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Refuse Collection

I agree. I was amused that, after our report was published, even though it did not back up what the tabloids had been saying, they nevertheless managed to say that it entirely vindicated them and the campaign that they had been running. Of course, it does not do that. The Committee's view on the subsequent report on the Government's waste reduction pilots is that they have pulled back on the original proposal to allow all councils to introduce charging if they wish and have instead focused only on five pilots precisely because of the vitriol in the tabloid press, which has made it difficult to have a sensitive debate about charges for residual waste. It became clear to us that the collection method had to vary depending on the nature of the area served. Most obviously, it is difficult for a council in a dense urban area with lots of flats and houses in multiple occupation to have an alternate weekly system, which relies on individual households having a significant amount of space to store the recyclables, or whatever, for the fortnight before the collection. Alternate weekly collections have rarely been introduced in dense urban areas because they do not work well, whereas they seem to work well in more suburban or rural areas, where space per household is not at quite the same premium and people have a reasonable amount of outside area where they can stash stuff until it is collected. Instead, many councils in urban areas have collective recycling facilities dotted about closer to people's homes, so people living in a flat can get rid of a lot of their rubbish themselves by taking it to the nearest recycling bin on the corner of the street. Clearly, it is horses for courses, which is why it is best to leave such decisions to councils, because they know their area better than anybody else possibly can. Food waste, along with disposable nappies, is the problematic bit of residual waste. Food waste is problematic because it is smelly and attracts vermin and other problems and because when it gets into landfill it, above all, generates methane gas, which causes enormous problems in managing landfill sites. We recommended that food waste should be collected weekly. I am glad that the Government accepted that that recommendation was the right way forward. The Committee also considered the evidence on health risks from alternate weekly systems. There is no credible evidence that there are health risks, although the public prejudice is that there are. We had a terribly interesting discussion about the life cycle of maggots, which demonstrated that even a weekly collection is too slow for the average maggot. We probably do not wish to go into that subject any further. However, that shows that even a weekly collection may not come often enough to deal with that problem. In addition, individual householders need to take some responsibility for wrapping their waste so that it is not so easily accessible to flies, foxes or magpies, which seem immediately to distinguish which colour bag has all the goodies in it and leave the recycling bags well alone. I want to mention financing refuse collection and unofficial charging, which some councils seem to be pursuing at the moment, then I shall deal with a number of other points. Financing refuse collection is the issue that is concentrating everybody's minds. As I pointed out at the beginning, costs are inevitably rising due to the pressure on landfill. Sir Michael Lyons, in his report on local government finance, recommended that councils should be able to charge for waste collection and disposal and that that should be done separately from council tax, so that householders could see what they were paying for. Of the original 15 members of the European Union, the United Kingdom is the only one that does not allow local authorities to charge for refuse collection. The Government initially decided to introduce a limited power for local authorities to charge for waste collection, but hedged that in a number of ways. First, the incentives to households that reduced the amount of waste for landfill had to be balanced exactly by the fines on other households. The scheme had to be self-financing, so that there would be a redistribution of money from households that were not reducing waste to those that were. Secondly, the administration costs of the scheme could not be included in that self-financing envelope, and would have to be borne by the council. As I understand it, it was argued that that was acceptable because the point of introducing incentives and fines was to encourage households overall to reduce the amount of waste going to landfill, so the overall cost to the council of disposing of waste would be reduced, and that reduction could then be offset against the cost of administering the scheme. The Government were so concerned about the bin charges argument that the then Minister, the hon. Member for Oldham, East and Saddleworth (Mr. Woolas)—the predecessor to the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Joan Ruddock)—indicated in Committee that the maximum incentive, and therefore the maximum charge, could be of the order of only £30 or £50 a year. The Committee felt strongly that such a sum was so small that it was unlikely to encourage householders to recycle more and to reduce waste, or to be a sufficient penalty on those who were not bothering, particularly as that sum in the context of their overall council tax was not very large. We felt that local authorities should be left to decide, that every local authority should be given the freedom to charge if they wished, that it could be done through the council tax if councils wished to do so, and that it should be for councils to decide how big or small the incentive or charge should be. We are obviously disappointed that the Government have subsequently decided not to give the power to all councils, but to go ahead with only five pilots. We are particularly concerned about the timing, because the pilot schemes would not come in until 2009 at the earliest, yet the thresholds that councils must meet for the landfill allowances trading scheme will come in in 2010. We think that the pilot schemes are just causing delays, because they will last three years, and then be reviewed and brought back to Parliament, when Parliament may decide to give the power to all councils. That will be well past 2010. If charging works, many councils will copy the few that act as trailblazers, and if it does not work, most will think, ““Thank goodness we decided not to do that and left the council next door to try it out.”” That is how it should be taken forward.