everybody who has spoken.
I want to end by giving my thanks to the Bill team. They have been fantastic. They have good sense and high intellect, and it has been a privilege to work with them.
Moved, That the Bill do now pass.—(Baroness Ashton of Upholland.)
Lord Forsyth of Drumlean: My Lords, I have no wish to detain the House, but I want to say a few words of thanks to my colleagues and noble friends Lady Seccombe and Lord Skelmersdale. At the risk of destroying her future ministerial career, I also want to pay tribute to the Minister and to the noble Lord, Lord Triesman, for the very positive way they have dealt with the amendments and probing which we have tried to carry out in the proceedings on the Bill.
I do not know if I am giving away any secrets in saying that there has also been a lot of time spent behind the scenes, arguing the case. I am particularly grateful to the Minister for the way in which she has been prepared to listen to argument and to help us in trying to reach agreement.
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This House is sometimes portrayed as being asleep and not doing much. One need only compare the consideration of the Bill in the other place with that given here, where the Government have agreed to important amendments in respect of OFFA, appeals and part-time students. I hope that we will not have finished with the consideration by the Commons of other matters that have come forward.
At the risk of causing difficulty to the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, I offer her my thanks. We are in different parties, but we have tried to work in the interests of the universities and higher education institutions, as we see them. The noble Baroness has been a pleasure to work with. I have rather enjoyed the experience, but I have no intention of repeating it.
Baroness Sharp of Guildford: My Lords, we are very grateful to the Minister for the consideration and good humour with which she has dealt with the Bill. There were occasions on which our positions were diametrically opposite, but there was always a feeling that there was a degree of understanding of where we were coming from. I find that encouraging.
I reciprocate the comments of the noble Lord, Lord Forsyth of Drumlean. It has been a great pleasure to work with him. It is very sad that the noble Baroness, Lady Blatch, is not in her place. I suspect that, had she been there, we would have spent many long hours on the Bill and, perhaps, considered more amendments than we have done. In some senses, we might have done a slightly more thorough job on occasions. Nevertheless, we have done a very good job, and it has been a pleasure to work together in this way.
Finally, I thank my noble friend Lord Shutt of Greetland, who came in at the last moment to help me to cope with the Bill. I am extremely grateful to him.
The Lord Bishop of Portsmouth: My Lords, I do not want to preach a premature funeral oration, but, on behalf of those of us on these Benches and others, I add my thanks for the way in which the Minister has responded to no end of approaches and the way in which she has listened. Although she was unable to work in our concern to have a statement of the values of higher education because of lawyers and litigation, I look forward to a future opportunity to explore that theme in another way in the House.
I am sure that I speak for many others when I say, "Thank you very much". It has been fascinating to watch not just the "Punch and Judy" show of Forsyth and Ashton but the triad involving the noble Baroness, Lady Sharp of Guildford, as well—and, occasionally, to take part in it.
On Question, Bill passed, and returned to the Commons with amendments.
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Business of the House: Children Bill [HL]
Lord Triesman: My Lords, unless any noble Lord objects, I beg to move that further consideration on Report of the Children Bill should be postponed until after the Unstarred Question in the name of the noble Earl, Lord Selborne.
Moved accordingly, and, on Question, Motion agreed to.
Waste Management Policy (EUC Report)
The Earl of Selborne rose to ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Report of the European Union Committee on European Union Waste Management Policy (47th Report, HL Paper 194), what steps they are taking to improve the development and implementation of European Union waste legislation.
The noble Earl said: My Lords, my Question refers to European Union waste management policy and specifically draws attention to the report by the Select Committee on the European Union that came out last year. I had the privilege of chairing Sub-Committee D, which drafted the report.
It must be recognised that European Union waste management policy has not been an easy area of legislation for this country to wrestle with. We found that often we failed to influence the debate and from time to time had difficulty implementing the legislation in a timely and effective way. One need only think of the approaching deadline for the co-disposal of hazardous and non-hazardous waste and of the End-of-life Vehicle Directive and the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive. All have caused great difficulty, and we must learn some of the lessons.
One of the documents that we scrutinised was a European Commission document that suggested a thematic approach. The document is called Towards a Thematic Strategy on the Prevention and the Recycling of Waste. We welcomed at least part of that thematic approach because it appeared to open the possibility of a sudden change in direction on EU waste strategy, which we felt was much needed. The report states:
"Current Directives foresee that all Member States should achieve the same recycling rates. However, the question is legitimate whether this uniformity in targets is most effective from both an environmental and economic point of view".
