Climate Change Bill [HL]

I found the debate extremely interesting, and a thought leapt into my head that I wish to share. A couple of times now, we have spoken about what to do when the wife is not around to help you with your cooking and how that might promote the need to recycle fast food canisters and so on. The Government are soon to encourage the introduction of basic cookery lessons for all children at school, including boys, and part of good cooking is about learning how to make lovely, appetising food out of left-overs. I am reminded by my noble friend that it is never too late to learn to cook and that it can be a creative and rewarding experience, even for older men in their retirement. That is something that some Members of the Committee may be interested in. I am sure that there is an all-party group on cooking somewhere that we could get going. I am not being flippant. Certainly, my mother and grandmother knew how to make the most amazing food, almost out of nothing sometimes, and it is a skill that young people would do well to acquire. The amendments tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, prompted this interesting discussion. Paragraph 2 of Schedule 5 places a small number of conditions on waste-collection authorities when introducing a waste-reduction scheme. That is to ensure that schemes do not have negative social or environmental consequences that are easily avoided, as we discussed on the last group of amendments. On this basis, we require authorities to take account of groups that are unduly disadvantaged; to have in place a fly-tipping prevention strategy; and to offer all residents a good recycling service. However, it is most important that local authorities have enough flexibility to run waste-reduction schemes in the way best suited to their area. We do not want to impose conditional restrictions on them that do not necessarily deliver materially different outcomes. Amendment No. 183J would require that an authority had a successful fly-tipping prevention strategy in place before setting up a waste-reduction pilot; and the first part of Amendment No. 183K states that the fly-tipping strategy must meet the standards set out in guidance by the Secretary of State. It is nice to hear the noble Lord proposing adherence to guidance issued by the Secretary of State because often I find myself having to give reasons why the Secretary of State should be allowed powers to issue guidance. I wholly support the need for all local authorities to take strong and effective action on fly-tipping. I am sure that the Committee will agree with that. That is why we require a fly-tipping prevention strategy to be in place before a scheme is set up. I know that it is obvious to say, ““How do you know that there is a scheme set up? You cannot start the scheme before the strategy is there””. What comes first, the chicken or the egg? The pilot scheme designation process will also assess the quality of a pilot’s fly-tipping prevention plan, and we have identified that as an important step. The second part of Amendment No. 183K would require pilot authorities to have in place a strategy that they had agreed with local retailers to minimise packaging. That is an important part of the jigsaw. However, we believe that the levers for bringing about meaningful changes in packaging levels lie primarily at national and international levels, not at a local level. That is not to undermine the efforts that could be made locally, but we do not see the need to include in this Bill reference to our committed work to tackle the packaging issue, which is going on elsewhere in government. We do not feel it necessary to put that in this Bill at this point when we are trying to set up these pilot schemes. We are taking action nationally, and we have already delivered real changes. Amendment No. 183L specifies that authorities wishing to introduce waste pilots should provide for kitchen waste to be collected separately. For the purposes of this amendment, we presume that ““kitchen waste”” means food waste. The Bill already requires participating authorities to provide a good recycling service to households in the scheme. That will be defined in guidance to which authorities must have regard, and we will be looking at the quality of recycling services in designated authorities as pilots. Although food waste is an important waste stream to be tackled, the lack of a separate food waste collection does not necessarily denote a poor recycling service. Only 10 per cent of authorities have a food waste collection, and only one out of five of the top recycling councils in England in 2005-06 operated a food waste service. Yet, they all had recycling and composting rates of 50 per cent or more. It is not as straightforward as direct cause and effect, but we are saying that it is important. We are talking about giving powers for pilot schemes. You could argue that the more diversity there is in the pilots, the more benefit to policy making in this important area. As the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, said, many components of kitchen waste may best be treated by home composting. It may not be the best environmental option for every authority to collect all kitchen waste separately. Guidance is therefore the right place for detailing the operational aspects of a good recycling service. It can be more readily applied to different types of authority to reflect their different demographies, infrastructure and access to markets for recyclers. Amendment No. 183N would make it harder in the long term to change the conditions of the scheme in the light of experience. Once the opportunity to make changes at repeal or roll-out stage has passed, any changes would have to be made via primary legislation. We do not think that that is appropriate. Even though we consider that the conditions are extremely important, and we would not change them lightly, they are already subject to the affirmative resolution procedure, which affords sufficiently strong protection. We need some flexibility because it is important to learn from the pilots and future possible schemes, should they be rolled out more widely, and to put those lessons into practice to the benefit of all. We recognise that we need to work with Parliament on this, and we think that the proposals for the affirmative procedure are appropriate for the type of changes and the level of significance that we are talking about. I hope that noble Lords will accept that we see as extremely important issues such as the fly-tipping strategy and kitchen waste. All those factors are tested in pilots, which we are committed to seeing make a real contribution to our knowledge and understanding of how to achieve the overall goal: reducing the waste in landfill and the impact on climate change. I hope, with that, that the noble Lord will consider withdrawing his amendment.