Sewage Discharges
Lord Dubs Excerpts(1 year, 5 months ago)
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Lord Benyon (Con)
The noble Baroness will be aware of the very strict new conditions set by Ofwat on water companies about how they reward their senior staff and shareholders, and of the absolute imperative, driven by the regulators and the Government, to reduce massively the effect of storm overflows. The letter that Ofwat wrote in October sets out quite clearly that:
“Company plans on storm overflows are lacking”;
there is “insufficient evidence” to support the positions that they have previously taken; and there is a “lack of ambition” and
“a lack of focus and maturity in partnership solutions.”
We are therefore giving them an extra two months, from March to May, to come up with better plans, and we will make sure that they are implemented on the original timescale as the next price review period starts.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I shall take a somewhat harder line than the noble Baroness, Lady Jones. When there are repeat offenders, we should not condone them but punish them. Surely the water company heads should be sent to jail, not have a gentle ticking off. Is it a lack of power on the part of Ofwat or a lack of willingness to do something about it? We cannot sit by as beautiful places like Lake Windermere are polluted beyond use.
Plastic Bag Charge
Lord Dubs Excerpts(4 years, 10 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, that is an intriguing comparison, but the position is that combining the publication of the summary and intended action will reduce the overall time taken, compared to publishing each separately. We have indeed had to take a little longer because officials have needed to undertake additional policy work in response to feedback from consultation. I assure my noble friend—and all noble Lords—that we are fully seized of the importance of plastic reduction.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I do not wish to be discourteous to the Minister, but his answer sounded like a direct quote from “Yes Minister”. Would he like to think about it again? This is intolerable. We have been waiting years to put a charge on plastic bags. We have it on some but not on others. Why can we not just get a move on? Why does it take so long?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, that is not quite the case, as with all such things. I am well aware of the sort of responses one is given, but as I said, perhaps the interpretation of “very soon” should be in a glossary of terms. I am very conscious that we need to take action on this. By the end of this year, many of the larger retailers will not be using single-use plastic bags at all. We are working with all retailers and market traders to address this fully, because we want to get this right.
Plastics: Reduction in Use
Lord Dubs Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, we are already working with industry to reduce our use of plastics. Key to this will be our reforms to the packaging waste regulations. We will shortly publish the response to our proposals on banning plastic straws, stirrers and cotton buds. Our response to the proposals on extending and increasing the plastic bag charge will follow thereafter. Where existing powers are insufficient to match our ambition, we will seek additional powers in the environment Bill.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, will the Minister consider a sentence from the answer given to this House last month on the same topic? It referred to the Government’s,
“plans to eliminate all avoidable plastic waste by 2042”.—[Official Report, 10/4/19; col. 491.]
That begs a lot of questions, as it is a long way ahead. What about unavoidable plastic waste? Surely that can also be dealt with. We know about the statistics—the Minister will be fully aware of them—on the dangers to marine life and the thousands of years that it takes for plastic to degrade. Plastic has been found north and south on this planet, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Surely we require more drastic action than that.
I have had an interesting e-mail from Waitrose about what it is trying to do. Will the Minister comment on two specific suggestions? First, can he develop a clear, visible kitemark on all packaging to indicate whether it contains plastic, and whether it meets decent standards? It would be a kitemark agreed throughout industry. Secondly, what about having an annual award to industry—I would like, without his permission, to call it the David Attenborough award—for the company, business or local authority that does best each year in getting rid of plastic?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, there were quite a few questions there but I agree with the thrust of what the noble Lord said. That is why we are working internationally, as well as at home. I share your Lordships’ frustration; we need to take action, which is why the UK plastics pact is so important. One of its targets for 2025 will be:
“100% of plastics packaging to be reusable, recyclable or compostable”.
Others include to eliminate by 2025 unnecessary single-use packaging and to have,
“70% of plastics packaging effectively recycled or composted”.
I agree with the noble Lord and we want to take action. This Government are taking action through research, which will obviously be an enormously important point, to find alternatives to the far too extensive use of plastics.
Transport Emissions in Urban Areas
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years, 11 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
I entirely agree with my noble friend and will pick that up with TfL and the Department for Transport. As my noble friend rightly identified, congestion is a cause of pollution, as is the idling of vehicles. I am pleased that the City of Westminster has issued an edict about idling and turning engines off. This is very helpful.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, 2040 to 2050 is still a long way away. I appreciate that one has to develop infrastructure so that there are charging points for electric vehicles. However, could we not have made an immediate decision to encourage the use of hybrid cars at the expense of petrol and diesel ones? Hybrid cars have enormous advantages and this could be done very quickly, without any charging points. Why not?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, there are many plus points in hybrid cars and I entirely agree that, at this time, they are a very good option. However, with our investment in ultra-low emission vehicles and in more publicly accessible charging points, we are clearly moving towards ensuring that ever more ultra-low emission vehicles are bought.
