Clause 36
Greater London Authority Bill
5:15 pm
Karen Buck (Regent's Park and Kensington North, Labour)
I am grateful to have the opportunity to speak to clauses 35 to 40 and 42 and amendmentsNos. 62 and 64 and the consequent new schedules. I apologise to the Committee in advance for what will be a failure to rise to the giddy heights of the previous debate when every 12 members of the Cup Winners cup team were mentioned. I have managed to include subtly within my speech a reference to every one of Britain’s entries to the Eurovision song contest between 1964 to 1977, with the exception of Lulu’s 1969 entry “Boom Bang A Bang” , which was frankly just too difficult. It is fair to say that I am surprised to be introducing these amendments, because a cursory glance at my website would reveal that waste disposal in London has not featured in my top 500 policy interests to date. None the less, having attended a Mayor’s briefing on this issue, armed with hot pins to retain my sense of purpose, I was completely converted to the case that was put to me. With your forbearance, Mr. O’Hara, I will spend a few minutes outlining the key points.
The central issue—establishing a single waste disposal authority for London—stems from the recognition that the existing arrangements and changes proposed by the Government are not capable of bringing about the step change in waste management that will be necessary if we are to offer Londoners the most efficient and effective waste management strategy and avoid liability for potentially extensive fines for landfill in future. Such an authority will enable us to drive further improvements on the waste hierarchy, reducing landfill and incineration, particularly without incidental benefit, and increase recycling capacity, helping us make further progress on the climate-change agenda.
Under the current proposal, the waste disposal arrangements for London remain cumbersome and unco-ordinated with no single body responsible for recycling and disposal operations at city level. The proposals do not alter the fundamental weakness in the system that has left London trailing in this country and internationally and allowed it to slip further down the league table of comparable city regions in recent years. However, all parties fundamentally agree about what we would like to see. We need efficient and effective management of the system and proper value for taxpayers; a dramatic reduction in landfill for environmental purposes and to avoid liability for landfill tax; incineration should be offset by the use of energy used for heat and power; the distance travelled during waste disposal should be subject to the maximum reduction possible; environmentally friendly transport methods should be used; and there should be increases in recycling and value for taxpayers. The Government’s favoured approach does not best place us to realise those objectives. That statement is based on past performance and on objective and independent research on the effectiveness of the strategy to date.
There are three key arguments, among many, which I should like to spend a few moments discussing. First, on the coherence of the existing arrangements, the Government have stated that creating a single waste disposal authority would mean separating functions of waste collection and disposal, which would make it more difficult to manage waste effectively and could cause confusion for residents about who was accountable for their services. That is a bizarre argument, given that 21 of London’s boroughs already have a two-tier waste management system, under which collection and disposal are separated.
The single waste disposal authority that I propose would have local political representation on its board. The proposed structure for the single waste disposal authority means that many of its day-to-day operations would be undertaken sub-regionally. Local residents tend to be aware of their local recycling and waste collection services, but waste disposal remains largely out of sight for the public. A single organisation responsible for waste disposal and accountable to the Mayor of London is likely to have a far higher public profile than existing waste disposal authorities and would be directly accountable to the people of London through the Mayor, rather than through joint waste disposal authorities that collectively process and dispose of between 60 and 70 per cent. of London’s waste. Those are little better than quangos, with no direct accountability to the people whom they serve. Waste management is separated between county councils, and between district councils in the shire counties, yet their recycling performance does not suggest that this makes waste management more difficult. The average household recycling rate in two-tier areas in 2005-06 was 31 per cent., compared with 23 per cent. in unitary areas.
The United Kingdom’s largest waste management company, Biffa Waste Services, in its response to the consultation on the Mayor’s powers, stated:
“We believe that time is rapidly running out to achieve sensible decision frameworks for one of the most significant flows of waste in the UK economy. London could be a benchmark for the entire UK economy by demonstrating boldness in its economic, technological, and socio-political decision making framework. It is unlikely that such vision can be achieved within the current framework compared to the strategic vision offered by the Mayor’s office”.
All of that broadly finds favour with the public,50 per cent. of whom—pollings rated 2:1—favour the strategic approach over the mess that we have now.
I accept that the structure proposed by the Government is, in some ways, a strengthening of the extant position, but it is a diagram—I know that we are not allowed to introduce visual aids, Mr. O’Hara—that Heath Robinson would reject for its unnecessary complexity. I am absolutely confident that anyone looking at that bowl of spaghetti would favour the clarity that a single authority would bring. What matters is not the bureaucratic structure but the extent to which a structure is capable of delivering on the environmental objectives of effective waste disposal.
