Climate Change Bill [HL]

My Lords, the noble Baroness, Lady Byford, asked me about an issue I raised in my speech. We proposed to bring forward an amendment in the Commons. I know it is in the Q & A and I cannot put my finger on it. Now I have lost the page in my notes and I do apologise. The noble Lord, Lord Greaves, asked me about the people charged. What we want is for the local authorities to have the opportunity if they wish—and it is up to them—to merge the scheme under the pilots with the council tax collection. As he said, we are not talking about large sums of money here. I think we estimated £30, £40 or £50, at the most, either as a rebate or as a charge. Linking it with the council tax, if they have a system for that, should actually be efficient for everybody, so I do not see that as the problem. I have made notes on everyone’s speech and I cannot find them. I do apologise. From that point of view, we are not saying how local authorities should actually deal with the rebate. I would like to think of the rebate first and the charge second, and try to make it revenue neutral anyway. It is up to them how they do it. We do not know which local authorities they are going to be. As we said in Committee, we do not know which parts of which local authorities they are going to be. We have got to leave it to the local authorities. That is not saying we are not interested; we sure are interested. In this respect—I understand why the noble Lord raises it—we have to trust local government. We may be able to elucidate on this in the other place. I realise that revenue neutrality is controversial. The noble Lord asked me in what circumstances we would abolish it. We think that revenue-neutral schemes are the right way forward and the work to date supports the view. But these are pilots and that is the whole point about piloting. This is a classic case from schools of government. If you are going to do something national, roll it out a bit at a time. Whatever you do, if it is major, pilot it first to see whether it works. This is normally what we have done. The old social security department and the DWP used pilots to operate. We cannot therefore give the answers; to a large extent, they depend on how the pilots go. We want to learn the lessons, including, I suppose—I do not know—some negative lessons. We should look at all the good criteria; a good recycling service is crucial. As the noble Baroness said, there must be provisions dealing with fly-tipping. We will look again at all of those issues if the evidence points that way. We must learn lessons. We do not have other motives; we simply do not know. This is a question of trying it out with local government as a partner. We do not have all the answers. The noble Baroness rightly said that I had referred to Germany on two occasions. I have warned inside Defra that we should not talk about giving a lead, particularly on anaerobic digestion. Farmers in this country—particularly farmers from England who have seen what has been going on in Germany for years—would laugh at me if I said to them that we are giving a lead; I wrote this in a note a couple of days ago. We are way behind. It is no good saying that we are a leader; we are not. People will not believe us if we tell porkies like that. Virtually every scheme that it is possible to pilot in this area is operating somewhere in the world. We made that clear in the original consultation. We are not inventing the wheel. We are a small island and we are running out of landfill, and landfill is bad anyway. We must therefore make reductions and encourage people to recycle more. We can give a lead on many things but on that we are taking evidence from other areas. The evidence from some of the examples I gave shows that this can work; there have been big reductions in what goes into landfill and there are huge advantages in terms of what is recycled. The noble Lord asked about instalments; I have answered that: it is up to the local authority. We tested that in the pilots. One local authority may want to take the charges one way and another may want to go another way; that is the whole point of the pilots. The noble Lord said that if awards or penalties were made in advance, there would be no behavioural incentive, but there is—it is in the next round. The process operates on an annual basis and the pilots, if I recall correctly, can run for up to three years. Local authorities will have the data on the levels of waste produced; they will relate to bins and be weight-based or volume-based. That can be built into the next round. People’s behaviour would be affected. I have specifically not used the P-word. I have referred to single-use carrier bags, and I am sticking to that because that is what I have been instructed to do. This will be dealt with in the other place. Somewhere in my speech there is something about a specific amendment that we intend to move in the Commons; I shall find it before the evening is over. When I discussed it earlier, I said that I thought it would be introduced not at Third Reading but in the Commons. In about 50 pages of Q and A, I saw a specific reference to it being introduced in the Commons. The noble Baroness asked me about that. I am a bit surprised that I have not had a copy of the page whizzed along to me. I will try to find it myself.