WEEE Directive

That is a big problem, which I shall go on to highlight. There is a distinction between an authority’s physical readiness, whereby it is tooled up to do the job, and its contractual readiness, whereby it has all the paperwork in place to do the job and make the scheme work effectively. That is where the problem lies. Contractual certainty and clarity do not exist, and I do not see how the market can work without them. In fact, by general confession, in place of contractual certainty and clarity is something tantamount to a bureaucratic nightmare. People who ought to know, because they are intimately involved with the regulations, tell me that the contractual uncertainty and lack of clarity are leading to the collapse of many pre-existing arrangements and the rise of mutual suspicions among all elements of the network. Producers fear over-billing; local authorities fear being left holding the baby, because the equipment will not be removed; and recyclers worry about the predatory activities of the black or grey markets. Many councils have not signed up to a producer-compliance scheme. My hon. Friend the Member for Solihull (Lorely Burt) just said that they number 250. Recyclers and producers are struggling with the critical evidence notice, which is the basis for the financial part of the transaction and crucial to the producers. Many people who are responsible for the recycling stations do not have the required permits from the Environment Agency, and although guidance was issued by the Department of Trade and Industry, it is widely agreed to be confusing. That is not my declaration; it has been passed on to me by people who have to use the guidance. Everyone is buried in paperwork, and that view seems to be the consensus. Some of the people implementing the process are not particularly sophisticated in handling complex paperwork. If such chaos characterises the arrangements between people who are willing to be responsible partners, one has to wonder what chance the Government have of dealing with the trade’s less reputable element—the people who work on the grey and black markets. If we cannot run a straightforward system, how will enforcement be run any better? They have the capacity to frustrate almost all the objectives of the WEEE regulations. The market figures are massive. Apparently, we export 150,000 fridges per annum; 150,000 washing machines and cookers; 500,000 televisions, which is equivalent to 10 per cent. of the UK’s electrical waste stream; 150,000 videos, with presumably many more to go; and 1.3 million monitors. It is a phenomenal but, by and large, unregulated trade. We are poorly equipped to run a satisfactory WEEE market, and we are vulnerable both to administrative chaos and to exploitation by people who work in a less regulated market. If that characterises our current efforts, I am somewhat sceptical about what we will do when we aim for a more fine-grained implementation of the directive—when we get down to making individual producers responsible, as the best of them want to be, for their products and not anybody else’s. Unless we do something like that, we will not encourage the improvement in design quality and general recyclability to which the directive aspires. The EU will definitely review the legislation and how it works in the round throughout Europe, but what we need now from the Minister and the Government is hands-on action to alleviate the administrative chaos and to make this worthy directive work properly.