Clause 18 - Strategy for Scotland
Waste and Emissions Trading Bill [Lords]
4:00 pm
Mr John Hayes (South Holland and The Deepings, Conservative)
My hon. Friend won more brownie points in that short time than in the rest of the Committee's proceedings. He is right that the ''Best Practicable Environmental Option'', the phrase that my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire uses in the amendment, is a means of devising a systematic procedure to emphasise the protection and conservation of the environment across land and water—as explained in amendment No. 76. It should apply to Scotland and Wales, as well as to England. It would be a useful additional catch-all provision, an opportunity for us to say that the Bill is targeted at a range of objectives, but that the Bill's wider impact needs to be tested. This useful summary amendment would allow us to do precisely that.
The procedure would establish a given set of objectives. The option would provide the most benefits for the least damage to the environment as a whole, with an acceptable cost in the long term as well as the short term. It is broad and deep; it would give us an opportunity to measure the overall impact of the Bill across a range of areas and over time. It is a strategic amendment, as suggested in previous discussions. The Opposition believe that it is important that the signals that we transmit should be part of a wider strategy. In that, we are close to the Liberal Democrats—as close as I ever want to be, but they take the same view.
I do not want to labour the point yet again, because, time and again, the Minister returns us to the ''Waste Strategy 2000'' and ''Waste Not, Want Not''. I assure him that we are aware of those documents and that we understand them. We do not argue that the Bill should replace either of them, and certainly not the strategy, but that it should interlock with them.
The Minister underestimates the need to telegraph or signal that message. I am concerned that the Bill
will be seen as excessively narrow. I hesitate to use the term again, but I will—I do not want the Bill to be seen as legislative cover. It should be seen as something of importance—in itself and in terms of its relationship with the bigger picture and the wider strategy. By allowing a procedure that facilitates a deeper and broader analysis, the amendment would help us achieve that bigger objective. To that end, I am delighted to commend the amendment.