Waste Management: Refuse Collections

Lord McKenzie of Luton Excerpts

Thursday 31st January 2013 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the short answer to my noble friend’s first question is no. I can amplify that a bit by saying that many of the successful bidders for the Weekly Collection Support Scheme are demonstrating that you do not need a fortnightly residual waste collection to generate high recycling rates. As I said, the scheme is set to generate 400,000 tonnes of recycling.

On Liverpool, I absolutely assure the House that the Government did not change any of the grant conditions between Liverpool City Council applying for funding, the Government awarding the money and Liverpool deciding to withdraw its bid. That was Liverpool’s option; it was not up to the Government.

[Lord McKenzie of Luton]

How does the Minister assess the relative merits of the £250 million fund to help weekly bin collections against the £480 million cut in council tax benefit support which, as the Resolution Foundation publication today shows, means that three-quarters of councils will be forced to demand increases of up to £600 per year in council tax payments from 3.2 million of the poorest households in our country? Does the Minister recall the poll tax?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, the £250 million found by the Department for Communities and Local Government was found from within its own budget. We are dealing with a very important area—that is, to ensure that people who already pay for their bin collections have the opportunity of having weekly collections. The analogy which the noble Lord is trying to draw and the trap he is trying to drag me into are not relevant to this particular discussion.