Examination of Witnesses (Questions 820-839)
Joan Ruddock MP, Ian Pearson MP and Malcolm Wicks
MP
13 MAY 2008
Q820 Lord May of Oxford: My question
touches on one particular aspect of Lord Crickhowell's question.
In large parts of India plastic bags are now simply outlawed because
of their persistent and pernicious environmental effects. When,
if ever, might Defra and, for that matter, BERR, think about biting
this particular bullet?
Joan Ruddock: We have of course said that we
will bite that particular bullet. In the Waste Strategy 2007 we
said that we wanted to make—and we do not specify plastic
bags—single-use carrier bags a thing of the past. It is
important that we do not take action on plastic bags that would
result in the substitution of paper bags for plastic bags because
I am sure, as Lord May will realise, they are even more difficult
to deal with in terms of their environmental impacts, so it has
got to be single-use carrier bags. What we are doing is taking
powers in the Climate Change Bill and we have said that unless
there is sufficient progress made on a voluntary basis that we
will legislate in secondary legislation next year to produce a
charge, and it will be minimum charge so that we would oblige
those who wished to distribute single-use bags to make a charge
for them. That will be a charge as opposed to the tax that was
levied in the conventional way in Ireland (although the results
of the Irish tax were that 92 per cent of these bags were no longer
distributed) so it is effectively not a ban but a major, major
reduction that we are looking for. If I just may say, we cannot
in the UK alone, our lawyers tell us, have a ban because it would
be against European trade law.
Q821 Chairman: For the record, could
you tell us how significant plastic bags are in relation to the
waste stream?
Joan Ruddock: They occupy a tiny, tiny proportion
of the waste stream, but may I say that is not the sole reason
for tackling these bags. The reasons which many people advance
are for example that they are a major litter nuisance. That was
what prompted the Irish Government that because of the fact they
are so light and they catch the air very easily they are a major
blight in rural areas and in our towns and cities. In addition
to that there is a small impact—and it is only small—on
marine life where they end up choking creatures in the sea, but
perhaps even more important than all of this is the fact that
they are really symbolic of a throwaway and wasteful society.
When there is public demand to tackle this aspect of waste then
it seems to us that we as a Government need to respond to that
demand. We do need to see action because if people are to be persuaded
that they need to change their behaviour in relation to many other
forms of waste, energy use, et cetera et cetera, if we want environmental
behavioural change, we have to start in places where it is very
obvious this is symbolic and where people are making a demand
to end it.
Q822 Chairman: It sounds very like
a Daily Mail editorial!
Joan Ruddock: I have to say Chairman, that although
the Daily Mail became very active on this subject, we had
already advanced the case before they began their campaign. I
am always delighted to find that our national media wants to do
something for the environment in a positive way!
Malcolm Wicks: I just wanted to inform the Committee
that I understand that the industry has already agreed to reduce
the environmental impact of such bags by 25 per cent by the end
of this year, by the end of 2008 and apparently this will be done
by reducing the weight of the bags and of course by cutting down
on the number of bags.
Q823 Chairman: Which makes them more
easy to blow around in the wind and more difficult to catch once
they are. Can I just ask one last thing, I was in my supermarket
the other day there and I picked up a "recyclable" plastic
bag which had no indication as to how many decades it would take
to be recycled or the biodegradability. Do you think you could
maybe be a little more rigorous when you are getting them to do
good things in being able to do it not by stealth but by clear
design?
Joan Ruddock: The agreement to which Malcolm
Wicks has referred is a very positive one. A great deal has been
done through this agreement, but it has only reduced the number
of bags being circulated by something like seven per cent. It
has done a lot of other things which have had carbon saving and
which have been important and are consistent with the 25 per cent
reduction in environmental impacts, but it is a very complex science,
as I am sure several members of this Committee will understand.
