§ Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Ms Bridget Prentice.]
9.22 pm§ Mr. Peter Atkinson (Hexham)I am glad to be able to raise a matter of considerable concern to my constituents, and grateful to the Minister for being here to respond to my remarks, and those of the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith), who may wish to take part in the debate. I realise that Thursday nights are not popular with Ministers who have to attend Adjournment debates, and I shall be as quick as I can.
The background to the debate is a decision by Northumberland county council to close nine of its 15 civic amenities sites as a means of saving £400,000 a year. That decision will cause problems to residents of Northumberland, and it poses the threat of fly tipping to the landscape of a county that is one of the most beautiful in the United Kingdom. To ensure that my argument is fully understood, let me say that what we mean by "civic amenities sites" are the tips where people take rubbish in the back of their cars. They can dump large items of furniture, garden waste and other things that dustbin collectors will not take away.
Northumberland decided on the cut as a panic measure following the Government's decision to loot the budgets of rural shire counties in England and Wales so that they could switch the money to suburban and urban areas. Despite denials from Ministers that that is so, the fact of that raid on the budgets of shire counties is confirmed by Unison in its newly published document, "Financing our future: putting the case for a fair deal for local councils", in which it lists 19 local authorities in crisis. Thirteen of them are rural shire counties, including Northumberland, which, unusually, is Labour-controlled.
Before the election, the Labour party trumpeted its plans to attack the funding of Westminster and Wandsworth councils as part of its "soak the rich" policy, while at the same time planning this raid on rural shire counties. Northumberland was the worst victim of that. As it happened, despite the cuts in their budget, Westminster and Wandsworth both set the lowest council tax levels in this country. In fact, Wandsworth cut its council tax level by 25 per cent. It is illustrative to note that, in Wandsworth, people living in a band D house pay £322 a year—that is in an affluent part of Greater London—while in Northumberland, council tax payers in an equivalent band of house pay between £812 and £833, so one can see the difference.
I could allow myself a certain wry smile at that because, in previous years, when the Conservatives were in government, every year that Northumberland county council received a rise well in excess of inflation, it used to complain that it was not enough. The local authority's public relations machine went into action to fill residents with horrors about cuts. I remember one local newspaper talking about all school meals being axed because of Conservative Government cuts. However, in the first year of this Government, Northumberland county council has received its worst-ever settlement—0.39 per cent., which was the worst of any local authority.
Three issues emerge from this decision. The first is whether the action by Northumberland county council in closing the nine sites is illegal. If it is not illegal, it is 597 certainly against the spirit of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which says that civic amenity sites—tips—should be reasonably accessible to the people whom they are intended to serve.
The second point that emerges is that there is no real saving, certainly not for council tax payers. Although the decision may clear £400,000 from Northumberland county council's budget, it adds costs to all the district authorities, which are now having to put in different schemes to avoid a rash of fly tipping throughout the county. The third important issue that emerges is that there is a difference of opinion between the Government and the Environment Agency. In the agency itself, there appears to be some confusion about the regulations that surround the manning and operation of civic amenity sites.
Northumberland is a sparse county. It has a small population, which is widely scattered. For example, the closure of the civic amenity site at Haltwhistle means a round trip of 30 miles for people who live in that town to dump rubbish in the site at Hexham. In Allendale Town, it means a 20-mile round trip to dump rubbish. In West Woodburn, the area of the north Tyne, again, it means a further 20 miles. One of the larger settlements in my constituency, Ponteland, which has more than 11,000 inhabitants, has also lost its tip. That means that those people now face a round trip of around 15 miles to dump rubbish. How on earth can that be called "reasonably accessible", as required by the Environmental Protection Act?
As a result of the closures, there has already been a rise in the amount of fly tipping in the county. In particular, farmers have complained that they are the ones who are having to pick up the bill for illegal tipping on their land.
