Examination of Witnesses (Questions 840-859)
Joan Ruddock MP, Ian Pearson MP and Malcolm Wicks
MP
13 MAY 2008
Q840 Baroness Platt of Writtle: Personally
I was very pleased to hear that you were not having the one-to-one
work with businesses because businesses have different and complex
problems. It is exciting everybody with the idea of reducing industrial
waste that I am sure is going to come out of our report when we
come to the background. We have been told that businesses are
often confused by the number of different business support organisations
promoting waste reduction. Is there any scope for streamlining
that? Mr Wicks has said that you are hoping to go down from 3,000
to 100. How will you monitor the success of programmes such as
Business Link because I have heard complaints about Business Link
because it is not sufficiently experienced in the problems that
are facing small businesses particularly, and so how will you
monitor their success in explaining waste legislation?
Malcolm Wicks: I think, Chairman, this note
should cover that aspect as well. We are setting ourselves a very
demanding target. I imagine the Committee would rather support
the idea of moving from several thousand to 100 organisations,
but we will send you a note setting out that in more detail and
talking about the monitoring arrangements that will be required.
Q841 Chairman: In the absence of
a note Mr Pearson, you wanted to add something?
Ian Pearson: I just wanted to add something
because I have been involved in the Business Support Simplification
Programme from the innovation perspective, and very much as a
Government we want to see Business Link as the gateway to advice
so they will be the first point of contact either through their
website or through direct contact with Business Link. It is not
a question about having Business Link advisers being expert across
a wide range of areas, from financial planning to waste minimisation
to manufacturing techniques. What it really is about is providing
that gateway and access. The message that we get time and time
again from businesses is keep it simple, make it easier, there
is a confusing range of organisations here providing business
support, whether it be from an environmental perspective, financial
planning perspective or manufacturing perspective. What we are
doing through the Business Support Simplification Programme is
undertaking a major rationalisation of our points of contact with
industry so that we respond directly to what the CBI, the British
Chambers of Commerce and the Federation of Small Businesses and
others, are saying to us. Obviously this is a major programme
and there are all the metrics that you would expect to be associated
with it to measure its performance as it starts to take place,
and across a range of these areas the Business Link network over
the next 18 months will be very different to the network that
it is today as a result of this simplification programme and the
product portfolios that it will offer in the future.
Joan Ruddock: Can I just say from the point
of view of Defra, obviously we have to feed into this Business
Simplification Programme and we will be doing so, but at the same
time we are actually reviewing all of our activities with business
on resource efficiency and on carbon reduction activity because
we think there are some ways of bringing programmes together and
creating greater efficiencies and delivering in a more user-friendly
way, so we have also got that message and we are doing it for
our own bodies and then we will feed in also through the simplification
programme.
Malcolm Wicks: Chairman, can I just add—and
we will cover this in the note—that Business Link's website
has been expanded now to provide additional advice to SMEs on
new waste legislation and the more general issue of creating a
sustainable business. I think we find from experience that SMEs
are often more likely to consult the Business Link website than
communicate, as it were, with us in different ways, but we will
provide you with more information about this.
Chairman: I think we would also like
information about the website and about how you propose to monitor
its effectiveness because a bald statement of the number of hits
in itself is insufficient to give a clear picture of what we were
looking for.
Q842 Lord Howie of Troon: In that
note can you tell us how much of these budgets is swallowed up
in administrative costs and how much goes elsewhere?
Malcolm Wicks: Yes, we will do our best to provide
that evidence.
Q843 Lord Methuen: To turn to landfill
tax now, what percentage of the revenue raised from the landfill
tax is being retained to support waste reduction initiatives and
how does this figure compare with the percentage retained in previous
years?
Joan Ruddock: Again I have the lead on this.