Plastic Packaging
Lord Dubs Excerpts(5 years, 12 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, the Government have been working with WRAP, the Ellen MacArthur Foundation and industry to develop the UK plastics pact, announced last week. The pact seeks to eliminate single-use plastic packaging by 2025 and ensure that 100% of plastic packaging is reusable, recyclable or compostable. In addition, government and industry are investing in research on plastics innovation and the development of more-sustainable products.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I think the Minister will agree that it is no exaggeration to say that we are poisoning our planet. Will he confirm that 70% of the rubbish on Britain’s beaches is plastic? Will he also confirm that, by 2050, the weight of plastic in the oceans will exceed the weight of fish, and that micro-plastics have been found on the tops of mountains and in the polar regions? I appreciate what the Government are trying to do, but are we not facing a desperately urgent crisis which requires more urgent action nationally and internationally?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I entirely endorse all the instincts that the noble Lord has expressed in terms of our need to take action both at home and overseas. Just at CHOGM, there was a strong desire within the Commonwealth countries to deal with marine pollution. Through the UN, the G7, the G20 and CHOGM, we have been working extremely hard, because this issue must be dealt with internationally. At home, we fully recognise that we need to advance the necessary changes. That is why our resources and waste strategy to be announced later in the year will represent an important way forward.
Air Quality
Lord Dubs Excerpts(6 years, 5 months ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Gardiner of Kimble) (Con)
My Lords, we have committed £3.5 billion for air quality and cleaner transport. We are helping local authorities to tackle pollution hotspots and have allocated £255 million to accelerate local action to meet concentration limits. Ninety-two per cent of monitored roads will meet limits next year. We are investing in vehicle retrofitting, ultra-low emission vehicles, cycling and walking, and implementing tougher real driving emissions tests. Next year, our clean air strategy will outline how we will tackle air pollution more widely.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister. However, will he confirm that, according to the United Nations, air quality in 44 of our towns and cities is such that it is too dangerous to breathe? According to the Royal College of Physicians, last year, the health impact of poor air quality was £20 billion. It is estimated that 50,000 people die each year from poor air quality, of whom 9,000 are in London. Surely we have to do more than the Minister has said the Government will do?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the Government take this seriously because we are well aware of the health issues. This issue affects many countries; as the noble Lord will know, 17 other EU member states have the same problem with nitrogen dioxide. We are working very closely with local authorities, particularly those in which we need to make more rapid progress, to escalate the issue, because we are well aware of the health consequences. It is a very serious issue.
Local Authorities: Recycling
Lord Dubs Excerpts(6 years, 9 months ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I entirely agree with my noble friend that we need to encourage clarity. Indeed, that is what WRAP’s consistency framework is intended to achieve. It is of course for local authorities, in consultation with residents, to determine the most appropriate arrangements, but the recycling guidelines already make clear what is recyclable and what is not. The Recycle Now campaign uses social and digital media. Work is ongoing to address the issue of black plastic.
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, there has been considerable success in the rate of recycling of plastic bottles. But what I think the noble Lord might be alluding to is that as part of the litter strategy, for which I have established a working group, we are going to look at a number of measures to improve recycling. One of them is to have a full and proper look at the impacts and benefits of different types of deposit and reward-and-return schemes for drinks. We want to set up that group very shortly and I am looking forward to its report early in the new year.
Recycling: Plastic Bottles
Lord Dubs Excerpts(7 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, the noble Baroness is right that there was a slight drop, and that is why we absolutely need to do more. That is why I think the work of WRAP will be very important. But let me give some examples of where recycling is working tremendously well: South Oxfordshire District Council has achieved 66.6% household waste recycling; East Riding has achieved 66.1%; and Rochford District Council has achieved 66%. We want to raise the bar where local authorities are doing very well. That is what we want across the country.
Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I hope the Minister will not think I am being discourteous, but his first Answer could have come straight out of “Yes Minister”. His subsequent answers were similar to those the Government gave when we talked about putting a tax or some penalty on the excessive use of plastic bags. We are getting nowhere in this. Surely we must do something—it is an environmental scandal. Could we not have some action instead of these platitudes from civil servants?
