What plans he has to promote good practice in the collection of domestic waste.

It is for local authorities to decide on the best way to collect waste in their area. They are, after all, best placed to make decisions based on local circumstances. Our role is to give them the tools to do that. It is for that reason that we fund the Waste and Resources Action Programme, among others, to provide guidance and share best practice.

I hear what my right hon. Friend says, but in the case of Tory-controlled Plymouth city council, it took the combined efforts of myself, the Shadow leader and the local councillor to get some rubbish removed for Mr. Pickford in Vauxhall street. It took more than a week, and even when he reported rat infestation, he received a flippant response. Will the Minister take an interest in ensuring that the quality of service, which was designed to be improved last November, does in fact improve?

I am interested to hear about my hon. Friend's example. As she will know, 99 per cent. of households in Plymouth city council have a kerbside recycling collection of mixed materials, but the circumstances that she describes would be very much worse if the proposed Tory cuts to public spending were introduced. There would be a very bleak prospect indeed for all the available support—not just through WRAP, but through the recycling and organic technology advisory team and others—if the Conservatives were to come to power.

The National Audit Office has warned the Government that they are set to miss their targets for reducing waste going into landfill and therefore face massive fines for failing to achieve good practice. Is it not madness that more of the funds raised by the landfill tax are not going into increasing good practice in waste collection, but are being swallowed up by the Treasury black hole? Will the Minister agree to reallocate funds from the landfill tax and further funds to local councils so that they can step down landfill and step up recycling?

The rate of recycling in England in 1997 was 7.5 per cent.; it is now 34.5 per cent., and it is continuing to improve. The landfill tax has been a singular success and it has focused the minds of local authorities on precisely that threat of failing to reach the targets. Local authorities are working hard, and in very many cases they have got the message. I think that they should be congratulated on the progress they have made.

As my right hon. Friend knows, best practice in waste management is recycling. As she mentioned, the Government have a good record on that, but we could improve it even more. Local authorities' recycling targets are measured not by product but by weight; if we had material-specific targets, recycling could be improved, as it could if we also removed the distinction between the collection of domestic and commercial waste in some circumstances. Will the Minister revisit those issues?

My hon. Friend will know that the waste strategy was published in 2007, and that the new economic climate in which we are operating requires us to keep all such matters under review. He has made his point in writing and at meetings. He raises an interesting point, which I will want to study further, but it is worth knowing that a lot of good work is already going on. Just this week, I visited a business in the centre of London, in Great Titchfield street. The business is called i-level; it is a digital media agency that is working with Alupro, the Aluminium Packaging Recycling Organisation, on the "Every Can Counts" initiative, which is all about the recycling of just aluminium and steel cans in a highly specific way. As I said, a lot of good work is going on, but there is always more that we can do.

I am concerned about the service that local authorities give to residents. Increasingly, under councils of every political colour, there is anger and criticism about how local authorities are operating refuse collection, not least regarding the move from a once-a-week to a fortnightly collection. In many cases, the size of wheelie bins has been reduced. When will local authorities take account of the interests of those paying them their wages rather than seek to meet—I say this although I do support recycling—some unacceptable regulations, many of which come from Europe?

It is obviously a matter for local authorities to determine how local household waste is managed, how it is collected and how much recycling is undertaken. I have already described the improvements across England in respect of the proportion of household waste recycled. The hon. Gentleman's local authority may be behaving in a way that he disapproves of, but let me tell him that in my experience, because of the importance to every household of dealing with waste, this is one of the most highly political issues. It is therefore very important for local authorities to be aware of what their communities are saying.

As a busy person who manages to compost my food waste, including small bones and the mouldy stuff that we find at the back of the fridge, may I ask my right hon. Friend what incentives the Government are providing to encourage the roll-out of composting systems such as Bokashi and Green Cone, so that more domestic food waste is kept out of the waste stream and so that gardens flourish?

It is a long time since I looked at the back of my fridge, and I dread to think what is lurking there. The recycling and organics technical advisory team is available to all local authorities in England; it provides advice on the separate collection of dry recyclables, and in particular the organic wastes that my hon. Friend describes. It is doing extremely good work. We also encourage the take-up of anaerobic digestion as an alternative means of dealing with organic waste. Again, good progress is being made by some of the big retailers, who are working with local authorities to bring organic waste into anaerobic digesters and produce some really useful products as a result.

Kettering borough council has increased its domestic waste recycling rate from 4 per cent. to more than 45 per cent. in the past six years, but following on from the question asked by Lynne Jones, to get the figure up to 55 or 60 per cent, we need to tackle the recycling of cooked food waste, which is not allowed into the compostable waste stream. That is proving problematic. Is the Department considering any financial or other incentives to enable local authorities to deal with that particularly tricky problem, so that we can reach the sort of recycling rates to which we aspire?

You should eat up your dinner—clean the plate!

On the other hand, health advice would be to eat only what we need to eat. Mr. Hollobone presses a very good point. He is right that local authorities need to engage much more with the issue of what we do with organic waste, precisely as my hon. Friend Lynne Jones said. There are projects in place, and there is funding, but it needs to be bidded for, and it needs to be based on local circumstances and local need. Good projects should be brought forward; they would then be considered by the regional development agencies, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or a local government department.