Lord Grantchester
Main Page: Lord Grantchester (Labour - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Grantchester
“(5) An instrument containing regulations which make provision falling within paragraph 6, 7, 8, 9, 12 or 13 (whether or not also making any other provision) may not be made unless the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.
(6) The first regulations under paragraph 10 or 11 may not be made unless the instrument has been laid before, and approved by a resolution of, each House of Parliament.”
Lord Grantchester
My Lords, Amendment 55ALE would implement the recommendations of your Lordships’ Delegated Powers Committee. Noble Lords will forgive the slight sense of déjà vu with which we return to this subject but, as the Delegated Powers Committee highlighted, the scale and nature of the extensive powers this Bill affords to the Secretary of State are vast. That these powers are subject to annulment only and could require no parliamentary approval seems completely inappropriate in the most part. This amendment also extends the provision for parliamentary approval to the CFD counterparty as well as enforcement provisions and the oversight of consultations. When commenting on this section of the Bill, the Delegated Powers Committee notes that much of the provision for investment contracts mirror those that will implement the CFDs in Schedule 2. Therefore its recommendation is the same.
Paragraph 14 of the sixth report states:
“We re-iterate in the context of Schedule 2 the view we expressed in the final two sentences of paragraph 4 above about the importance of draft regulations being made available to the House in sufficient time before it embarks on the report stage of the Bill”.
Paragraph 15 states:
“We also consider that any regulations made under Part 2 of Schedule 2 should require the affirmative procedure, with the exception of those which make provision falling within paragraph 10 or 11, which should require the affirmative procedure on first exercise”.
Without repeating remarks made in Committee previously, it is clear that this is not an appropriate way to legislate. We are now on the final day in Committee on this Bill, which has already been passed in another place, and we still lack most of the detail to enable us to understand how the new landscape will work in practice. Parliament is being asked to approve little more than a framework for legislation that should guide investment in the energy market for many decades to come. I sense that the Government are keen to heed the advice of the Committee, and therefore ask the Minister to ensure that draft regulations, in particular for Part 2, are published in good time for this House to analyse them ahead of Report when we return after the Recess. I beg to move.
Lord Roper
My Lords, I support the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, on this amendment. I believe that we have a responsibility on behalf of the House to follow the report of our Delegated Powers Committee. Although I was in some ways disappointed, in other ways I was relieved when I saw in the Forthcoming Business published this morning that we will not be reaching Report stage in the first three weeks after the Recess. That will give the Government time to have these regulations published and for the House to examine them carefully. I was worried that we would get them just before we came back without a proper opportunity for discussion. I would be very grateful to have reassurance from the Minister that the regulations will be available in good time for Report.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, for his amendment which would implement the recommendations of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. It would require that all regulations made using the powers in Schedule 2 should be made using the affirmative procedure, apart from regulations made under paragraphs 10 and 11 on the provision of information and advice. These would need to be made using the affirmative procedure the first time such regulations are made.
I welcome the Committee’s scrutiny of the Energy Bill. As I have previously mentioned, the Government are carefully considering the recommendations of the Delegated Powers Committee’s reports and will respond in due course. I reassure the Committee that throughout the Summer Recess, Ministers and officials will be working very hard to try to provide as much information on the regulations as soon as we can. We intend to consult from October on the detailed implementation of the EMR, which will give noble Lords an opportunity to scrutinise the detail ahead of Report. Further details of our plans for secondary legislation can be found in the memorandum we recently sent to the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee. I hope that with this reassurance that we will be working extremely hard to try to satisfy not only him but the Members of the Committee the noble Lord will withdraw his amendment.
Lord Grantchester
I thank the Minister for those comments and the noble Lord, Lord Roper, for telling the Committee that we may well get a chance to have a look at this in October so that we can take careful cognisance of the situation before we return on Report. I beg leave to withdraw the amendment.
Lord Grantchester
I thank the noble Lord, Lord Teverson, and my noble friend Lord Judd for bringing forward the subject of the use of organic waste and wider aspects of renewable generation. We welcome the opportunity to debate this, alongside amendments on other developing technologies. I understand that EU Sub-Committee D will be conducting an inquiry into food waste during the next Session.
A diverse mix of technologies and providers is crucial to a well functioning market, a point that was highlighted last week when this Committee debated access to the market for independent generators. Last week, we heard that while the rest of the economy showed meagre but welcome signs of growth, green growth in 2011-12 was 4.8%, thereby outstripping almost every other part of the economy. It bears saying again that investment in emerging technologies, such as biogas, that will provide the engine of growth in years to come is vital.
Sustainable development means that we must get a lot smarter about the management of our natural capital stock and flow, and this means smarter management of the entire life cycle of the resources we use. Recycling organic waste for renewable energy generation is no substitute for eliminating the volume of food waste produced in the first place, and I ask the Minister to update the Committee on what progress the Government have made in reducing this organic waste.
The amendment relates to reducing food waste from the retail supply chain. I shall extend this amendment’s probing to anaerobic digestion in the wider agricultural sector and sewage works in local authorities’ areas of activity. Where waste is unavoidable, anaerobic digestion can be a double win by reducing methane emissions caused by land-filling and, if used in CHP, generating renewable heat and energy. In addition, the digestate produced by anaerobic digestion can be used as a fertiliser.