Lord Gardiner of Kimble
My Lords, I have never taken the noble Lord to be anything other than courteous, and I do not take what he said in any untoward sense. On what he said about the plastic bag charge, there are 6 billion fewer plastic bags in circulation and the 5p charge has raised £29 million for good causes. These are good examples. I am sure that when the litter strategy is launched, as I hope it will be soon, the noble Lord will agree that we are trying to be—and will be—ambitious.
Lake District National Park Authority
Lord Dubs Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, it is the turn of this side; I live there. Is it not shocking that parts of the national park—one of the most beautiful national parks—have to be sold off as a result of government cuts? Is there not a problem that, in a further sale of the land, the Lake District planning people might well give a more relaxed permission in order to get half the money? Is it not rather unhappy that we are doing this at all? Surely we should adamantly say that the Lake District is not for sale to the highest bidder.
Lord De Mauley
I agree with much of the sentiment behind the noble Lord’s point, but the national park has assured me that this is not about cuts. It routinely reviews its assets and makes disposals where appropriate so that the proceeds can be reinvested into the acquisition, improvement or maintenance of other properties. It is worth saying that between 2007 and 2010—three years during which the noble Lord’s party was in government—it made sales totalling £1.9 million. In the five years from then, sales have totalled £1.8 million.
Single Use Carrier Bags Charges (England) Order 2015
Lord Dubs Excerpts(9 years, 1 month ago)
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Lord Dubs (Lab)
My Lords, I broadly welcome this proposal. Some of us have been arguing about it for years and years. I remember that when I raised it with another Minister, I was slapped down and told that the Government had no intention of doing this, even though I pointed out that it was a benefit and the Government might even raise some revenue. At the time we were talking about a tax on the bags rather than a donation to the supermarkets.
This is a good idea. I think Ireland started this even before Wales and it seems to work pretty well there. Despite the objections of the noble Lord, Lord Holmes, the system works pretty well where it has been in used in Wales, Ireland and Scotland. But I welcome the Government as a repenting sinner. The Government were against this in the past, but it is pretty good that they are in favour of it now.
Some supermarkets—Sainsbury’s or Marks & Spencer or both—charge 5p already. But, of course, they do not publicise the fact at the till. It is only when one does a self-service transaction, by putting one’s purchases against the barcode—you see, I go shopping myself; how many others go shopping?—that, occasionally, it asks you to indicate whether you have no bag or that you should be charged for the bag. Sometimes, for very small bags, there is no charge. The system needs more publicity, both at the point of sale and more generally. If people know that they are being charged—sometimes it is easy not to notice, they might pay more attention.
I remember some years ago, when Ireland introduced the scheme, I was at a conference with Irish politicians in Oxford. We looked out the window and saw somebody walking along the street with 15 plastic bags—I think they were the orange Sainsbury’s ones. The Irish politicians said, “That wouldn’t happen in Ireland any more”. They have stopped it, and it works there. We are following on a bit late, but we are doing it.
My other specific point on publicity is this: I am trying to interpret the exemptions. If, say, somebody buys six loose oranges, does that enable them to have a bag without the charge or would the charge apply? It is not clear to me. Sometimes fruit is packaged and sometimes it is sold loose. It is slightly less expensive if it is sold loose. I wonder how that will be handled.
I understand that there is higher energy content in making a paper bag than a plastic bag but there is a good argument against plastic bags.
A lot of us were brought up to go out with a shopping basket—I am old enough to remember that—or bag and would not dream of expecting the shop to provide the packaging. There is no harm in going back to that.
I add one other plea about the amount of plastic wrapping on products, which is not directly concerned with the order. Buy a simple toothbrush and try to open it without a pair of scissors or a knife; it will be too firmly packaged. The Government should move on from this to look at other forms of packaging, which are totally excessive and add to the amount of plastic in the environment.
Lord De Mauley
Yes, I am quite sure that the right reverend Prelate’s chemistry is still current in that regard.
Lord Dubs
Perhaps I may ask a couple of questions. One is on unwrapped fruit. If one goes shopping, one normally buys a lot of things, including, say, four oranges. That means the shopping will be automatically exempt from the charge. That seems to be an inconsistency and, to my mind, not all that sensible. My other question is about publicity for the scheme. Surely one needs to encourage supermarkets to have publicity at the point of sale and wider so that people know what they are about. That will encourage people to take reusable bags.
Lord De Mauley
My Lords, my experience when buying oranges in the same way as the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, is that supermarkets tend to offer a very light bag specifically for that purpose. We are talking about a very light bag, not one into which he could put the whole of the rest of his bottles and other heavy items. I hope I made that as clear as I can. He also asked about publicity and I entirely agree with him. We very much hope that retailers will do as he suggests.