Clause 4 - Allocation of landfill allowances
Waste and Emissions Trading Bill [Lords]
3:30 pm
Ms Sue Doughty (Guildford, Liberal Democrat)
I welcome you to the Chair, Miss Begg. I am concerned about the idea of consultation. In a perfect world, a district authority or a borough council should be consulting with its county council and, of course, we would all want them to agree. One of the interesting things that the Audit Commission found was that the
''split between collection and disposal authorities appears to be unique in Europe.''
I believe that to be a problem and that is why I support what my hon. Friend the Member for Lewes said. The Audit Commission found that the split led to inefficiencies, and stated
''two-tier authorities, where collection and disposal are split, will find it harder to meet their targets.''
Throughout the country, there are many examples of the collection authorities being, for one reason or another, unhappy with the waste strategy of the disposal authority. The collection authorities may have decided that they want to avoid incineration, particularly if it was going to come their way, and they might adopt a zero-waste strategy or some other waste management strategy that they felt was more sustainable than the one that the county council had proposed. Throughout the country there are authorities where the county and the district are at odds with one another about the most sustainable way of dealing with waste while also trying to achieve targets, and that is a problem.
I do not like that split, but I realise that the Bill is not about that. I would be interested to hear the Minister's comments on the matter, although I appreciate that there is nothing in the Bill to change it. I fear that the proposal in the amendment is not deliverable, because the disposal authority and the collection authority will not always agree, especially where the collection authority has from time to time made its own arrangements because it has probably been able to do it better.