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Refuse Collection

I think so. Nobody produced the numbers to demonstrate that point, but I know from my own council—I am not criticising it—that it collects garden rubbish and gives out free compost bins. The issue is how we strike the right balance, and I wonder whether there should be a greater concentration on getting people to compost in their own gardens, rather than seemingly encouraging them just to think that garden waste is like any other waste and that they can stick it in the bin to be taken away. That is a difficult balance for councils to strike. The point that I was trying to make earlier, however, is quite difficult—I had to write it down. The perfectly reasonable incentives that the Government have introduced to get councils to reduce biodegradable waste give rise to a slightly perverse incentive, in that they encourage councils to collect garden waste and compost it themselves, rather than letting the individual householder compost it. That also increases transport costs, which is not environmentally sensible. Another issue related to London. At this point I need to declare a constituency interest. The Mayor of London has criticised a number of London boroughs for shuffling off responsibility for commercial waste in a way that makes them appear to have reduced the amount of refuse that they send to landfill. That also highlights the fact that a great deal—two thirds—of London waste goes to landfill in the south-east, not in London. One of the landfill sites used is in my constituency, which explains my constituency interest. The Mayor of London provided us with a great deal of information to try to back up his claim that a number of London boroughs that had previously collected a lot of commercial waste, as well as residential waste, had deliberately reduced the amount of commercial waste that they collected either by putting up their charges so that businesses went elsewhere or by stopping collections. They therefore diverted away from themselves a lot of the landfill waste that originated with businesses, and the waste went instead directly from those businesses to a commercial operator and into landfill. In other words, there appeared to be a reduction in the amount of waste from London boroughs going to landfill, but that was simply because authorities had removed it from their collections from businesses and encouraged those businesses to deal with it through the private sector and to let it go to landfill without the council's mediation. It is a contentious point, and the data we received, which are reproduced in our report, do not prove the case one way or the other. Clearly, a debate is going on, because I have seen correspondence between the Mayor, the Department and, indeed, the European Commission. The Mayor is continuing to try to make his point and is pressing the Environment Agency to audit more closely what the London boroughs are doing. All that the Committee said was that as we could not work out what was going on, it would be a good idea if the Environment Agency made a proper audit so that people could be clear about whether such practices were occurring. That issue pointed up the fact that we need to look at both commercial and domestic waste when talking about the waste that goes to landfill. The only disincentive for sending commercial waste to landfill is the landfill tax escalator—such practices are not governed by the LATS threshold. Speaking as a south-east MP, I can tell Members that the issue of London waste going to landfill in the wider south-east is extremely unpopular with people who live near landfills in the region. My constituents may accept that we have to provide a hole in the ground for our own waste, but they are not particularly keen on lorry loads of London waste coming to landfills near us, with the problems that that causes. They are certainly with the London Mayor on the issue and want to persuade London boroughs not only to reduce the amount of waste that goes to landfill, but to deal with that waste within their own boundaries, rather than exporting it to the wider south-east. I have reached the end of the major issues that I wanted to raise in relation to our report. The Committee has carried out quite a number of interesting inquiries recently, but this one was particularly interesting, and all the members of the Committee have become much better informed about the various issues relating to refuse collection. It is extremely important that councils across the country do their best to ensure that their refuse collections not only meet the needs of their local populations, but help every local community to think seriously about the amount of waste that we generate. Councils must work together to reduce the amount of waste we create, to ensure that waste is recycled as much as possible and to reduce the amount that goes to landfill. I will be very interested to hear the contributions of other hon. Members.