I am grateful for the opportunity to bring before the House the important matter of waste disposal in Essex. I am pleased to see in their places my hon. Friends the Members for Castle Point (Mrs. Butler) and for Upminster (Mr. Darvill), and the hon. Members for Colchester (Mr. Russell), for Maldon and East Chelmsford (Mr. Whittingdale) and for Billericay (Mrs. Gorman).

This is the second time that I have brought the subject before the House. The other occasion was in early 1999, soon after the draft Essex and Southend-on-Sea waste plan was published.

In Essex, waste plans are rightly controversial and emotive. The plan was first published in November 1998. It identified a number of sites for large-scale waste management. Warning lights immediately came on because of the possibility that those sites might be earmarked for incineration plants. One of the sites was at Rivenhall airfield in my constituency.

Such a choice was singularly offensive as that site had been the subject of a major public inquiry in 1995, when an enormous project for waste disposal by way of landfill was proposed. The inspector took 17 days of evidence and came to the conclusion that it was not an appropriate site.

I shall quote from the inspector's report on the Rivenhall site, but much of it will apply to other sites across the county in which other hon. Members have an interest. In 1995, the inspector stated with regard to Rivenhall: I conclude there are visual, heritage, amenity, traffic and ecological objections to the proposals, all found in discord with the development plan. At that time, landfill was the danger; now it is incineration. In the hierarchy of waste—that has always interested me as an intellectual notion—incineration languishes near the bottom, among the serfs and villeins of former times, so to speak, together with landfill.

One might say that in many ways incineration is a greater threat to local communities than is landfill. Landfill has a life expectancy. Eventually a hole is no longer a hole because it is filled up. A very expensive capital project such as an incinerator would be expected by its owners to last as long as possible, to maximise profit. A landfill site is an eyesore and a nuisance to the neighbouring occupiers, but because of the height of the structure, an incinerator is a blot on the landscape. That would be particularly so at Rivenhall.

The site may not be at the forefront of the minds of those who do not come from Essex, but a number of hon. Members present do come from Essex. The incinerator would be placed at the top of the hill and would be seen for miles around—almost, one might say, as a monument to the folly of those who decided to locate such an installation there.

Incineration has an insatiable appetite. It needs, by its nature, to draw in an endless supply of waste to a central point.