Ms Sue Doughty (Guildford, Liberal Democrat)

This seems to me to be one of the key areas of the Bill, which, as we discussed on Second Reading, is designed to do several things. It is possible to meet targets or to trade them, but within that, there is flexibility to allow local authorities to catch up, albeit by spending money. The ability to trade within the year gives them flexibility. However, the clause will allow them to carry over allowances to the next year by banking them, and that concerns me. It seems to be a risky strategy, if we are trying to reduce, year on year, the amount of waste that we send to landfill, because it would seem possible to keep sending waste to landfill and then suddenly reduce the amount sent to landfill some time afterwards. It would seem a bit reckless to defer all the good work that I was doing in any area, because I had borrowed my allowances for subsequent years, and then suddenly had to catch up at the last minute because I had no allowances left.

We need to forward plan. The Minister helpfully said that disposal authorities will know what the targets are for the 20 years of the scheme. That would seem to provide a good opportunity for business planning. I accept that we are talking about a small part of the whole waste management strategy, which we discussed extensively this morning, but those who are trying to develop their waste management strategies—the disposal authorities and the waste management business, which is contracted to execute waste management strategy on behalf of the authorities—need to get on with their planning. It would appear that if one is allowed to borrow allowances for a subsequent year, one might delay investment in the necessary technologies. I should have thought that the Government might be trying, in the Bill, to send the message, ''We must stop sending waste

to landfill. We know what our targets are, so, using those allowances, we must plan wisely for the future.'' Even with the statutory recycling targets, if municipal waste grows by 3 per cent. a year, one could find that, by borrowing allocations from subsequent years, one was sending the same amount of waste to landfill in 2008 as in 2003. To me, that is contrary to the sense of the Bill. We want to reduce landfill as soon as possible by trading within those years. Trading within the year would allow that to happen, but borrowing from subsequent years would and could defer it if we did not have a prudent disposal authority, which would stack up trouble for authorities in future years. That is why we have proposed changes: we do not want that to happen.

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