Industrial and Commercial Waste Incineration

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Stephen Doughty

Tuesday 28th January 2020 Westminster Hall

[Stephen Doughty]

I agree that all those issues have to be considered.

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

I am reluctant to make this point to my hon. Friend, because I am a good friend of his. Is he aware that many of us who have specialised in this area over the years think that energy from waste is absolutely part of the answer to climate change, when it comes to the waste that towns and cities create and do not want to take responsibility for? Is he aware that modern energy from waste can be excellent in scooping up that stuff, bringing us energy and stopping us exporting waste all over the developing world?

[Stephen Doughty]

My hon. Friend and I take slightly different approaches to this issue. In the waste hierarchy pyramid, which will be familiar to many people, incineration of waste is only just above landfill; indeed, there is some controversy about that. The key thing is that we need to reduce the waste that we create in the first place, so that we do not have to burn it, put it into landfill or export it, as he suggests.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Doughty]

I will make a bit of progress, then I will happily take some more interventions.

Ultimately, the decision on this particular project is a devolved matter, and I hope that Welsh Ministers, the Planning Inspectorate for Wales and Natural Resources Wales will listen to the growing cross-community and cross-party opposition to the proposal. However, the implications of a wider policy on the incineration of waste and, most critically, on whether we continue on the path of wasteful waste production and climate-changing linear economy or revolutionise the way we live our lives, are a matter for the whole of the UK and globally. I hope Wales will uphold its own responsibilities to future generations, but this is part of a wider context. I do not want Wales to become a dumping ground for waste from other parts of the UK or further afield. I am sorry to say that sometimes it feels, particularly in my area, as though that is an issue. We saw what happened with the mud from the Hinkley nuclear sites, and we have seen other incinerators being built in the area. When we look at the history of Wales, we can think back to the dark days of Tryweryn, for example. We do not want that sort of relationship between Wales and the rest of the UK.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stephen Doughty]

I will not give way to my hon. Friend, because I have done so already. I will give way to others shortly.

I thank all my constituents who have raised concerns, and I thank the various campaigning organisations who have provided evidence for the debate.

--- Later in debate ---

[Stephen Doughty]

The right hon. Gentleman makes his point. He will know that one of the strongest opponents of the Barry incinerator is the Assembly Member for the Vale of Glamorgan, Jane Hutt, who sits in the Welsh Government. She was with me at the protests outside the Senedd, making her views clear alongside many of my other friends. It is good that concern is being raised across the political spectrum. In fact, the Chair of the Climate Change, Environment and Rural Affairs Committee in the Senedd, Mike Hedges, has made it clear that he thinks there should be a moratorium on incineration.

[Mr Sheerman]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Stephen Doughty]

I am going to make some progress, because I am conscious of time. Lots of people want to make speeches—[Interruption.] I will let my hon. Friend intervene before the end of my speech, but I want to make some progress.

The lack of data is crucial. I have been asking a series of parliamentary questions over the past few months about this issue, and there appears to be a lack of data and no strategic approach for locating incineration facilities, in relation to travel times, emissions from travel and so on. For example, there is apparently no clear information available on how much waste travels between England, Wales and Scotland, on how much waste we are exporting and importing, or on the emissions caused by transporting waste by road to incineration locations, including the differences between, for example, transferring things by rail and other means. If we do not take that holistic picture of carbon and other emissions into account, how can we make strategic decisions?

The proposed incinerator in my constituency would lead to as much as 200,000 tonnes of commercial waste being burned each year, and it would operate 24 hours a day in a predominantly residential area. Where would the waste come from? How far would it travel? What is the impact of clustering incineration facilities? I hope the Minister will be able to explain why that information is not recorded at a UK level and made available so that decisions can be taken, whether by the UK Government or by devolved Administrations and councils.

I am also concerned—I hope the Minister can answer some questions on this—about why the UK Government have been promoting, in their UK Trade and Investment “GREAT Britain” strategy, overseas investment into CoGen and the facility in my constituency? In a glossy brochure on the energy investment portfolio, the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North Somerset (Dr Fox), asked for investment in the proposed incinerator in my constituency. Again, that seems to be at odds with what the UK Government are saying overall about carbon emissions. We are hosting the Conference of Parties this year. Given their position, why is that going on? Why are they actively promoting this facility, which has not even received planning permission yet?

[Mr Sheerman]

My hon. Friend knows that I was a councillor in Wales many years ago, so I know a bit about Wales. I have to ask him the acid test question: what is the answer to all the waste that is generated in south Wales? Most of the local authorities have low performance in recycling; the national average is certainly not good. Will the waste be exported to my constituency, or to Indonesia or some other country? What will he do to take responsibility for that waste, which he has a moral duty to deal with in some modern way?

