Waste Incinerators

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

13:30

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

I note that Mr Barclay has removed his jacket, so others are permitted to do so if they wish.

[Baggy Shanker (Derby South) (Lab/Co-op)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered waste incinerators.

I declare my interest as a Derby city councillor of almost 17 years and a former leader of the council. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell.

I pay tribute to the amazing residents of Sinfin, Osmaston and Normanton; I have campaigned with them against an incinerator in our community for the past 16 years. I promised them that I would take this fight to Parliament, and that is exactly what I plan to do today.

Many present will be all too familiar with stories like that of Sinfin—and worse. It is a story of broken promises and good money thrown after bad. At its heart is a community that has suffered the consequences of poor planning, poor management, poor decision making, and a lack of transparency and scrutiny. Residents have lived in continuous anxiety and fear that the incineration plant in Sinfin will become operational. They have endured a protracted planning process, with the incinerator eventually being approved only on a technicality following a High Court ruling. They are rightly concerned about the impact that the incinerator would have on their health, local environment and quality of life.

Unfortunately, so much of the story is not unique to Sinfin or Derby. Incinerators loom large over so many communities across the UK, so we are here to say that incinerators do not have a place near schools, people’s homes, allotments, elderly residents, or spaces where our children grow up and play. We are here to say that enough is enough. Incinerators must be kept to a minimum, especially when they impact local communities.

I recognise that waste must be disposed of responsibly, and we have to accept that some incinerators will be needed to achieve that, but they must be safe, be appropriately located, use proven technology and be kept to a minimum. We do not need local plants that impact the lives of local people in local areas. For the sake of our communities and environment, we must also take bold steps towards increased recycling rates and a circular economy. When we talk about waste disposal, we are also talking about the future that we want to create for our children and grandchildren.

It is important to highlight what it is like to live next to an incinerator. Nobody wants to live next to noise pollution from a constant stream of heavy goods vehicles, deal with a fly infestation because waste is being left on site, or worry about their health and their children’s health because their next door neighbour is an incinerator that is leaking sulphuric acid and damaging air quality. All those are lived experiences from the plant in Sinfin, which has never operated for a single day, and which failed during commissioning.

It is not just the experiences of impacted residents—the statistics on incinerators speak for themselves, loud and clear. BBC analysis has found that burning household waste in incinerators to make electricity is now the dirtiest way that the UK generates power.

[Catherine Atkinson (Derby North) (Lab)]

My hon. Friend and neighbour has spent many years fighting on behalf of residents on this issue, and I thank him for that. Does he agree that, after 16 long years and with no working incinerator, it is time to say that enough is enough and to explore cleaner, safer alternatives for waste disposal in Derby, particularly given that producing energy from waste is as bad for the environment as burning coal?

[Baggy Shanker]

I thank my hon. Friend and constituency neighbour for that timely intervention. She is absolutely right. Incinerators are right at the bottom of the waste hierarchy, and recyclable material in incinerators is being burnt because it has a higher calorific value. It is time to say that enough is enough. Nearly half the rubbish produced by UK homes is now being incinerated. While we continue to burn waste, recycling rates have stalled over the past 14 years. The message is clear: too many incinerators are not working for our environment or for our communities.

There could not be a better example of a failed incinerator than that in Sinfin, where poor decision making, exaggerated business cases and hidden truths have landed our community and local authority finances in an absolute mess. This incinerator has been nothing short of a nightmare from the start, and unfortunately there is no finish yet. After a drawn-out planning process, years of opposition from residents and the staggering sum of nearly £150 million of council tax payers’ money going down the drain, the incinerator still has never operated and, in my view, will never operate. Let us imagine what the community in Derby could have done with £150 million invested in local projects, delivering real outcomes for our community.

Instead, the incinerator has never processed operational waste and has created minimal employment. It gives me no pleasure today to say, “We told you so,” because at every opportunity the community has spoken out against the incinerator, and has been ignored by big business, council officials and decision makers. Clear warning signs were not heeded, at the expense of residents.

As a joint project between Derby city council and Derbyshire county council, the incinerator was intended to be a gasification plant. Gasification is a largely unproven technology with a history of failures and technical challenges, and unfortunately Sinfin has been no different. The facility has consistently failed commissioning tests, and we now need to say, exactly as my hon. Friend the Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson) just did, that enough is enough. The incinerator does not have a place in Sinfin and we do not want it there.

The councils have now selected three potential partners to try again to operate the plant, but huge question marks over the project’s viability remain. I urge all involved to do the right thing by our local community and say of this incinerator that enough is enough, because over the past 16 years it is the people of Sinfin and Osmaston who have suffered the consequences of its shocking mismanagement. Understandably, they have lost trust in politicians and council officials because while residents have been ignored, consultants have made millions on this project.

During attempts to commission the plant, residents have suffered vile smells, despite a promise from operators and officers that there would be no smell off site. In fact, they were told that it was impossible for the plant to emit odours. One resident said:

“Where we are, the stench is really strong and smells like rotting food. We have been getting loads of flies around here as well. The summer has been horrendous, we have had to keep our windows closed in the hot weather because when we open them it is just awful.”

Sitting with the windows shut throughout the summer is no way to live. I am absolutely confident—I wish I was not—that other hon. Members present will share similar stories from their constituents. Whether the concerns relate to health, noise, pollution or the environment, incinerators are not working for too many of our communities. But we know that waste needs to be disposed of responsibly, so where does that leave us?

As the Climate Change Committee states, we need a step change towards a circular economy. That means transitioning away from incinerators and urgently increasing recycling rates, which have been shockingly low in recent years. Data from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs shows that higher rates of incineration mean lower rates of recycling. That is known in the industry as “deliver or pay”, where clauses in council contracts demand that a minimum amount of waste be sent to incinerators for burning. We are facing a climate crisis, and that is not good enough. We do not have time to lose getting it wrong on waste disposal methods that harm our communities and planet.

I wholeheartedly welcome the Government’s action to crack down on waste incinerators by introducing stricter standards for new builds, which include tougher local and environmental conditions. It is absolutely right that projects will be required to maximise efficiency and support the delivery of economic growth, net zero and the move to a circular economy. But for Sinfin residents, sadly, the measures are too late. Residents are stuck with an incinerator that does not and will not work. They can be certain of only one thing: every attempt to get the incinerator working means more of their hard-earned taxpayer money thrown down the drain on this white elephant.

I urge the Minister to instruct senior officials in her Department to investigate this mess and to meet me to discuss better protecting communities such as Sinfin, whose residents are stuck living a prolonged nightmare with the incinerator looming over their lives. We have to say that enough is enough, so that councils do not throw good money after bad at the expense of local residents. Ultimately, we need to turbocharge our transition to a circular economy, moving away from incineration, which is the dirtiest way to generate power.

[Several hon. Members rose—]

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Order. I remind Members who wish to speak to make sure that they bob. I am putting a limit of four and a half minutes on all Back-Bench speeches.

13:42

[Ben Obese-Jecty (Huntingdon) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I commend the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this important debate. Huntingdon could be impacted by two waste incinerators just four miles apart from each other, and I rise to express my opposition to them once again.

Warboys incinerator was first proposed in 2022, put on hold in 2023, and then revamped in October 2023. The plant would operate 24/7 and process 87,500 tonnes of waste per year. I commend Councillor Ross Martin in my constituency for campaigning against it. There are many concerns about the significant impact on local residents in Warboys and nearby Pidley of not just the Warboys site but of being slap-bang in the middle of two sites of this scale.