Biodegradability is something that can be very positive if it
is done in the right way but it does not mean that the bags should
biodegrade in landfill where of course they will produce methane
but biodegradability on a compost heap is of course scientifically
and environmentally acceptable, so it is a complex science. We
do have to work through this science and we are devoting a lot
of resource to working through our delivery bodies on these things,
but at the moment we are looking at the single-use carrier bag
from the point of view of being symbolic of the wasteful society
and the fact we need an end to it, rather than a different form
of materials to be made into bags.
Malcolm Wicks: Chairman, I was reflecting on
your remarks about the weight of paper bags and it will be for
the Committee to make its recommendations, but I hope one will
not be that we need weightier plastic bags. I was also reflecting
on how difficult it can sometimes be to please select committees!
Chairman: We are not policeable, we are
no-go areas as far as Ministers are concerned!
Q824 Lord Howie of Troon: Mrs Ruddock,
in your opening remarks you pointed a finger at the construction
industry as what we might call a major culprit. In this Committee
we were told some while ago that about a third of construction
materials are wasted. As a civil engineer myself I just do not
believe that. A week or so ago we had representatives of the construction
industry before us who dismissed this mythical third. Does your
Department have any real statistics on how much waste there is
in the construction industry as opposed to these fantasies?
Joan Ruddock: As I indicated, we are not so
confident about our statistics in the commercial and industrial
sectors as we are in the household sector, and so that is why
we want to do some of the plugging of gaps which my colleague
has referred to through collaboration between the two departments.
I do not want to suggest that the construction industry is irresponsible.
When I say that they produce a great deal of waste, that is inevitable
from the way in which they work, so first of all we need them
to look at whether they can reduce the actual waste arisings,
and we believe there is scope for that, but more importantly probably
is the reusable material because so much of the material that
they do produce is reusable, so recycling and reusing is absolutely
crucial to that sector. They are working well with us and, as
I indicated, we have got the new site management plans. Those
are directed at making sure that the least possible waste is produced
on site and that what is produced is recovered and recycled and
reused, and there is huge scope for that. I think that there is
a big spectrum in the industry so that I am not surprised if there
is a debate about whether it is a third or not, and I think my
colleague has something to add.
Malcolm Wicks: Chairman, I have got an estimate
here that the construction and demolition industry annually produces
three times the amount of waste as all UK households combined,
and figures for 2003 show that about 44 per cent of construction
waste was used as recycled aggregate, 7 per cent as recycled soil
for landfill restoration, with the rest spread on exempt sites,
used to fill quarry voids or landfill. Industry and government
are working together to try to improve the situation through a
strategy for sustainable construction and the strategy is looking
at the case for setting very challenging targets to reduce such
waste from construction, including to halve construction demolition
waste to landfill by 2012 so I just want to reassure the noble
Lord that we are on the case and that this is an important part
of the waste question.
Q825 Lord Howie of Troon: I am always
happy to be reassured but I am not quite. It is not a really a
good idea to combine construction and demolition; they are not
quite the same thing, and we do know that 90 per cent—
Malcolm Wicks: —One follows the other.
Lord Howie of Troon: Frequently—sometimes
not deliberately! About 90 per cent of demolition material is
recycled. What I am really wondering about is whether it is counted
as waste first and then when it is recycled do you subtract it
from your statistics—I do not imagine you do.
Q826 Chairman: Perhaps you could
send us a note on this one because the Committee has had conflicting
estimates of amounts so I think if we could get perhaps a note
on the figures and the rationale behind these figures.
Malcolm Wicks: What we know and what we do not
know; we have acknowledged there is a gap.
Chairman: I think we have got everything off
our chests, colleagues, and we can make progress now. Lord Haskel?
Q827 Lord Haskel: Could we move on
to the business sector and the schemes that the Government runs
to support business. There is the National Industrial Symbiosis
Programme, there is Envirowise, there is WRAP, and there is the
Market Transformation Programme. Could you tell us what their
budgets are for the current year and how they compare with previous
years and, most important, how do you decide on these budgets,
what is the basis of your assessments for this, what are your
priorities?
