New clause 32 - Moratorium on new municipal incinerators
Waste and Emissions Trading Bill [Lords]
9:15 am
Mr Gregory Barker (Bexhill and Battle, Conservative)
That is exactly the point that I was endeavouring to make. The hon. Gentleman has encapsulated it and I am grateful to him for that help. It is now that the decisions are being made. The contract in East Sussex has already been signed. If the measures are not to be encapsulated in the Bill, they should have been in the Budget. We must now wait 12 months for another Budget.
Mr. Peter Jones, not the esteemed leader of East Sussex county council but Biffa's director of external affairs, told ePolitix.com yesterday:
''It's hardly surprising that the Chancellor has failed to respond to calls for levelling the financial playing field for innovative resource efficient processing technologies compared to the landfill option. This merely confirms what we have come to expect when considering the Prime Minister's rhetoric, which has more ambition than substance.''
He continued:
''Given the relatively marginal impact on corporate costs compared to the immense gains in resource efficiency, society is the long term loser.''
He concluded:
''At least we know that with Gordon Brown's timetable we won't achieve parity with landfill until 2011—well beyond the 'crunch' period of 2006/8 when many European obligations land on the mat.
The absence of any reference to enabling legislation in this finance act with regard to charging households for waste merely confirms the political fears this administration has when tinkering with environmental economic instruments.''
Tinkering is what we will do today if we do not agree to new clause 32. We all know what the problem is and we all know the size of the challenge, but we are just tinkering with the system. For the Minister to say that the Government may return with a new Bill at an unspecified date or that there are already sufficient legislative powers is simply not good enough. It will be to the eternal discredit of us all if there is a new generation of huge incinerators in the next 20 years because we failed to make a change in time to prevent them, because we failed to embrace the technologies that the hon. Member for Stafford spoke about and because we failed to address the fears that the hon. Member for Stroud articulated. We have a responsibility to be bold and creative, to take the initiative and to encourage the Minister, who is able and hugely respected, to have the courage of his convictions. He should speak for all of us and make this not just a tinkering Bill but one that pushes the envelope across the table.