Just four miles away, another plant in Huntingdon has already been approved, known as Envar. I have met the local campaign group POWI—People Opposing Woodhurst Incinerator—and have heard their opposition to the plans that would blight our land with a 26-metre-high chimney, create even more congestion and raise concerns about health risks. There are also concerns about the increase in vehicles, particularly given the proximity to the dangerous Wheatsheaf junction, which still has not been repaired. The incinerator was originally rejected by both Conservative and Labour councillors—the Lib Dem councillors, who did not live locally, voted in favour of it. The rejection was overturned on appeal, and the Labour Government then approved it.

On 30 July last year I was concerned that, in the Deputy Prime Minister’s response at the Dispatch Box to my question about her approving the site despite the council rejecting the initial application, she claimed not to have dealt with that decision, deferring responsibility to the Minister of State, and ignored my request for her to meet the people impacted by the decision. That request was further ignored in a letter from a Minister on 13 September.

The Government have updated the national policy statement in order to meet their ideological aims, and I feel strongly that the Government are doing their utmost to silence the opposition of people in Huntingdon to railroad through their plans. Residents across Woodhurst, Old Hurst, Pidley, Somersham, Colne, Bluntisham, Needingworth and the market town of St Ives will likely be impacted by Envar, with residents of Pidley and Warboys being impacted by both the Envar and Warboys incinerators. St Ives is the second largest town in my constituency, and the incinerator is right on its doorstep.

The Deputy Prime Minister did not consider the scheme to be in accordance with the Huntingdonshire local plan, and my constituents need clarification on precisely why the decision was deemed beneficial above and beyond the local plan. Local job creation was given significant weighting in the decision-making process, even though only 22 additional jobs would be created at the site. My constituents want to know the reason for that weighting, given that so few jobs would be created.

The NHS 2023 clinical waste strategy outlines the need to reduce waste incineration, and that the development of in-house capability should be viewed as a strategic priority, so I am at a loss to see how the approval of a privately owned healthcare waste recovery facility can be justified. I would be grateful if the Minister could explain that. I asked the Government the current medical waste incineration capacity in the county, and they did not know, so I do not see how they can know that the additional capacity is required.

I want to hear why the Government seem to be rewriting rules to fit their aims without doing my constituents the courtesy of listening to them. I want clarity about why things such as the creation of just over 20 jobs outweigh the raft of concerns from the affected local residents. Finally, I extend my invitation, for the third time, to the Deputy Prime Minister or any of the ministerial team: I want them to sit down and explain the process to the people of Pidley, Woodhurst, Old Hurst, Somersham, Colne, Bluntisham, Needingworth and St Ives, and explain why the Government have thus far ignored their voices and those of their elected councillors.

13:45

[Lee Barron (Corby and East Northamptonshire) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell.

I want to raise the issue of an incinerator that has received planning permission on Shelton Road in Corby. I believe that, at best, the planning system is being exploited —without a shadow of a doubt, it is being played.

Corby is a growing new town. The site I will refer to is on an ex-ironside site with a sludge lagoon. The planning permission for the Corby incinerator was applied for in 2013 and granted on 7 February 2014—more than a decade ago. The only public consultation lasted for 20 days, and one single notice was placed in the Northamptonshire Telegraph, so most residents had no idea about the incinerator.

DEFRA’s temporary pause on issuing permits ended on 24 May 2024, and the Environment Agency permit for the incinerator was granted just 11 days later. No community funds—section 106 money—have ever been raised from the project. Planning permission has not expired, despite the fact that it is more than a decade old, because work has started on the site—basically, a pathway has been built, but the site itself has not yet been built out. That leaves residents uncertain about the future.

The planning permission was initially granted because the site was on the outskirts of Corby, but there has been expansion ever since, which has not been taken into consideration. The site is no longer on the outskirts of Corby; it is in the heart of a community, right next to local businesses and thousands of houses. It is 750 metres away from the houses and 1 km away from Priors Hall school and nursery, all of which did not exist when the planning permission was granted.

The traffic impact assessments carried out 10 years ago have not been updated, and even then they estimated that there would be 175 lorries a day carrying waste through Corby. Do Members not think that, after seeing “Toxic Town”, the people of Corby have had enough of lorries with waste being driven up and down its streets? They do not need it anymore.

Ministers have informed us that the Government’s crackdown on incinerators will not apply to proposals with existing planning permission, although the fact remains that waste incineration is the dirtiest form of power generation, so councils must now reconsider. That shows that the waste incineration system is broken. The incinerator in Corby must be reconsidered, and we must have a full review of the planning permission that was given for that site more than a decade ago, given that not one brick has been laid and the local circumstances have changed beyond all recognition. That is the least we can do for the people of Corby.

13:49

[Samantha Niblett (South Derbyshire) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker), my constituency neighbour, for securing this debate and giving me the opportunity to address this important issue.

I want to voice the concerns of some of my constituents about the proposed new incinerator in Swadlincote. I have met the lead campaigner against it and—for balance—the two companies that want to build and run it, so I want to start by acknowledging that we have a significant waste management challenge in our county. This has been identified and reported on by DEFRA. No campaigner against the incinerator denies this.

Shamefully, the east midlands is the second worst region in the country for the amount of waste sent to landfill. Even more shamefully, Derbyshire is the worst-offending county in our region, with almost 750,000 tonnes being sent to landfill and just over 308,000 tonnes being sent to incinerators. We produce a lot of waste.

A challenge in South Derbyshire is that existing incinerator facilities at Drakelow and in neighbouring Derby have struggled. The latter has rightly been mothballed since 2019, having never worked at all. The former has failed to reach its full potential because it is no secret that gasification technology, as used in these plants, has had a “litany of failures”, as described by experts including United Kingdom Without Incineration Network.

In Derbyshire, the proximity principle—which emphasises that waste should be treated as close as possible to its source—has been undermined by these two existing incinerators not solving the problem. We therefore need to transport waste over long distances to facilities outside of Derbyshire. Sending waste elsewhere not only impacts our carbon footprint but contradicts the very principles outlined in our local waste plan. We are exporting our waste to distant incinerators, including to northern Europe, and in doing so we miss an opportunity to truly address our local waste management issues. That is not to say that we need incinerators in local towns, as is being called out today.

In terms of local economic benefits in South Derbyshire, we have been told that the proposed incinerator promises over £200 million in investment and 39 skilled jobs. However, nothing more of benefit is being offered to the local community, which will have an eyesore to look at for something that does not solve our county’s waste problems. It is claimed that it will process 186,000 tonnes of residual waste. That still leaves us with almost 564,000 tonnes of waste going to landfill, so it is hard for people to believe that yet another incinerator is the answer. Are we not better to prioritise reducing waste in our county, region and country? Even when there are claims that new tech mean zero emissions, and when some of the outputs from incinerators can support sustainable practices such as creating sustainable aviation fuel from plastics as the aviation industry targets net zero by 2050, the truth is that where materials are burnt there will always be concern about the release of harmful chemicals and emissions into the atmosphere.

We must challenge ourselves to think beyond incineration and invest in a future where waste is managed sustainably and the environment protected for generations to come.

13:52

[Lincoln Jopp (Spelthorne) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this debate.

