New clause 32 - Moratorium on new municipal incinerators
Waste and Emissions Trading Bill [Lords]
5:51 pm

Mr Bill Wiggin (Leominster, Conservative)

That Division was a mere squeak, Mr. Amess. It is a shame that we did not manage to persuade the Government to accept the helpful waste hierarchy. The amendment seeks to crystallise the waste hierarchy by the addition of the word ''or''. It is not a huge amendment but it seeks to separate materials and energy recovery from biogas reduction, composting and recycling. In that small way it seeks to raise the lower echelons of the waste hierarchy. It would have been better if waste minimisation and reuse had been inserted before recycling, but that would have merely completed the plan. What I seek to do is clear from the small amendment, and I hope that the Minister will accept it.

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for attempting to insert the word ''or''. As he will have noticed, it fits in nicely with amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 and is essential to their success. Without that word my amendment would be incomplete. I thank him for working together with me on that.

This group of amendments deals with incineration, and I suspect that, in many ways, most members of the Committee feel uncomfortable about where the Government are going. I have little confidence that the Government strategy, as set out at present, will limit incineration. I believe that it will lead to an inexorable rise in the number of incinerators across the country, which I, and most people in the Room, would wish to avoid.

Amendments Nos. 4, 5 and 6 seek to delete ''or energy recovery'' from subsection (3). My hon. Friend the Member for Guildford and I tabled them simply because we do not wish energy recovery to be put on the same level as the other listed alternatives—recycling, composting, biogas production, materials recovery and so on. The Government have a hierarchy, as we discussed before we adjourned for half an hour. The Minister said that the hierarchy need not be mentioned in the Bill. He said that it exists outside legislation. He said that there is a strategy. Yet when it comes to referring to alternatives, which he must do when he refers to a strategy, he does not explicitly put those within a hierarchy. They are lumped together.

The way that the Government strategy is unfolding and the way that the Bill will operate, both through the implementation of the landfill directive and the existence of the landfill tax, will make landfill the

least attractive option. I hope that the hon. Member for Stroud is interested in this point. He raised it on Second Reading and elsewhere, but I do not think that he is. I am quite happy that the Government have rightly taken action to put landfill firmly at the bottom of the waste hierarchy, but one must ask what steps the Government have taken to make waste minimisation the most attractive option, reuse the second most attractive option, recycling the third most attractive option, and incineration the least preferred option of the four.

Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)

Zero.

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

The hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle is right. I have seen no attempts by the Government to seek to minimise incineration, although the Minister makes the point regularly when pushed. When I asked him about incineration he said:

''I have already said that the Government do not support any significant expansion of incineration.—[Official Report, 6 March 2003; Vol. 400, c. 945.]

That is his policy, and it is one with which we all concur. Unfortunately, it is not the reality. Only four days later, in a parliamentary question, the hon. Member for Southampton, Test asked

''how many waste incinerators are planned by waste disposal authorities; what the capacity is of each incinerator planned; and what information she collates on the contractual arrangements for waste disposal.''—[Official Report, 10 March 2003; Vol. 401, c. 6W.]

That is a thoroughly proper question. The Minister, who had said beforehand that the Government did not support the expansion of incineration, listed a page of incinerators that were coming on line. Clearly, his wish to minimise incineration is not borne out by reality—there are incinerators all over the country. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test, in his excellent, forensic analysis on Second Reading, gave a clear indication of why it is almost inevitable that incinerators will pop up and down across our land. I hope that he will speak in this debate.

Mr David Kidney (Stafford, Labour)

A company in my constituency is very successful in making energy converters—small engines that burn biomass very efficiently with gasification and pyrolysis. The hon. Gentleman refers to incineration as though it is one process—he seems to have in mind the giant, static incinerators of which there are a few in the country. Does he draw any distinction between those and the energy converters of the kind that I have described?

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

That is a very relevant point and the hon. Gentleman is right to raise it. There is a case for small-scale incinerators for specific local purposes. For example, incineration might be appropriate for farms, which face particular difficulties. Incineration is the flower that will grow and cast a shadow over everything else. It will extinguish the sunlight from other options and ensure that they do not see the light of day. That is because a waste disposal authority, in considering its options, is limited to 35 per cent. landfill. It has to make up the huge gap.

Recycling in this country is, as the Minister said, pathetic. The Government set strong and difficult

targets for recycling in ''Waste Strategy 2000''—33 per cent. of household waste and a waste recovery target of 67 per cent. by 2015. They were right to do that in the context of the country's generally pathetic performance in recycling, reuse and waste minimisation.

As a consequence of the Bill, local authorities will be obliged to meet strong targets at an early stage or face penalties. I do not disagree with the philosophy—they should face penalties if they cannot meet targets—but what are they going to do? Are they going to say, ''We agree with this; let us try to meet our targets by recycling, reuse and waste minimisation. There is a scheme involving one small firm here and a voluntary organisation there''? They will not do that. They will say, ''We have a major problem in meeting the target in the short time before a penalty kicks in. The only way to do it is by incineration.''