We had an agreement which was of course about using some of the
landfill tax receipts for waste initiatives, and waste reduction
initiatives came within that. Ring-fencing arrangements are ones
that are always kept under review, and we have come to a decision
with the Treasury that that will no longer be the case, so there
is no ring-fencing of landfill tax receipts in this financial
year or the subsequent one, so I cannot offer you a comparison
with what happened in the past. What I can tell you is that a
maximum of eight per cent of landfill tax receipts between 2005
and 2008 were used to fund waste reduction initiatives, so that
is the measure of it, and at the moment it is not possible to
give a comparable sum because of the changes that I have previously
described. We have a whole host of delivery bodies and a range
of programmes and we consider that waste reduction is a priority
for government but it is not being funded in the way it has been
in the past.
Q844 Lord Methuen: The Local Government
Association has told us that as a result of the last Comprehensive
Spending Review, local authorities will now receive 1.5 billion
less from landfill tax revenues. How will this affect their ability
to implement short- and long-term waste reduction strategies?
Joan Ruddock: I think that the Department and
other Government departments prior to the Comprehensive Spending
Review discussed settlements for the funding of local government,
and we are satisfied that they can carry out all the duties that
are required of them in respect of waste. We believe that it is
necessary to give a strong signal throughout the economy about
the need to divert waste from landfill. That is what the landfill
tax escalator is about. For local authorities there are year-on-year
efficiencies which they are obliged to make and that is the key
because if they make those efficiencies they will have much more
money to spend. That is the way the Government has conducted its
business vis-a"-vis local authorities.
Q845 Lord Methuen: The Flemish Government
are aiming to ban landfill in toto. Do you see us going as far
as that?
Joan Ruddock: I think the situation is quite
different for them in terms of their ability to bury waste at
all. We do have landfill sites that can take waste and will continue
to take waste into the future, so I would not predict an ending
of the use of landfill, but quite clearly we are bound by European
law to reduce the amount of waste that goes into landfill and
we are on target at the present time in terms of our reductions
of waste to landfill. It will become more challenging as time
passes and we get closer to 2020. That is why we have looked to
introduce some incentives to local authorities to enable them
perhaps to encourage more recycling. Recycling rates are going
up, recovery rates are going up. We have quadrupled recycling
by local authorities since we have been in power in the last ten
years, so progress has been made, but I would never be complacent
about landfill; it is and will continue to be a real issue.
Q846 Lord Methuen: Do you not think
that particularly from the industrial sector that landfill is
too cheap compared with other ways of disposing of waste?
Joan Ruddock: Well, I think a balance has always
got to be struck and we obviously have to look constantly at what
will give the right signal and give the right incentive to people
to divert from landfill without making it so expensive that we
could potentially end up with far greater problems of illegal
disposal, so I think there has to be a balance there. Industry
does often say to us—and I have had this said to me by some
sectors in industry—"Put it up even more, drive this
forward even harder," but equally one will hear from other
businesses that they find that they are already quite stretched.
I think that we have probably got the balance right but clearly
this can always be reviewed.
Q847 Chairman: One of the things
that you said about local authorities was that some of them are
very small and you are trying to have joint waste authorities;
how successful has this been? How much money have you made available
for the joint authorities and what about the regional development
agencies; how much money do they get for their waste reduction
activities?
Joan Ruddock: I do not have those figures and
of course we would partly be talking about the relationship with
CLG here, so I do not know if they are any officials present who
are able to supply me with a note while this Committee proceeds
but if not it would be necessary to write to you because I do
not have that detail.
Chairman: Thank you.
Q848 Lord May of Oxford: Focussing
in on one of the plethora of acronyms we were discussing earlier,
the Market Transformation Programme (MTP) is piloting a roadmap
approach to identifying environmental impacts of particular products
throughout the entire life cycle. Could you say how the target
products were selected, how successful this approach looks and
how you monitor progress?
Joan Ruddock: The Market Transformation Programme
has been mainly concerned with carbon impacts, so that programme
has been working on getting reductions in energy from products.