I hope my speech will be a lesson to those hon. Members lucky enough to not yet have an incinerator in their constituency. The Surrey waste transfer station is in my constituency of Spelthorne. For those Members who thought Spelthorne was in Lancashire or Lincolnshire, it is actually the only borough in Surrey north of the River Thames. Why someone decided to put Surrey’s eco centre right on its northern boundary remains a mystery to me. It was opposed by the borough council and by the public, although in the face of that opposition it nevertheless went through.

Those Members who represent constituencies to the west of London may subliminally know the centre. As you drive out on the M3—just as it starts and before the M25—all is green and beautiful and then there is this horrific chimney pumping out goodness knows what into the atmosphere. It was planned to be a gasification plant; post recycling, waste would go into the gasifier, which would then produce the electricity to run the anaerobic digestion plant, where food waste would go. The trouble is that, like the provision mentioned by the hon. Member for Derby South, it does not work. The gasifier has never worked to optimum capacity and has continually broken down, and the process does not work because it does not produce enough electricity to run the anaerobic digester. Anyway, Surrey is not diverting enough of its food waste into the anaerobic digester for it to run at capacity and throw off additional electricity on to the grid system.

I hope that that is a lesson for those who want to build their case against further incinerators—come and have a look at the case study. The noise pollution, the air pollution and indeed the water pollution caused by food waste leakages have all plagued local people. That is a source of considerable frustration.

What can we learn from all of this? The first thing that we all ought to learn is that we should all waste far less food. Between a quarter and a third of all food in this country ends up in landfill, which is appalling when so many people are hungry. I am blessed to have in my constituency an amazing charity called Surplus to Supper, which takes in 4 tonnes of food a day from supermarkets within a 7 to 8-mile radius, and produces hundreds of thousands of meals a year for before and after school clubs. I recommend that we look at that model.

There is a second lesson that we can take from all of this. I heard the Secretary of State say that we were in a “sprint to decarbonise” our economy and I heard the Deputy Prime Minister say that, under the planning framework, nimbys were not going to stand in the way of development. Those two things concern me, because they could combine to allow further programmes and plans simply to ignore local concerns. If local concerns had been listened to at the time that the Spelthorne eco park was being built, it would not have been built and would not have become the failure that it is.

We need to have a weather eye on these cutting-edge and bleeding-edge technologies that promise the earth at the time they are developed but cost the earth in the long term.

13:56

[Ms Julie Minns (Carlisle) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this very important debate.

On 8 October 2021, a fire broke out in a warehouse at an industrial site near the villages of Cargo and Rockcliffe in my constituency. The fire forced the local primary school to close, residents were advised to keep their windows shut, and for nearly a month the fire burned at the site, fuelled by hundreds of tonnes of plastic, household waste and wood that had been kept in the warehouse. Calls to the Environment Agency show residents complaining of breathing problems, sore throats and headaches from the fumes.

I share this because, just three years later, the owners of that site, on whose watch that fire took place, brought forward a proposal for a gasification facility. As we have already heard today, this appears to be an unproven technology, and it is one that has raised a great deal of concern among residents in Rockcliffe and Cargo. I pay tribute to them for the concerted campaign they have waged for well over a year now in opposition to that application.

The proposed facility would allegedly heat pellets made of plastic, wood and paper, creating a gas of hydrogen and carbon monoxide. It is claimed by the applicant that that gas would be used to fuel the generation of electricity and to power the site, enabling the replacement of the diesel generators now. I would fully support the reduction in carbon emissions that that would bring were it not for the fact that those diesel generators could be dispensed with today if the site owner would only use the grid connection to the site that already exists. It is also worth noting that other emissions from the proposed gasification plant will fall on adjacent farmland, which is used by two local farmers, both of whom I have met in the last month and both of whom have very real concerns about the proposed plant.

I am not opposed to incineration in principle, but in recent years it seems to have become something of a panacea for the challenges of recycling. Over the last 14 years, recycling rates have stalled. Almost half of waste collected by local authorities in 2022-23 was incinerated, with just 40% being recycled. Rather than pursuing recycling, we appear now to have regulations that encourage businesses simply to burn waste, and that unfortunate trend is all too apparent in my constituency of Carlisle and in north Cumbria.

Just a stone’s throw from the proposed gasification plant is another site that is the subject of a planning application—for, yes, another incinerator. It should not fall to villages like Cargo and Rockcliffe to become unofficial waste clusters. That is why I am glad that the Government are proposing new, stricter local environmental conditions. Incinerators can have their place, but they must not be allowed to be a means to make a fast buck out of burning resources that we should be recycling.

14:00

[Jeremy Corbyn (Islington North) (Ind)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I welcome this crucial debate, the way it was introduced by the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) and the excellent intervention by the hon. Member for Derby North (Catherine Atkinson).

We have had debates in the past in Westminster Hall in which, unusually, the right hon. Member for Chingford and Woodford Green (Sir Iain Duncan Smith) and I joined forces—[Laughter.] Yes, it is true. We joined forces to oppose the expansion of the Edmonton incinerator for a number of reasons: first, that it would create high levels of pollution; secondly, that it is in quite a poor area of north London; and thirdly, that the exhaust gases would descend over Essex and land there, causing all kinds of problems. We opposed it because it was over capacity. The modelling even predicted that it would import waste from Europe to keep the incinerator going, because the design was far too big. I can see hon. Members nodding in agreement, because exactly the same kind of nonsense has been talked elsewhere.

When the Government are represented at the UN plastics treaty convention in Geneva this August, they might, if they have a moment, have a chat with the mayor of Geneva. I spent an interesting evening with him some years ago, and I asked him what problems he had. I complimented him on the levels of recycling in the city, which are very high—it is well run. He said, “Fantastic. The problem is that we are stuck with a private finance initiative-type incinerator that needs a vast amount of rubbish to keep it going.” Geneva has to truck burnable waste from Milan through the Alps to keep the incinerator going. This is the economics of the madhouse.

I recognise that we cannot immediately end all incineration, but the fact is that the Edmonton incinerator, which produces 700,000 tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions every year, is being expanded. The recycling rates of north London boroughs are better than they were, but none of them is very good. The Minister will probably remember the occasion when she and I were both in Islington—she was a councillor—and we discovered that some Islington waste had turned up in Indonesia, which is obviously a handy place to take waste from Finsbury Park. It is utterly absurd. We need a different and better approach to waste in this country.

Incineration is a sort of faux recycling. People say, “It’s okay—it’s burned; it’s gone.” It is not gone. It is burned, and pollution comes from it. Yes, we generate electricity from it and get some road-building materials from the ash, but surely we should look at recycling rates instead. The Government’s own estimate is that 55% of all waste is readily recyclable, quite a bit more is partially recyclable and only 8% to 10% is absolutely impossible to recycle. Our society needs a different approach and a different attitude.

I hope that the Minister will tell us that there will be no new licences for new incinerators in this country. I hope that she will look at the existing licences and see where we can reduce incineration to a much lower level, although I recognise that it is difficult to get rid of it straightaway. Finally, I hope that there will be a big Government initiative on recycling rates. That will mean looking at household as well as industrial collections. Too little is recycled, and too much food waste goes into landfill or to incineration when it could and should be composted. But if we have 45 different systems to collect household waste, we are bound to get confusion. Let us have a simpler system, much better composting and recycling, and an attitude that is about working with our environment, not destroying it.

14:04

[Lloyd Hatton (South Dorset) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this important and timely debate.

