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Labour Party Conference: SERA Fringe Event
Dirk Hazell, Chief Executive, ESA
Brighton, 28 September 2004
Tomorrow’s historians will judge today’s Labour Government in part by its environmental performance.
ESA believes the Prime Minister is right to make climate change a priority for next year’s British Presidency of the EU and Chairmanship of the G8 and we have always praised the Labour Government for leading Europe on emissions trading.
We also welcomed the Labour Government’s promise to Europe to recycle more value contained in waste and waste management has improved in this Parliament. In partnership with ESA’s Members, local authorities now recycle more waste than ever before and the amount of municipal waste landfilled fell last year.
However, progress is still not fast enough to get to the end of a third term of Labour Government having achieved even the delayed binding target in the Landfill Directive to divert biodegradable municipal waste from landfill.
But we should be on track. Securing sustainable waste management is one of the easier objectives of public policy to deliver. It is much easier than sorting the NHS or cutting crime or improving schools.
Our European partners, Austria and Holland, already comply with the final 2016 targets to divert biodegradable municipal waste from landfill. Elsewhere in the European Union ESA’s Members already deliver sustainable waste management.
However, Britain still does not have the regulatory and economic conditions to lead the World in recycling and recovery. The Environment Select Committee, of which Joan is a Member, has just concluded that the 25% recycling target for 2005/06 is unlikely to be met.
We need to reach European levels of spending on waste management. The Local Government Association, the Policy Studies Institute, Ernst and Young and Pricewaterhouse Coopers are among those agree with ESA.
A major Mori survey of 2002 showed that the public sees waste management as councils’ most important service. It is even ranked above schools. However, waste management accounts for only 1.5% of total expenditure by local authorities.
Although Margaret Beckett did not mention this on Sunday, we understand that the Labour Party is considering including a Manifesto pledge to allow local authorities to introduce variable charging.
My personal view is that variable charging is the inevitable long term funding solution. Variable charging applies the polluter pays principle to the municipal waste stream. It can also provide resources to finance investment-and we need £10 billion of investment-in modern recycling infrastructure without increasing public spending.
Our only thought is that at current stages of public awareness there is merit in starting with a charging scheme which does not encourage fly-tipping. That’s partly why, in a study Ernst & Young did for us, 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.
We are pleased that Margaret Beckett picked this up on Sunday and the brains behind the Belfast scheme will be speaking at our own conference next month.
The only warning I would give is that before money is given back to householders for recycling, the Government and councils need to be sure the waste management is properly funded in the first place.
The Environment Agency has estimated that more than 2000 new facilities to recycle and treat waste could be required over the next decade to deliver compliance with the Landfill Directive. We do not see that the planning system can deliver so we have published a report setting out necessary improvements we hope the Government’s review of national planning policy on waste will bring.
Again, we support the Prime Minister’s focus on climate change for the British Presidency and G8 chairmanship next year.
It is really exciting that Europe’s emerging thematic strategies on resource efficiency and on waste prevention and recycling provide scope to build a new consensus.
These strategies seek to secure additional environmental improvement on an economically sustainable basis. SERA’s mission is much easier to promote when environmental sustainability goes hand in hand with good jobs and decent standards of living.
As part of this process, personally I support a shift from personal to environmental taxation. And the Labour Government has rightly led Europe on the application of economic instruments to deliver environmental outcomes.
We think the Government should go further. Indeed, perhaps our own top priority would be for the Government to use the Presidency to help Europe develop the World’s most effective environmental regulation.
Although we think environmental regulation should continue to be undertaken by Member States, we believe everyone in Europe should to be able to see that all environmental regulation anywhere in Europe is adequate. This would help to deal with opportunist comment, too much of it from the business sector, and 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 helpfully offered the thought that the more environmental regulation could become like financial regulation, the stronger the long term foundations the Agency would be laying.
Since then, our advice has been absolutely vindicated by the work now taking place within the European Commission and OECD.
The performance of the Environment Agency has improved under the chairmanship of Sir John and with Barbara as Chief Executive and no-one wants to go back to the days of local regulation.
However, we believe the next generation of environmental improvement cannot be achieved by adding another layer of prescription to regulation of industrial process-the coalition against would be too strong-but we can sustain a better environment by harnessing the market to carefully defined environmental outcomes. This suggests a modernisation of environmental regulation.
Getting more sustainable waste management should not be difficult. If the Government provides the right framework, ESA’s Members can promptly deliver state of the art facilities to transform Britain’s environmental performance.
SERA does not need me to say that the alternative to handing future generations an environment better than ours is too awful to contemplate.
Time is running out even though the second Labour Government and many backbench Labour MPs have said many of the right things.
A third Labour Government needs to deliver the deeds.
Gordon Brown spoke yesterday of Prosperity and Justice for all.
Perhaps SERA’s mission should be to ensure a third term delivers Prosperity, Justice and Sustainability for all.
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