Climate Change Bill [HL]

I am grateful to the Minister for that full reply. On the last issue, she has almost convinced me that she may be right. The real concern is that the powers might be used in future, if there is a roll-out, to make things less flexible for local authorities and impose more uniformity on the basis of pilots that are flawed because they have not tested all the areas. However, I hear what she says about that. On packaging, I was disappointed that she said that the Government did not think local campaigns had much of a role to play. The whole movement in this country against use-once bags, as they are now called, has come from grass-roots campaigns, and there is evidence that that campaign is continuing to build momentum throughout the country. Targeting local supermarkets, particularly if local authorities had powers to do so, could make a huge difference to the amount of packaging waste that people have to throw away. That is one of the main components. The question of kitchen waste caused a lot of debate. An increasing number of authorities—the Minister said it was 10 per cent—are collecting kitchen waste. The noble Duke, the Duke of Montrose, asked what kitchen waste was: basically, it is food waste that, I hope, cannot be composted in someone’s back yard or garden, such as chicken carcases, meat bones, the remains of take-aways that contain gravy and so on. It may be that noble Lords have impeccable recycling and refuse disposal habits and do not chuck away vast amounts of food, but many people do. Earlier the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, referred to the Waste and Resources Action Programme, WRAP, and its campaign called ““Love Food, Hate Waste””. I have a great press release about it here—I will not treat the Committee to it because it is actually from the Liberal Democrats, not WRAP itself—that says that 6.7 million tonnes of unused food are thrown away each year, about half of which is still edible at the time of disposal. Half of it can be prevented from being thrown away simply by people not wasting food. Noble Lords have talked about going back to old habits, such as making soup from left-overs, which some of us do a bit but perhaps not as much as we ought to. Those habits have to return, there is no doubt about that, but then there is still all the residual stuff that can and must be thrown away. If it goes to the right places and is treated by the right processes, which I think would involve quite a lot of heat, it can be turned into compost even if it is not vegetable remains. There is an increasing drive for that. Cambridge City Council does it very well, and friends of mine on Eastleigh Borough Council are introducing it steadily across the borough. Many other councils, including my own, would like to do it and simply cannot afford to or they do not have the facilities in the area; there is no local firm that can treat the waste after it has been collected. More government action on recycling food waste would have a huge impact on what we are talking about here, which is climate change. It is the food going into the tips that causes the methane. What the Government were saying was a bit complacent. One noble Lord talked about garbage disposal units. That reminded me that, when I was a kid in our back street in Bradford, we had things called pig bins that stank to high heaven. All the food went in them; then it was taken away and fed to pigs. Nowadays, quite rightly, you could not do that. I am grateful for everything that has been said in this debate, and I will read carefully the Minister’s remarks. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment. Amendment, by leave, withdrawn. [Amendments Nos. 183J to 183L not moved.]