Yesterday, a High Court judge rejected a statutory review into Powerfuel’s planning application for a proposed waste incinerator on Portland in my constituency. It follows the granting of an environmental permit by the Environment Agency earlier this year. This week’s legal decision is deeply disappointing, but we should never have reached this stage in the first place. Constructing a waste incinerator on Portland makes no sense, for a whole list of reasons.

First, there are serious health concerns about building an incinerator so close to a built-up area and to a prison. The proposed location of the incinerator is only a few hundred metres from the prison. I remain deeply alarmed by the idea that polluting technology should get the go-ahead on the island. Secondly, alongside my community I am deeply concerned about the negative impact on our precious Jurassic coast. Building an incinerator on the edge of a UNESCO world heritage site would be a deeply damaging world first.

Thirdly, I worry about the potential impact that an incinerator would have on our local economy and our status as a hub for sailing and water sports. Countless local business owners have raised objections with me at every stage. They must not be overlooked. You need not take my word for it, Ms Lewell. Portland is the proud home of the National Sailing Academy, where Olympic sailors train, and live nearby. Elite sailors have made it abundantly clear that building an incinerator next door to the academy would be a disastrous decision. Just recently, the Royal Yachting Association has also taken the unprecedented decision to announce that it will independently investigate the potential health impact of an incinerator if it is built.

Finally, there is little need for a waste incinerator to be built on Portland. As the United Kingdom Without Incineration Network—UKWIN—has highlighted in its research, we are at risk of building too many incinerators across the country, which could lead to a problem of overcapacity. I do not want a nightmare scenario in which Britain is importing waste from across the world simply to keep the incinerators running.

To be completely blunt, I am opposed to any new incinerators being built locally or anywhere else across the country at the present time. As has been mentioned, incinerators are the dirtiest way in which Britain generates power, as underlined by a recent BBC investigation. Regretfully, incinerators across the country have been found time and again to have breached environmental permits by emitting harmful pollutants. That is why I am once again calling for a nationwide ban.

The Government are moving in the right direction, but they must move so much further and faster. They have introduced strict environmental rules for new proposals, but the scope of those rules must be widened significantly. If the crackdown measures were applied to the proposed incinerator on Portland, it would not be built. Taking all these arguments into account, I urge the Minister to reassess the plans and prevent an incinerator going ahead on Portland.

The case against the proposal is strong. Hardly anyone living in Weymouth and Portland wants an incinerator to be built. I find it completely baffling that Portland port and Powerfuel—the firm behind the proposals—are still pushing ahead. I urge them to listen to our community and abandon the proposals. When I look to the future of South Dorset, I see green investment opportunities and well-paid green jobs, not an unwanted and polluting waste incinerator. I believe that we can deliver a cleaner and greener future for South Dorset, but harmful, dirty and outdated waste incinerators are simply not part of it.

14:09

[Steve Barclay (North East Cambridgeshire) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I welcome the debate called by the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker); it highlights the cross-party consensus in opposing further incinerators.

In terms of the Wisbech incinerator, it is remarkable that an application to build an incinerator half the size was rejected in the local authority next door, so the response of developers was to double the size in order to make it a nationally significant infrastructure project, to get out of the local planning rules; to put it next to the biggest school in the district—only 700 metres away; to take waste from six different counties, all on small roads in a rural market town; and to have a chimney bigger than Ely cathedral in the flat landscape of the Fens. One can understand why so many people share my concern with the proposal.

I do not want to repeat the very good points that colleagues have made. I want to highlight two new points that the debate has not highlighted so far, which I hope will help Opposition and Government Members and support my own case in empowering the Minister. First, I will cite the Government’s own figures. On 30 December —quite recently—the Government’s own analysis showed that as of 2024 there was already 20.6 megatonnes of residual waste infrastructure capacity in England, of which 14.3 megatonnes was incineration. To put that in plain language, we already have enough incinerator capacity today to deal with the amount of waste that was projected in 2023 to arise by 2035—19.4 megatonnes of residual municipal waste. In other words, our existing capacity, at over 20 megatonnes, is more than we will need in just nine years’ time.

My first question to the Minister is whether DEFRA will commit to publishing analysis assessing the environmental damage of building incinerators, such as the huge incinerator at Wisbech, against the fact that they will be surplus to requirements in as little as nine years’ time. In other words, it will three years to build the incinerator, and after six years of operation it will be additional capacity to what we will need. We therefore need to assess how those two things compare.

[James Naish (Rushcliffe) (Lab)]

Does the right hon. Member agree that a sense of where incinerators are located around the country would be helpful, so that we could see the demand for incineration versus the capacity? That might reveal oversupply in certain parts of the country.

[Steve Barclay]

That is a fair point, which is addressed in DEFRA’s December paper. But as my hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) highlighted, there are two at Huntingdon, another at Peterborough and two at Boston. There is already a concentration, so I do not accept the point about the east of England in that paper. My point is that we need to see analysis from DEFRA around the bridging issue for the next few years as the Government meet their legal target to reduce the amount of waste by 50% between 2019 and 2042. The amount of residual waste is coming down and we already have sufficient capacity, but there is a bridging issue. There will be short-term options around landfill refuse-derived fuel exports. We need to look at the respective merits of building huge incinerators and the damage that they will do compared with the short-term bridging options.

The second point is that the waste mix has changed. That was a feature of the BBC report that the hon. Member for Derby South highlighted. Burning food waste produces less CO₂ than putting it in landfill, but burning plastics produces 175 times more carbon dioxide than burying it. The reason that that matters—to my first point about bridging—is that the mix going into incineration has fundamentally changed from when the planning rules were initially put in place. What we have seen, and what the BBC highlighted, is an increase in food waste being dealt with through anaerobic digestion. As the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) pointed out, the predominant waste now going to incineration is plastics. It is the burning of plastics that drives the environmental damage, and that is why the hon. Member for Derby South correctly pointed out that it is the dirtiest way that the UK generates power.

My second question is whether the Minister will commit to publishing a composition analysis study of the residual waste treated at energy recovery facilities, as I asked for in a written question on 16 October. DEFRA has confirmed that it is undertaking a composition analysis study, but it was not published with the December analysis. Will the Minister commit to publishing that, so that we can see where the waste is going? Again, that fundamentally changes the environmental case around incineration.

14:14

[Josh Fenton-Glynn (Calder Valley) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this debate. Much like him, I am going to tell a story about companies using the courts to ride roughshod over local people’s opinions.

I rise to speak about a proposal for an incinerator in Calderdale; my hon. Friend the Member for Halifax (Kate Dearden) and I feel like we have spent months banging our head against a brick wall about it. The incinerator is to be built on the border between our constituencies, and while it will be located in Halifax, I speak with her permission, as Members will be well aware that fumes from such incinerators do not respect constituency boundaries.

The story of this incinerator is also a cautionary tale about the way that wealthy companies can ride roughshod over the wishes of the local community. The Calder Valley Skip Hire company was given an environmental licence by Calderdale council in 2022—a decision made on the basis of the legal advice that the council got about the rules that left it powerless to intervene or refuse. I know this because I was a council member at the time. The local community, however, appealed that decision and reviewed the finding. The planning inspector reversed the decision to grant the application on the basis of the risk to health and the lack of good information about the impact of the valley and vegetation on smoke dispersal. That meant that the company could not go ahead with it.