That will be the logical conclusion of authority after authority around the country. Many are reaching it now. They are planning for incineration in East Sussex, in Surrey and elsewhere. As soon as recycling is mentioned, authorities opt with their feet and their cheque books for incineration now. That is what is happening. I am afraid that an explosion in incineration is inevitable.

Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)

I am listening carefully to the hon. Gentleman. He made a very powerful point that the Minister's evidence has been contradicted by his own parliamentary answers. However, is he aware that the list of incinerators in the planning system will double the incineration capacity from 8 to 16 per cent.? A total capacity of 2.7 million tonnes is in the offing, and that is just through incinerators that we know about. The Minister is misleading us if he says that no major increase in incineration is planned. It clearly is; his parliamentary answers prove it.

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

To be fair to him, the Minister said that he supported no significant increase in incineration. Nevertheless, it is occurring.

Mr Michael Meacher (Minister of State (the Environment), Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs; Oldham West and Royton, Labour)

There is a serious misunderstanding here, and the hon. Gentleman has made a lot of hay out of it. My hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Kidney) made the correct point. Municipal solid waste incinerators are completely different from the small incinerators that exist on farms and near hospitals to deal with clinical and hazardous waste are. If they are linked together under the name ''incinerator'', the hon. Member for Lewes is able to make his political point, but that is seriously misleading.

The number of municipal solid waste incinerators in the UK remains 14, of which two are in Scotland. That number is not set to increase as far as I know, but if it does, it will be by only a very small number. There are mechanical biological treatments, such as gasification, pyrolysis and anaerobic digestion, which are new technologies, that can be used rather than mass burn incineration. To confuse them by putting them all together in one category is to give a false impression.

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

Had I put them all in one category, the Minister might have had a point, but I did not do so. Of course there are small-scale incinerators, but I

understand that the doubling of capacity mentioned by the hon. Member for Bexhill and Battle is a fact. Furthermore, there are plans for municipal waste incinerators throughout the country, and I am surprised that the Minister does not know about them. The waste disposal authority is determined to build one in my patch in Newhaven, and many are coming through the planning process.

Mr David Drew (Stroud, Labour/Co-operative)

The hon. Gentleman has hit on the crux of the problem. To my mind, the easy option for local authorities will be to look at incineration. However, surely that is what happens with a devolved system of government. We should go back to the local authorities and tell them to get their act together and examine alternatives to incineration.

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

The fact that incineration is the easy option is the problem. The Minister must accept that, faced with stiff targets to be met in a short time, local authorities will go, and are going, for the easy option.

Local authorities do what they are driven to do after analysing the signals coming from central Government and the European Union. Those two signals are, first, not to landfill and, secondly, to reach their target in a short time. Faced with that, the answer is incineration. There are alternatives, to which the Government should give preferential treatment so that authorities do not feel that they have to incinerate. We must do that early, but we have not yet done it. Both the Bill and, in effect if not in words, the Government's waste strategy provide for equal treatment for the alternatives to landfill.

Members on both sides of the Committee have mentioned the waste hierarchy and the need for the Bill to be more encompassing because the time to deal with the waste stream is short. If landfill is to be drastically curbed but the strategy in the Bill is limited to dealing with the landfill directive—which, by and large, it is—that means that, unless the Budget proves different, the Government will provide no lead in either legislation or taxation to use the alternatives that, as the hon. Member for Stroud said, would be more desirable. The Minister will know that Peter Jones from Biffa has said that there is no need for a local waste disposal authority to resort to incineration, but for the reasons that I have given, I believe that they will.

The time scale is important, especially when local authorities are making decisions this year, this month or, in some cases, this week. They must realise that there are alternatives and that the Government are promoting them not simply in an abstract hierarchy but through practical measures. That means that there must be a disincentive for incineration, at the very least through a tax. We do not have that yet, and I hope that we will have it in the Budget next week.

Mr Paddy Tipping (Sherwood, Labour)

Tomorrow.

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

I thank the hon. Gentleman. My diary is out, so I am grateful to him because I might otherwise have missed the Budget.

In the Budget tomorrow, we will find out whether the Chancellor has taken the opportunity to introduce such an incinerator tax. If he has not, where is the message to local authorities that incineration is not the ideal solution and that recycling, reuse and minimisation is preferred?

Talking about minimisation, the Minister said calmly before we broke for a cup of tea that he expected growth to reduce from 3 to 2 per cent., and he said that the targets must be realistic and achievable. I agree, but goodness me, what an unambitious target by which to reduce the rate of growth. In other words, further growth in the waste stream is being countenanced when we face a crisis and must take urgent, drastic measures to conform with the landfill directive. That is not the reason that we are to move towards incineration.

The Minister's figures predict further growth in the waste stream of 2 per cent. a year. Where will that waste go if it is not incinerated? I see little alternative if that growth takes place, and it will because the Government have not actively taken measures in the Bill or elsewhere which will have a real impact on waste minimisation or the reuse of materials. The Minister has done more on recycling than on waste minimisation, and I accept that it is more difficult to tackle the latter. However, waste minimisation is, after all, No. 1 in the hierarchy—that is what everyone says—yet it has had least attention of all.

