Clause 26 - Penalties under Chapter 1: General
Waste and Emissions Trading Bill [Lords]
11:00 am
Ms Sue Doughty (Guildford, Liberal Democrat)
We have one additional consideration. If for whatever reason the Minister suggests that he is not encouraging people to beat a path to his door, we shall continue to have a political situation, which I think the public have by now rumbled, whereby Governments are often more friendly to local authorities that are of the same political persuasion as themselves. There could again be opportunities for people to say, ''Well, we won't go so heavy,'' ''They had an excuse,'' or ''We won't fund this local authority, but we will fund that.'' We have been talking about the amount of money that is given to local authorities to support the change from landfill to other technologies, or about the lack of funding or budgetary constraints, which is a political decision. The amount of money that local authorities have—