So far, so good—the system is working as it should and the courts are upholding standards. However, rather than making changes and appealing the decision, the site owners just withdrew the application and resubmitted it as a fresh application, showing no respect for the community or the decisions that had been made. The council, with similar legal advice to the advice that was received last time, then went ahead and granted the application again, and the decision is being reviewed again.

The incinerator in Calderdale has been opposed many times by our local communities and local councillors, particularly Councillor Adam Wilkinson. It has received more than 900 objections and has been objected to by both the local MPs. Unfortunately, when unscrupulous developers wish to seek legal options, they attempt to water down communities’ voices and force them into submission. Frankly, there comes a point when our job in this Chamber is to stand up for our local communities, and to say that enough is enough.

I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South for securing today’s debate, and I will continue to speak for my residents in Calder Valley and Halifax on this issue, because, frankly, some things are more important than the profit of a company.

14:17

[Euan Stainbank (Falkirk) (Lab)]

I extend my thanks to my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this debate and for all he has done today to represent his constituents. The concept of the waste hierarchy, while not new, remains as relevant as ever. As waste generation continues to increase and risk greater environmental impact, waste management needs to evolve accordingly. We need to prevent, reduce, reuse, recycle, recover and then—and only then—dispose. Sadly, we have seen too much stagnation in driving waste up this hierarchy.

Cleaner technology than incineration is progressing rapidly, and many of the options presented in Project Willow last month for investment in Grangemouth involved novel waste management or bio-feedstock technologies. Those advancements could help to reduce the demand for incinerators in Scotland, so if anyone is interested in investing in the opportunities in Grangemouth, I urge them to get in contact with the Department for Energy Security and Net Zero.

I served as a councillor for the Falkirk South ward, and I was the Labour group portfolio lead in climate and waste for two years. Waste management issues were at the forefront of my work there, including addressing concerns about waste disposal sites. It is clear to me that what happens to waste after collection is as critical to our constituents as how it is collected. In my Falkirk constituency, the principal landfill site is Avondale. It serves a nationwide need and is currently the only landfill site in Scotland capable of storing hazardous waste. However, the smell from the site can often be a persistent concern for my Polmont constituents.

Although they are preferable to landfill, my view is that incinerators have served a purpose in allowing the transition away from landfill, but their costs increasingly outweigh the benefits. The BBC report from October revealed that emissions per unit of energy from waste incineration are comparable to those from coal and nearly twice as much as those from gas. Energy from waste now accounts for a fifth of emissions from electricity production in the UK, while generating only 3% of the UK’s electricity.

That highlights the need for a strategic approach. Waste incineration is not a viable long-term solution if we are serious about our climate goals. The Scottish Government have accepted recommendations from the “Stop, Sort, Burn, Bury?” review by delivering a moratorium in 2022, but contrary to another recommendation of the review, they have not provided an indicative cap on waste incinerators. That risks entrenching a practice that they are otherwise indicating should be phased out. Many groups have raised reasonable concerns about the prospect of the overcapacity of incinerators beyond the ban on biodegradable waste to landfill, which kicks in later this year in Scotland.

In the meantime, councils continue to commission long-term energy-from-waste contracts. Falkirk council, for instance, announced a 10-year contract for energy from waste in 2023. Luckily, the contractor is now looking at integrating carbon capture and storage on site to mitigate the environmental impact of the site. The reality is that rising emissions from this practice, efforts to build infrastructure to mitigate its environmental impact and the risk of incinerator overcapacity point to the need for a faster push on improving recycling rates, as many colleagues have said.

Recycling rates currently stand at 44% in the UK but at 42.1% in Scotland, with Wales largely leading the way. I welcome the fact that Falkirk’s recycling rate is 50.7%. I credit that to the ridiculously hard-working waste and climate change officers at Falkirk council, with whom I had the honour of working when I was a councillor, as well as fantastic community volunteers, including my successor, Labour Councillor Claire Aitken, who has set up regular litter picks in our ward. There is still so much more to be done to drive up recycling rates.

A clear strategy is needed if we are to phase out incineration across the UK. Calm, clear heads are the order of the day. I have three key questions for the Minister. What discussions has she had with the waste management industry and local authorities about phasing out waste incinerators, and how can any transition away from incineration be managed strategically? What targets are in place to improve recycling rates across the UK by the end of this Parliament, and what expectations do we have for our devolved partners? What conversations are taking place regarding integrating carbon capture and storage with any existing or further waste incineration projects?

14:21

[Luke Taylor (Sutton and Cheam) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Ms Lewell. I congratulate the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) on securing this debate.

Waste management is a huge issue, which requires the attention of us all in this House. We Liberal Democrats are committed to strengthening incentives to reduce waste and our country’s reliance on incinerators. Although incineration of residual waste might be the least bad option available at the moment to handle our unrecycled and unseparated waste, it is far from the long-term solution that we need. Let us be absolutely clear: incinerators are currently an unavoidable solution for many local councils. They are a deeply imperfect solution to a much bigger problem, though. When we get to the point where all of our commercial and domestic waste is avoided, reduced, reused, recycled and composted with no residual waste remaining, I will be at the front of the march to shut down our energy-from-waste facilities, for they will have served their purpose.

As several Members have correctly observed, incineration sits at the very bottom of the waste hierarchy. The energy that incinerators produce for local heat networks will ideally have been switched to air source and ground source heat pumps or perhaps waste heat from server farms, leaving these towering structures finally silent, but we are a long way from that point. Today, well-managed and well-maintained incinerators are an effective and safe method for disposing of our residual waste.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

Can the hon. Gentleman clarify whether the parliamentary position of the Liberal Democrats is pro-incinerator? Can he tell me how many incinerators there are in Liberal Democrat constituencies?

[Luke Taylor]

I am happy to clarify. Incineration and ERFs are the least worst available option for disposing of our residual waste. The hon. Gentleman referred earlier to the ping-pong in approaches to incineration between different Administrations and different political parties. On his question about where the incinerators are, well, my constituency, Sutton and Cheam, is next to Carshalton and Wallington. Our borough, Sutton, has an incinerator in Beddington. It was initially given planning permission by the local council because of legal advice, but it was called in by a fella called Boris Johnson, and what political party did he represent? He was the Conservative Mayor of London, and he reviewed the plans and approved the incinerator in Sutton. We have an incinerator operating in our constituency because it was approved by a Conservative London Mayor.

In his 2022 report, chief medical officer Professor Chris Whitty wrote:

“The ERF is preferred over the use of landfill due to the opportunity to recover valuable and sustainable power.”

But they are not all well maintained and not all well managed. We know that we must move beyond them as soon as possible, but we can do that only by speeding up the changes in the ecosystem of waste management in this country that would enable their extinction.

Let us begin with plastic and packaging. We support the strengthening of incentives to reduce packaging and waste sent to landfill and incineration. In the coalition Government, we pioneered the plastic bag levy, which was exactly the kind of successful societal change that we need. It is almost impossible to remember a time when we were not charged for a plastic bag or did not give a second thought to our need to take one.

The reuse of bags and the growing market for stronger reusable bags is fully normalised—we do not bat an eyelid. It is akin to the removal of lead from petrol. Something that once seemed pervasive and impossible to imagine an alternative for was phased out entirely in such a way that whole generations have no recollection of it ever being any other way. That did not happen overnight. It took a mission-driven Government to step in and lead the way, incentivising the right kind of behaviour in waste management to light a path forward for society to take. I accept that that is already happening in some areas, but we need to go further and faster.

