HL Deb 09 December 2003 vol 655 cc736-42

9.15 p.m.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton

rose to move, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 1st December be approved [First Report from the Joint Committee]

. The noble Baroness said: My Lords, I beg to move the Motion standing in the name of my noble friend Lord Whitty.

The regulations set business recovery and recycling targets for packaging waste for the years 2004 to 2008. They also make other changes to the existing legislation which are designed to improve the working of the present system. Subject to approval the regulations will come into effect on 1st January 2004.

The packaging regulations have been in place since 1997 and were designed to allow the UK to meet the targets in the 1994 EC directive on packaging and packaging waste in 2001. We know already that there will be higher recovery and recycling targets to be met in 2008 and these are reflected in the regulations before us.

The regulations require businesses covered by the law to take responsibility, either individually or by joining a compliance scheme, for ensuring that target levels of recovery and recycling of packaging waste are met each year.

We have done well so far. As a result of those businesses affected meeting their recycling obligations, the United Kingdom achieved a 44 per cent recycling and a 50 per cent recovery rate for packaging waste by the end of 2002. This is an increase in recycling of 17 percentage points and in recovery of 20 percentage points since the regulations came into force in 1997.

We believe that by setting future targets for the period 2004 to 2008, as requested by business and endorsed in the consultation held earlier this year, and by making improvements to the systems for the collection and recycling of packaging waste, these regulations will enable the United Kingdom to meet its future packaging directive requirements and make an important contribution to the achievement of the UK waste strategies and the sustainable development of our economy.

It would be remiss of me were I not to note how grateful we are for the work of the Advisory Committee on Packaging under its chairman, John Turner, for its valuable input into this comprehensive review. In drawing up the regulations we have accepted most of the recommendations of the ACP, which were also, for the most part, endorsed in the consultation. I commend the regulations to the House.

Moved, That the draft regulations laid before the House on 1st December be approved [First Report from the Joint Committee].—(Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton.)

Lord Dixon-Smith

My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Baroness for her clear exposition of the regulations. Would that the regulations themselves were as clear.

I am rather in the position where I am reminded of a song from my youth about 10 green bottles standing on a wall. We are now down to six—seven including the Deputy Speaker.

I am not happy about the procedures in which we are indulging ourselves. Last week we knew that these regulations were to come before the House. I could get a copy of the 1997 regulations; I could get a copy of the 2002 regulations; I could get a copy of the original EC directive. Could I get a copy of the regulations we are discussing today? I could not. It was not until yesterday that I finally received a typescript copy of these regulations and a printed copy was available today. I do not believe I was in a unique situation, but it has made it extremely difficult for us to find out what the regulations are about and to be properly briefed by those who will be affected by them. The regulations apply to industry, but if one reads them, although they are written in impeccable English, one needs an academic lawyer to interpret them, who must go through all the background to know exactly what they are all about.

Be that as it may, I accept that the purpose of the regulations is benign and I do not want to delay their implementation. However, it has certainly not been easy to find out exactly what has happened. I accept that there has been consultation with the industry; but whether the regulations are on the same basis as the consultation is another matter. As far as I can make out, they are not. The percentage required to be recycled or recovered is greater than in the original consultation.

I am slightly puzzled, because the regulations are being introduced to deal with an anticipated EU directive in 2008. Why do we need to regulate now to provide for a situation that may have changed by the time we have to deal with it? I cannot help but wonder whether we are not gold-plating the provision to some degree. We know that consultation with the industry was based on 61 per cent recovery or recycling by 2004, but the regulations now demand 63 per cent. I should be grateful if the noble Baroness would explain why that change has been made.

Another small change may not be fundamental, but the industry compliance plans under the old regime, if I may put it that way, had to be submitted by 30th June. Now, under the regulations, those plans must be submitted by 31st January. The implementation date for the new regulations is 1st January 2004. Is the requirement that those plans be submitted by 31st January to apply when the regulations are implemented, or from a year later? If we are in effect giving the industry two weeks' notice of a major shift in the timing of plans being provided to the authorities, we are putting it in a difficult position.

The regulations will not be cheap for the industry. Some new offences are included that may cause problems. There is a step increase in the cost of licences, which are essential to be involved in recovery or recycling—one cannot do that without a licence. If one moves from recycling 400 tonnes to 401 tonnes, that extra tonne will cost another £2,150 on the licence. That is an interesting anomaly that does not encourage an expansive and dynamic industry.

That said, those are criticisms of procedure and of the rush with which the regulations are being introduced, because it has not been possible to receive sufficient explanation from the industry. I look forward to hearing what the noble Baroness has to say in reply.

Baroness Hamwee

My Lords, having arrived breathless at the last minute, without having realised that this important matter was on the Order Paper, I have been persuaded by my noble friends sitting in array on the Front Bench to say something on it. I am delighted to be able to do so, but I must confess that I have not had the opportunity to undertake the research that clearly the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, has done.

