Climate Change Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 183E: 183E: Schedule 5, page 56, leave out lines 5 to 7 The noble Lord said: In moving Amendment No. 183E, I shall also speak to Amendments Nos. 183FA, 183ZZA and 183ZZB. Amendment No. 183E is another probing amendment that deals with the types of premises to which the scheme may apply. It would delete paragraph 1(2)(b) of new Schedule 2AA in Schedule 5, which says: "““A waste reduction scheme … may apply to all domestic premises, to domestic premises other than those of a specified description or to specified descriptions of domestic premises””." Again, the amendment probes the way the Government see this working. The previous group of amendments dealt with the way in which a scheme can apply to part of a district or a collection authority and not to the rest of it. Paragraph 1(2)(b) says that a scheme can apply to some types of premises and not to others within a particular part of the collection authority area. It would be helpful if the Government explained what this is and why it is, and again how they see the principles of equity and fairness applying if some premises and households in a ward, a village or a district are in the scheme and some are not. Is this not a recipe for setting neighbour against neighbour? Amendments Nos. 183FA, 183ZZA and 183ZZB deal with composite hereditaments—I use the word ““hereditaments”” because it appears in rating legislation for properties, some of which are the sort that the noble Baroness, Lady Carnegy, talked about, which are partly commercial and partly domestic. Typically, they are workshops where the owner or operator lives on the premises, or small shops which people live above or behind and which are rated for commercial purposes at commercial rates while the rest of the property is not and is subject to council tax. These are often known in local authorities as mixed hereditaments, but the correct title as defined in the Local Government Finance Act 1988 is composite hereditaments. The last two amendments in the group simply define that this is what is meant. It is not clear why a couple of corner shops on an estate or some other area of housing that are entitled to throw out domestic refuse each week or fortnight and that take part in the recycling scheme should be excluded from the system that applies to all the other domestic properties in the area. There is already a separate system for their commercial waste, which will be collected separately and charged for separately. There is no problem there; the probing question for the Government is why they propose that a composite hereditament such as the one that I have just described, which takes part in the normal domestic waste collection system, should not or could not be included in the Government’s new mantra of flexibility for local authorities and could not be included in the pilot scheme. I look forward to the Minister’s answers. I beg to move.