Draft Waste (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019

Neil Parish Excerpts

Thursday 7th March 2019 General Committees

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Dr Thérèse Coffey)]

I beg to move,

That the Committee has considered the draft Waste (Miscellaneous Amendments) (EU Exit) Regulations 2019.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Austin. The need for the statutory instrument arises as the UK leaves the European Union, as provided for by the result of the 2016 referendum and as subsequently agreed by Parliament. In line with the European Union (Withdrawal Act) 2018, the regulations simply make technical legal amendments to maintain the effectiveness and continuity of UK legislation that would otherwise be left partially inoperable, so that following our exit from the EU, the law will continue to function as it does today. I assure the Committee that the adjustments represent no change in policy and will have no impact on businesses or the public.

The matters under consideration are devolved, but the four Administrations have agreed to make most of the necessary changes through the statutory instrument, so its territorial extent and application is the United Kingdom. That said, the following amendments do not cover the whole United Kingdom.

First, in part 2, the Environmental Protection Act 1990, which is amended by regulations 2 and 5, does not extend or apply to Northern Ireland. Secondly, Council decision 2003/33/EC, which is amended by regulation 15, does not form part of retained EU law in relation to Scotland, as the requirements of that decision have previously been implemented directly in Scottish domestic legislation. Thirdly, of the new reporting requirements that replace the existing reporting requirements to the Commission, which I will cover later in my speech, a particular example refers to England only, as the devolved Administrations did not want that duty to apply to them in the instrument. We have worked with the devolved Administrations during the drafting of the instrument. They have all given their consent, as has the Scottish Parliament.

The instrument covers the waste management areas of waste batteries and accumulators, end-of-waste criteria, packaging waste, end-of-life vehicle destruction certification, landfill acceptance criteria, the classification of hazardous waste, the management of waste from extractive industries, and calculation methods for verifying compliance with recycling targets under article 11.2 of the waste framework directive.

To ensure operability, the instrument will make amendments to three waste-related Acts of Parliament and 14 related EU regulations and decisions. More broadly, as has often happened with such statutory instruments, a large number of the changes are due to amending references to the European Union, EU institutions and EU administrative processes to make them refer to their domestic equivalents in the UK, and to updating legal references to refer to relevant domestic legislation.

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

I thank the Minister for giving way and assure her that I will not keep her long. The end-of-life vehicles directive puts a sum of money in place to dispose of vehicles. Naturally, the statutory instrument only passes the legislation from European to British law, but further down the road, I would like the Minister to consider the cost of scrapping vehicles. Perhaps electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles could have a lesser charge, which would be yet another way to encourage people to use electric vehicles so that we improve our air quality in the long run.

[Dr Coffey]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting policy point, but he will recognise that the purpose of the instrument is not to generate new policy at this stage. That will be a matter for a future separate debate. I fully understand where he is coming from—he mentioned the matter in the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee yesterday—but to keep the debate relevant to the statutory instrument, I suggest we talk about it another time.

[Neil Parish]

I understand.

[Dr Coffey]

A significant part of the instrument addresses the way in which references to EU directives will be applied after exit day. I now turn to the detail of the changes that are being made through the instrument.

In part 2, regulations 2 and 3 effectively bring references to the waste framework directive up to date with respect to part II of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Waste and Emissions Trading Act 2003. That is enabled by section 2(2) of the European Communities Act 1972. Part 2 of the draft regulations therefore brings our existing regulations up to date with the correct references.

Part 3 comprises the substantial changes needed to make the retained law operable, with respect to primary legislation, after exit from the EU. That is the element directly relevant to the withdrawal Act. Regulation 4 considers the Control of Pollution (Amendment) Act 1989, which contains a specific power for the Secretary of State to exempt—by secondary legislation—a waste carrier operating in the UK from the need to be UK registered, based solely on meeting the legal requirements in other EU member states. That power has never been used and will be redundant upon exit so we are revoking it, but the existing general power to exempt registering when prescribed conditions are met will remain. I emphasise that all carriers operating in the UK will still need to meet the requirements set by UK competent authorities.

