Climate Change Bill [HL]

I have now forgotten my punchline. The noble Duke’s last point was going to be my opening gambit. First, I will answer the question of whether local authorities will still have a duty to collect waste. Yes; all local authorities will have to meet the requirement under existing legislation to collect household waste. In August 2005, Defra advised that waste collection authorities need not collect household waste outside the main receptacle, so long as they had sent out a notice under Section 45 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 setting out the arrangements for presenting the receptacle for waste collection. As at present, if people do not comply with the authority’s requirements on presenting waste for collection, they might be subject to a fine or a fixed penalty. Under Section 45 of the 1990 Act, authorities have a general duty to collect household waste. Section 46 of the Act gives authorities powers to determine the arrangements for waste collection—the size and number of bags or boxes, and so on. When an authority uses its Section 46 powers to prescribe such arrangements and a resident does not comply with those requirements, an authority has no further duty to collect his waste other than to keep the relevant land clear of litter and refuse. To that extent, we are keeping up the process: there is also a duty on residents who, in the end, could receive a fixed penalty notice for not following some of these rules. It is not a free-for-all to do what you want out there. As the noble Duke said, there is an obvious public health protection. I turn to our response to the amendments. Some waste reduction schemes may involve charges for those residents throwing away the most non-recycled waste. In our view, general compliance and non-payment of such charges need not be a significant problem where the local authorities communicate well with residents who understand why they are being asked to pay. I do not want to wind him up, but I had always thought the noble Lord, Lord Greaves, was the epitome of a defender of independent local government. Yet he has shown a distinct lack of confidence in that tonight, bearing in mind that we wish to have discussions with local government. As I said earlier, one facility in the Bill was the request of consultation with local government so that it can choose to do as it thinks best for its area. I hope that it is taking account of one of its champions not exactly sticking up for local government here. We will obviously want to look at the issue that the noble Lord raises within the pilots. Clearly, those will have to be brought forward with a business plan and with a communication plan to residents taking full account of the extreme cases that the noble Lord raises. However, it is essential that local authorities have powers sufficient to recover debts in the small proportion of cases where residents fail to pay. Enforcement options would be as for a civil debt, and have broadly similar sanctions as with non-payment of council tax—but, we envisage, without the draconian measures of imprisonment and bankruptcy. I wanted to get that out of the way before we start any other questions. Amendment No. 183U would mean that local authorities could refuse to collect waste from a household which has not paid its charge. We do not think this an appropriate response to non-payment and think that the general duty to collect should still apply. That would avoid the situation, as raised by the noble Duke, of residual waste being left to pile up outside as a public health hazard. As I have explained, there are other courses of action for the authority to deal with non-payment, which it is well accustomed to using for, say, some cases of parking fines or for council tax—although not in the extreme position. Amendment No. 183V looks to change the wording of the provisions to say that a failure by any person to pay charges that they owe does not affect the authority’s general duty to arrange for collection of household waste. Given what I have already said, we do not consider that Amendment No. 183V adds anything to the provisions as they stand and therefore does not add to the Bill one way or the other. I have not been asked this, but I shall answer it anyway: how much will it cost an authority to collect debts? We do not hold data centrally on the costs to local authorities of enforcing fixed penalties. In any case, costs will vary according to the nature of the scheme. As a rough comparison, we know that council tax collection costs are about 1.8 per cent of the total yield. That squares as probably the most efficient tax to be collected. I recall that many years ago I was responsible in the other place for organising the opposition to the infamous poll tax and I had to defend the rates. One of the great defences of the rates was that they were so cheap to collect—a penny in the pound. They were cheaper than all the other taxes such as VAT and corporation. But the poll tax did not only cost a fortune to collect; it cost the Government power in office.