Waste: Incineration

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Lilley

Tuesday 22nd October 2024 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

It is a really important point that the noble Lord makes. If we are moving to a more circular economy, as this Government want, we have to see less residual waste being generated —in fact, less waste as a whole. There is a statutory target to effectively halve residual waste by 2042 from 2019 levels, but there still will be an estimated 17.6 million tonnes of residual waste to manage in 2042. Therefore, we have to look at the bigger picture. How do we actually reduce waste overall?

[Lord Lilley (Con)]

My Lords, is not the biggest incinerator in the country the Drax power station? It receives eye-watering subsidies for burning wood that has been transported across the oceans, creating emissions, which has had to be dried and cut into chips, also making emissions, and which emits, on being burned, more CO₂ than coal. This is justified on the grounds that, over the next half-century to a century, trees replanted in those forests will absorb CO₂. If we can take this leisurely approach to reducing CO₂, is there really a climate emergency?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I do not consider the Government to be taking a leisurely approach on this aspect. What is really important is that we look at how we decarbonise our energy from waste facilities going forward. We have consulted on expanding the UK Emissions Trading Scheme to waste incineration and energy from waste, and we are taking on board the responses to that and will bring forward detailed final policy in due course. We plan to include energy from waste under decarbonisation readiness requirements.

European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Bill

Debate between Baroness Hayman of Ullock and Lord Lilley

3rd reading: House of Commons & Committee: 3rd sitting: House of Commons & Report stage: House of Commons
Wednesday 8th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Sue Hayman]

I am talking about what constituents who actually work in the industry are telling me. To be honest, I would trust the judgment of my own constituents. In an intervention, I mentioned a constituent who works at the National Nuclear Laboratory, who says that leaving will impair his ability to collaborate with leading scientists and engineers across Europe, to the detriment of science and technology in this country. This is what my constituents are telling me. The hon. Gentleman can choose to disbelieve them—I do not. I trust my constituents.

I do not understand why, when we have conflicting legal opinion on why we have to leave, the Government are insisting so much that we have to. We need to make sure that a rapid exit does not do serious harm to our nuclear industry. We have so much to lose, with so little to gain. I therefore ask Members to support new clause 192.

[Mr Lilley]

For the sake of brevity, I will focus, if I may, on new clause 11, which is entitled “Tariff-free trade in goods and services”. Of course, there are no tariffs on services worldwide, so that should be fairly easy to achieve. I take it to mean tariff-free trade in goods and the minimum of barriers to services.

With regard to trade, there are only two realistic outcomes to the negotiations we will have: first, that we negotiate a free-trade agreement continuing tariff-free trade—more or less what we have at present—and secondly, that we move to trading on the basis of most favoured nation tariffs under WTO rules, which is basically what America, China, Japan and Russia, the four most successful countries exporting to the EU, do.

From what I have heard in this House and what I know of the Government’s position, everybody would like us to negotiate continuing tariff-free trade with our European partners. We do not particularly need any clause in this Bill to try to achieve that. Moreover, it is very simple to negotiate. It is very easy to go from zero tariffs to zero tariffs—it can be done in an afternoon. It is not like negotiating the removal of tariffs, as the EU has had to do with Canada. Canada had 5,000 different tariffs, the EU had 12,500 different tariffs, and they had to trade off one against the other.

Tariff-free trade is very simple to negotiate. As far as barriers and services are concerned, if our regulatory systems began to diverge, all we would have to negotiate—after assessing whether or not the matter was serious—is the normal dispute resolution procedure, because after the great repeal Bill we will start with identical regulatory arrangements.