Local councils, particularly Tynedale district council in my constituency, are looking at alternative schemes to make good the shortfall that has been created by the county council. They have a system of putting amenity skips in parishes throughout their area, all of which will be costly to operate. Therefore, the county council's decision has simply transferred the cost from its budget to council tax payers through district council rates. Council tax payers are getting a double whammy out of this decision.
I move to the third point: the difference between the Government and the Environment Agency on the question of how the tips are operated. One of the points that I made in a letter to the Minister when the decision was first announced, was that it seemed that the rules and regulations that apply to the manning of rural tips were excessive.
For example, a tip such as the one that has been closed in Allendale should not require staffing every hour that it is open. It is a rural area in the north Pennines. The risk of vandalism or of dangerous chemicals being deposited must be low. The Minister gave some comfort in her letter to me in February that the Department was considering revising the guidance given to the Environment Agency about that but the agency subsequently said that it would under no circumstances allow any tip to be unmanned in any area. In a letter to me, it made it clear that it believes that there are risks in having unmanned tips.
Citing the risks show how ridiculous they are when applied to rural areas. Tips could be set on fire. People could put engine oil, asbestos or lead acid batteries into 598 them if they were unsupervised. Sites could be subject to scavenging by totters. For sites in one of the most remote parts of the United Kingdom, the Allen valley, that is extraordinary.
While in urban areas there could be such risks, in rural areas they would be minor. There would be a chance to catch any dangerous chemicals when the rubbish was resorted at the waste transfer station. There is a risk of car batteries being dumped into skips on civic amenity sites. It is better to take such a risk when the waste would end up in a properly designed landfill site than to risk allowing it to end up in a ditch or water course in a wood or behind a hedge. The confusion should be sorted out by the Minister. There should be scope for rural sites to have less frequent staffing. There are opportunities for video surveillance of sites. Physical barriers can be installed to stop trade waste being left by builders with lorries if there is a particular worry about that.
Ironically, while the Environment Agency nationally says that it will not countenance such arrangements, locally, where it has to cope with the legacy of the problem, it has been running around advising my local council that it is all right to put amenity skips in rural villages which would be equally vulnerable to having illegal waste discharged into them. It suggests that parish councils should assist in policing skips to prevent abuse. It is ridiculous to expect parish councillors to stand guard over amenity skips while saying that fixed sites in other rural communities need to be staffed whenever they are open. The mere fact of staffing put up the cost to Northumberland county council and was one of the reasons why it decided to make the cut.
I urge the Minister to intervene with Northumberland county council to point out that no one could say that a 30-mile round trip made a site reasonably accessible. I want her to put pressure on the Environment Agency to sort out the guidance and regulations that affect the manning and running of civic amenity sites. I want her to tell the Environment Agency to reconsider the possibility of allowing some rural sites to be unmanned for some of the week so that they are available for local people to use and the threat of dumping rubbish, litter and dangerous chemicals in the county of Northumberland is reduced.
§ Mr. A. J. Beith (Berwick-upon-Tweed)I am glad that the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) has secured this debate, and I agree with his plea for something to be done. I do not think that Northumberland county council realised what outrage would be engendered in the rural parts of the county by the closure of the tips. In Wooler and Seahouses, this has aroused more fury, and given rise to more campaigning, than almost any local issue I can remember for a long time—especially now that people are becoming ever more conscious of the environment.
The distances involved for my constituents are even greater than those referred to by the hon. Member for Hexham. People going from the Wooler and Seahouses areas to Berwick face a 40-mile round trip, which does not constitute reasonable accessibility under the terms of the Act. They have to go to Berwick or a place south of Alnwick to find their facilities. That is too far to expect people to travel; every car journey involves the burning of fossil fuel, thereby adding to pollution of the environment. Fly tipping follows in the areas of the tips and elsewhere, and it is Berwick borough council and the district councils which have to pick up the costs. 599 The background to the problem concerns the financial position of the county council. The problems did not begin with the present Government; for the past seven years, the county has had adverse local government settlements—although the Labour leader of the county council has written to me pointing out that this year's settlement, from this Government, is the worst of any to date. I hope that the message will go back from Ministers dealing with those problems that Northumberland county council has been left in an unreasonable financial position.