Where is the promotion for waste minimisation? The packaging directive, which the Minister likes to bring up, does not help on waste minimisation at all. The directive aids recycling, but it will not reduce one iota the amount of packaging produced. It simply puts the onus on manufacturers to recycle more of the packaging that they produce; it contains nothing about waste minimisation. We must have a strategy for reducing the amount of waste that households produce. I do not pretend that that is easy, but, goodness me, we need it and rather than pretend otherwise the Government should address themselves to such a strategy.

The objections to incineration are many and principled and I am sure that other hon. Members have their reasons for opposing it. One reason is that incineration potentially diverts from the waste stream. The Minister knows and recognises that and has raised the matter before. Incineration is potentially a hungry mouth that operates 24 hours a day to take material away from recycling and reuse. The Minister says that no permission will be given for any incinerator to have that effect. However, it is equally possible to receive that answer and to see a big increase in recycling.

In East Sussex, for example, about 10 or 11 per cent. of waste overall is recycled, and the landfill directive will, I think, allow 35 per cent. to be landfilled, which leaves 54 per cent. of waste. It is possible to recycle 30 per cent. and still have an incinerator. There will be such results up and down the country. A third of waste will be landfilled, a third will be incinerated and a third will be recycled. That picture is unfolding in authority after authority throughout the country. That is not inconsistent with the hungry mouth, which is a concern.

There is also the proximity principle, which the Minister has accepted and which I have raised with him more than once. If it means anything, the proximity principle means that those who create the waste should be responsible for disposing of it, which does not mean shipping it miles in a lorry into someone else's back yard. However, that is of course what waste disposal is by and large, because the municipal incinerators—not the ones to which the hon. Member for Stafford rightly referred—are large beasts that must take from a large area.

East Sussex, Brighton and Hove, for example, believes that it requires one huge incinerator to deal with the waste that comes from the western end of the county, if not from some of the eastern end as well. That means that my constituents in Newhaven will have lorry load after lorry load of waste—it will not come by train or by boat—shipped from Brighton and Hove, which washes its hands of its rubbish and dumps it all in the incinerator in my constituency. Where is the proximity principle when a whole city can simply shove its rubbish into someone else's territory? I mention Brighton and Hove, where there is no proximity principle at all, but that example is not unique.

There are also health implications, which might have been overplayed. As the Minister and others will argue, the emission levels from incinerators are considerably lower than they were previously. However, people are still concerned about that, and they still dislike and distrust incinerators for that reason. There is still the potential for certain emissions, particularly if the incinerator malfunctions and the temperature drops. Those are genuine concerns.

There is also a concern about the fly ash—the toxic ash—that is produced. The ash does not all simply disappear. As the Minister knows, a large percentage—up to 30 per cent.—remains as toxic ash that must be disposed of to landfill. Incineration therefore perpetuates landfill, because it still produces a waste stream for landfill in ash that cannot be dealt with in any other way. Incineration is unacceptable in that way and for other reasons to which Committee members may refer.

I do not want to hog the debate; I want to give other hon. Members the chance to speak, because I know they also feel strongly about the matter. I hope that I have demonstrated that incineration is an undesirable method of dealing with waste, but it is likely to happen, because of the instruments that have been set up and because of how things are going nationally. I urge the Minister, whose philosophy on the matter is not far from mine, to look at what is happening in the country, to analyse what local authorities are doing, to ask each waste disposal authority what their plans waste strategies are, and to add up the number of incinerators being planned. If he does not already know, he will get a shock—there are a lot.

Finally, I draw the Committee's attention to new clauses 5 to 12, which were tabled by my hon. Friend

the Member for Guildford and I, and which are intended to do two things. First, they would ask the Government to establish a strategy to start a moratorium on incineration, if that is not a contradiction in terms. Secondly, they are intended to instigate a study of the health and environmental implications of incineration. That is the least the Government could do at the moment. When the time comes, I will ask for a vote on new clause 5.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

I am most grateful to be called to contribute to this aspect of our deliberations, which, as the Minister rightly acknowledged, is important. It is important because it draws into sharp focus some of the concerns expressed earlier about the effect of the Bill, not in terms of what it deliberately sets out to achieve, but on what it may stimulate and encourage by default. As I said before we broke up for our tea and hot cross buns, the most profound concerns stem from what is not in the Bill. I share the Minister's view that the Bill does not legitimise incineration—it may not even incentive it, except by default—but I suspect that it will produce incineration because those responsible for implementing the Bill cannot find a suitable, convenient and practical alternative.