To meaningfully tackle plastic pollution and waste and get Britain as close as possible to full recycling, we have called for a deposit return scheme for food and drink bottles and containers, working with the devolved Administrations to ensure consistency across the UK. We must learn lessons from the difficulties with the Scottish scheme.

To further reduce residual waste, we have been calling on the Government to expedite the complete elimination of non-recyclable single-use plastics within three years and their replacement with affordable, reusable, recyclable or compostable alternatives. That would enable us to set an ambition of ending all plastic waste exports by 2030. The separation of plastic waste for reprocessing is critical to reduce the amount of recyclable plastic that is unnecessarily burned in incinerators. We know that peer group pressure and normalisation of behaviour is critical to that.

The comments made by the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) remind me of the former leader of the Sutton Conservatives, who told residents recently that

“most of your recycling goes up the chimney”

at the local ERF—untrue claims that undermine efforts to increase recycling. If there are efforts to improve recycling and our diversion of plastics from incineration, perhaps he can remind his colleagues of the importance of recycling as often as they possibly can.

Turning to food waste, in this age of food banks, according to the company Waste Managed, the UK throws away 9.5 million tonnes of food every year. That is nearly 24 million loaves of bread. In Sutton borough in my constituency, we recently had a campaign to improve the participation in the recycling of food waste that targeted about 15,000 households. That campaign saw an increase of 17% by tonnage of food waste recycling in the areas targeted and a 10% increase in the number of households participating in the programme. The evidence is clear: targeted programmes can be effective at improving participation rates and getting food waste down.

The previous Conservative Government failed to take the measures needed to support businesses in becoming more efficient and to support communities in moving beyond the throwaway culture. Many private sector enterprises, such as Too Good To Go, are opening up in this space and, frankly, doing a far better job than the Government. That is welcome, but a reminder that there is room for the Government to take steps of their own.

The Government have to look again at the enormous mistake that is their family farms tax, which will undermine any last vestiges of localism in the food chain that remain in this country. If we do not incentivise local produce being sold to local people through local businesses, we stand no chance of getting our emissions down, minimising food waste, encouraging healthier eating or moving beyond incineration.

On air pollution, let us be clear that we do not have to accept that the way incinerators currently operate is the only way in this final phase of their history. A significant amount of the concern around the use and potential misuse of incineration stems from mismanagement and the fact that our regulator, the Environment Agency, is prevented from doing the pervasive monitoring that it should be able to.

In my borough of Sutton, the Beddington ERF, on occasion, exceeds the pollution levels set out in its facilities permit. Although those breaches are minor and often for a very short period, and are often caused by nitrous oxide canisters getting into the waste stream, they are not investigated very often by the Environment Agency. The local council and waste authority lack the powers to compel the operator to address problems in their sorting and filtration systems. We can move towards the managed extinction of this form of waste management and wean ourselves off incineration altogether only if we make sure that existing sites are properly managed and meaningfully regulated.

The Liberal Democrats want the UK to be world-leading in its efforts to improve air quality. We have called for a £20 billion emergency fund for local authorities to tackle the clean air crisis, and a £150 billion green recovery plan. We need to pass a new Clean Air Act based on World Health Organisation guidelines and enforced by a new air quality agency, to codify in law that nobody should be subject to consistently awful levels of air pollution. Not passing those measures makes a mockery of the Government’s already opaque plans for meaningful climate action. We were deeply concerned by the finding of the Climate Change Committee’s seventh carbon budget that the UK has deliverable plans for only a third of the emissions reductions needed to meet climate goals. If the Government want to rectify that then they should get a grip, with a beefed-up approach to managing waste and dealing with air pollution. We can do a lot more to prevent waste going to incineration in the first place, and better regulate the existing stock of incinerators.

The recent progress report of the Office for Environmental Protection noted that waste generation and incineration rates have continued to increase, but recycling rates have stalled. That is not the case in my borough of Sutton, where we have seen reductions in the tonnage of waste sent to the ERF from residents, but elsewhere more effort must be made. We need an active Government to step up to the plate and reverse that worrying trend. We must take meaningful action to regulate existing incinerators and look more closely at proposed new incinerators, such as at Canford Magna in the south-west of England, where data suggests that 95% of the required capacity already exists. We must implement a better food waste strategy, eradicate plastic waste and speed up the energy transition to alternative technologies that would hasten the end of residual waste. That would allow us to move away from incineration, and finally consign incinerators to the oblivion of history, to sit in engineering museums alongside Victorian technology as a reminder of how important waste reduction is, and how critical it is at the top of the waste hierarchy.

14:31

[Robbie Moore (Keighley and Ilkley) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Lewell. I thank the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for securing this important debate, in which we have heard incredibly powerful views from all hon. Members who have participated.

Incineration is a strongly felt issue for many people across the country. I have my own strong feelings on the issue. I am familiar with it from my constituency, where we have staunchly campaigned against the Aire valley incinerator, which is due to be constructed, at some stage, on the outskirts of Keighley. It is not yet built, but it was given the green light by Labour-run Bradford council and the Environment Agency some years ago. I put on record the staunch work that the Aire Valley Against Incineration campaign group has done for a number of years, working with me and many residents to campaign strongly against the Aire valley incinerator. My view remains as it has been since I was first elected to this place: the Aire valley incinerator should not be built. Similar opinions have been expressed by many hon. Members in this House—although, dare I say, not by the Liberal Democrats, who seem to be staunchly warm to incineration. All other hon. Members have staunchly expressed their views against.

We heard from the hon. Member for Derby South about the Sinfin incinerator, which he has campaigned long and hard to oppose; from the hon. Member for Corby and East Northamptonshire (Lee Barron), who is staunchly against the Corby incinerator; from the hon. Member for South Derbyshire (Samantha Niblett), campaigning against the Swadlincote incinerator; from the hon. Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns); from the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn), no longer in his place, who is campaigning against the Edmonton incinerator; from the hon. Member for South Dorset (Lloyd Hatton), who is against the Portland incinerator; and from the hon. Member for Calder Valley (Josh Fenton-Glynn), who raised his concerns about incineration.

My hon. Friend the Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) spoke against two incinerators in his constituency, Warboys and Envar. He rightly raised concerns that despite him making valid challenges on behalf of his constituents, not only to the Secretary of State but to Ministers, they have not even had the decency to come back to him. I can only urge the Minister to take those concerns to the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, and hope that a response is received to the planning challenges that were raised. My hon. Friend the Member for Spelthorne (Lincoln Jopp) shared his experiences of a live incinerator in his constituency, giving us the warnings that we all need as we continue our campaigns against incineration in our own constituencies. He was right to highlight the challenges with not only the feedstocks going into that incinerator but the wider problems associated with it.

My right hon. Friend the Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) has campaigned consistently against the Wisbech incinerator. The applicants seemingly decided to get around their application being determined by the local planning authority by making the scheme so big that it would cover six different counties, meaning that a national strategic decision had to be made. He rightly raised concerns around capacity, which as he said already exists in the system. He also raised the huge challenge that, by the time a planning application has been approved for incinerators, technology and the feedstocks that are being incinerated have changed dramatically. This happens even in the case of the incinerator in the Aire valley in my constituency, which dates back to 2015. He is therefore quite right to advocate for the Government to look at that.