Joan Ruddock: I am happy to tell the Committee
the budgets for the year 2008-09. Envirowise is £9.390 million;
NISP, which is the symbiosis, is £5.025 million; WRAP is
£43.223 million; and the Market Transformation Programme
is £2.750 million. So those are the budgets and if noble
Lords had got the figures for previous budgets it would be very
clear that there has been a reduction in every one of these budgets.
The reason for that is two-fold. One is that we have to look back
over a three-year period and clearly investment has been made
to develop these fields, to develop business resource efficiency,
and to pioneer work of this kind, so there has been a big investment,
and of course that has produced very good results. There is no
question about it, all of these programmes have produced very
good results. In some cases I think some of those programmes have
probably reached the end of their natural life and would not require
the same level of funding or perhaps funding at all. We have taken
a decision, notwithstanding what I have just said, that we should
rather reorientate our approach so that we would not give support
to business which is on a one-to-one basis or direct business
support to a particular company. What we are doing now through
all these delivery agencies is providing the evidence about how
something should be done, and therefore we can offer that expertise
involved with business so that business can make its own progress,
and that is a reasonable thing to do because, there is no question
about it, that business is now much more aware of the environmental
impacts a business has, much more aware of the importance of resource
efficiency which of course usually means that they save money.
So this is a natural process and that is why we have been able
to reorientate our priorities and why the budgets are considerably
lower than they were in previous years.
Q828 Lord Haskel: So just to be clear,
these budgets that you have just given us are going to be to advise
business on best practice in these areas?
Joan Ruddock: These budgets are to organisations
that while they are obliged to deliver within our departmental
strategy, whether on waste or carbon reductions or whatever, they
decide how they spend the money in order to meet what we regard
as our departmental priorities, so there would be a range of activities,
and it is rather early in the year so we have not got business
plans from all of them. For example, I think it will be a couple
of weeks or more before WRAP, which is a major delivery body on
waste, produce their business plan for this year so I cannot give
you the detail of how there will be a breakdown of the £43
million that they have to spend.
Q829 Lord Haskel: So how do you assess
where the priorities lie?
Joan Ruddock: We set our overall priorities
so that if we are looking at waste, and the subject of this inquiry,
then of course that was there in the Waste Strategy that we published
last year. We have got minimisation at the top of the hierarchy
and we have recycling, and so they will work to deliver those
priorities through the means that they think best, and obviously
they have experience of direct engagement with business and they
will know what a business needs, so for example a lot of the work
that WRAP undertakes is about developing markets because we know
it is no good collecting recyclings if indeed there are no markets
for recycled products or there are no facilities to actually undertake
the recycling, so that is the kind of priority they will take.
Q830 Lord Bhattacharyya: So therefore
they will intervene in the market?
Joan Ruddock: They do intervene in the market.
Q831 Lord Bhattacharyya: And set
up companies just to recycle these?
Joan Ruddock: They do intervene in the market
and they provide some grant funding and they provide expertise
and they look to find where there is a need. For example, the
use of plastics has become a major, major concern and the fact
that we are not able to use as much plastic in this country in
either remanufacture or indeed in reprocessing, so WRAP has spent
time, energy and money getting facilities on the ground and that
is perhaps a world-first recycling facility that is about to be
started up.
Q832 Lord Bhattacharyya: So it is
not just about giving back best practice?
Joan Ruddock: It is not about giving best practice
but that is the way that the programmes will move. I am talking
about things, when I mention this particular new enterprise on
plastics, that have come out of grants already spent of course,
but increasingly, as markets appear, then of course free enterprise
comes into play and we will anticipate that more of this will
happen and of course we have big drivers for reductions (the landfill
tax escalator) so the business world is changing all the time
and our budgets reflect that.
Q833 Chairman: Before you go any
further, WRAP has experienced something like a 40 per cent cut
and it has not yet presented a business plan. Would I be right
in saying they were somewhat surprised at the size of the cut
and that is why six weeks into the new financial year they have
not yet produced a business plan to take account of that? It does
not seem to suggest the rationale that you are offering that these
schemes have been so successful and are now so developed that
in fact they do not really need quite as much money as they had
in the past.
