UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE
To be published as HC 1100-i (see note below)
HOUSE OF COMMONS MINUTES OF EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE ENVIRONMENT, FOOD AND RURAL AFFAIRS COMMITTEE
WASTE STRATEGY FOR ENGLAND 2007
WEDNESDAY 15 OCTOBER 2008
MR PAUL LEINSTER and MS LIZ PARKES
MR STEVE LEE and MR ROBERT LISNEY
MR PHILLIP WARD
Evidence heard in Public
Q56 Paddy Tipping: Can I talk to you about specifics because you are a consultee on the planning process? There is a big new incinerator planned in north Nottinghamshire. You have not objected to it even though there is no heat being used from this incinerator. Why is that?
Mr Leinster: I will look into it.
Q57 Paddy Tipping: I was told by your local people that you were going to issue a policy paper that defined your position on the use of heat, but it is clear to me that this incinerator is going to be built with nowhere for the heat to go. In principle you ought to be objecting to it.
Ms Parkes: We do have a policy that requires heat to be recovered so we will have to look at why that has not happened.
Q58 Paddy Tipping: This has been built by means of a 25 year pfi. During the 25 years and in the next 25 years the way that we dispose of our waste will change radically. I do not think in 25 years’ time there will be enough waste to feed this incinerator. Is that a concern of yours?
Mr Leinster: Absolutely. What we should not be doing is having incinerators which then mean minimisation, re-use, recycling get impacted and that has to be over the 25 year period. I do have concerns over locking technologies in on a 25 year basis when technologies are moving as fast as they do.
Chairman: It will be all right. When they run out of municipal waste because of the new technologies, all the old Environment Agency records will be gone.
Q59 Lynne Jones: Birmingham already has a 30 year contract for its incinerator and amounts of waste which could be recovered are sent there. Why cannot Nottingham send some of their stuff that should be incinerated? There should be cooperation between the different authorities rather than new incinerators.
Ms Parkes: Defra’s advice on the Waste Strategy is very clear, that local authorities need to avoid being locked into long term contracts or plant that is too big. They need to be responsive to future, technological changes.
Q60 Mr Drew: Unless I am wrong, I think part of the problem with the whole pfi process to try and deal with the threat is that in a sense everybody is working in their own silo. You have your device. Defra have to make some decisions on whether they make the pfi credits available and then local authorities have to role this forward. There is a whole series of case studies of delay and obfuscation. Is it not better that we get much more joined up thinking and certainly joined up action to evolve strategies? I do not want one size fits all but you cannot have one authority in one place with an incinerator and another authority saying, “We are not having incineration at all”. They could be dishonest and send their stuff, dare I say it, to the incinerator next door which of course is not unknown. Where are we going to? Are you part of the solution or do you see yourselves as perhaps part of the problem unless we can grapple with this really successfully now, because an awful lot of local authorities out there, I would allege, do not know what they are doing.
Ms Parkes: Our role on municipal waste is fairly limited. We are the reporting and monitoring authority for the landfill allowance trading scheme but a lot of the dialogue that you are talking about, as I understand it, does happen between local government and Defra. Certainly Defra have been looking at how to remove those barriers to joining up the creation of…
-=-=-=-
USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT
1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others.
2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings.
3. Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant.
4. Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee.
5. Transcribed by the Official Shorthand Writers to the Houses of Parliament:
W B Gumey & Sons LLP, Hope House, 45 Great Peter Street, London, SW1P 3LT
Telephone & Fax Number: 020 7233 1935
