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

Lord Teverson Excerpts

Wednesday 27th February 2019 Grand Committee

[Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend for setting out the background to this instrument, which I welcome. I would like to ask a couple of questions.

The Minister referred to a national plan being in place. Has anyone voiced concerns about this plan? Are they entirely happy with it? At what date will that national plan kick in?

I think that my noble friend has addressed the concerns raised by Sub-Committee B of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee, but there was a scenario referred to whereby 556 UK approvals to export notified waste to the EU, with an associated tonnage of just under 25 million tonnes, might be caused to fall into an abyss. Can my noble friend put my mind at rest that the situations in paragraphs 3.6 and 3.7 on page 3 of the Explanatory Memorandum have been resolved?

[Lord Teverson (LD)]

My Lords, I would also like to thank the Minister very much for participating in a meeting—I only managed to get to the very end of it, but the invitation was there. I also congratulate her on making what seems like a mundane statutory instrument really exciting through the enthusiasm of her reading.

However, this is an exciting issue, and it is a global issue. This whole market has fundamentally changed since the beginning of last year—almost a year ago—when China refused imports of what it called low-grade plastic, anything below about 99.7% pure plastic recyclate. Since then, that tide of waste from the developed world to the developing world has now been stopped by Thailand temporarily, as well as by Vietnam and Malaysia. We had the irony of President Trump blaming Asia for the litter that was washing up on the west coast of America, when of course most of it had already been exported from developing countries, particularly the United States, to east Asia. I will come back to this theme at the very end, but I want to put this SI in the context of an important issue and a quickly changing world.

Perhaps I could go through a few questions about the SI itself. I understand from it that we are, obviously, already members of the OECD and tied by those regulations and agreements, but are also we signed up not just as a member state of the EU but as a member in our own right to the Basel convention, which covers this area, so that we do not have to have a treaty change for that?

I was interested that the Minister mentioned Spain and, as I understand it from her, we have got to a stage where we are agreeing to agree but have not actually agreed. I understand also that the SI’s territorial limitations are to the United Kingdom. Does the Minister have any information about the relationship between Gibraltar and mainland Spain regarding its waste disposal? I think that the overseas territory—that is its status—relies very much on Spain for that as well. I do not know whether that is included as part of the negotiations going on at the moment.

I note the Minister’s remarks on consultation, but I would be interested to understand whether waste contractors and waste exporters have now been sent precise instructions on what they have to do.

I found the actual form on page 33 of the SI rather quaint. It read a little like one of those forms you get when you go to the United States, which says, “Have you indulged in terrorist activities recently?”, as if you are going to casually tick that for yes. I was quite surprised to see such a 1950s-style document here, but perhaps it is all computerised. I would be interested to understand that from the Minister.

I want to be clear on another area which affects all these things. As we know, Defra is the department that has suffered more cuts under our fiscal regime than pretty well any other department, outside that for local government—the MHCLG, as it is now. Does the Environment Agency have the capacity to take on any additional responsibilities in this area, particularly given the rise in waste crime that there has been? Frankly, I suspect that the amount of waste crime internally in the UK is absolutely dwarfed by the amount of potential exported material that should not be exported. Despite saying that we should not export waste to countries that have lower environmental standards than us, I see no track record of that whatever.

I come back to the fundamental point I made at the beginning. I read through the resources and waste strategy published by Defra at the end of last year. Chapter 6 of that is entitled “Global Britain: international leadership”, and I could not see anywhere in it a wish to stop this trade in waste, so that we would clean up our own backyard and no longer send that waste to other parts of the world. The greatest thing about this SI ought to be that it should become absolutely redundant within five to 10 years.

--- Later in debate ---

[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.

[Lord Teverson]

Do we have officials who check what happens to this stuff once we have exported it outside the EU and EFTA? Do we follow the supply chain and check what happens to it?

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton]

I would not want to confirm that 100%, but I hope very much that that is the case. I will investigate exactly what happens in the supply chain in order to find out whether we know exactly what happens at the other end. I think that all noble Lords will find that interesting; I know that I certainly would.

