Environment: 25-year Plan

Viscount Hanworth Excerpts

Monday 29th January 2018 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Hanworth (Lab)]

My Lords, I declare that I am a member of the European Union Energy and Environment Sub-Committee. My reason for this declaration is that I wish to allude to some of the evidence that we have heard from witnesses and to some of the ministerial replies to our inquiries regarding their opinions on proposed legislation from the European Union.

The Green Paper on the 25-year plan for the environment, which we are discussing, is full of laudable ambitions and good intentions. I hesitate to be critical of it. However, we have been waiting a very long time to see this document. It is the product of an agenda that has suffered significant delays. It is appropriate to question the Government’s commitment to some of their declared aims. The issues on which I wish to concentrate are the disposal of our domestic and industrial waste and its recycling. This also entails the composition of the waste and the question of what can be done to make it more amenable to recycling and less harmful to the environment.

The European Union has proposed some stringent targets for recycling. These are expressed, somewhat crudely, as the percentage of the waste, by weight, that should be recycled. A target to recycle 65% of urban waste by 2035 was agreed by the European Council and the European Parliament in December. The proposal now awaits a vote of approval by the member states. The target has already been reduced from 70% by 2030, which was initially proposed by the European Parliament. However, the UK has asserted that it cannot support even the lesser target. The UK delegation has proposed a 55% minimum target, while declaring that it has been unable to identify a mix of policies that would be effective in reaching a higher target. Nevertheless, waste management is a devolved matter, and Scotland and Wales have both adopted a 70% target.

Our committee has been struck by the variability of the recycling rates across the country, even within limited geographic areas. Thus, whereas South Oxfordshire already achieves a 67% rate of recycling, Greater London has a far lesser rate of 32% and the rate for the London Borough of Newham is a mere 14%. The explanations for the derelictions of some local authorities that have been offered to our committee have sounded unconvincing. It has been asserted that it is far more challenging to achieve high rates of recycling in urban areas than in rural areas and that many local authorities are locked into waste management contracts.

The truth seems to be that rates of recycling are correlated with the incomes available to local authorities. The matter has surely been exacerbated by the cuts to local authority incomes and expenditures that the Government have imposed. In any case, the degree of variability in the rate of recycling is indicative of a lack of a co-ordinated national policy. It is clear that, if the Government were willing, we could do much better.

The pronouncements that have accompanied the publication of the Green Paper suggest that the Government are keen to confront a wide range of environmental issues. However, a cursory examination of some of the practical proposals belies this impression. For example, the proposals for dealing with the menace of single-use plastic items are wholly inadequate. The 5p charge on plastic bags, which had been imposed on larger retailers, has now been extended to smaller shops. It should have been applied universally in the first instance and, in any case, it has already been mandated in European Union legislation. The scourge of plastic packaging should have been addressed by imposing a cost upon manufacturers commensurate with the environmental damage that it inflicts. There should be mandatory design guidelines to eliminate polymer mixes in plastic packaging that make recycling close to impossible. Many single-use plastic products should be banned.

Much of our plastic waste has been exported to China, but from January China has banned imports of such waste. The consequence is that, until we establish adequate facilities for recycling it, this plastic waste will be consigned to landfill sites or exported to some of our European neighbours for incineration as refuse-derived fuel. The Government have been unwilling to adopt any of the obvious measures and it is difficult to understand why. Perhaps the answer lies in their adherence to a free-market ideology that discourages intervention of Governments in commerce and industry and exalts the sovereignty of consumers.

An odd accompaniment to the 25-year environment plan is a cost-benefit analysis that expounds the metaphysical concept of the capital value of the environment. This has been the work of the Natural Capital Committee, a group of self-styled neo-classical economists who have been appointed to the task by the Government. Cost-benefit analyses attempt to apply the precepts of commercial project appraisal to social investments and to other initiatives of public authorities that have an enduring effect. This has to be done in the absence of markets that could determine the monetary values of the outcomes. It is proposed that, in the absence of a market value, consumers should be asked to declare what they would be willing to pay to obtain the benefits of a project or to avoid its detriments. This is not an appropriate way to determine how we should confront the threats to our environment. Instead of seeking to uncover the self-interested opinions of individual consumers, we should seek to create a social consensus in favour of actions that might save us from the sort of thoughtless folly that is bound to result in a universal detriment. It is the duty of Governments to take a lead in forming such a consensus, and I do not believe that this Government are fulfilling their duty adequately.