[Stephen Doughty]

Actually, Wales has extremely strong targets and good performance on recycling. This is industrial and commercial waste, and it is not clear that all of it will be coming from Welsh sources. That is an issue that I have been raising. It looks like it will be shipped in from elsewhere. Unless we can be clear about where that waste is travelling from, how can we take strategic decisions about how it should be dealt with? I certainly feel that three incinerators located within five miles of each other in my area of Cardiff and the Vale of Glamorgan seems like overkill. Why are they not being shared out fairly across the country?

Co-operative and Mutual Businesses

Debate between Barry Sheerman and Stephen Doughty

Thursday 27th June 2019 Commons Chamber

[Mr Barry Sheerman (Huddersfield) (Lab/Co-op)]

It gives me great pleasure to follow that rather enlightened speech by my friend, the hon. Member for Wycombe (Mr Baker). As I said in my earlier intervention, we work together on the FairLife initiative, which shows the children present today that sometimes we work positively across party lines; we do not just disagree over Brexit or other things.

I suppose my admission today is that as a young academic teaching at Swansea University, I got involved in learning about worker co-operatives and wrote an article about them. I got so enthused that I started to set up worker co-operatives. Eventually, someone said to me, “You’re very political and interested in co-operatives; why don’t you join the Co-operative party?”, and I said, “What is the Co-operative party?” The person said to me, “Come down to a Co-operative party meeting at the Elysium buildings”, which were by the railway station in Swansea. It was a pouring wet night—we specialise in those in Swansea—and I got down to this meeting and came out as the secretary. You will understand, Madam Deputy Speaker, how politics works in that sense. I have been a co-operator ever since.

I have also been a bit of a dissonant voice, because I have always called into question the idea of having a single view of co-operation. We all look at Google these days, and when I did I saw this definition of a co-operative:

“A farm, business, or other organization which is owned and run jointly by its members, who share the profits or benefits.”

It is a simple thing, but it is also the most liberating thing I can think of in terms of the politics that I do, because it is absolutely the kind of politics that says, “Politics is not just about general elections, referendums or the big scale; it is about ordinary people deciding that they are going to take control of their own lives and that they are not going to be manipulated.”

I do not want to go too much into the history, but we all know that the industrial revolution pulled people off the rural economy—the farms and the life they knew—and into awful conditions in the factory towns of Britain. They had to shop at the company store: the company not only employed them, but paid them in its own currency so that they could shop only at the company shop. That was called truck. The Truck Acts passed by this House banned the practice of companies having their own currency.

Co-operatives sprung up—one could see at least 50 co-operatives from Castle Hill in Huddersfield. They started as local communities saying, “We are going to be able to buy fresh, good food that isn’t overpriced, and we are going to take control of that by setting up a retail co-operative.” Members will know the old principle: people used to put in a pound and they would have a share, so they were a shareowner in that co-operative. People were then employed to run the co-operative.

I have a criticism of that model. It is a good model, and by the 1950s most people shopped in co-ops. The co-operative retail movement was so powerful that it was the major retailer in our country. Indeed, in 1917, when Lloyd George was Prime Minister and the co-operative shops were not getting their fair share of flour and sugar because the Germans were blockading Britain, people marched down to Westminster Hall and started the Co-operative party. The biggest retail movement in Britain was not getting a fair share. Very soon, the Co-operative party came to an agreement with the Labour party that we would never stand candidates against each other, which is why there is a Labour and Co-operative wing of the labour movement.

That is the history, but let me bring things up to date, because that was an important lesson. People’s lives were in turmoil: the whole social and economic nature of the country changed in the 18th century and into the 19th century. There was radical change, and radical change is now happening again in respect of the assured ways of life. People thought they were going to get a job and probably have it for life, working in the public services or at a big company. In questions this morning there was mention of someone having worked for ICI—Imperial Chemical Industries. I worked for ICI. It is long gone, but many of the people with whom I worked at ICI worked there for life. It was the norm that people joined a company and, although perhaps they would change their job once or twice, by and large the structure of life was stable and secure. That stability and security has largely disappeared for many of the people we represent in this House.

We have to come to terms with things and to change. Human beings are quite good at responding and saying, “This is really difficult; let’s do something to mitigate this and take control of our lives.” What happened during the industrial revolution? Working people set up trade unions to represent them, and housing associations and mutuals—a whole range of things. They set up mutuals and co-ops to make sure that people could have a holiday with their family once a year. They set up mutuals to make sure that people had money for Christmas presents and other big occasions, when they could get their dividend. People set up co-ops for burial, and the Co-op is still today a big player in that sector. They covered holidays, funerals and all those sorts of things. What is the great cause today? It is housing. Young people, and even people on reasonable incomes, cannot get a foothold in the housing market. In the current circumstances, why are we not going back to those mutual and co-operative ideas to meet that need?

