Climate Change Bill [HL]

moved Amendment No. 183NA: 183NA: Schedule 5, page 56, leave out lines 34 to 36 The noble Lord said: I shall speak also to Amendments Nos. 183P, 183Q and 183S, which are in the same group. We move on to charges and issues relating to them. Amendment No. 183NA is a probing amendment. The Bill states: "““The scheme may provide for the incentive to be provided … by means of rebates from council tax or by other payment, or … by means of charges under paragraph 4 or 5””." The charges under paragraphs 4 and 5 are fairly clear and straightforward. They involve providing containers. One charges £1 a bag, or whatever it happens to be, or one charges more if they have a larger quantity of waste—I presume that they would be sent a bill for that. However, if one is talking about rebates from council tax, one is opening a can of worms. I presume that the rebate would have to be calculated over a period and then be rebated from council tax at some point in the future. How much delay would there be before one could rebate the council tax—council tax bills are sent out before the end of a financial year? Would the period be relatively short, or would the rebate be calculated for the month, every three or six months, or the whole year? How will one deal with that in areas where there is a substantial turnover of population? One could be in the position of paying rebates, or perhaps imposing penalties, on people who would be long gone. That would not seem to be an efficient way of going about it. Even in relatively stable neighbourhoods, the turnover of population can be 5 or 10 per cent a year, as those of us who are interested in the registers know. Providing incentives via the council tax seems to require substantial additional bureaucratic systems, which will require money to be set up in the first place. It is not clear from where that will come if it does not come from the Government’s £4.5 million, and it is not clear how it will work. I look forward to what the Government say. I suspect that such schemes will turn out to be far too complex, and that any council which wants to go in for the pilots will go for the much easier option of charging per bin or bag. It is a probing amendment. Amendment No. 183P suggests that rebates and charges apply only to people in the scheme. With the balancing-out system that the Government are proposing, the charges on some people may be balanced out by the benefits to others—in the short run at least, that is not a problem. The real problem arises if it applies only to some people in the local authority district, the costs of administering it are not taken into account in the calculations and everybody pays them. Unless those setting-up and administrative costs are paid for by the Government through the grants, which I presume would not be possible following a rollout, or unless they are being balanced by savings in waste disposal charges and perhaps in the frequency of collection if the system works really well—it is clear that that will not happen initially and will take some time, even if the systems are wonderfully successful—they must be taken into account. The amendment probes how far people will have a financial imposition made on them for the benefit of others when they are not taking part in the scheme. Amendment No. 183Q probes the meaning of the words, "““person by whom any charge is payable””," because I do not understand them. I would like an explanation. I beg to move.