Liberal Democrat Conference: ESA fringe Event
Delivering Sustainable Waste Management

Dirk Hazell, Chief Executive, ESA
Bournemouth, 22 September 2004

Last week the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition set out their commitment to the environment.

To characterise this simply as a pre-election box ticking exercise would not be fair.

In Government the present Leader of the Opposition signed the agreement to end CFCs and not only signed the Climate Change Convention but persuaded the first President Bush to do the same.

The present Government may not have proved quite as persuasive with the current President Bush but it has shown some international leadership in tackling climate change. British business has not always given the Labour Government the credit it deserves for its willingness to give leadership in the European Union on emissions trading.

 
For all that, it is the LibDems who have most consistently given most profile to the environmental agenda, the paramount importance of which is increasingly recognised.

And when it comes to implementing its own promises to Europe on waste, the Labour Government’s deeds have fallen short of its words.

The coming General Election provides an opportunity to review what this Parliament has achieved in terms of waste management, and to set out priorities for the next.

Despite the best efforts of some very committed MPs like Norman Baker and Sue Doughty, the current Parliament has been characterised by missed opportunity.

First, we had the Waste Summit. Partners were summoned to identify the barriers to delivering sustainable waste management. The Summit resulted in a supposedly independent review of waste policy.

 
We waited for this review which ended up as the Government’s report to itself, There was real hope that the Government would finally put in place a framework to ensure the UK met its legal obligations to the Union on sustainable waste policy.

It took 18 months to publish a report and this was met with almost universal disappointment. It was more of the same: strong on words, weak on deeds like finding the relatively small amount of money needed to revolutionise municipal waste management.

And throughout this Parliament we have had crises: fridges, hazardous waste, abandoned cars. It is all unnecessary: in many ways, delivering sustainable waste management is one of the easiest objectives of public policy to deliver. Much easier than sorting the NHS. Much easier than cutting crime. Much easier than getting better schools.

Our EU competitors do it: Austria and the Netherlands already comply with the 2016 biodegradable municipal waste diversion targets of the Landfill Directive.
ESA’s Members can do it: they are already doing it in other EU Member States.

But if Britain is to have sustainable waste management, it must first have the right political, regulatory and economic climate.

What needs to be done hasn’t changed since the first day of this Parliament.

First, there needs to be full funding for the management of the municipal waste stream.

A major Mori survey of 2002 showed that waste management was seen as the most important service delivered by local authorities. It was even ranked above schools. And yet, waste management accounts for only 1.5% of total expenditure by local authorities. We spend only half what comparable European countries spend on municipal waste management and the spending needs to get to £1 per person per week.

 
Yesterday, the Lib Dems approved a motion to allow local authorities to introduce variable charging. Variable charging not only applies the polluter pays principle to the municipal waste stream, it can also provide resources to finance investment in modern recycling infrastructure without any increase in public spending.

My personal view is that with variable charging the Lib Dems have correctly identified the long term funding solution.

Our only comment is that at current stages of public awareness there is merit in starting with a charging scheme which does not encourage fly-tipping. That was one reason, in a study Ernst & Young did for us, why flat rate direct charging was recommended for the early period.

Over the longer term, we are looking with interest at a scheme to be piloted in Belfast which instead of charging householders more for producing more waste, rewards households for achieving high levels of segregation for recycling.

One thing is clear on funding: the Labour Government’s piecemeal approach to funding municipal waste is both inefficient and insufficient to enable local authorities to deliver the required diversion targets.

The second problem the Government has not corrected is the inability of the planning process to deliver the 2,000 new waste recycling and treatment facilities the Environment Agency estimates are needed to achieve compliance with the Landfill Directive. ESA has published a report setting out the improvements needed in the planning system.

Although our sector is a key partner in achieving environmental sustainability and the UK’s compliance with European law, as of today no planning Minister in the Labour Government has yet met ESA.

Third, and actually I believe this is the most important, before it can invest in new waste management technologies, our industry need a clear and precise legal framework. Two words make the point: hazardous waste.

Yesterday, Liberal Democrats discussed a motion rightly criticising the Government for failing to prepare Britain for changes to the management of hazardous waste.

Many of the effects of the Government’s chaotic implementation of EU legislation are not yet visible. The Environment Agency and the Government do not have real-time data on waste flows. As things currently stand, they do not know if hazardous waste is being stockpiled by producers or dumped illegally by criminals.

As liquid hazardous waste simply disappeared when it was banned from landfill two years ago, there is mounting concern that solid hazardous waste is now bypassing legitimate treatment infrastructure.

And the legal framework for municipal waste isn’t much better. It is not my job to be party political, and LibDems do not need me to say that the party of Government is now the third party of local government.
 
Even so, given this context, perhaps one is naïve to be disappointed that, five years after the Landfill Directive was agreed, local authorities still do not know exactly how much biodegradable municipal waste the Government says they can landfill in coming years.

In your pre-election manifesto, the Liberal Democrats have clearly signalled that environmental enhancement is a defining characteristic of your party. And Norman and Sue Doughty have been tireless in scrutinising the environmental performance of this Government.

Of the three main political parties the Lib Dems are of course the strongest supporters of the European Union.

I strongly encourage LibDems to base your environmental policy on the EU environmental legal framework and on the emerging thematic strategies on resource efficiency and waste prevention and recycling.

Doreen and I have been sparring partners in Brussels but I believe a really exciting development is taking place with the capacity to build a new consensus.

The European Commission rightly recognises that essential environmental improvements can only be sustained where economic and environmental outcomes are aligned. We must work with the grain of markets.

We have also got to make people’s jobs and people’s decent standards of living consistent with environmental sustainability.

Next year, the UK’s Presidency of the EU provides the Government with an opportunity to shape the environmental agenda of Europe. The Prime Minister has already and quite rightly promised that tackling climate change will feature heavily both in the Presidency and in Britain’s chairmanship of the G8.

We believe the Government should go further.

We have been pressing Margaret Beckett all year, and last week I wrote to the Prime Minister, to urge the Government to use the Presidency to ensure Europe has the most effective environmental regulation in the World.

Although we think this regulation should continue to be undertaken by Member States, we believe everyone should to be able to see that national environmental regulation across Europe is of an adequate standard.

This is why we have recommended that the European Environment Agency be given powers to audit the performance of national environmental regulators.

More significantly, perhaps, when Barbara Young became Chief Executive of the Environment Agency, we offered her the thought that the more she could make environmental regulation emulate financial regulation, the stronger the long term foundations she would be laying.

Since then, our advice has been absolutely vindicated by the work now taking place within the European Commission and OECD. The next generation of environmental improvement will not be achieved by adding another layer of prescription to regulation of industrial process but it can be sustainably achieved by harnessing the market to carefully defined environmental outcomes.

So I personally support the shift in the LibDem Manifesto from personal to environmental taxation. We also think this needs to be strengthened by economic instruments such as, for example, a successful global carbon trading mechanism.

Recovering more value from the waste stream is not difficult.

If the British Government provides a proper framework, ESA’s Members can promptly deliver state of the art facilities to transform Britain’s environmental performance.

Time is running out.

If we are serious about handing to future generations an environment better than ours, and the alternative is too awful to contemplate, we simply cannot afford another Parliament which sees plenty more words but not enough deeds.