Clause 8 - Offences under regulations under
Waste and Emissions Trading Bill [Lords]
10:15 am
Mr Michael Meacher (Minister of State (the Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Oldham West and Royton, Labour)
No; no. The hon. Gentleman is being a little vehement. Of course those Acts concern money, but we are talking about knowingly or recklessly providing false or misleading information to the monitoring authority. [Interruption.] Hold on and give me a chance to speak. The result of providing false information in target years could be the failure of the allocating authority, which is in effect the Secretary of State, to achieve the targets set down in the EU landfill directive. That would be an extreme case, but unless we have accurate information to provide to the Commission as evidence that we have properly fulfilled our requirements, this country could be in considerable difficulty. The penalties for the whole country in that case would be vastly greater than the relatively small gains that might be made under those previous Acts.
I have been informed that all the precedents relate to trading. The offences in sections 6 and 7 of the Competition Act 1998 also concern trading, so there is a direct precedent.