All that brings me to the second part of my speech, although I do not want to keep the House’s attention for too long. As life is changing radically, the opportunities are changing. I am a long-term social entrepreneur: since I have been in this business, I have started more than 50 different social enterprises. A lot of social enterprise is about asking people for money, and it is difficult. It is tough. As a member of the court of governors of the London School of Economics, I was befuddled, because every time we hired a fundraiser, they did not even make enough money to pay the wages of the fundraising team. Eventually, we hired a young American woman—I think she was called Sally Blair—who raised tens of millions of pounds. People gave us whole blocks of buildings around the LSC in Holborn. She was the most magnificent fundraiser. I said, “Sally, why is it that you have been so successful? She said, “I am an American. If you’re an English fundraiser, you ask someone for some money, and if they say no, you go and sulk forever. We ask seven times, and put a person on the back burner only after the seventh time.”

As a social entrepreneur and a co-operator, I was in the business of asking people for money for good causes, and it was hard. Then we had the big financial crisis. George Osborne always used to say that the Labour party had caused a worldwide breakdown in modern capitalism. I used to say to him that I wished that we were that powerful. The issue was actually something to do with international banking and the corrupt way that banking had emerged.

The point I want to make is that technology has changed the opportunities for raising money for co-operation. I chair the Westminster Crowdfunding Forum. Social media can achieve immediate results. For example, if someone has an idea for a co-operative, they could raise money worldwide. They could identify a particular need in Yorkshire, in Huddersfield, or even in your own constituency of Doncaster, Madam Deputy Speaker. The technology presents us with an amazing opportunity.

[Stephen Doughty]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way. I completely agree with him about those challenges of raising money to get new social enterprises and co-operatives off the ground. In that regard, crowdfunding is a way forward, absolutely, but it also needs leadership from Government. Does he welcome what the Welsh Government have done in the past few days in announcing a new £3 million fund for the Social Business Wales New Start initiative to kick-start hundreds of new social enterprises and co-operatives across Wales? It was, in fact, launched at a restaurant called The Clink, which is next to Cardiff prison and is itself a social enterprise. Does he agree that that is exactly what the Government should be doing—kick-starting the co-operative economy in the UK?

[Mr Sheerman]

I was amused by that intervention because, of course, my origins in co-operation are in Wales. It is a delight to hear about that initiative. There is also a Clink in London—in Pentonville I think.

The point that I am trying to make is that there are new opportunities. I got fed up talking about co-operation and how wonderful it was. I worked with John Smith, who was a passionate supporter of co-operatives and who started the Co-operative Commission with an international committee on mutuals. We had lots of debates and we set up the Co-operative Development Agency. The problem now is that the co-operative movement is too conservative these days. It clings to the old model, the basics and the values of which are right, but sometimes, I think, we miss the point.

When I went into Co-op shops, I felt that the conditions for the workers were worse than those in Woolworth’s, Asda or Morrisons, which was wrong. I made myself unpopular when I said, “Why don’t we do what John Lewis does?” John Lewis, as I am sure everyone on the Government Benches know, is a workers’ co-operative; it is owned by the workers. They call them partners, but it is a workers’ co-operative; and it works and it is successful. It is still doing relatively well even with all the pressure on the high street. So, we have to be critical about the co-operative model and we have to modify it, but, essentially, we have to energise the workers. Worker co-operation is essential if we are to make an organisation work. That blend of everyone having a share as a consumer along with measures to energise the staff is absolutely the way forward.

Finally, now that we have all these new opportunities— we have not only crowdfunding and crowdsourcing, but blockchain and digital currency—there are real possibilities for transforming the economy big time, not little time. I am not talking about a couple of small shops or a couple of little start-ups; we need massively to change the way that we do things in this country. Most international business people whom I meet believe—partly because of Brexit but not entirely so—that we are heading for another global collapse of the economy, another global meltdown, another major recession. We will need, as never before, co-operatives, new mutuals and new ways of doing business. If those new ways of doing business are rooted in empowering people as individuals and as communities, a brilliant future will lie ahead.

The flag of the co-operative movement worldwide is a rainbow of colours. The United Nations has understood the power of our co-operative ideals to transform people’s lives not only in wealthy countries such as the United Kingdom and in Europe, but across the world. If we are to do something to stop what is happening in central America—the tragic picture of that father and little girl was still in my mind this morning—and if we are to bring wealth and power to people who do not have it at the moment, co-operation must be at the very heart of what we do.

Let me finish by saying that co-operation is wonderful, it must be updated and forward looking, and it has got to be, in the best sense, empowering and revolutionary.