Environment Bill
Debate between Mark Pawsey and Anna McMorrinWednesday 26th February 2020
(4 years, 9 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Environment Act 2021 View all Environment Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Anna McMorrin
I congratulate my hon. Friend’s local council and my right hon. Friend the Member for Birmingham, Hodge Hill on the fantastic work they are doing. I am really proud that my own local authority, Cardiff Council, is doing groundbreaking work through a clean air plan to tackle air pollution levels. Cardiff Council has just been awarded £21 million from the Labour Welsh Government to invest in practical measures, such as retrofitting, taxi migration and transport initiatives. This is really groundbreaking stuff, which is absolutely needed.
Climate change is no longer a theory. It is a reality beating at our door. The recent floods across our country have shown it is not just something that happens to other people in far-flung places. It is happening right here. We have a moral, social and ethical obligation to the generations who will follow us to meet the environmental challenges of today and leave behind a healthier, more sustainable environment for tomorrow. This long awaited Environment Bill is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to strengthen our environmental standards at home, modernise waste and recycling strategies, and show global leadership at a time when it is so sorely needed. At COP26, we can show the world what we are doing.
There are some welcome measures in the Bill, but I am afraid it fails to show the promised gold standard stipulated by the Environment Secretary’s predecessor. I am not suggesting that any of this is easy. It is not easy to change the way that we do things to meet the climate challenge, but I am suggesting that it is absolutely imperative that we take urgent, radical action to build a sustainable environment and economy for the long term, to safeguard our planet for future generations—offering also opportunities for people, our communities and our businesses. That need not be an either/or scenario. I do not know for how many years I have been making speeches about either the environment or the economy. It need not be either/or; it can be both.
Today I want to focus on one of the Bill’s key elements: waste and resource efficiency and phasing out unsustainable packaging. The UK has been using and wasting resources at unsustainable levels; we are far behind the recycling rates of many of our European neighbours. There is a rising imperative for Government, business and consumers to think and act radically when it comes to plastics and packaging, waste and recycling.
In the previous Parliament, I presented my Packaging (Extended Producer Responsibility) Bill. UK Government figures had been shown to underestimate drastically how much plastic packaging waste Britain generates. A study by Eunomia, the waste experts, estimates that just 31% of waste is currently recycled. Where does that waste go? Much is exported and shipped overseas, and dumped into our precious oceans, washed up on the pristine shores of the Arctic and Antarctic. While the Bill sets targets on waste reduction and resource efficiency, there is more of a focus on end-of-life solutions, rather than tackling types of packaging, and the use and reuse of plastic packaging. That continues to place a disproportionate burden of waste collection and costs on local authorities.
The coalition of waste industry experts and local authorities that I set up around my Bill all believe that the Bill before us does not adequately deal with the reform of waste as it should. We desperately need radical reform of the system across the country. Producers need to take responsibility, from the packaging they produce to the clean-up at the end of the life cycle. This is the Government’s opportunity to be ambitious—to show the UK to be a world leader. It would be a great shame if they did not take this opportunity. Such reform is not in the Bill as it stands.
The current system has failed to get to grips with export waste. I am not confident that the Bill in any way toughens our stance on the restrictions on exporting waste. Even the most well intentioned of producers who ship plastic waste overseas to be recycled and treated correctly, lose control and ultimately lose sight of whether that waste was appropriately disposed of. The Secretary of State, in his opening remarks, said that he had toughened up that area, but I cannot see that in the Bill: we have gone from “prohibit” and “restrict” to providing for regulation. I ask the Secretary of State and the Minister: what does that mean? What does that regulation look like? How does it adequately meet the needs? It does not, as I see it.
Mark Pawsey (Rugby) (Con)
Will the hon. Lady be supporting or opposing the Bill in the Lobby this evening?
Anna McMorrin
I am absolutely opposed to a lot of things in the Bill, because it does not speak to what our industry—our producers—need. So I will be thinking very carefully and taking that decision at the end of the debate.
We must build on our recycling industry here in the UK. The answer to that problem cannot simply be that the Government will tackle the problem by causing more materials to be sent to landfill or the incinerator. Although end-of-life solutions are important, the ultimate objective must be to decrease the volume of single-use plastics, improve design and recyclability and see large-scale investment and infrastructure capacity here in the UK, and not ship things off overseas. We must address the core reason why so much plastic is shipped overseas: 356 million tonnes of plastic waste in 2018 alone.
In England, councils, restricted financially, have been less able to invest in recycling facilities, so much of the growth in the waste disposal sector has been achieved by exporting waste. In many cases, a failed austerity agenda has created that growing dependence on export markets. I am fortunate that in Wales the Welsh Government have been ambitious and introduced those hard recycling targets and invested in recycling, but for this to work we will need fundamental reform across the whole UK. I want this UK Government to take innovative steps to make radical change.
Finally, I want to touch briefly on the Office for Environmental Protection. Where is its independence in holding Governments to account and what consequences will there be when the Government fail to meet targets? It will be a toothless regulator with fewer powers than the European Commission. How can we hope to meet the challenge of the climate emergency with such a weak regulator? The Bill lacks ambition. It lacks legally binding targets and fails at every level. If we want people to take Government and Parliament seriously, we need to wake up and to toughen up the Bill.