The situation will vary. We have said continuously that different circumstances apply to authorities in various parts of the country. Some authorities are already more prepared than others to deal with the effects of the Bill. There are those who are not in a position quickly to find useful and positive alternatives. Some authorities are already doing good work in recovery, reuse and recycling, whereas others are perhaps doing less. I suspect that the easy option would be to incinerate, which is worrying. It is not that the Bill would be a direct cause of that, but it may cause it by default. That is precisely why my hon. Friends the Members for Bexhill and Battle and for Mid-Bedfordshire want to insert new clause 32, which is a rather better version of the new clause tabled by the hon. Member for Lewes. I say that without unkindness; I am trying to be helpful and to guide the hon. Gentleman towards a better path. Nevertheless, the essence of the two proposed new clauses is to sharpen the Bill's focus on incineration.

I shall not anticipate too much of the Minister's response, because that would be impolite. However, he may say, rightly, ''Well, that is not the business of the Bill''—he said that about earlier amendments which dealt specifically with recycling. If one takes that view and accepts the logic of my case, which is that the Bill may cause incineration by default, the Committee and the House will send a signal to the people responsible for implementing the Bill that will be unlikely to discourage what we want to discourage.

Mr David Kidney (Stafford, Labour)

May I ask the hon. Gentleman about the official Conservative party policy in relation to the business that I mentioned in Stafford that makes energy converters? Where does his party stand on the recovery of energy? I note that the new clause tabled by the hon. Members for Bexhill and Battle and for Mid-Bedfordshire provides for recovery of energy, and I wonder whether that is official party policy.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

It would not be appropriate to broaden the discussion to a detailed chat about Conservative

party policy on energy—although we might have one around the fireside. You would soon call me to order were I to suggest it, Mr. Amess. Suffice it to say that Conservative Members are leading the campaign to ensure that the Bill does not distort the waste hierarchy by encouraging additional incineration—a cause that the Committee would agree with.

The fact is that two prominent Conservative members of the Committee have tabled a new clause, and I am speaking in support of it. We happily take the view that to reduce landfill, we need to produce less waste, and that what is produced should be recycled, reused, composted or recovered whenever possible. That is a statement of our party's position on the matter. The hon. Member for Stafford is obviously a student of matters relating to Conservative energy policy. At the last election we made a manifesto commitment for a moratorium on the building of incinerators. Come the next general election, the hon. Gentleman will be able to see what is in the Conservative manifesto and to decide whether he should vote for us.

Mr David Kidney (Stafford, Labour)

To put the point in a different way, would the hon. Gentleman draw a distinction between incineration by large-scale municipal incinerators and the modern ways such as pyrolysis and gasification?

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman is right that there is a difference between different types of incineration. As for the technological terms to which he referred and the scale of operation that the Minister mentioned earlier, one needs to draw a distinction between the different types of incinerators and incineration. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Bexhill and Battle, a great expert, wants to intervene.

Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)

I am certainly not a great expert: my hon. Friend must be thinking of my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire. Will my hon. Friend tease from the hon. Member for Stafford how many of those plants are up and running, and how many of those technologies are included in the list of large municipal incineration projects provided by the Minister in columns 5W to 6W of Hansard of 10 March? He will find that the answer is very few.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

My hon. Friend is being a little unkind to the hon. Member for Stafford, who I believe made that intervention with the best of intentions. The hon. Member for Stafford is clearly an honourable man—he is a Member of the House—but he is also a kind man, and I think that he was trying to be helpful. It would have been unnecessarily cutting to shoot him down by saying that he was speaking about something that was more of an option in imagination than in practice. However, he is right that that will change; technology will change over time. The hon. Gentleman knows that a lot of work is being done. Some other countries are incinerating a much greater proportion of their waste than we do. My hon. Friend and the hon. Gentleman both know that the European average is about 20 per cent., whereas our figure is just under 10 per cent. In some of those places, different forms of technology are being used from those that we use here. Perhaps, in a further intervention, the hon. Gentleman

may give us a brief travelogue around Europe to identify the various technologies being used.

Mr David Kidney (Stafford, Labour)

It might be said that the company that I referred to—let me name it: it is Talbotts Heating Ltd. of Stafford—is taking coals to Newcastle. It sells its energy converters to the Scandinavian countries, which are regarded as the world's best. That is how good the company is.

There are lots of energy converters on the market and the market is growing substantially. If there is a problem, it is one that the Conservative party can help with. We need to lose the stigma caused by the broad-brush approach taken by the hon. Member for Lewes, which puts them in the same category as the giant incinerators that everyone regards as very undesirable. They are entirely different and should be able to make their case separately.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

I think that the sensible and refined way in which I responded to the hon. Gentleman will, for the whole world, be contrasted with the broad-brush approach, as he describes it, of the hon. Member for Lewes. I do not mean that unkindly; it is not fair to shoot rats in a barrel, and I must resist the temptation.

Of course it is important that we look to the development of technology. We should take an iterative approach to the matter, and not set it in stone. I do not want to go too far down this avenue, but the fundamental point is that we must not assume that incineration is good enough. That would be an unhelpful signal to send out. It would probably be damaging to the efforts that we hear that the Government are making—I am sure that they are—to encourage all the other good ways of dealing with waste. Those ways were described at length earlier and are supported across the Committee and the House.

