Climate Change Bill [HL]

This is a legitimate and practical question but unfortunately, at this stage, one to which I do not have an answer. What would a combined council tax and waste bill look like? I have not taken advice on this. I do not know how such a bill is envisaged. There are some possible variants but we want to work further with local authorities on this. I do not know how far the work with local authorities has progressed. We need to assure local authorities and the public that we have the necessary flexibility here and that the information is transparent and straightforward. Residents will demand nothing less. Their behaviour in this regard will change only if they know why they are doing something and what the cost or saving of doing it is. The relevant information must not be buried in a footnote or in the great tranche of leaflets that nobody ever reads that come with your council tax bill. It must be as up front as the information on the police or the fire brigade in two-tier authorities. That is my personal view but I believe it would be very unwise for us not to make it as transparent as that. As I said earlier, this flexibility is there only because local government raised this issue during the formal and informal consultation process. A waste disposal authority may well suggest a system that has no connection whatever with the council tax. The system has inbuilt flexibility, which is why I cannot give any indication of what a bill would look like. However, residents must be able to understand it and it must be credible in terms of being no different from what they see in the rest of their bill. I have an answer to a point made by the noble Baroness which I hope will be helpful. I am keen to get as much information on the record as I can in Committee as that will help us on Report. One pilot is the area of one waste collection authority but there are two types of relevant authority structure. In the two-tier structure comprising the districts and counties, the district is the waste collection authority. The unitary authorities are the waste collection and disposal authorities but one pilot is the area of a waste collection authority, or part of it. As regards the relationship between the two, particularly in the two-tier structure, we would expect a waste collection authority coming forward as a pilot to be able to demonstrate an excellent working relationship with its disposal authority. That relationship will underpin the success or failure of the pilot.