Members have consistently raised wider concerns to do with planning applications that are in the pipeline—at the local planning authority or the environment agency—relating to noise, smell and odour, insect infestations and topography. In my constituency, Bradford council, a Labour-controlled local authority, approved a planning application for an incinerator to be built at the bottom of a valley that, when temperature and cloud inversions and the significantly low stack height are taken into account, would cause emissions to get trapped in the cloud and have a detrimental effect on those residents who are higher up on either side of the valley. That is a challenge that we have consistently put to not only Bradford council but the environment agency.

Other concerns to do with consultation processes that have been raised include the lifespan of an incinerator, the decommissioning process once that comes to an end, challenges with the number of job that will be created as a result of a positive incinerator being approved, and the failure of an incinerator to meet the initial expectations around electrical efficiency that are provided when an application is considered. We have also heard challenges around section 106 moneys coming, challenges associated if schools, nurseries and residents are in close proximity to an incinerator, and challenges relating to highways.

Prior to the general election, the last Government rightly paused new incineration licences due to concerns around there already being capacity in the system and oversupply being prevalent. That moratorium expired during the election, and has not been renewed by the new Labour Administration. The end goal of our waste system must be to reduce the volume of residual waste as much as possible. That means absolute focus on reducing, reusing and recycling, but we must also be realistic in recognising that there will always be waste that must be disposed of. While the Conservatives pledged to stop all new incinerators for good and double down on efforts to reduce waste in the first place, Labour has instead attempted to manage the issue of incineration.

In new regulations announced late last year, the Government said that incineration plants would be granted licences only if they can demonstrate that they are reducing landfill. That is a rather low threshold, as almost any waste heading to an incinerator would otherwise be landfilled. More importantly, that criterion misses the key point that methane emissions from landfill will simply be replaced with carbon emissions from waste incineration. In fact, greenhouse gases from incinerators are more intense, as landfill releases its carbon much more slowly than incineration plants. I fear that this landfill criterion is merely an attempt by this Government to give a veneer of environmentally friendly credibility to a policy that actually represents a failure to tackle the broader waste challenge.

Another requirement is that new plants be carbon capture-ready, but one wonders how the Government will assess that criterion when carbon capture technology is still in its infancy and remains unproven. This is not the basis for sensible, long-term policy. Incineration is the dirtiest form of electricity generation in the country, and has a huge impact on local air pollution, as has been raised by many Members across this House when challenging decisions that have been made by their local planning authority or the environmental operational licence that is then awarded by the Environment Agency. They are rightly advocating, on behalf of their constituents, that such decisions should not go ahead as planned.

At the same time, Labour has claimed that it has introduced tough new rules to clean up incineration and is considering introducing a carbon tax on councils that incinerate. That reveals a gaping hole in the Government’s thinking. I ask the Minister: will the Government’s changes to licensing be effective in reducing pollution? If so, why tax cash-strapped councils—or does the tax reveal that the Government expect their licensing policy to fail and are hoping to deter the use of incinerators as a result? Incinerators are dirty and as a result should be taxed as we tax landfill, but clearly a long-term strategy should be adopted to phase out incineration. Why will the Government not commit to that vision?

In its announcement on the new rules, DEFRA explained that the need for new incinerators was small, as waste capacity is now almost sufficient for UK demand. In that case, why will the Government not reassure the thousands of campaigners across the country—many Members on both sides of the House have referenced many who have worked alongside them and I also mentioned the Aire Valley Against Incineration group in my own constituency —and commit to building no more incinerators? Surely we would hope that the existing incineration plants reach the end of their lives, and that we are reducing residual waste sufficiently that we do not require any replacements.

The Government must come forward with a comprehensive vision for the future of UK waste; otherwise, we will be flying blind. I urge the Government to instigate an immediate stop to all new incinerators being built, regardless of whether they have been approved, and whether that approval was through planning permission or an operational licence awarded by the Environment Agency.

14:42

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)]

What a pleasure it is to speak under your chairship, Ms Lewell, I think for the second time in a fortnight; we are truly blessed to see each other so frequently. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker) for raising this important issue and congratulate all right hon. and hon. Members from both sides of the House who have taken part in the debate. We have heard some disturbing stories; I was horrified to hear about the fire in Carlisle and the consequent impacts that had, particularly on local children.

As we have heard, the process for extracting energy from waste through incineration is an important issue up and down the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Derby South has drawn attention to the Sinfin waste treatment facility in Derby. He will understand that it is not for me to comment on individual decisions that are for waste authorities to make; however, I am able to say that the operator will need to apply to the EA for a variation to review the permit before it can be recommissioned, which would include a comprehensive assessment of measures to prevent odours and pests. If the recommissioning does happen, the EA would ensure that a robust commissioning plan is in place to prevent any adverse environmental impacts, including from nuisance. He asked whether my officials would meet him to discuss his many concerns; I am happy to offer him that undertaking.

I am sure council tax payers in Derby and across Derbyshire are disappointed that a facility that promised so much and cost so much has yet to treat waste, but I am pleased to set out the progress this Government have made in delivering the long-awaited recycling reforms, our circular economy ambitions and our position in relation to energy from waste. I do not think anyone can accuse us of being slack in those areas. I am sure that through the magic of Hansard and the Government processes, the hon. Member for Huntingdon (Ben Obese-Jecty) will shortly receive a response to the letters that he has written to Government colleagues in the MHCLG.

Let me take you right back, Ms Lewell, to 15 years ago, when the Conservative party was governing in coalition. Basically, over the last 15 years recycling rates have stalled, and in some places gone backwards. Too much waste is still dealt with through incineration or landfill. More than half of waste collected by local authorities in 2023-24 was incinerated, and just 41% was recycled. Incidents such as those that the right hon. Member for Islington North (Jeremy Corbyn) raised—he and I go back a long way—have really damaged people’s confidence in our recycling system. That incident of litter turning up in Indonesia shows us that there is no such place as away. We only have materials.

In an uncertain and turbulent world, we need to take steps to address this, and we have done so at pace. We have introduced reforms that will create 21,000 green jobs and stimulate £10 billion of investment in our recycling capability. That is what underpins our ambition to recycle 65% of municipal waste by 2035. We will get from 41% last year to 65% in 10 years’ time. That is a bold ambition. These are the biggest changes to waste recycling since the last Labour Government introduced the landfill tax back in 2001-02. This is a step change.

I would gently point out that not everybody in this room voted for the deposit return scheme, which is one of the three big pillars of reform that the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) developed when he was the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. The hon. Member for Keighley and Ilkley (Robbie Moore) was absent for the vote in the House on the deposit return scheme. I am glad that somehow, despite his absence, he may have supported the reforms that he worked on as a Minister.

[Jeremy Corbyn]

On recycling, does the Minister agree that one of the problems is that there are too many collection systems that operate differently in different boroughs and different places? Secondly, people living in flats often find it very difficult to store waste for weekly collection, and the levels of compostable waste recycling are very low in those places. Does the Department agree, and is the Minister prepared to take any action to improve those rates of recycling?

[Mary Creagh]

I have set out the actions that we are taking to drive up recycling rates, one of which is to put paid to the proposal we inherited for up to seven bins through the simpler recycling reforms. We have been really clear that we will have black bin waste and mandatory food collections in every local authority, because that does not happen. It obviously happens in Islington, but it does not happen with uniformity across the country. Mandatory food waste recycling came in for businesses on 1 April this year, and it will come in for local authorities on 1 April 2026. That standardisation of recycling and collections should help us all to do better and play our part.

