Climate Change Bill [HL]

To come back on the junk mail/charity mail point, I know that thinking is going on in another part of government about how to make it easier for individual householders to get themselves off those mailing lists. That is a separate issue and it is hard to do. I accept that more could be done. As a former charity professional, it is very unfortunate that this issue continues to dog the image of charity fundraising. That is not quite for this discussion, but it is taken seriously. To pick up the point about shops, shops have their waste collected separately and they pay the council or the contractor. We need to be clear that the sort of pilot schemes that we are talking about would be designed to take into account particular localities. A scheme might come forward to address the problems of people living in flats, who may face different issues from those faced by people living on a leafy estate. We very much hope that local authorities will think in very practical terms about the logistics of recycling and waste minimisation as people live their daily lives. That is how we have to make the incentivisation work. On the question of McDonald's, and speaking generically about fast-food outlets, we would of course expect such businesses to be paying the business rate. As I understand it, local authorities go to quite some effort to ensure that they pick up the cost of litter collection around their stores. For example, sometimes you see individuals sponsored by those companies going out around the store collecting litter. Sometimes you see special litter bins in the area of the stores. However, the noble Lord highlights an important point. We must expect business to play its part in the same way as we hope that householders will. In the Bill, we are talking about creating provisions for some important pilots. I am not trying to suggest that the questions of the commercial sector are not important; we just do not propose to cover them in these pilot schemes.