The product roadmap approach is actually being co-ordinated by
our division on sustainable products and materials. What we did
in approaching this question was to look at the available research
and the EU was able to provide information about where the greatest
impacts are in terms of areas of consumption. We were told by
the EU that 80 per cent of impacts were coming from food, personal
transport, buildings, the kind of equipment that we have in buildings
and textiles. Those are the major areas where we know we have
got consumer impacts that could be addressed. Then we looked in
the priority areas at specific products that we could then examine
for the roadmap purposes. For example, in food we took milk and
fish and in energy using products such as the equipment within
homes we took TVs, lighting and motors. In total we got ten products
and we have been roadmaping those ten products and that means
working through the whole life-cycle analysis. If you were to
take clothing, you would go from the time you have a seed that
a farmer plants, probably in a developing country, right through
to how that plant grows, then to the production of materials,
manufacture, retail and eventually disposal of the waste. By mapping
the whole life cycle it is possible to see how inputs can be reduced
and how waste can be reduced, et cetera, et cetera. We published
the first of those recently, which was a milk roadmap. What we
do is we work with key stakeholders. We are attempting to get
the key stakeholders to sign up to commitments that actually produce
lower impacts, less waste, et cetera.
Q849 Lord May of Oxford: Did you
say one of the ten was personal transport?
Joan Ruddock: Yes.
Q850 Lord May of Oxford: The roadmap
is particularly appropriate to that! Could you sketch how that
is going?
Joan Ruddock: I am afraid I cannot sketch how
that is going.
Q851 Lord May of Oxford: It seems
a very large topic to try and cover under that heading.
Joan Ruddock: Much work is being done on cars.
This is an area where a lot of work has to be done at European
level and has to be done through manufacturers because the best
way that we could reduce the impacts of cars, if we take them
as entities, is clearly in their design, in their fuel efficiency,
in their CO2 emissions and the way in which they are constructed
and the End of Life Vehicles Directive has made a big impact.
Now vehicles are taken, they are deconstructed and the materials
are recycled. Just from memory, I think we have got to about 70
per cent or more recycling and we hope to move to 90 per cent.
That is the way forward for cars as entities, but we then have
to look at environmental behaviours and that is not to do with
waste so much as to do with efficiencies and carbon footprinting.
Defra has a whole programme of trying to influence environmental
behaviours through our "Act on CO2" campaign strategy,
our website and our calculator. I suspect that will take us away
from this inquiry, but that is one of the ways that we will be
working.
Malcolm Wicks: We are doing better with the
End of Life Vehicles than my colleague was suggesting because
the overall performance, taking into account vehicles handled
in subcontracted sites as well as the contracted sites, the approved
treatment facilities, is actually 83 per cent on a combined total
of almost 1.1 million vehicles. We are not complacent, but we
are doing relatively well in hitting the targets there.
Q852 Lord May of Oxford: Many years
ago the Cleaner Vehicle Task Force's recommendations were all
essentially put in the bin. We simply do not even enforce the
MOT regulations. If you compare us with Los Angeles, it is just
appalling.
Joan Ruddock: We have heard what you say.
Ian Pearson: On personal transport, recently
we have had the King Review that has reported, which is a major
piece of work. I wanted to make the point about the link between
technology roadmaps and product roadmaps as well. Through the
Technology Strategy Board we are producing a number of technology
roadmaps which look further out at how technologies might change
which might produce new products and new processes in the future.
It is important that we build that sort of front-end linkage into
the final roadmap process. TSB officials are very much talking
to Defra about these links, particularly in the area of transport
but also in the areas of home products and food as well. I think
it is right that we build in that technology roadmap and foresight
process into the product roadmap and the life-cycle analysis that
Joan was talking about.
Q853 Chairman: At the moment a lot
of it is working on a voluntary basis. What are you going to do
when you establish the scale of recalcitrance as it were? At the
moment people are being given the roadmap and they are encouraged
to follow it. What happens to those who just do not wish to participate?
Are you going to legislate for them? Is there going to be an element
of compulsion brought in?