However, none of that excuses this decision, with all its consequences. When I suggested to the Minister some weeks ago that she try to help, she responded by saying that the Environment Agency should reconsider its approach to the manning of tips—that was her opinion expressed in a parliamentary answer. Since then, the agency has thrown out her suggestion, claiming that it could not contemplate such a change. In a letter to me, the agency stated that it would be unacceptable to have unmanned tips.
I find this attitude obscurantist and mistaken. I am fortunate to live within half a mile of a waste transfer station. When I have bulky waste, it is not difficult to take it there, but when I go at weekends, I never see the man managing the tip, because he is busy inside the building sorting materials with his bulldozer. I just deposit my rubbish—paper, metals or whatever—in the appropriate receptacle. I do not see him, he does not see me. He is doing a useful job, but it is not necessary for him to be there the moment someone arrives at the site.
There needs to be some flexibility in rural areas—some means of ensuring that facilities are not completely withdrawn just because it is impossible to provide a Rolls-Royce service in every remote community. The real problem is that people make decisions at their desks in London or Leeds on the basis of what works in urban areas, without considering what happens in rural areas.
Now that the Environment Agency has thrown the idea back at the Minister, I must ask her what options she is going to encourage. I submit that the tips can be run unmanned, or manned only part time with supervision only at certain times of the day; or they could be opened only on certain days of the week.
Our tips used to be scavenged by totters, who did quite a bit of constructive recycling. Indeed, more recycling was carried out by the totters than goes on under the more bureaucratic current arrangements—they had uses for many of the materials deposited. The only danger was that a person could tip a load into a skip without realising that there was someone else in it at the time—I have known that to happen. Still, they performed a useful recycling function.
Another option is that the authority should develop the sites constructively with occasional manning, given the latitude to do so, and with more sorting and more recycling. People campaigning to get the tips reopened are keen to participate in a scheme that would increase the amount of recycling, thereby reducing the county's landfill bill. It would be far better if the tips were practically organised in a way suited to rural areas, and that ensured that more recyclable material was actually recycled and less went into landfill. That would result in the payment of less landfill tax.
600 I plead with the Minister to help us to persuade the county council to apply itself to a solution; to persuade the Environment Agency not to stand in the way; and to help us find an answer to what has become a very difficult problem.
§ The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions (Angela Eagle)I congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham (Mr. Atkinson) on his success in obtaining this Adjournment debate. The subject is clearly of great local concern and raises important issues.
I shall begin by outlining the legislative background to the matter. A number of controls are in place to ensure that waste is managed safely and recovered or disposed of without harming human health or the environment. As the hon. Member for Hexham said, the main controls are set out in part II of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which fulfils the UK's obligations under the amended European framework directive on waste. As one can see from the date of the Act, those arrangements were formulated under the previous Administration.
Under section 51 of the Act, the county council, as a waste disposal authority, has a duty to arrange
for places to be provided at which persons resident in the area may deposit their household wasteand to ensure that those so-called civic amenity sites are—as was mentioned in the debate—"reasonably accessible". Clearly, that means that they must be within the area of the authority responsible, be open at all reasonable times and be available for residents to deposit their waste free of charge. In answer to the hon. Gentleman's question about whether the council's action is legal, I have to tell him that the definition of reasonably accessible is a matter for the courts. He may want to pursue that.The Environment Agency is responsible for the administration and enforcement of the licensing system, and I have no reason to suspect that Northumberland county council is not fulfilling its statutory duty. However, as I said, the definition of reasonably accessible is crucial in that instance. The Act does not stipulate what is reasonable in terms of the number and location of civic amenity sites to be provided. That is quite properly a matter for the county council to determine, which the Government would not want rigidly to dictate at national level, partly because of the fact, which the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed (Mr. Beith) mentioned, that local circumstances can differ. It is difficult to make hard and fast rules that apply to every civic amenity site in every location, whether it is in an area of rural sparsity or the middle of a bustling urban conurbation. The right hon. Gentleman is right to point out that needs can vary in those different places.