One issue that we have not discussed with sufficient vigour is waste production, although waste minimisation has, quite rightly, been mentioned by the hon. Member for Lewes. I say again that producers of waste—business in particular—need to be sent a clear signal about packaging and other forms of waste production that are increasing steadily. We know that waste continues to increase despite our efforts to encourage recycling. The figures were made clear by my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire earlier in Committee. He said that there was a growth of about 3 per cent. per annum in waste, and an increase of only 1.5 per cent. per annum in the recovery. Those figures refer to biodegradable waste; I think that the overall figure is some 3 or 4 per cent., but there are different interpretations.

Mr Jonathan Sayeed (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

It is 3 per cent.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

I bow to my hon. Friend's great expertise. We know that there is a big problem. I suspect that a lot of the responsibility lies with producers. We must be tough on people who produce unnecessary packaging. One thinks of those dreadful hamburger companies that produce the polystyrene and non-biodegradable packaging that I see strewn up and down roads a considerable distance from where the product is sold, having been thrown out of windows. That may be a reflection on people who consume such products, but it is also an

unfortunate sign of just how a producer's culture can increase both the likelihood and the reality of waste being caused.

We need to consider the production of waste much more strictly and robustly if we are to cut the increase in waste. The only way in which we will meet our targets is by approaching the matter from both sides. I suspect that if we simply consider what to do with waste once it is produced, without considering the root cause, we will miss the targets. I am absolutely plain and blunt about that; I think that that is what will happen in terms of our strategy for reducing waste and achieving increased recycling.

As has already been said, we need to take a robust approach to the information necessary to encourage recycling, reuse and recovery, and the facilities that allow them. On previous amendments—I do not want to go over earlier discussions—we mentioned the necessity of putting in place practical steps that will encourage householders and members of the public to take their responsibilities seriously. Such measures, alongside the Bill's provisions to reduce the proportion of waste that goes into landfill, are vital.

Perhaps most significant is the need to send out a clear message about the long-term view, vision, and strategy. I have said that repeatedly, but make no apologies for saying it again. The question of where we are going on waste needs to be well understood and articulated, so that all the interested parties—the wider public, the authorities that have a role in the matter, and the private sector that is so involved in production—understand it clearly. That way, we can go some way to achieving what I hope are ambitious targets in not too long a time. As one hon. Member said, the clock is ticking. This is a time-related issue. The more waste we produce, the bigger the problem becomes, and the greater the difficulty we have in coping with it. To some extent, the problem is cumulative and that must be taken into account, which is why we need a time scale or model for a strategy.

For those reasons, I support new clause 32 because it sends out appropriate signals. I accept the helpful intervention from the hon. Member for Stafford about detail. I do not differ from him on the need to be sensitive about details. However, I implore him to support the new clause if it is pressed to the vote, because I know that in his heart of hearts he believes that it is right that we make it absolutely clear that incineration is not a happy or desirable alternative to landfill. It should not be high on our list of priorities or achieve a position in the waste hierarchy that it does not warrant. I appeal not only to the hon. Gentleman, but to all Committee members to take seriously the amendments, and in particularly new clause 32. If they cannot bring themselves to do that, perhaps they could consider our new clause's rather less impressive cousin—the Liberal Democrats' new clauses 5 to 12.

Mr Norman Baker (Lewes, Liberal Democrat)

Cousins.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

Cousins, then: we Conservatives managed to sum up everything in one rather pithy new clause. I hope that Committee members are able

to cut across the party divide on a matter that will inspire and excite our constituents.

Mr Jonathan Sayeed (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I have enjoyed my hon. Friend's elegiac rhetoric.

Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)

Does the hon. Gentleman mean that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings gave an elegy on something, and, if so, what was it?

Mr Jonathan Sayeed (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

It was an elegy on a Bill that he clearly saw as failing.

The amendments remove energy recovery from the list of measures to be included in the strategy to minimise landfill. New clauses 5 to 8 would place a moratorium on the building of new incinerators until a review is completed of the health and environmental impacts of incineration and other thermal treatments of waste, the reduction of incineration and extending the landfill tax to incorporate incineration. New clauses 9 to 12 would require strategies for assessing the environmental and health impacts from incinerators and the continuous monitoring of dioxin emissions of all currently operating incinerators. They would require waste disposal authorities to produce waste strategies that do not require the building of new incinerators.

We must all recognise that major solid waste municipal incinerators have a range of problems. First, they nearly always require a constant stream of waste over a long contractual period, which makes it much harder to divert waste to recycling. Secondly, they incinerate materials that should be recycled, which leads to the further extraction of more primary resources. Thirdly, they waste energy. Despite my preferred euphemism of energy from waste plants, more is required to replace the material burned than is recovered by the plant. That option does not tackle climate change as effectively as reduction or recycling. Despite increasingly stringent emission standards, there are small toxic pollution risks from emissions and ash. Most importantly—at least, for politicians—municipal incinerators give rise to a great deal of public opposition, which will always pose problems for local authorities and parliamentary colleagues.