Ian Pearson: Obviously at an EU level there
has been a very strong debate about emission limits and the desire
to move to 100g per kilometre of C02 emissions. One of the things
that we are doing through the Technology Strategy Board is supporting
a low carbon vehicles innovation platform, which is in the process
of funding collaborative R&D to help produce the new breakthroughs
in the technologies that would be required if we are going to
have lower carbon vehicles on our roads. That is a practical way
in which as a Government we are providing support, working with
industry to deliver low carbon solutions which are in the process
of being mandated through the EU in terms of regulations.
Joan Ruddock: We have a voluntary agreement
with major retailers on low energy light bulbs. We have promoted
this agreement through various programmes, through CERT and so
on in Government. This is where we are leading the field, we are
ahead of legislation here, but the legislation we would need is
European-wide legislation and that is going to happen. In many
of these areas, because of trade law, it will be European legislation,
but our voluntary agreements can get us to go down the path, to
get ahead of the game and inform the Commission. One of the important
things that came out of our work on low energy light bulbs is
that there are some health effects. These had not been picked
up by the Commission but they have been picked up by us. We have
worked with the pressure groups that have people who are sick
from various conditions. We are making a real contribution. It
is a case of doing both. If we need to legislate then we will,
but if we can make headway with voluntary agreements, so be it.
Q854 Lord Crickhowell: I am very
glad to hear you say you are picking up the health point, but
I do hope there will be some concentrated effort too to make sure
that these bulbs give enough light. The problem at the moment
and why most people do not use them is because they do not give
as much light as ordinary light bulbs. It is a major issue which
I believe you have got to tackle before you force them down everyone's
throat. Can you assure us that waste reduction will continue to
be a long-term priority? The second part of my question is about
how the Government encourages the best manufactures to continue
to be innovative and push the boundaries of sustainability. In
putting that question I am bound to raise an issue which we will
come back to later, which is individual producer responsibility.
We are told, for example, by the Green Alliance that one of the
difficulties here is that because we have not transposed article
8.2 of the WEEE Directive we are operating mainly on collective
responsibility and it is argued that this has not been as effective.
In answering the question about how we can keep it going could
you perhaps just say something about how we are going on individual
producer responsibility, which seems to have worked in other countries?
Joan Ruddock: We have got the Batteries Directive
which we are working on. We need to see this in a wider context
and as not just the UK having to act vis-a"-vis business
or trying to push the boundaries about sustainability because
so much of what we work on and transpose comes from Europe. There
is a constant surge forward coming from the EU on sustainability
and its relationship to business and industry. We take all of
that into account and that underpins so much of what we do. I
have mentioned so often today the Waste Strategy and that is a
long-term strategy, it has been very well received and it is very
well understood by business and industry. They are both very clear
about where our priorities are. We also think we have given the
right economic climate in terms of the landfill tax escalator,
making sure that business over the very long term is aware that
there is a need to reduce the waste that is produced. That is
a very strong signal. We also try to assist business by adopting
a very light regulatory regime so that it is possible to exempt
certain waste recovery operations from being permitted. This is
a very positive signal to industry because it says, "Your
material can be recovered, your material can be recycled and can
be regarded as a resource, not a waste," and that is very
helpful as well. We have got the Environment Agency, we have got
WRAP and all the other delivery bodies that we have spoken about
that will continue to give their advice and support to business.
Malcolm Wicks: Let me add something about the
Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment Directive which is also
known as the WEEE Directive and it is an important aspect of this
discussion. An estimated two million tonnes of electrical waste
is produced in the United Kingdom every year and each of us as
individuals during our lifetime will generate an estimated 3.3
tonnes of electrical waste. We have now implemented the Directive
and although it is still early days, we think it is going well.
The UK exceeds the current EC target of 4kg, we are meeting the
6kg target and rising, but it is still early days. In terms of
the issue you raised about individual producer responsibility,
this is where we do want to move because it would then give an
added incentive to the particular company to think right from
the first day of designing a product how to design, in a way that
is sustainable and so that the materials can be used in the future.