Joan Ruddock: Let me put it to you, Chairman,
that in the past we have for example—
Q834 Chairman: On the question of
WRAP; just stick with WRAP.
Joan Ruddock: I have to be careful now whether
it was WRAP who give this money so I may have to ask an official
to check this for me, but I do know in terms of our waste programmes
that we have given very substantial sums of public money to for
example supermarkets. I think people would understand that as
progress is being made—and great progress has been made
in the retail sector—that this will no longer be an appropriate
use of public money. In the case of WRAP, very specifically, they
have had a huge programme of support for local authorities in
terms of home composting and they have spent an enormous amount
of money on home composting equipment. Again, this has been a
hugely successful programme so as the programme increases and
increases maybe there is a rationale for saying there should not
be any subsidy given to home composting kits, or maybe local authorities
themselves should bear the cost, et cetera, et cetera. We are
saying two things: firstly, that we will not have the direct agency
to business funding in the same way, and, secondly, we are asking
delivery bodies to consider—and it is for them to consider—whether
indeed they should have some charging schemes because the climate
has changed, the environment has changed, and we think that they
can make progress. Indeed if we look to the Carbon Trust, which
has some relevance to this inquiry, they are raising more and
more money from the private sector and complementing the public
money that they spend, so I think it is true to say not that WRAP
were surprised, because WRAP were very much in dialogue with us
on a constant basis about their budget, but they were certainly
disappointed, and they have had to reorientate themselves. However,
they are a superb organisation and I am completely confident that
they can deliver the priorities that we seek from them.
Q835 Chairman: Ian Pearson?
Ian Pearson: Joan and others mentioned sharing
best practice. I would like to say something about knowledge transfer,
which is clearly linked to it. My Department, Innovation, Universities
and Skills, funds a number of activities that are relevant to
this agenda. The DIUS sponsored Technology Strategy Board funds,
in particular, three Knowledge Transfer Networks which are set
up as partnerships between the industry, academia, training organisations,
technology intermediaries, technology companies, the finance sector,
all working together with an agenda to increase innovation in
that particular sector. We have a Resource Efficiency Knowledge
Transfer Network; we have an Environment Knowledge Transfer Network
and there is also a Materials Knowledge Transfer Network. All
of those are very much looking at the market, looking at opportunities,
sharing best practice but also contacts and delivering market-led
solutions to a number of these problems, and I think it is important
that we factor those into our considerations, in addition to the
Technology Strategy Board as well. As you will be aware, we have
a number of innovation platforms and the Technology Strategy Board,
which is an arm's length body from Government, is considering
at the moment the potential for other innovation platforms and
I understand is looking potentially at the agri-food chain and
also waste management as potential future innovation platforms
which will then lead to calls for proposals and collaborative
R&D. One of the things that I think is helpful to point out
to the Committee is the extent to which our research base is working
with the construction industry on the Sustainable Construction
agenda. It is looking at new materials for the future which will
produce less waste. It is working with the construction industry
in looking at better designed buildings which again would reduce
waste arisings as part of them, as well as meeting our carbon
reduction targets which have been set for new build, so there
is a lot of work going on linking our research base with the business
sector as well when it comes to looking at the sustainability
agenda.
Malcolm Wicks: Perhaps a general contextual
point following the question we were asked. I think we recognise
in Government that the number of different schemes to support
businesses, not just on this issue but on a whole range of issues,
has grown like topsy. To be blunt, it is confusing, there are
far too many, indeed there are an estimated 3,000 such schemes.
We are now involved in a project to get it nearer, say, 100 schemes
instead of 3,000 by 2010. Government as a whole spends about £2.5
billion a year supporting business, 40% of which is local funding.
I think by rationalising them and by focusing on Business Link
as the primary access point, we can help businesses in general,
and I think there will be knock-on effects in this rather important
area.