Does the noble Baroness, Lady Farrington of Ribbleton, agree that there is no room for complacency in our discussion of the issue? This country does not have good recycling targets. There are honourable exceptions, but, on average, we are pretty poor at reducing waste. The explanatory note on the order refers to stimulating the recycling market. Can the noble Baroness comment on stimulating the market for products made from recycled materials? I am aware of London Remade, which does good work but in an inevitably limited fashion. The memorandum also refers to the producer calculating its recovery and recycling obligations; but is the point not to reduce waste before one reaches the stage of reusing and recycling? I hope that, in working towards the targets set in this order and, no doubt, others, we remember not to lose sight of that important point.

I have difficulty in understanding the extent to which the order applies to packaging waste discarded by households. Obviously, in this context the term "domestic" refers to the UK rather than households. However, I will not be the only householder sitting in this Chamber who finds the amount of packaging that one inevitably acquires, very often as a result of buying the simplest item, quite offensive. Although one tries, one cannot always leave the shops with a brown paper bag of apples. They are packed on a polystyrene tray, possibly covered with rigid plastic or sealing plastic, for instance.

Noble Lords who have been to the Republic of Ireland recently will have been hugely impressed by the change of culture, almost overnight, as a result of the tax on plastic bags. That means not only that plastic bags no longer hang from hedgerows throughout the country, waving at you, but more importantly, a material is not being used, discarded and then disposed of in landfill sites. Many of us would like to be forced to think about taking a bag with us when we go shopping.

Baroness Farrington of Ribbleton

My Lords, I am delighted that the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, arrived in time to take part in this short debate. Perhaps the Government, in full consultation with and operation alongside the industry, have got it right. The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, implied that we were going too quickly, and the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, that we were going too slowly. As it seems to be a night for declaring age, musical interests and infirmities, I find—and I am sure that the noble Lord, Lord McNally, will find when he reaches my great age—that not only hankering after records of the 1950s but not even being able to open packets of biscuits becomes a problem.

I agree with reusing materials and reducing waste production. We are not gold-plating the directive; we have set business targets in the UK regulations to achieve the directive targets that we must meet in 2008. There may have been a little confusion. The 20th November business targets are different from the directive targets.

The intention of the directive and the regulations in driving recycling is also to promote greater use of recycled materials. The use of these materials by producers will result in lower costs of compliance for the industry—to answer the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith.

I note the comment made by the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, about plastic bags. Some supermarkets now discourage the use of bags by offering reusable bags at a reasonable price. I have dealt with the issue of over-packaging. In these strategies, we have set national standards for the recycling and composting of all household waste. Those have been underpinned by challenging statutory performance standards for local authority recycling. More than half the 10 million tonnes or so of packaging waste arises in the household stream, as the noble Baroness recognises. We believe that this work in the industry plays an important role alongside that issue.

I am sorry about the problem referred to by the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, about the statutory instrument. The draft statutory instrument was laid on the 19th November and 100 copies were sent to each House. It had to be withdrawn because of a clerical error—I know that the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, will remember the problem that we had when cattle and beef got mixed up in an order. In this case, it was necessary to change the word "or" to "and". However, printed copies of the replacement were available on Friday 5th December. Another statutory instrument was actually re-laid the same day that it was withdrawn.

We are aware that reprocessors are falling just below the fee threshold and could be affected, but there are only very few in this category. Recent data supplied by the Environment Agency suggest that there only seven reprocessers issuing between 400 and 500 PRNs.

We have not yet published the responses to the consultation. Our summary of the responses will be placed on the Defra website shortly. In the mean time, we have indicated in the regulatory impact assessments, especially the RIA on other changes, what percentage of responses were in favour of a particular proposal and the types of comments received.

The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, questioned the timing and procedure related to setting out targets. Targets were agreed in the common position reached by member states in September 2002. That was endorsed at second reading in the European Parliament. The targets are now legally agreed. Some other issues have been holding up agreement on the directive, but I am pleased to inform noble Lords that agreement has been formally reached in the past few days. The targets agreed to in the common position are available on the Commission's website. I also stress that we need to plan ahead, because we have to meet a target by 2008.

We expect the new regulations to come into force on 1st January and updated compliance plans will be due on 31st January 2004. Most schemes already know what their membership is likely to be next year. They will be updating an existing three-year plan, not developing a new one.

The noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, also raised the issue of the 61 per cent recovery target being changed to a target of 63 per cent for 2004. Since publication of the consultation paper, the data that we used to calculate the targets have changed. Third quarter reprocessor data suggest that the UK is recovering more packaging waste this year than had been expected, although, to quote the noble Baroness, Lady Hamwee, we are not complacent. That changes the starting point for the new targets. We have been informed by the industry that the amount of glass, wood and packaging waste in the waste stream is higher than previously thought. That means that a higher target is needed to achieve the required results.

I thank noble Lords for taking part in this short debate.

On Question, Motion agreed to.

House adjourned at twenty-five minutes before ten o'clock.