What we are all trying to think through—and we meet with
the newly established advisory board on this one—is how
you do it. There are practical issues because one takes the electrical
or electronic waste, the product, down to one's local authority
recycling centre and it is a question of how you separate all
that out so that it can be properly dealt with by company A or
company Z. I think the practical difficulties are really quite
strong ones. We need to work this through with the producers,
given that it is a producer responsibility, in the months to come.
Q855 Lord Crickhowell: My question
was very much directed to innovation. We do have the example of
Japan before us where there is no doubt that the "top-runner"
scheme has driven innovation in a pretty dramatic way. We have
had a good deal of evidence from organisations, including the
major electrical manufacturers, pointing to a whole list of improvements
that it has produced in the manufacturing field. Perhaps you could
elaborate a little more on how we can benefit from the experience
that we have learned from in Japan. I want to make just a very
small secondary point which arises from your remark about driving
down to the recycling centre to leave your batteries. Yes, we
do that with the big batteries, but why are we not yet following
the example that I have observed in many European countries of
having outside every chemist shop a place where we can put the
little batteries that we have in our everyday bits of apparatus
and my hearing aid and so on which most of us simply do not know
how to get rid of? It is a very simple thing. It is being done
in Europe but it is not being done here. When are you going to
do something about it?
Malcolm Wicks: I will give you some more information
in writing on batteries because we are trying to move forward
on that. At home in our kitchen we have a plastic bag full of
batteries ready for us to implement what we are doing on batteries.
On the individual producer responsibility point, I do not think
I can add to my answer. We will look at the Japanese experience.
Some companies are anxious to proceed on this. It is a very practical
matter. I used to call it the dump and now I have to call it the
recycling centre. I think there is the really practical problem
of separating out the different bits of waste and finding the
actual producer responsibility. We have now set up an advisory
board on this Directive but it has only had one or so meetings
at the moment. I want to discuss this issue with the advisory
board just as soon as I can.
Q856 Lord Crickhowell: You are not
quite getting the point I am making, which is not so much about
how we get rid of the stuff. We have had a whole list of technological
improvements from the electrical industry, for example, the unification
of materials, the reduction in the number of components, screws,
the standardisation of materials, the development of recycling
technologies, separation and so on, arising from the Japanese
experience. I am trying to move us to what ought to be the centrepiece
of our report, which is how we are getting the design and the
technological improvements rather than the local authority end
of getting rid of the stuff.
Ian Pearson: I do not think our best manufacturers
need any encouragement to be innovative and to push the boundaries
of sustainability. When you look at some of our best companies
and you look at their annual reports and you look at how they
operate in practice, sustainability is very much built into their
business model, I do not think it is a separate add-on. I think
the issue is more other companies and making sure that right down
throughout our manufacturing base we continue to promote sustainability.
Malcolm and I sat as members of the Commission on Environmental
Markets and Economic Performance, which reported last year and
we responded to that report recently. One of the key things coming
out of that report is really the strong business opportunities
that can result because of the Green Revolution that will need
to take place in industry over the next few years. There are strong
commercial drivers which give big incentives to companies to act
in a more sustainable way. Mention was made of the Japanese top-runner
initiative and I think that that has been effective in terms of
driving up standards in Japan. My understanding of what we are
doing through the EU is adopting a similar sort of process. Joan
mentioned the phasing out of non-energy efficient light bulbs
and that is part of a similar process to what the Japanese have
adopted with their top-runner programme. Across a range of different
product areas at a European level the UK has been pushing to say
which are the most efficient in the marketplace, which are the
least efficient in the marketplace and to seek in the first instance
to work voluntarily with industry, but then to move to regulate
to ensure that the most inefficient products will not be allowed
to be sold in the future and so in effect choice editing will
take place. So the decision will be made that products that are
very poorly performing in terms of energy efficiency standards
but also potentially waste standards in the future will not be
allowed on the market in the first place.