Turning to the Basel convention, I can confirm that we are members in our own right and that in fact we play a leading role within the convention in the way that it moves forward. We ensure that we get the best environmental outcomes from that particular organisation. That will remain the case and noble Lords should be reassured in that regard.

On Gibraltar, we are working closely with the Government of Gibraltar to support their EU exit preparations on waste shipments. Where the UK has 11 approvals outstanding, Gibraltar currently has 45 consents to ship waste to Spain which extend beyond exit day, and these will require reapproval by the Spanish authorities. It is a transitional issue for approvals to ship waste which have already been consented to. The EU legislation provides a framework for where consent has yet to be granted. Gibraltar is covered by the UK’s ratification of the Basel convention and our membership of the OECD, so there is no legal impediment to Gibraltar continuing to ship waste to Spain after our departure from the EU. If no agreement is reached within the next short period of time, what will happen is that Gibraltar would put forward new applications which will be submitted from 30 March onwards. Again, there is no legal impediment to those applications being agreed to. There will be a slight break in the continuity of service, but we do not think that it would be for very long. The Environment Agency has spoken to the affected exporters and contingency plans are being made.

I turn now to consultation, an issue which was raised by the noble Lord, Lord Teverson. This is a technical instrument and, if I may coin a phrase, nothing has changed. Much of what happens already will continue to happen. Organisations will get their approvals. There will be two countries working together, and the waste will go from A to B. However, it is important that we make sure that everyone is aware of the plans we have in place. As I explained earlier, we have held events where we talked to the stakeholders involved in this area. The conversations were focused strongly on contingency planning and encouraging them to make sure that they are ready for Brexit, if it is a no-deal Brexit, on 29 March. We have issued a technical notice on the continuity of waste shipments which was published on 14 October.

A number of questions were asked about costs and resourcing. I would like to reassure noble Lords that much of this will not change. The amount of enforcement which has to happen will stay the same, and the number of applications which have to be submitted to a certain office in a certain place will also remain as it is. We do not foresee any significant changes in costs or additional resources being required as a result of us leaving the EU without a deal. The systems are already in place, and we are confident that they will continue.

I would like to respond to some of the questions put by the noble Lord, Lord Dubs. He mentioned the sister—or brother—legislation, which has been mentioned. This is happening with some of the no-deal SIs, in particular Defra SIs. Some of the cross-cutting SIs are picking up various issues from other SIs and putting them into one because they sit more comfortably with each other. The SI we are talking about is the Environment and Wildlife (Legislative Functions) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019. These regulations were approved by the House of Lords on 12 February and the instrument was then passed by the House of Commons on 14 February. That piece of legislation has gone through and, once this instrument has gone through, the two will combine together and the SI will be made.

Turning now to the imports of waste from Ireland and the impact on the Irish border— which again I will try to answer as much as possible—we have in the past agreed to allow imports of hazardous waste to the UK for specialist disposal, for example, by high-temperature incineration. This has been at the request of the Irish Government, and these imports have been agreed on the basis that suitable disposal facilities are not available in Ireland. This is the same for many countries when they work together on these transactions. When the UK leaves the EU, such import of waste for disposal from EU member states will be prohibited under EU law. If EU member states wish to continue to export waste to the UK for disposal—that is, from Ireland to Northern Ireland—it will be for the EU to amend its legislation to make this possible. So it will not be possible in the future. In 2017, the UK imported 12,973 tonnes of waste from Ireland. Of this, 7,978 tonnes of hazardous waste was imported to England for HTI.

I shall probably stop at this point on the Northern Ireland-Irish border issue. I can see myself getting into hot water around it, and it would be sensible for us to give a considered response on this specific issue.

However, in general terms, I hope noble Lords will agree that the SI does what it says on the tin and keeps as much the same as possible. We hope it will not be needed in the future, but if it is, we know that the international transfer of waste will happen in an orderly fashion. I commend the Motion to the Committee.