In government, my party transformed our relationship with waste by quadrupling household recycling, introducing measures to divert waste from landfill and securing capital investment in these new technologies. We would not wish to see this work wasted—no pun intended—and urge the Government to build on this legacy.
In 2011, the Government published an Anaerobic Digestion Strategy and Action Plan for England. Can the Minister update the Committee on its progress? I shall raise a number of points in that regard. The Government say that they see AD CHP providing between 3 and 5 terawatt hours by 2020. Can the Minister update the Committee on the current level of deployment? The Government set themselves no specific targets for regional adoption of AD; however, they aim to remove unnecessary obstacles to its development. Given the Combined Heat and Power Association’s concerns about the ability of decentralised energy to access the market, are the Government confident that they have now removed these barriers to development of this important technology? Finally, what funding has been provided to date through the Waste and Resources Action Programme, WRAP, for the development of AD?
In Denmark, more than 80% of district heating is provided through CHP plant. Embedded, decentralised renewable generation of this kind requires a comprehensive strategic approach, and it is welcome that the amendment has brought this to our attention. The Committee looks forward to hearing from the Minister whether the Government will bring forward a plan to promote the sustainable development of this technology as part of our European commitment to recycle.
Baroness Verma
My Lords, I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Teverson for prompting a very important debate on setting targets for the landfilling of waste.
The amendment is designed to require the Secretary of State to set out a plan and timeframe, as soon as practicable, for reducing and eventually eliminating the landfilling of organic waste to make it available for renewable energy generation and other appropriate uses consistent with the waste hierarchy, as defined in the Waste (England and Wales) Regulations 2011.
We support the minimisation of organic waste going into landfill and are sympathetic to the aims of this amendment. To date, we have made considerable progress. We have reduced the amount of food waste produced and encouraged separate food waste collections that are suitable for anaerobic digestion and composting. We have already seen a substantial increase in the number of anaerobic digesters generating energy from food waste and expect many more to come on stream in the next few years.
As noble Lords will be aware, there are currently targets, set out in the EU landfill directive, for reducing the amount of biodegradable municipal waste entering landfill. Those require the UK to reduce the amount of biodegradable municipal waste entering landfill in 2020 to 35% of the levels that entered landfill in 1995; the UK is currently on course to meet that. An EU review of those targets is under way as part of a wider review of EU waste policy and legislation. I must stress that the outcome of the EU review will not be known until mid-2014, but there is a possibility that the European Commission will propose setting new targets. Therefore it would not be appropriate to commit ourselves to targets in addition to those set by the EU, particularly at this point in time when the outcome of the review of the EU targets is still unknown.
The Government have worked very successfully with industry to reduce supply chain food waste by nearly 10% over the past three years. Household food waste is down by even more: 13% since 2006. As noble Lords have pointed out, we want to focus in particular on waste prevention, rather than landfill targets or restrictions. As noted in the 2011 waste strategy, preventing food waste is the most effective approach in carbon-saving terms, compared to landfilling. Each tonne of food waste prevented means that 4.2 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent emissions are avoided. We believe that there are more efficient options than targets or restrictions in this area, with companies themselves knowing best where to make changes for maximum impact.
The voluntary approach has been shown to work and allows businesses to reduce waste and make themselves more efficient and competitive. We want to build on that work with businesses rather than impose targets or restrictions. As well as the continuation of the Courtauld agreement to reduce food and packaging waste in the retail and manufacturing sector, the Government have also recently launched a further voluntary agreement, which takes the same approach with the hospitality and food service sector.
We are also making progress in the collection and recycling of food waste, which is used to generate electricity by means of anaerobic digestion. Local authorities in the UK collected and recycled approximately 250,000 tonnes of separately collected food waste from households in 2011, which is a 54% increase on 2010. We expect that to be nearer 300,000 tonnes in 2013, which could provide electricity for 30,000 homes.
We can continue to support a growing anaerobic digestion industry without targets. Current evidence suggests that introducing further statutory targets would impact on businesses and local authorities in terms of compliance and monitoring, which would risk additional cost burdens on business.
I will respond briefly to a couple of points made by my noble friend Lord Teverson on the sector’s need for a plan that will avoid landfill from food waste. My noble friend will agree with me that the measures we are taking on anaerobic digestion are a success story. The Government have achieved their ambition of increasing the energy produced from anaerobic digestion of waste. The number of plants has increased from the 54 that existed when we published our strategy and action plan to 110. There are many other plants with planning permission in development.
We provide incentives for anaerobic digestion through the renewables obligation feed-in tariffs and the renewable heat incentive, which the noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, asked about. We have also provided a £10 million anaerobic digestion loan fund through the Green Investment Bank, whose fund managers have already invested in AD plants. The action plan has also delivered a driving innovation anaerobic digestion fund that is helping to challenge costs in the industry and a range of other measures, including reducing red tape for businesses in the sector. All these measures are helping the sector to grow and achieve its potential. Like my noble friend Lord Teverson, I am a keen supporter of composting, but I suspect he is probably much better at it than I am.
The noble Lord, Lord Grantchester, asked what the Government are doing to try to reduce the amount of food waste going to landfill. I referred to that in my speaking notes. We are working with business, and the voluntary approach has been successful. I hope that my noble friend finds my explanation reassuring and will withdraw his amendment.