Waste Incinerators

Ben Obese-Jecty Excerpts

Thursday 3rd April 2025 Westminster Hall

[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.

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[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.

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[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.