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Spelman defends Waste Review
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The Environment Secretary came under fire during a recent House of Commons debate (30 June 2011)
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5/07/2011
Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman has defended the government’s decision not to impose a recycling target for England amidst criticism from MPs over an apparent lack of ambition in the government’s Waste Review.
In a recent debate (30 June) in the House of Commons, Shadow Waste and Recycling Minister Jamie Reed called on the Environment Minister to explain why she has scrapped recycling targets for England, adding that the apparent lack of ambition in the Review “belongs entirely to the Secretary of State (Spelman).” Mr Reed also repeated The Sunday Times assessment of the Review as a “sloppy, flybrown mess.”
In response, Mrs Spelman labelled Mr Reed’s comments as a “gross distortion”, adding that the government has not in fact scrapped recycling targets but is committed to EU recycling targets.
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Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman
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“In addition, we have more ambition with regard to landfill, which exceeds the ambition of the previous government and involves proposals not to bury metal and wood in landfill,” the Environment Secretary added.
Joan Ruddock, Labour MP for Lewisham, Deptford, also attacked Mrs Spelman for not adopting recommendations by environmental group Friends of the Earth (FOE) to halve black sack waste by 2020, thereby creating jobs and reducing costs. (FOE: Waste Review is “embarrassingly vague”)
“I support the scale of the ambition of Friends of the Earth’s target, and we are of course bound by an EU target to recycle 50% of household refuse, but if targets are too specific they can be distorting, driving councils to meet centrally imposed indicators instead of doing what is best for their local circumstances,” Spelman said. She continued: “A good example of that was the landfill allowance trading scheme, which led to the anomaly of disincentivising the recycling of business waste.”
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Ross Dempsey, 05/07/2011 |
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| | | Paul M - Plymouth (Guest) | 11/07/2011 10:41 | The document is fairly vague and thin on substance but I suspect that this is entirely deliberate. There are three linked issues that we all need to be concerned about...the first being the statement " The government will be working with local councils to increase the frequency and quality of rubbish collections and make it easier to recycle”; the second being Eric Pickles' statement “It’s time to consign the failed policies of unfair bin taxes, bin fines and bin cuts to the dustbin of history. Families pay £120 a month in council tax. Both Whitehall and the town hall need to raise their game to deliver more frequent and better rubbish and recycling collections in return.”
Finally there is the recent announcement that S46 EPA is to repealed. When all three are considered together it becomes pretty clear that despite the public statement that the Government has shelved plans to force Council's to introduce a weekly collection in the face of opposition from Council's and the LGA they are fully intending to do this 'through the back door'. Abolishing S46 means of course that a Council will no longer have any legal powers to make householders separate waste, put bins at the curtilage, use bins supplied by the Council etc etc whilst of course still being under the legal obligation to provide a service as defined by S45. This will of course make life very difficult for LA's as it opens the doors for the Doretta Cock's of this world to legally challenge any aspect of the Council's collection policy that they don't agree with...be VERY afraid!!!!
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