Q857 Lord Bhattacharyya: The Prime
Minister has entered into discussions about the possibility of
introducing a lower tax for more energy efficient products. Could
this concept be developed to encourage resource efficiency so
that, for example, virgin raw materials could carry a higher tax
than recycled or re-used materials?
Joan Ruddock: I am sure you will understand
that in all cases of this kind the Minister's standard response
is that all tax issues are for the Treasury. I am afraid I have
to give that standard response; it is for the Treasury to decide.
However, all I can point to is the fact that we have encouraged,
for environmental reasons, a differential taxation. One of the
best examples in this context is that of the aggregates tax whereby
we have got a lower tax on recycled aggregates in order to discourage
the use of virgin materials. The principle is well established
and it has been applied in that particular example. As I have
said so often today, the landfill tax escalator is another very
big signal. I am afraid I cannot comment beyond that other than
to say that the principle has been accepted and put into practice
elsewhere.
Ian Pearson: I just wanted to add a personal
view because obviously these matters are matters for the Treasury.
In my view two of the failings of neoclassical economics are the
failure to take into account the externalities of carbon and,
secondly, the failure to take into account fully the externalities
in terms of natural resource depletion. I think over the next
20 years or so we will see a strongly performing carbon market
that prices in externalities and I think that we will need to
have a debate at a global level about the use of natural resources
and whether they are properly priced at the moment. That is a
big political question. I would be very interested to know whether
the Committee has any views on this for the future.
Lord Bhattacharyya: Oil has already started
going in that direction.
Q858 Chairman: It is not really our
purpose to enter into discussions in quite that depth.
Malcolm Wicks: We will be consulting on batteries
in the summer.
Joan Ruddock: We are indeed consulting on batteries,
but from Defra's point of view, we do hope very much that we can
produce an agreement that means that we will get retailers who
actually sell these small batteries of this huge variety to take
back the batteries at the end of their life, but it would be those
who sell who would take back.
Q859 Lord Haskel: Let us move from
tax to technology where you may have a bit more to say. A great
deal of research has been carried out by materials designers which
focus on the development of new materials, more sustainable and
lighter. I ought to declare an interest as the President of Materials
UK. What is equally important is new technologies into the use
of recycled and re-used materials. Are you giving any support
to new technologies for doing that?
Ian Pearson: As the Minister responsible for
research councils and the Technology Strategy Board it is probably
appropriate that I give an initial response to this. The short
answer is that we provide substantial funding for research right
across the range, whether it is for the development of new materials
or new technologies in terms of recycling. As a Government we
are providing a lot of support and looking at new technologies
across a whole range of renewable energy as well as recycling.
I would like to draw the Committee's attention to two particular
programmes. The first is the ESRC funded "Waste of the World"
five-year research programme which is bringing together researchers
from across a range of disciplines, from geography to anthropology
and material science and a range of universities, not just in
the UK but internationally as well. The whole aim of that programme
is to rethink how waste is thought of in the social sciences,
to provide a global analysis of waste and to examine how rethinking
waste impinges on some of the core concerns of contemporary social
science, notably economies, researching globalisation, hazards
and risks and such like. The second programme I would like to
draw attention to is the cross-research council Living with Environmental
Change programme, which is a significant programme that we have
funded as part of the new Comprehensive Spending Review settlement.
Three of the six objectives of this programme are relevant to
minimising waste and to using it as a resource. This is bringing
together researchers from across a range of disciplines. When
it comes to the objectives, one is specifically about minimising
waste and the other is going to address how communities can be
encouraged to make the right choices for the environment as well,
so there is a significant programme of work there. Lastly, just
to add in the work that the Technology Strategy Board is doing
as well, the TSB has supported collaborative R&D projects
worth around £70 million with Defra on waste minimisation
and has an active programme in this area as well.
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