HL Deb 29 June 1988 vol 498 cc1697-9WA
The Earl of Kimberley

asked Her Majesty's Government:

What conclusions they have reached following the public consultation exercise on waste disposal law amendment.

The Earl of Caithness

The Department of the Environment and the Welsh Office have announced today the Government's conclusions on the amendment of waste disposal law in the light of comments received on the public consultation paper issued on 15th September 1986. Copies of those comments whose authors agreed to publication are being placed in the Library of the House, together with copies of the 1986 consultation paper, a detailed statement of the two departments' conclusions and a compliance cost assessment estimating the costs of these measures for industry. The Government intend to enact all the main proposals set out in the 1986 consultation paper.

A statutory duty of care will be imposed on both producers and holders of waste. Guidance on the duty will be set out in a code of practice. Carriers of waste will be obliged to register with a waste disposal authority, and there will be provision for the revocation or refusal of registration to persons with unspent convictions for relevant offences.

The Secretary of State will be able to make regulations empowering waste disposal authorities to refuse, revoke, suspend, or refuse the transfer of waste disposal licences to unfit persons. The regulations will be able to specify, as grounds for judging fitness, an applicant's previous unspent convictions, financial resources or technical competence (once a suitable certificate of competence has been introduced in the industry). Goods vehicle operator licensing authorities will be enabled to take account of convictions of relevant pollution offences in operator licensing.

Waste disposal authorities will be empowered to impose conditions requiring pollution control measures at licensed waste disposal sites to continue as long as may be necessary to make each site safe. Licence holders will no longer be able to surrender a licence until they have satisfied the authority that their site is safe.

Other amendments will be made to the Control of Pollution Act 1974 to enable prosecutions for the breach of any waste disposal licence conditions, to permit the licensing of mobile plant, to provide for appeals against delay by authorities in modifying licences and to empower the Secretary of State to direct the disposal of particular waste.

The Government will introduce nationally prescribed charges by waste disposal authorities for -the issue of site licences and the registration of waste carriers. The burden of licensing and enforcement will therefore be lifted from local government who will recover their reasonable costs by these charges There will be some increase in central government work under new provisions for appeals to the Secretary of State. The main burden of these proposals will fall on industry, either directly through the additional care to be required or indirectly through charges. The estimate in the compliance cost assessment is that these might add some £22 million to industry's annual costs. We believe that this is a price worth paying for increasing the effectiveness of waste regulation. These measures command a wide measure of support from industry and pollution control bodies. The Government will introduce legislation embodying them when parliamentary time permits.

Since the 1986 consultation exercise a number of further possible improvements to waste disposal law have been considered. The department and the Welsh Office are preparing a short additional consultation paper on these new proposals which will be issued shortly.