I take on board the right hon. Gentleman’s point about collecting from flats. There are really serious problems. One issue is that recyclable waste is often put into black bins, so they get full very quickly, when actually a lot of stuff could be taken out. The deposit return scheme, the simpler recycling reforms and the extended producer responsibility scheme are really big changes developed under the previous Government and carried on by us at speed, because we have no time to waste. We have to move away from our linear, unsustainable “take, make, throw” model, where we just extract things, make things and throw them away. We want to end the throwaway society, and for things that are made in Britain to be built to last, as they were in olden times.

[Steve Barclay]

Just to follow the logic of the Minister’s point, if more recycling is being promoted by the Government, which is what she has set out, self-evidently both the composition of waste and the existing capacity for incineration will be sufficient. In their December paper, the Government said:

“While there are a number of waste incineration facilities that are consented, but not yet under construction, it is highly unlikely that these will be brought forward.”

If that is the Government’s expectation, and if the Minister is increasing recycling and the capacity is sufficient, why not give clarity to the public and her own Back Benchers by saying, “No more incinerators”?

[Mary Creagh]

The right hon. Gentleman asked about a couple of things in his speech, so I will respond to those first. He asked about composition analysis—we are getting into deep technical detail—and it is about what is actually being incinerated. What is being burned? The right hon. Member for Islington North asked why we do not just put plastic in the ground, as it would just sit there, inert. What is going into incineration?

My understanding is that the emissions trading scheme was consulted on under the previous Government—that bringing local authority energy-from-waste facilities into the ETS from 2028 was consulted on in 2024, so it was an in-flight proposal—but I am very happy to be corrected if I am wrong. The residual municipal waste composition study, covering the period from May 2024 to May 2025, will be published later this year, and I know we cannot wait. It will be interesting, because it is essentially the baseline. It is where we will see if the changes are going to start feeding through.

We said in our manifesto that we would reduce waste by transitioning to a circular economy, which is one of the Secretary of State’s five priorities for DEFRA. I am really proud to be the Minister responsible for that.

The right hon. Member for Islington North asked why we cannot just landfill waste plastics, but there are wider environmental impacts from landfilling plastics than simply carbon emissions, including the issue of microplastics. We do not yet fully understand how plastics degrade in landfill in the long term. Emerging research is exploring the potential of plastic-degrading bacteria in landfills, which could break down plastics and in turn impact greenhouse gas emissions. However, I gently say that we cannot solve today’s problems by storing them up for future generations.

The UK emissions trading scheme is minded to expand the scope of the emissions trading scheme to include energy-from-waste facilities. A consultation on this was published in 2024, which included a call for evidence on incentivising heat networks. With the energy-from-waste plants, there is electricity generation, but there is also a massive excess of heat. Most of that heat just dissipates, but it would be much more efficient to use it, as Coventry city council has with its mile-long pipe under London Road, which heats the local swimming pool or Coventry University’s buildings. I understand that the authority will respond in due course.

At the end of last year, we set out that we will require proposals for new facilities to demonstrate that they will facilitate the diversion of residual waste away from landfill or enable the replacement of older and less efficient facilities. This position reflects the evidence and analysis we have published. It also reflects the waste hierarchy and is congruent with the transition to a circular economy.

Even after the successful delivery of our recycling reforms, there will be sufficient residual waste capacity to treat forecast municipal residual waste arising at national level. On that point, my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South is correct. However, there are five areas in England where more than half the residual waste collected by local authorities was sent to landfill in 2023-24. Landfill was also still relied on for an estimated 5.4 million tonnes of non-municipal, non-major mineral waste in 2022, which is the most recent year for which data is available.

We know about the waste that goes into our bins, but there is a lot of other stuff coming out of construction sites, and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) and I had a chat about this issue in the Lobby, but the analysis the Government published at the end of last year sets out the regional disparities and the regional capacities. It is a good read.

[Ben Obese-Jecty]

I am listening to the Minister’s comments about capacity. I appreciate that she may not have the specific details in front of her, but I would be interested to know whether Cambridgeshire sits within one of the undercapacity regions, and whether that is why so many incinerators are being built in those constituencies.

My other point—I appreciate this is slightly tangential—is that residents of the village of Pidley in my constituency will find themselves equidistant from two incinerators if both are approved. Is there a minimum distance that a village can expect to be from an incinerator? If so, what is it?

[Mary Creagh]

In law, as I understand it, it is for local planning authorities to decide on planning applications. The hon. Gentleman will be surprised to hear that I have not memorised the full 60 pages—I do my best, but I am just not that good. I am very happy to write to him about the Cambridgeshire point, but he can see it online.

The consultation proposed aligning the ETS with the extended producer responsibility for packaging to allow local councils to pass the emission trading costs from the incineration of plastic packaging waste to the producers of plastic packaging. It also sought views on how best to support local authorities in managing ETS costs.

It is not for the Environment Agency to decide where an energy-from-waste plant is built, or whether it is the right solution for treating waste. It can revoke environmental permits only where there is clear evidence of ongoing non-compliance.

I have discussed simpler recycling, and we heard some excellent examples from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) about food waste, including Too Good To Go. The Government have set up a £15 million food waste grant to tackle on-farm food surplus.

We have also set up the circular economy taskforce, bringing together experts from the Government, industry, academia and civil society. It will work with businesses on what they want to see to create the best possible conditions for investment. We are developing a new circular economy strategy for England, which will mean an economy-wide transformation in our relationship with our precious materials. It will kick-start the Government’s missions to have economic growth, to make us a clean energy superpower and to accelerate the transition to net zero. Through our efforts to tackle waste crime, of which there is a great deal in the waste sector, we will take back our streets.

On our capacity announcement, we know there is a need to minimise waste incineration, but it is still a better option than throwing rubbish into landfill. Energy-from-waste facilities provide around 3% of the UK’s total energy generation. They can support the decarbonisation of heating our homes and businesses, helping to cut customers’ bills. Energy from waste can both maximise the value of resources that have reached the true end of life and avoid the greater environmental impact of landfill, which creates its own problems.

I will conclude to give my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South time to respond. I encourage investors, financiers and businesses to invest in infrastructure that supports the movement of resources up the waste hierarchy. Our recycling infrastructure capacity analysis, published in partnership with the Waste and Resources Action Programme, alongside our packaging reforms identified forecast capacity investment opportunities of 1.7 million tonnes a year for paper packaging reprocessing and 324,000 tonnes a year for plastic packaging reprocessing by 2035.

We want to unlock investment, and last week my officials met the Lord Mayor of London, Dutch officials and members of the UK and Dutch financial sectors to agree to form a circular economy finance coalition to boost investment in the transition to the circular economy to which we are committed. That is no small task, but by working together we will keep our resources in use for longer.

[Emma Lewell (in the Chair)]

Baggy Shanker, you have one minute to wind up.

14:59

[Baggy Shanker]

I thank everybody for participating in this really important debate. I thank the Minister for agreeing to my request to ask DEFRA officials to look at the concerns I have had about the Sinfin incinerator for many years.

Right hon. and hon. Members made important points about the industry as a whole. There is a lack of transparency when planning applications are going through and, in certain cases, when the plants are running. The business cases are also not tested when the plants are in operation. Those two things, in my experience, do not marry up, and the Environment Agency and other authorities seem powerless when the incinerators do not perform—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10 (6)).