By contrast, recycling is more beneficial to the environment, and it is extremely popular. It reduces pressure on habitats affected by mining or forestry, creates jobs, saves energy and resources and promotes ''environmental citizenship'' among those who take part.

An Environment Agency research paper of 2002, which has been partially quoted already, states:

''Nine out of 10 people in the survey on household waste claim they would be very likely to sort rubbish for recycling if the local council provided containers. Where councils already provide recycling containers, the survey shows that participation in recycling increases dramatically. For example, whilst only 6 per cent. of the total sample surveyed claimed to recycle plastic packaging, the proportion rises to 59 per cent. of those whose council provides containers and doorstep collection. On the same basis, the proportion recycling plastic bottles rises from 10 per cent. to 59 per cent., and for cardboard from 17 per cent. to 67 per cent.''

There are very major increases when the facilities are provided by the local authority.

Furthermore, the United Kingdom stands to gain in employment terms. WasteWatch has predicted that even meeting a recycling target of just 30 per cent. by 2010,

''the potential for jobs being created are around 9,200 in collection, over 26,000 in sorting, and over 9,300 in reprocessing. Therefore, meeting the current 30 per cent. recycling target by 2010 potentially could create 45,000 jobs.''

Such figures have also been supported by Biffa Waste Services.

In terms of industrial potential, the Department of Trade and Industry has estimated that the worldwide market in environmental technology is currently worth no less than $515 billion and is forecast to grow to $618 billion by 2010. The UK share of that market is less than 5 per cent.

However, having said all that, we must be realistic. Whilst avoiding large-scale mass-burn incinerators on a long-term contractual basis that demand a continuous waste stream and militate against waste reduction, we must also accept that some forms of waste, such as clinical waste and particular types of plastics, cannot be efficiently recycled. Modern energy-from-waste plants compare extremely favourably with other sectors in terms of emissions, and indeed in 1999, EFW plants accounted for only 0.2 per cent. of the total UK NOx emissions, whereas road transport accounted for 44.5 per cent.

We need to ensure that the proximity principle is upheld. All new plants, where practicable, should be small-scale integrated waste management facilities that handle local waste, incorporating composting, recycling and energy-from-waste, taking the recyclables out of residual waste and treating the rest. Regional self-sufficiency in municipal waste management should prove more acceptable to communities that refuse to deal with waste that is not local, and here I undoubtedly speak from personal experience, because I represent a rural constituency that is littered with cheap holes in the ground, which are constantly filled by London's waste.

We need to ensure that we are not causing more environmental degradation by transporting waste over considerable distances. That is why the proximity principle for all forms of waste should be at the forefront of our minds. It follows from what I have said that I cannot support a complete moratorium on incinerators. That is why I have moved new clause 32, which defines the conditions and criteria for a local waste strategy that must be met before permission can be granted for an energy-from-waste plant. That would ensure that the incentives to reduce and recycle were greater than those provided by incineration. There are plenty of European examples that could be cited to demonstrate that high recycling rates and energy from waste can co-exist.

A local authority waste management strategy should be developed in co-ordination with existing development planning, waste planning and regional strategies for self-sufficiency in waste management. That might include co-operative schemes, to meet the authority's targets, with the private sector, local

supermarkets, retailers and other stakeholders, according to the particular local context and the specific nature or quantity of the waste produced. Intensive and thorough bring schemes offer significant cost offsets against capital investment in new technology, which would consequently be obviated.

The objective is for each local authority to be able to make use of a local integrated waste management facility that utilises the most effective and environmentally friendly technologies, incorporating EFW, and to have the freedom to investigate different technological innovations. However, permission for such a facility would be conditional on the submission of a planned local strategy that demonstrated that the local authority, directly or indirectly by co-operation with other authorities and stakeholders, could provide for the separation and recycling of domestic waste where that was economically viable.

Given the intense pressure from local authorities to divert from landfill, we can all empathise with the plea from the green activists not to look to incineration as a convenient alternative. We need to place limitations on the use of energy from waste and guarantee that local authorities adhere absolutely to a waste hierarchy that places recycling above disposal by either landfill or burning.

I know that many Labour Members have spoken on this in the past. The hon. Member for Stroud has done so, and I have heard the hon. Member for Stafford discuss the need for certain types of incineration or energy from waste. I know that the hon. Member for Sherwood (Paddy Tipping) is deeply knowledgeable on the subject. The hon. Member for Southampton, Test attested in his speech on Second Reading to his considerable knowledge.

I urge the Government to consider new clause 32. I have given considerable thought to it over a long period. It essentially says that a local authority, either by itself or corporately with other stakeholders, can use incineration but only after it has jumped through a series of hoops—basically that, wherever it is economically viable to do so, it must recycle. It must show that it can collect in a way that promotes recycling and produces the best quality recyclate. After all the hoops laid out in the clause, it can then get permission.