Q836 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
I think I am right in saying that 90% of waste in this country
derives from industry rather than domestic waste and that the
amount spent on WRAP and NISP and so forth is minute compared
to the amounts spent in the Carbon Trust and the savings derived
from the amounts spent are probably proportionately quite substantial.
These programmes have been built up over the course of time and
one of the problems that you face is that, okay, big supermarkets
should be looking after themselves, and there is absolutely no
reason why we should be subsidising big supermarkets and big industry,
but a great deal, roughly 50 per cent of that 90 per cent actually
comes from small and medium-sized businesses, and it is quite
clear from the evidence that we have received that those businesses
in fact need a great deal of help. The report we had for example
from the BREW centre for local authorities, which works in conjunction
with the LGA, indicated that 49 per cent of businesses contact
their local authority on environmental issues. If a business is
willing to consider behavioural change it is important that local
authorities be in a position to harness that willingness and to
give them support. The support they have been receiving through
organisations like BREW has been very substantial and there have
been quite substantial savings that have been made. Given that
you have got that programme up and running, and that it was beginning
to yield very substantial returns, why turn off the tap?
Joan Ruddock: I hope I have indicated that we
are not turning off the tap. WRAP funding, as I say, is £43
million; NISP has still got £5 million, Envirowise £9
million, so there are very substantial budgets still available
to these organisations. I have tried to indicate that change has
happened. As regards advice generally, particularly to small business,
there is of course the Business Link programme, and again a lot
of the advice that we have and that has come from all the work
that has been done by all these different bodies is going into
Business Link so that there is a network of regional business
advisers that the Government supports, contracted through the
regional development agencies, and they are establishing working
models for advising industry on how to be more sustainable.
Q837 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
The Business Link people have got no background in this resource
efficiency work which is precisely the background that NISP have
got, and it is the specialist background in helping to promote
resource efficiency which has promoted substantial savings on
the part of small and medium-sized business here and, as I say,
was beginning to roll itself out, is now known; and the consultants
who work with Business Link have not got this specialist background.
Joan Ruddock: I accept they have not had it;
they are going to acquire it. It is really important that we take
the lessons and make them available in a comprehensive way because
however much funding, even at the level of last year's funding,
these delivery bodies could not be in contact with every business
in the country. No way would they ever be able to give the kind
of support they have given on a single business interface on a
vast scale. It is needed on a vast scale and that is why it needs
to be channelled through the main channel, which is Business Link
for the advice in general, but we will continue to see that very
specific work is done that will then provide the template for
others to follow.
Q838 Lord Bhattacharyya: I would
agree that Business Link is the right mechanism but how are you
going to train these people? The majority of the people in Business
Links are retired or redundant people coming to help small companies;
how are you going to train them?
Joan Ruddock: If I may, I would have to give
you a note on that because I myself am not involved in the detail
at that level and, indeed it is not even directly in my portfolio,
unless anybody else would like to answer.
Malcolm Wicks: It is not directly in my portfolio
either.
Joan Ruddock: He is closer to it than I am!
Malcolm Wicks: Baroness Shriti Vadera has responsibility
in my Department. It seems to me that one of the roles of Business
Link is to give generic advice on how to run businesses more cost-effectively
and more efficiently. One could well imagine as part of a more
general discussion with a small business this issue being raised.
I take the point which I think Baroness Sharp is making that some
of this requires quite specialist knowledge.
Q839 Baroness Sharp of Guildford:
And you have built up this body of specialist knowledge.
Malcolm Wicks: Yes but some of it I guess, at
the other end of the continuum, just requires a bit of thinking
through and a bit of commonsense, does it not. I am rather impressed
by the way in which large numbers of businesses now, not least
those with a clear customer interface, have this on their agenda
because it is what their customers are demanding. As Joan Ruddock
said, we will send the Committee a note on this aspect of Business
Link's work.
Chairman: That will be helpful.
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