I think we all agree that at the heart of this is the desire to reduce landfill for economic and, above all, environmental reasons. In support of the current delivery mechanism, the Government say that local authorities are on track towards reducing their use of landfill and therefore are not at risk of incurring the fines that will befall them if they do not meet their objectives. That is prayed in aid as a case for not needing the significant and radical change of having a single waste authority, but I do not accept those arguments.
London has two large-scale waste incineration plants that manage 20 per cent. of London’s waste between them. That is significantly more than in any other region, which has led to there being false confidence in London’s ability to meet landfill targets, particularly after 2010. The real tipping point with landfill targets will come between 2010 and 2013, but many London authorities have no plans or procurements to ensure that there will be an infrastructure in place to cope with that tipping point. The GLA estimates that four fifths of London’s authorities are at high or medium risk of not meeting their landfill obligations. Even the construction of the Belvedere incinerator would not substantially alter that position.
About two thirds of London’s waste is buried in landfill sites, and most of that amount is taken to sites in the surrounding counties. The Mayor has set a target that London should be 80 per cent. self-sufficient in managing its municipal waste by 2020. That level of self-sufficiency is needed to meet landfill directive targets and avoid landfill fines of up to £1.7 billion between now and 2020.
By 2020, London will need four times its existing capacity for recycling and three times its existing capacity for waste treatment. A GLA assessment indicates that four fifths of London waste disposal authorities are at risk of failing to deliver the landfill directive targets. Whilst the Government are concerned in the short term about changing governance arrangements and the risk of failing to deliver on early landfill directive targets, the real challenge is in the medium to long term. Estimated fines for landfill could be £35 million in 2010, rising to £139 million in 2013 and £232 million by 2020.
The Government have completely missed the point by focusing only on short-term landfill directive targets, because the targets will become progressively harder to meet. Waste disposal authorities in England must collectively reduce the biodegradable waste that they send to landfill to 75 per cent. of their 1995 levels by 2010, 50 per cent. by 2013 and 35 per cent. by 2020. It is because the real risk to London, in terms of failing to achieve targets, is in the medium to long term that I believe, as does the Mayor, that it is essential to make the radical changes needed to allow London as a whole to meet those targets by putting in place the support and investment mechanisms required to enable us to avoid those risks.
Both the amount of landfill and the risk of receiving fines could be reduced in several ways. Currently,20 per cent. of London’s waste is incinerated, and that level is set to rise to between 33 per cent. and 38 per cent. depending on whether the Government’s or the GLA’s figures are accepted. That is a substantial proportion of the UK total.
We need to take care that incineration does not drive out the scope both for new technologies, such as gasification and pyrolysis, and for recycling. The new technologies always sound to me like particularly unpleasant stomach complaints, but they are at the cutting edge of alternatives to landfill and incineration and produce a number of beneficial side products that, among other things, permit creation of heat and energy and provide scope for hydrogen production to feed London’s bus fleet.
It is absolutely clear that, on the basis of current developments, the scope for investing in new technologies and in plant to boost recycling is at risk of being driven out by the emphasis on incineration. Recycling as it stands is unsatisfactory and London’s performance is poor. Some London boroughs are performing well, but many others are not. Overall, London is the poorest-performing region for its recycling of household and municipal waste, recycling just 21 per cent. of household waste as against the English average of 27 per cent. Just one London borough is in the upper quartile of local authority recycling performance, and 18 London authorities are in the lower quartile.
Some argue that London faces a unique challenge, and that that should be taken into account when considering its recycling. However, although it is true that there are particular challenges to recycling in London, I do not believe that they are insurmountable. The best-performing European cities outperform London significantly. Hamburg recycles 57 per cent., Munich 42 per cent., Milan 39 per cent. and Berlin37 per cent. In north America, San Francisco recycles more than 50 per cent. of household waste and Seattle recycles 58 per cent.
As part of the consultation on the Mayor’s powers, the Government asked waste disposal authorities to forecast recycling rates up to 2020. The answers to that question show a total lack of ambition. Just one authority stated that it planned to meet the London plan’s target of recycling 45 per cent. of municipal waste. Collectively, the recycling rate forecast for 2020 was less than that for Europe’s best performers now, with some authorities aiming no higher than 25 per cent. That approach, coupled with a hunger for incineration, means that unless a different approach is taken now, the waste management system in 2020 will continue to lag 30 years behind.
A press release from London Councils on Monday stated that London should be compared with urban authorities in England and is therefore doing acceptably well. London Councils have trawled through the available research on recycling, and all that they have managed to show is that half of London councils are recycling less than Barnsley. It is my contention that London should be aiming to be a leading international city on recycling, and should be benchmarking against the best in the world, yet London Councils show the real lack of ambition that is the present position.