Climate Change Bill [HL]

I, too, was worried about that last point. I try to keep ahead of things but I should have asked about Amendment No. 183W this morning. There is a protection in the fact that the affirmative resolution procedure will provide powers to Parliament, and the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee would have to be satisfied with the process. On revenue neutrality, it is a closed loop, as the noble Duke said. But, as I said in an earlier debate, local authorities could save a lot of money by such a scheme. Leaving aside the incentives and the charges they could save a fortune in landfill costs, for example, which they can keep or use to reduce the council tax overall for everyone in the authority. That is part of the infrastructure. So there are potential savings. The closed loop comes in with the direct charges and the rebates. If as a result of getting a change in behaviour of residents the local authorities end up with their costs of disposal being a lot less overall—which we think will be the case—those will be savings to the country at large and would not be counted for or against the individual participants of the scheme. So there is an opportunity there. I am not saying but implying that when local authorities come forward with their proposals for pilots, part of the business case will include the overall savings—in other words, the cost of running the scheme. As I have implied, it is a very small amount of money. I still live in the real world and £4.5 million is a lot of money to me, but in the scale of local government it is only a couple of decimal points when adding up the figures. So the money is there but no decisions have yet been taken on that. The revenue neutrality simply means that the local authority does not make a profit out of the residents taking part in the scheme. That is the bottom line so far as the residents are concerned. But if they can see that the local authority is going to save money overall and keep costs down, that has got to be a good thing for those both in and out of the scheme. As I have said, the amendment requires the revenue schemes to be neutral so that no profit is made, which is a key element of the pilot schemes that we wish to organise. It is part of the definition of piloting that we may need to alter the way schemes work in the light of experience, but at this stage it is impossible to guess what might happen. That is why we need the powers to amend the various elements of the framework, including, for instance, exactly what conditions local authorities have to meet before running a waste reduction scheme. We need to respond to what comes out of the pilots. We want the flexibility to amend the revenue-neutrality condition. In the unforeseen event that we need to make an amendment, as I have said, it would come back to Parliament. The Minister would be given a pretty rough ride if they did not have a good reason for amending it, because it is a key part of the scheme that we want in the pilots. Amendment No. 183VA seeks to allow the authorities to use the money raised from waste charges to cover the costs, but that could create an additional burden on local residents who could end up paying more overall to the authority. It could also reduce the amount of money available to reward the householders who were benefiting from the scheme. It would hinder efficient administration if they had less incentive to keep the costs down, and that would not be fair; it would look like a rip-off. On the other hand, if the offsets were greater than the costs incurred, that could result in the savings achieved being passed directly back to the local residents covered by the scheme via the rebate. That might appear to be a good deal for the residents but it would limit the authority’s freedom to invest the savings where it chose; for example, in other priority services. I have not been misleading. Earlier I said, in answer to the noble Lord, Lord Dearing, that local authorities could potentially save a lot of money from running such a scheme. Even though the incentives and charges to residents are ring-fenced, there could still be other pots of money for local authorities to save. That money is for the greater good of all ratepayers in that authority.