Climate Change Bill [HL]

I thank noble Lords who took part in this brief general debate and the Minister for his comments. I was desperately trying to avoid saying at any stage in the debate that this is all a load of rubbish but the Minister pre-empted me, or half pre-empted me. But I will try to avoid saying it again. I will also try to avoid touching further on some of the issues that have been raised as they will be discussed in later amendments. I have one or two questions. All the stuff that has been produced about schemes in other parts of the world has not convinced me that those are more than a series of local individual schemes that work in some places. Where have schemes such as this one been tried but failed? Those are not in the list and are not being discussed, for obvious reasons. Those schemes stopped when they failed and they are no longer taking place. There may not be any such scheme. Perhaps every charging scheme ever introduced on the basis of the amount of waste thrown away has been successful. I wonder about that. I am not at all convinced by the information I have been given so far, including the stuff from the Defra website—which, as I said, is very useful. I have to welcome the fact that the Government are piloting this—not the particular scheme but the principle of piloting things with local authorities. So many things are dumped on local authorities. They do it whether they like it or not and just have to make the best of it. The concept of piloting is a good one and I hope it spreads within Defra, the DCLG and other government departments. We will see. The Minister apologises for the fact that it is not a full-blown scheme. If it was a full-blown scheme, I would want to divide the Committee on it every 10 minutes. This is not the kind of thing you can impose without piloting at all. To that extent, I welcome it. The Minister said that householders have an important part to play. Of course they do; their part is crucial. However, that is not the point at issue. The point at issue is whether the best way of getting householders to play their part is to impose financial penalties and to hand out financial benefits or whether it is to provide a good collection service that will encourage people to use it. All the evidence is that, where good recycling services are provided, the proportion of stuff that goes to recycling goes up and up. That is what has happened when local authorities have done this over the past few years. Local authorities now have a whole mix of different schemes in different areas. If all the best schemes from the all the areas could be carried out everywhere, we might achieve more than the Government will through their proposals. On the question of which councils are involved, I am afraid that Joan Ruddock let the cat out of the bag when she said that the department was talking to 18 councils. If she has mentioned the figure 18, 18 names must exist. It is those 18 names that we are asking for but which no one will provide. That is not satisfactory. I accept that there may well be preliminary discussions, almost certainly with council officers. One wonders how many councillors on those 18 councils know that the discussions are taking place and what they think about them if they know. Who knows? We do not know where these councils are and we cannot find out. I cannot find a council that is enthusiastic about doing this, although perhaps other noble Lords know of some and we will learn of them later. The Minister said that formal application processes would be developed. That introduces the question of timetables. Will this happen after the Bill has completed all its stages and becomes law, when it goes to the Commons or at some other stage? It would be interesting to know that. Finally, the Minister did not answer my questions about the savings for households, particularly the national saving of £94 million. That is a specific sum, but we do not know how it was arrived at and what proportion of householders in England would have to take part to achieve such a saving. If the Minister has that information now, it would be helpful to have it; if he has not, perhaps he will find it and let us know.