I hope that the hon. Member for Hexham and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed will appreciate that neither I nor my Department has powers to intervene and dictate what is reasonable provision in any given area and would not want to do so. We therefore have no plans to issue guidance on the matter. I am sure that my Department could come to a view on the matter, but it would have no particular legal 601 force, since the interpretation of the law is a matter for the courts. We need to be wary of encouraging central Government to make such arbitrary rulings.
I understand and have considerable sympathy with those bodies and individuals, including the hon. Member for Hexham and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, who have written to my Department and the Environment Agency expressing concern about the possible effects of the closing of nine of the 15 local civic amenity sites that were being operated by Northumberland county council, such as the ones in Allendale, Wooler and Seahouses. However, I am informed that the remaining six still take over 15,000 tonnes of waste per annum, which is more than 50 per cent. of the total civic amenity site waste in the county and that the hon. Member for Hexham and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed each have two sites in their respective constituencies.
The hon. Member for Hexham and the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed have pointed out some of the difficulties that closure of sites has caused people, particularly those in rural areas, in their constituencies and the area of the county council. I understand that the county council has met the district councils in the area with a view to determining how their collection services may be further utilised to ameliorate the effects of the closures. From those discussions, it has been confirmed that the closures are temporary, which may represent a little light at the end of the tunnel.
The Environment Agency has already been understanding in its enforcement of the regulations, so I hope that the hon. Member for Hexham will realise that there is a little more flexibility than he might have imagined. Since the publication of statutory guidance in waste management paper 4 in 1994 regarding the operation of civic amenity sites, a phased programme to enforce compliance was agreed with Northumberland to facilitate the adjustment to the new regulatory demands.
In addition, a number of options have been suggested by Environment Agency regional staff to assist Northumberland in the provision of civic amenity facilities sites. Those include charging for use by commercial customers to offset part of the cost of operating the site; part-time opening, as the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed suggested, to reduce operational costs; and the provision of amenity skips, which the hon. Member for Hexham mentioned in his contribution.
I understand that the agency has written to Tynedale district council, for example, regarding the placing of publicly accessible amenity skips in each of its parishes. If certain precautionary measures are undertaken, the agency would allow such a scheme to proceed. Similarly, mobile collection vehicles could be provided, as they are in other rural areas.
My Department and the Environment Agency are also considering the possibility of unstaffed civic amenity sites. Whatever the local office might have told the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed, those are under consideration.
602 Current statutory guidance in waste management paper 4, to which the Environment Agency is required to have regard in the discharge of its licensing functions, states that
the licensee"—of civic amenity sites—should have the site manned during opening hours".Recent consultation on the subject raised the question whether the particular needs of rural and remote areas make the cost of staffing civic amenity sites disproportionately high for small sites, and force their closure.There are still outstanding issues raised by the Environment Agency about possible public health implications arising from untended equipment, vandalism, arson and the disposal of potentially hazardous waste at such unmanned sites. Perhaps a car acid battery would not create a major problem, but asbestos might. Such issues require careful consideration, which the Environment Agency is undertaking.
It may be possible, for example, to provide the agency with the discretion to license unmanned civic amenity sites in rural or remote areas where, in its view, the environment and public health could best be protected by the provision of such sites. That raises the question of balance, which the hon. Member for Hexham mentioned in relation to fly tipping. Aspects such as capacity and numbers of skips, the types of waste and the frequency of collection of waste would have to be taken into account.