That goes right to the heart of the current problem with the EU approach of one solution fits all, which we found to be fundamentally flawed when trying to implement across Europe. In summary, we found that there was inadequate scrutiny by national Parliaments and by the European Parliament. We found that there were imprecise definitions of what is waste, which leads to different interpretations in member states. We found a lack of adequate baseline data, which made impact assessments of present and future legislation inadequate. There was a lack of impact assessments on
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amendments by the European Parliament and by the expert committee, the Technical Adaptation Committee. There was most uneven reporting by member states.
At the UK level, we recognised a lack of involvement in developing national strategic thinking by those best suited to contribute. We always seem to be overtaken by events. It was rather discouraging to find that the Environment Agency complained that it did not have an adequate opportunity to contribute to legislation in its formative stage. Certainly, that was true of the waste industry, which felt that it could be much better employed as part of the consultation process. We heard the same from local authorities.
A second fault at the United Kingdom level identified our failure to implement EU legislation in a timely way. That has been fully dealt with by the Better Regulation Task Force. At this stage, I would endorse its recommendations for project planning. We felt that the third area of United Kingdom failure was a lack of adequate co-ordination within government. We made proposals for how Defra and the DTI might work more effectively together.
To return to the areas of concern, the Technical Adaptation Committee (TAC) is meant to be an expert committee which should not be involved in determining policy. It should certainly not be left to conclude matters that are fundamental to the delivery of policy. However, on taking an example such as the landfill directive, industry found itself having to determine what class of waste it should handle before definitions had been determined about what was and what was not included as hazardous. That is a completely inappropriate use of a technical committee. It is impossible to decide how to invest in infrastructure until precise directions are given from the European Union about what should go into it.
The timing of the TAC deliberations was most unhelpful. Currently, we have the electronic equipment directive. The decision process took more than 2.5 years, so one really cannot say that there was any need for a rush. But here we have UK transposition required by August 2004 and the details of the TAC and its deliberations are still emerging on the DTI website. However, it is an advance at least to have a DTI website which is publishing those deliberations. That was not the case for earlier EU waste recommendations. We made a very firm recommendation that substantive definitions accepting the operation of the directive should be decided at policy level and not at expert level.
As regards definitions, there must be consistency between the different directives about the definition of waste and other technical terms. We saw an overlap between directives; that is, the Urban Wastewater Treatment Directive and the Waste Framework Directive. As regards something like taking a battery out of a car, the industry was not clear whether that should be dealt with under the End of Life of Vehicles Directive, the Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive, the Battery Directive or the
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Hazardous Waste Directive. How on earth can anyone plan sensibly to handle those materials if definitions are not agreed?
Turning to the lack of baseline data, there cannot be consistent legislation until one understands where one is starting from. Targets are quite meaningless if the data is suspect. The timetable for a proposed waste statistic regulation suggests that the first set of data will be available from the Commission in 2006, which will allow the assessment for trends by 2008. That makes quite problematical any future directives that may set targets.
Our firm belief is that we should resist setting further targets until we have got some robust data. In the United Kingdom, we should not wait for the European data, but we should try to generate some for ourselves in which we have some confidence.
The lack of impact assessments is a particularly worrying aspect. It is being addressed. The Battery Directive is subject to a pilot study, as well as the revision to the Groundwater Directive. We need to ensure that as amendments are moved by the European Parliament, they are subjected to impact assessments. As we have a proud record in this country, we should lead the way on that.
As regards who should collect the data in Europe, we felt that the European Environment Agency, as the main agency for collation of data, has a central role. It has the task of promoting awareness and producing reliable comparisons on the state of the environment across the European Union.
If we accept that the United Kingdom's influence on EU policy making has been less than impressive in the past, we must ensure that the Environment Agency, industry and local authorities are brought in at an early stage in deliberations. There is evidence, which comes through in the Government response to the report, that this has been taken in hand. Certainly, if the Better Regulation Task Force recommendations on project planning are accepted—as I believe they will be—by government, we will have a much more sensible approach. Co-ordination in Government needs to be led within Defra, which has a concordat with the Environment Agency. The DTI needs to do the same. We need a single website; we need to have one unit.
The example of the landfill directive and all the other waste directives to which I have referred in my short address demonstrates that we have most inadequate data, definitions and objectives. If we are to have anything like consistent implementation across Europe, now is the time for the European Commission to take a long, hard look at the effectiveness of regulations. Indeed, the United Kingdom Government should look at their own ability to transpose such directives into law in this country.
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