International Waste Shipments (Amendment) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Lord Dubs Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Lord Dubs (Lab)]

My Lords, I join in thanking the Minister and her officials for a useful and helpful discussion yesterday. It was probably intended to answer questions to shorten this debate, but unfortunately it gave me more things to think about after the discussion, so it may not have achieved its end. However, I appreciate the trouble the Minister and her officials went to to answer questions and to brief us.

I appreciate this SI is based on the Basel convention, which is not an EU convention, and therefore it is quite right that we should conform to it. I also hope that the bulk of what we are talking about will be proved unnecessary if we do not crash out of the EU, as some people fear. I am not sure whether yesterday’s discussions in the House of Commons have made that easier, but that is not for debate today. I understand that something has to be done, even if we leave the EU on the basis that the Government are suggesting, as some elements of this will have to be carried over eventually, but that is not for today.

There is obvious concern about Spain and Gibraltar but not because there may not be a simple answer. I read in the papers that the Spanish Government are concerned about Gibraltar and may be using this and other measures to bring pressure to bear on our Government about the future of Gibraltar. The danger is that this may drag on beyond the exit date—although we now probably have three months longer—but what happens if the Gibraltar and Spain issue is not resolved by the time we leave the EU? How many businesses will be affected? What is the position there? The House of Lords Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee was,

“concerned that any refusal by a competent authority to treat an existing approval as valid could have an impact on the UK’s ability to export notified wastes”.

If we cannot reach an agreement with Spain in time, we would presumably have to have new agreements with other countries to get rid of the waste there, or are we stuck with it? What is going to happen?

I have a few more questions beyond Spain and Gibraltar. Do the Government expect an additional workload for the UK’s competent authorities—the Environment Agency, the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, the Northern Ireland Environment Agency and Natural Resources Wales—as a result of Brexit? What will be the cost to taxpayers of any additional workload?

The Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee recommended that the instrument should be upgraded,

“to the affirmative procedure so that the House may consider any potential impact on UK manufacturers”.

Can the Minister tell us a little more about what impact there might be on British manufacturers? Is there an impact assessment somewhere, or do the Government feel one is not necessary?

Paragraph 6.4 of the Explanatory Memorandum, which is perhaps easier to understand than the main document—that is not surprising—states:

“Provisions …. on waste shipments, which transfer legislative powers from the European Commission to the Secretary of State, are included in a separate cross-cutting transfer of legislative functions instrument relating to the environment”.


Is that a different statutory instrument? If so, which is it, when will it be published and how does it relate to the SI we are discussing now?

Paragraph 7.4 states that, in the event of no deal,

“UK exporters will need to familiarise themselves with the customs guidelines the EU has laid down for imports of waste from outside the EU”.


What have the Government done to publicise these guidelines to UK exporters? What is the cost to UK exporters if we leave the EU without a deal?

Paragraph 7.6 states that the instrument is:

“Amending references to the EU and EU institutions and administrative processes to UK equivalents”.


What are the UK equivalents? What is the cost to the UK taxpayer for this additional workload? Will the UK equivalent institutions need to take on new members of staff to handle the administrative processes? How many new members of staff have already been hired to deal with this?

Paragraph 7.8 states:

“A number of amendments … on waste shipments are not included in this instrument but will instead be contained within a separate cross-cutting statutory instrument relating to the environment”.


Which SI is that? Is it the one I asked about earlier? Has it already been published? If no, when will it be?

Paragraph 10.2 states:

“Government informally engaged stakeholders at a large face-to-face event … No substantive comments or issues were raised”.


What stakeholders did the Government engage with? What were their concerns?

Finally, I am not trying to pull a fast one, but page 29 of the instrument refers to Article 55 under the heading “Designation of frontier crossing points”. I must ask about Northern Ireland; the Minister is nodding. Is any waste going back and forth between Northern Ireland and the Republic? If so, what are the implications of this designation on the wider discussions concerning an open border between the United Kingdom and the Republic? I should have given the Minister some warning about the last point; she will not have been expecting it, but I thought I should make it anyway.

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I thank noble Lords for their contributions, especially the noble Lord, Lord Dubs, whose approach to this SI has been particularly forensic—I hope that he will do many more. I will address some of the issues raised today. A number of questions were asked that go into slightly more detail beyond the nugget of legislation that noble Lords are looking at today. I will therefore probably write a letter in addition to what I say today, particularly on the border crossing issue, which goes far beyond the scope of our considerations. I hope that I can answer noble Lords’ questions and put their minds at rest.

My noble friend Lady McIntosh mentioned the UK plan. I assure her that there are no concerns about the UK plan; it has been in place since 2012 and will continue.

Furthermore, my noble friend referred to the 556 approvals. She is quite right: when this instrument was laid, it looked like we had a mountain to climb in getting this waste approved and out of the country. I am pleased to say that this is an example of us working really well with our EU counterparts, who recognise the same as us that the shipment of this type of waste is hugely beneficial on both sides. It is an economic arrangement and makes sure that we get our waste treated in the right place, particularly where we do not have the capacity to do it ourselves.

The noble Lord, Lord Teverson, mentioned the trade in waste, both with China and more generally. If we lived in a perfect world, we would be able to dispose of and treat waste in our own nations, and that would continue for ever. However, some waste has a greater economic value to other countries or they have greater facilities to process that specific sort of waste, so I cannot see a future, at least in the short term, where we will ban all waste exports, because we simply cannot deal with some waste ourselves. However, we want to promote UK-based recycling and export less waste to be processed abroad. We are looking at a suite of measures, such as increasing the monitoring of international waste shipments and charging higher fees to improve compliance. We set out all these ideas in the recent resources and waste strategy, as the noble Lord will know, and we will publish more detailed plans soon.

The instrument retains the prohibition on the export of waste for disposal to countries outside the EU or the European Free Trade Association. The export of hazardous or household waste for recovery to countries outside the OECD is prohibited. Where we export waste destined for recycling to countries such as China—there will be other examples—that are better able to cope with this sort of waste, they will have specified which wastes they are willing to import and the procedures that UK exporters must follow are very well set out.