Before we proceed with any such revision, it is important that we are satisfied that its terms will provide adequate protection to the environment and human health. However, I am anxious to conclude the issue as quickly as possible, and we hope to make a final decision on any revision of waste management paper 4 soon.
I understand the concern about possible increases in fly tipping. I can confirm that Northumberland county council and its contractor remain obligated under the waste management licence provisions for the closed sites and their environs. They must therefore deal with fly-tipped rubbish there. More generally, the responsibility for monitoring illegal tipping, clearance of the wastes involved and pursuing offenders lies with a number of organisations, including local authorities, the police and the Environment Agency.
The Environment Agency is continuing to monitor the situation closely throughout the country, not just in Northumberland, and is working with local authorities to monitor and control fly tipping and prosecute offenders. An emergency hotline number, which I shall give the right hon. and hon. Gentlemen so that they can issue it to their constituents when the need arises—0800 607080—has been established and widely published so that vehicles and individuals involved in fly tipping can be reported.
When the landfill tax was introduced, it was accepted that it would cause local authorities extra costs in the disposal of household waste. The hon. Member for Hexham will remember that, as the tax was introduced by the previous Administration, whom he supported.
It is, however, important that councils should have the same encouragement as businesses to look for more sustainable ways of dealing with their waste—to look 603 at the whole life cycle issues of waste, not just deal with the initial problem. When the local government finance settlement for 1996–97 was made, the previous Administration claimed that the extra costs of the landfill tax had been "taken into account" in the settlement.
In his March Budget, my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced that the landfill tax would be increased from £7 per tonne to £10 per tonne from April 1999. The delay in the increase is intended to allow local authorities and others to budget for the extra costs; clearly, discussions with local government on the financial settlement for 1999–2000 will need to cover the extra costs imposed by the tax.
The hon. Member for Hexham will be aware that my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Environment recently issued a consultation paper on the future waste strategy, entitled "Less Waste, More Value." In that, we floated suggestions for possible improvements to the efficiency and effectiveness of current grant arrangements for local government waste management services. For example, we raised the idea of a possible change to a system whereby districts—as waste collection authorities—receive grant in support of waste management, and are charged by counties' waste disposal authorities on the basis of tonnage of waste delivered for disposal. Government encouragement for public-private partnerships is also available, for example, in the form of private finance initiative credits, and we shall consider how such investment, for example, in new recycling facilities, perhaps in supra-district facilities for the disposal of rubbish in a more environmentally sensitive way, could be developed. Hon. Members need to bear in mind the forthcoming landfill directive from the European Union, which will force a change in the way that rubbish is disposed of.
604 The consultation document makes it clear that we are concerned about the risk of increased waste transport. The right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed was right to point out that there is an environmental cost when waste is transported long distances by road. Local authorities should think carefully about the full range of implications of their decisions on waste, not just the initial cost and the direct impact on the environment of waste disposal, but factors such as emissions from transport of waste in council lorries. "Less Waste, More Value" also recognises the importance of encouraging households to think carefully about what they throw out, and about how their patterns of consumption can lead to increased waste.
One possible way of making households more aware of their environmental impact is to legislate to allow councils to charge for waste collection and disposal on the basis of the amount that each household throws out, instead of including the cost in the council tax, as at present. However, that type of scheme would work only if households had real alternatives for dealing with their waste—in particular, local recycling facilities, or even separate collection of recyclable materials.
Of course we realise that recycling poses particular challenges in rural areas, and we are also interested in ideas such as scrap schemes, which are a slightly more organised version of the totter that the right hon. Member for Berwick-upon-Tweed and the hon. Member for Hexham mentioned.
We need to look long and hard at any proposals for rural areas, to ensure that they are fair, especially for families with children and for poorer households. I congratulate the hon. Member for Hexham on obtaining tonight's debate, and I hope that I have been able to give him some reassurances on this especially worrisome issue.
§ Question put and agreed to.
§ Adjourned accordingly at nine minutes to Ten o'clock.