HC Deb 30 April 1990 vol 171 cc451-2W
Mr. Andrew Welsh

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if, pursuant to his answer to the hon. Member for Angus, East on 24 April on waste disposal sites, he will consider introducing a national register of landfill sites; and if he will make a statement.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton

District and islands councils in Scotland are the competent authorities with respect to waste management. Each council is required by law to have at its principal office a register containing copies of all current waste disposal licences issued by the council. Accordingly, we have no plans to introduce a national register of landfill sites.

Mr. Andrew Welsh

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the research and development projects currently being undertaken into waste disposal by his Department and other agencies, listing the cost and number of people employed in each project.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton

Research into waste disposal management and practices is normally commissioned by the DOE on a United Kingdom basis. Details of the work currently under way were given in a reply to my hon. Friend the Member for Devizes (Sir C. Morrison) on 23 April 1990 at columns2–4. Nevertheless, in order to investigate a particular issue within Scotland we recently contributed £15,000 towards the cost of a study into waste arising in central Scotland being carried out by the SDA.

Mr. Andrew Welsh

To ask the Secretary of State for Scotland if he will list the operational waste disposal sites which have been identified by the hazardous waste inspectorate in 1989 as having the potential to generate methane gas.

Lord James Douglas-Hamilton

In 1988, the Department asked district and islands councils to identify all sites in their areas which had received biodegradable (potentially methane-generating) waste since 1960. They identified 520 such sites, of which 216 were operational. In February 1989, the authorities were urged by the Department to monitor and take appropriate action at all the sites in accordance with guidelines contained in waste management paper No. 27, "The Control of Landfill Gas".

In view of the limited information available from the survey and the need for further work by the authorities to confirm the extent of any landfill gas problems, it would be inappropriate to publish details of the sites. However, a follow—up survey to review progress will be undertaken shortly, and I expect an appropriate summary to be available in due course.