Regulation 5 inserts new section 75A into the Environmental Protection Act. The new section clarifies how the waste framework directive will be applied after exit to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Regulation 6 contains two strands of amendments to the Waste and Emissions Trading Act 2003. Regulation 6(2) amends section 1 of that Act. It omits subsection (2), which referred to landfill targets contained in article 5.2 of the landfill directive, as those targets are already set out in domestic legislation. Subsection (4) is also amended to require the Secretary of State to consult the appropriate devolved Administration for each part of the UK before setting any new landfill targets or amending existing ones. That fully respects the devolution agreements as waste is a devolved matter. A similar change is made by regulation 6(3) to the secondary legislation-making power in section 23 of the 2003 Act. Regulation 6(4) amends section 37 of that Act, which defines waste for the purpose of the Act, and inserts new section 37A to provide modifications to clarify the way that the waste framework directive will be applied after exit, in order to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Part 4 of the instrument makes amendments to and revocations of retained direct EU legislation. The lawyers have drafted the regulations by number in order of year, but I will speak to groups of new regulations that refer to specific waste-related subject areas. Chapter 1 of part 4 makes amendments to EU regulations. Regulations 8 and 10 of the instrument are about batteries. They make amendments to Commission regulation 1103/2010, which relates to capacity labelling of batteries, and to Commission regulation 493/2012 on the calculation of recycling efficiencies of the recycling processes of waste batteries and accumulators.

The amendments include replacing references to “Member States” with “The Secretary of State”, and defining “appropriate agency”, which would be the environmental regulators in England, Scotland and Wales, and the Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs in Northern Ireland. The amendments also insert modifications that clarify the way that the various EU directives referenced in those EU regulations will be applied after exit in order to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Regulations 9, 11 and 12 cover waste criteria and make amendments to three EU regulations made under article 6.1 of the waste framework directive. Those three EU regulations provide criteria for determining when certain types of scrap metal, glass cullet and copper scrap cease to be waste. The required processes for businesses to achieve end of waste will not change as a result of the instrument. The assessment of end-of-waste status and the guidance provided by regulatory agencies will still apply as before.

The principal amendments made to those EU regulations insert modifications to the way that references to EU directives in those regulations are to be applied on and after exit day. For example, references to “Member States” are to be read as references to the “appropriate authority”, “competent authority” or “local authority”, which was responsible for the UK’s compliance with that obligation or was able to exercise that discretion before exit day. To be clear, those are not new burdens; they merely maintain the status quo about who does what currently.

In addition, the amendments account for the fact that environmental verification under the eco-management and audit scheme—known as EMAS—will no longer apply in the United Kingdom. Hon. Members who have regularly attended such Delegated Legislation Committees will know that the amendments relating to that scheme have already been passed by both Houses.

Chapter 2 covers EU decisions. Regulation 13 amends Commission decision 2000/532/EC, which contains a list of waste classifications for hazardous and non-hazardous waste. The amendments introduce modifications to clarify the way that various EU directives will be applied to maintain the existing effect and operation of the law.

Regulations 14 and 16 make amendments to decisions made under directive 94/62/EC on packaging and packaging waste relating to derogations for glass packaging and plastic crates and pallets. References to “Member States” will be replaced by the “Secretary of State”, references to “Community” will be replaced by the “United Kingdom”, and appropriate agencies defined as the regulator of each nation and DAERA in Northern Ireland. They also introduce modifications that clarify the way in which EU directives referenced in the legislation will be read.

Regulations 15 and 17 to 20 amend various decisions made under directives 1999/31/EC and 2006/21/EC relating to the landfilling of waste and extractive waste respectively. These amendments include replacing references to “Member States” with “The Secretary of State”, and references to “Community” with “the United Kingdom”, and provide certainty on definitions and defining the appropriate agency. Two amendments convert requirements to report information to the European Commission into a statutory duty to publish the same information reports. As before, they introduce modifications that clarify the way in which EU directives referenced in the legislation will be applied.

Regulation 21 relates to Commission decision 2011/753/EU on establishing rules and calculation methods for verifying compliance with a target set in the waste framework directive. Regulation 21(7) applies to England only. This is where we have amended article 5 of the decision so that it now requires the Secretary of State to publish the progress report on whether the current target to recycle 50% of household waste by 2020, set by article 11.2 of the waste framework directive, has been met in respect of England. The progress report must be published before 1 January 2022. The devolved Administrations did not want this duty to apply to them in this instrument.

In chapter 3 of part 4 and the schedule, the instrument revokes some directly applicable EU legislation on waste. Some of this legislation has been revoked because it is redundant in a domestic context, for example Commission decisions that set the format of questionnaires and data reports that EU member states complete and return to the Commission in relation to the implementation of EU directives.

Other pieces of the directly applicable EU legislation are being revoked because their requirements are already embedded in domestic legislation. For example, Commission decision 2003/138/EC covers material and component coding standards for end-of-life vehicles; and Commission decision 2002/151/EC relates to minimum standards for the certificate of destruction for those vehicles. In both cases, the requirements of those decisions are already set out fully in the End-of-Life Vehicles Regulations 2003.

This statutory instrument is long and technical, but as I said at the start, it does not change policy. It simply makes the rules that we have today applicable.