Debate on the Address

My Lords, I welcome the Climate Change Bill which includes powers for councils to introduce financial incentives for recycling. The Government should look again at their recycling policies. Only last week they published figures showing that householders are recycling more than ever—30 per cent. This is good news and householders should be congratulated. But no, the Government now plan to introduce a ““pay-as-you-throw”” tax. This cannot be the right answer. It will penalise larger households, be extremely expensive to set up and administer and, rather than pay the tax, some householders will illegally fly tip or start garden bonfires. It is the retailers and manufacturers which have yet to receive the message, not the householders. The Government are further increasing the target to recycle from 30 to 40 per cent of all household waste by 2010. While I am certain that householders will rise to the challenge, the Government must ensure that once waste has been collected for recycling it is recycled in a green and commercially friendly way. To me, this is the kernel of the issue. It is all very well collecting all this waste for recycling, but what happens to it all after it has been collected? One of the problems is that there is not a developed market for recycled goods in the UK, so that a large proportion of recycled waste is exported. Half of all recycled paper is exported, 20 per cent of all recycled waste goes to China and an alarming proportion goes to landfill as being ““too difficult”” or not commercial. This rather negates the very reason for recycling in the first place. The Government must ensure that recycled waste is put to a greener and more commercial use. Even if the 40 per cent recycling target is reached by 2010, what are we to do with the remaining 60 per cent? Burying it in landfill is not the right answer, although the ratcheting-up of landfill tax has helped change attitudes. I favour incineration. Not only can it accommodate virtually all the residual waste but it also produces much needed non-fossil fuel heat and energy with virtually zero emissions. The Climate Change Bill will set binding statutory targets for the reduction of CO2 emissions. What worries me is the Government setting themselves targets. They are very good at setting others targets but not so good at meeting those they take on themselves. Here I mean the Kyoto targets whereby this country should have 10 per cent of its energy requirement met by renewables by 2010 and 20 per cent by 2020. Since the late 1990s, the march of renewables has been disappointing and it now contributes only 4 per cent of electricity in the UK. The Government have just three more years to add a further 6 per cent of renewables to meet their 2010 target. It seems very doubtful that the Government will meet this target. Indeed, this realisation of failure has at last dawned on some members of the Government. The Guardian newspaper recently reported, so it must be true, that leaked documents between Malcolm Wicks, the Energy Minister, and John Hutton, the Secretary of State for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, showed that the Government were abandoning their energy renewable targets as being too expensive and encumbered with severe practical difficulties. This is surely an admission of failure and can bring only considerable damage to the Government’s credibility. On the one hand we are being told today that the Government think that climate change is so important that they propose to introduce a Bill to reduce CO2 emissions, and on the other we are now told that the Government are giving up on their previous commitments for renewable energy. If the Government are so keen to reduce CO2 emissions, surely meeting their own renewable targets would have been a good way to prove it. Will the Minister clarify what the Government’s position is now with regard to renewable targets? If they are still committed to meeting their targets, what measures will they put in place to ensure that the necessary extra 6 per cent of renewable energy is achieved by 2010? If, on the other hand, the Government are no longer committed to those targets, why not? I have heard the argument that ““Brussels did not specify that all EU members had to meet the targets so long as it was achieved across Europe as a whole””. I am tempted to say, ““Pull the other one””. This is not a good argument. The Government have had 10 years for the UK to meet its targets. Surely they cannot expect the 10 new EU members to carry Britain in this regard. I am sure there are other arguments but, rather than making lame excuses, the Government should own up to their failures and admit they are throwing in the towel.