That seems to be the right way round. We cannot recycle everything; let us not try to pretend that we can. Some waste is impossible to recycle and some is economically not viable to recycle. There will always be something left over whatever we do; the question is what we do with it.

Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)

My hon. Friend makes a very good point but he must not overlook the fact that we already have a significant existing incinerating capacity. We are not discussing whether we should have incinerators, but whether we should have a moratorium on existing incinerator capacity or allow further growth in it. We are not talking about doing away with incinerators altogether. It is the Government's permissive attitude to that growth that the new clause brings under the microscope.

Mr Jonathan Sayeed (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

I thank my hon. Friend. I assure him that I had not overlooked that, but was intending to put it towards the end of my remarks.

There are very few municipal incinerators in the UK. If we agree with the concept that incineration cannot take place until all those other things have been done, we have to make a decision: shall we transport that residual waste over a long distance and cause another form of environmental degradation, or are we prepared to license, permit and provide the planning permissions for high quality, well and constantly monitored small local incineration plants? I believe that such plants have a greater chance of gaining local acceptance if they are dealing with local waste.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

My hon. Friend makes a compelling argument, which is entirely consistent with the responsible position that was advocated by the hon. Member for Stafford. It is important, however, to point out again, as my hon. Friend already has, that when we reduce the amount that we incinerate because of the increase in recycling, much of what we currently burn will no longer be burned. That will mean that the existing capacity will be able to absorb material that cannot be recycled, and that, as a result, the requirement for those new, smaller-scale incinerators of which he spoke may be relatively small.

Mr Jonathan Sayeed (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

That I accept—it is a fair point. It is possible that we will not need to build new incinerators. The question, however, is whether we are then prepared to transport the residual waste over long distances.

Mr Paddy Tipping (Sherwood, Labour)

If the hon. Gentleman really does believe in the proximity principle and in the strength of his proposed new clause, he must be advocating that the 14 existing mass incinerators across the country should close. In environmental terms, he believes that there is a case for incineration, and that high quality, locally based schemes should play a part in a future waste strategy.

Mr Jonathan Sayeed (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

The answer to the hon. Gentleman's question or statement is that some of those incinerators may have to close, but probably not all of them. We must look at where the incinerators are. If they are close to large urban centres of population, as I know some of them are, the proximity principle and the use of that incinerator can go hand in hand. However, if they are a long way from any major source of waste production, and we believe in taking an holistic view of the environment, they should close.

The point that I make, and my wish, is that Labour Members, without whose vote no new clause can be passed, should consider new clause 32 and assist the Minister by arming him with the certainty that the Committee wants to produce a cleaner, better environment by having a cleaner, better, more effective waste policy. The best way of doing that is, at the very least, to abstain from voting against new clause 32, and better than that, to support it.

Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)

I feel about the clause and about the debate on incineration rather as I do about Arsenal, which is that I was particularly pleased when Arsenal

recently came to Southampton and were beaten by them, but when I see Arsenal on television playing in the champions' league, I am anxious that they win.

On Second Reading, I set out my concern about our current and future position on incineration in the UK. On the other hand, the debates in this Committee—and a number of the amendments and new clauses that have been tabled—unfairly attack the Government and their waste strategy: what they do is rather like attacking a Fiat 600 on the grounds that it is not a good racing car. That is true, but it is a perfectly good Fiat 600, and the purpose of a Fiat 600 is to go around town rather than to enter grand prix races. That point goes to the heart of much of the Committee's discussions.

I have been particularly interested in new clause 32. What is curious about the Committee is that pretty much all of its members mostly agree on most things about waste strategy. The question is: how do we get there? The hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings has a great knowledge of Marx, as he revealed earlier, so he will know that one of Marx's key phrases was:

''The philosophers have only interpreted the world . . . the point is to change it.''

The problem with new clause 32 is that it has an interesting method of describing the world, but it does not necessarily do the things that are needed to change it.

Another curious feature of new clause 32 is that it advocates centralised planning—perhaps Labour Members should welcome it for that reason. It is my understanding that the Conservative party does not advocate centralised planning. The new clause advocates a substantial amount of power being taken away from local government and being centralised, and I am sure that the hon. Member for South Holland and The Deepings will have at his fingertips the speech that his leader recently made at the Nicholas Ridley memorial lecture in Kensington town hall, when he praised the importance of community self-governance and the removal from that of all concerns of national planning or centralised planning. He did that in the name of Nicholas Ridley, the chief anti-planner of a previous generation.

Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)

I have been listening to the hon. Gentleman's entertaining remarks, but they are not wholly accurate. He cannot think that the Conservative party is against a national planning regime, for example. We would wholeheartedly support the reform of a national planning system that would then be interpreted locally. The point of new clause 32 is to set an ambitious national strategy that will be implemented locally.

Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)

The new clause proposes that

''all local waste management strategies conform to standardised national waste management criteria''.

I welcome the conversion of the Conservative party to the idea that planning exercises a central role in the nation's wellbeing. All planning has to be implemented according to local conditions.

That new clause refers to

''various ways according to local conditions''

but it also talks about centralised planning. I think that an element of substantial planning is important: there is no way out of that for waste management in the future.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

The hon. Gentleman is prefixing his U-turn on incineration with this slightly uncharitable attack on the Conservative leader and his party—perhaps, in order to distract attraction from that U-turn. However, I simply say to him that of course it is appropriate that there is a degree of central co-ordination. If that were not the case, we would not be calling for a national strategy. We have repeatedly called for that: we would not have done so if we did not think that there should be some national common element to that. However, the new clause makes it clear that, in implementation terms, that must be sensitive to local needs, and it is clear that local authorities will play a crucial part in the whole process, so there is no great dichotomy between having a national strategy and having local involvement in that.

Dr Alan Whitehead (Southampton, Test, Labour)

I am delighted to hear clarification of the Conservative party's move back towards supporting the notion of planning our nation's business. That is very welcome.

New clause 32 also rather coyly states that

''the Government has introduced fiscal measures''.

By that, I presume that they mean an incineration tax, but I cannot be certain because it is a rather coy reference. However, that is a new tax, and I would guess that the rest of the strategy requires a considerable sum of money to introduce, to support and to sustain. Those are interesting developments given what I regularly hear about other elements of current Conservative policy, but they are nevertheless welcome.

I shall come straight to the issue of incineration: all hon. Members know the reality of the current situation. It is true that if nothing happens, it is likely that we will shift away from landfill and towards incineration. We should properly take care to distinguish between old mass-burner incineration, energy from waste, combined heat and power, pyrolysis, gasification and other forms of thermal treatment. Small-scale incineration, which consists of pyrolysis through advanced thermal treatment with full heat capture through CHP, is quite an advanced method of recovering energy and dealing with waste. Even if we use that method, the danger is that we will turn to incineration.

I have further refined the material that I presented on Second Reading: some 36 per cent. of local authorities currently take part in incineration either as partners or as main players. That does not mean that 36 per cent. of waste is currently incinerated; it means that 36 per cent. of waste disposal authorities take part in incineration to dispose of some part of their waste. The hon. Member for Lewes mentioned the committee plans, which account for another 10.65 per cent. of those local authorities. The significant point is that about 22 per cent. of waste

disposal authorities have medium-term plans that include likely incineration.

The ultimate conclusion is that if nothing else happens by the end of the decade, some 70 per cent. of waste disposal authorities will be involved in some form of incineration. However, that will not necessarily happen, which is a central point that needs to be made. A long time ago, I read an interesting book about green shift called ''How to Avoid the Future'', which is what our overall strategy needs to be. We need to avoid that future, which looks as though it might happen if we do nothing.

Perhaps we need measures outside the Bill on incineration tax and different ways of dealing with incineration, and perhaps we need incentives on how local authorities work. We need a degree of planning, a number of fiscal incentives and several changes. The fact that such changes are not in the Bill does not mean that they should not happen. The fact that they are not in the Bill does not mean that it should be criticised for their not being there, because it is the platform on which other things will be built. It deals with the question how we can stop waste going to landfill, but other things must happen subsequently. I believe that further things must happen on the future of incineration in order to stop the future that I have set out here from happening. Such things should be developed. Some of them have been developed and the Government are working hard on others of them. It is not a criticism of the Bill that it does not contain such measures because it is about waste and emissions trading and in that sense, like a Fiat 600, it goes along the road rather well.

Mr Nick Ainger (Government Whip (technically a Lords Commissioner, HM Treasury); Carmarthen West and South Pembrokeshire, Labour)

I beg to move, That further consideration be now adjourned.

Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)

On a point of order, Mr. Amess. May I respectfully point out through you to the Clerk that I am Mr. Gregory Barker and not Mr. Gregory Baker, as I am repeatedly referred to in the Amendment Paper? I should hate it for there to be any confusion between me and the hon. Member for Lewes.

Mr David Amess (Southend West, Conservative)

As far as that point of order is concerned, it has been heard and the matter will be sorted out.

Mr Jonathan Sayeed (Mid Bedfordshire, Conservative)

Further to that point of order, Mr. Amess. May I, through you, apologise to the Chair and to other hon. Members? If we are resuming on Thursday, I regret to say that I have a hospital appointment for a broken foot and will therefore not be in Committee for those proceedings.

Mr David Amess (Southend West, Conservative)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for making that point of order. I am sure that the Committee wishes him a swift recovery.

Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)

Further to that point of order, Mr. Amess. What my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire has said has prompted me to explain as a matter of courtesy that I shall not be in Committee on Thursday morning because I shall be defending the interests of British fishermen in a statutory instrument.

I have no doubt that Mr. Baker and Mr. Wigley will admirably represent the Opposition's interests.

Mr David Amess (Southend West, Conservative)

I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that point of order.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at Seven o'clock till Thursday 10 April at five minutes to Nine o'clock.