Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(5 years, 8 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
Rory Stewart
As the hon. Gentleman says, that is a fantastic organisation. We are, of course, conducting a very detailed consultation on the future of probation, but to reassure him, the principles behind Durham’s CRC and, in particular, the involvement of local authorities and of the voluntary sector and the close co-ordination with the National Probation Service are fundamental to our reforms.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(6 years, 1 month ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The Minister of State, Ministry of Justice (Rory Stewart)
We do not believe this is an ideological divide between the private and public sectors. We are looking at the relationship between the community rehabilitation companies and the national probation service, in terms of their geographical spread and how they work together. However, we are finding across the country that having the public sector focus on the highest risk prisoners and the private sector and other, non-profit actors focusing on delivering for the lowest risk offenders is delivering innovation, from Cumbria right the way down to London.
Alex Cunningham
In the Committee on the Bill that created the service we have today, many weeks were spent trying to convince the Government that their privatisation experiment with the probation service would fail, and it has. The exception might be the only not-for-profit public sector CRC, which covers the Tees Valley, part of which I represent. It has been singled out in Her Majesty’s inspectorate of probation reports as delivering best practice. What will the Minister do to ensure that the Tees Valley CRC is not subsumed into another privatised contract, to learn from it, and to return the probation service to the public sector?
Rory Stewart
I pay tribute to the hon. Gentleman’s local CRC, which is a good example of how CRCs can work. Durham CRC is a good example of the local authority and the previous probation trust working together. It has met 85% of its targets and is a well-performing CRC. There are also good examples to be followed elsewhere in the country, including in Cumbria, where the CRC is working with rural communities, and in London, where the CRC has improved dramatically and done some very good work with Grenfell survivors. I certainly pay tribute to the work done in the hon. Gentleman’s constituency.
Privately Financed Prisons
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(6 years, 4 months ago)
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Urgent Questions are proposed each morning by backbench MPs, and up to two may be selected each day by the Speaker. Chosen Urgent Questions are announced 30 minutes before Parliament sits each day.
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Rory Stewart
That is absolutely right. It has traditionally been a challenge to bring those private sector skills into government and to make sure we have a critical mass of people who really understand how to stay on top of those contracts, as my hon. Friend says, not just annually but day by day. We are very proud of our director, Ian Porée, who focuses on this procurement, particularly in relation to probation, and has those private sector skills. As I said, we also have 25 years of experience here.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
I appreciate there are major issues around funding prisons and keeping staff and prisoners safe. The Minister wrote to me about drug scanners in Holme House prison in Stockton North, but he did not address the issue of scanners to detect drugs concealed in prisoners’ bodies when they leave one prison for another. Will we get one soon, or is there not enough money?
Rory Stewart
There are, as the hon. Gentleman points out, two different types of scanner. There is a straightforward x-ray scanner, which will generally pick up on bits of metal and things outside a body. Then there is a millimetre wave scanner, which is able, in certain of our prisons, to detect objects inside the body. These are expensive pieces of kit: in certain cases, they can run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. We are now beginning to roll them out across the estate. I absolutely agree that that is the technological future and we will be piloting them in 10 prisons to see that they do what we both believe they should do.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(6 years, 7 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The troubled Holme House prison in my constituency has had another damning report, this time from the Independent Monitoring Board, which talks of a shortage of staff, a lack of appropriate care for prisoners, a sustained drugs problem, and more violence against staff and between prisoners. Things do not seem to be getting any better. Will the Minister please take an interest in Holme House and ensure it gets the support it needs?
Rory Stewart
Absolutely. The central problem in Holme House is, of course, not the age of the building—it is relatively modern—but the drugs. So the first steps we are taking are to get more scanners, sniffer dogs and staff in place. It remains a very serious problem; the connection between the drugs, the violence and the suicide in Holme House is making it a particular area of focus for this Department.
Draft Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) (Amendment) (No. 2) Regulations 2016
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
My hon. Friend asks a very good question. The answer is that we began the communication process through a highly publicised speech given by the Secretary of State at the Oxford farming conference, which got a lot of coverage in the agricultural press. There is increasing awareness now among the farming community of this future exclusion, but clearly we can do more. We will do our best to work with my hon. Friend, with the Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, and particularly with the trade press, to make sure that farmers are now aware of the new procedures. In my experience, farmers generally cotton on very quickly to these kinds of legislative changes, but I am happy to take up the challenge if they want.
I will move forward to address the questions put by the hon. Member for Stockton North. Regarding the question of the calculation of risk and who calculates it, essentially that process has been led by water engineers within the Environment Agency. Some of the exclusions and exemptions are genuinely very low risk indeed. If we look through the list of the exclusions, it was necessary in the past to obtain a bespoke permit, in theory even if someone was just putting a floodgate over their house. Ambiguities within the legal drafting meant that anything that could possibly affect the flow of water, such as someone not letting water into their front door, could have required a bespoke permit.
In the past, putting a sign into a river required an entire bespoke permit. Now, there is absolutely no engineering evidence whatsoever that sticking a small pole into a river will have a significant impact on flooding downstream. However, to reassure the hon. Gentleman, I will point out that the process is very much driven by a cautionary principle—people are being very risk-averse. We have made sure that we have excluded only the very lowest risk activities. Again, registered exemptions are very carefully controlled. In fact, we have had some complaints from people who would like to see us go much further.
The reason we have had to be quite careful is that the measure has to apply to all rivers across the country; it is not possible for us to come up with a single set of rules without being very cautious. For example, there is a standard exemption for scaffolding to extend across 10% of a river. People come back to us and say, “Well, that doesn’t make much sense. If my river is only eight miles wide, you are allowing me to put only 0.8 meters of scaffolding into the river.” The reason for that is that we have to make sure we are very, very cautious, which is why nearly half of these cases will still require bespoke permits. We have to deal with the fact that every river is different, every condition is different and the hydrology of these different river systems is very testing. However, in straightforward cases—a noticeboard or a ladder going into a river, or a simple piece of work on banks, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Bassetlaw—we have taken the view that a calculated risk makes sense.
Finally, on the question of who is best placed to make such decisions, whether on IDBs or the action of local councils, the draft regulations apply primarily to main rivers, which is to say the rivers and streams that we believe have a significant impact on a large degree of flooding. Most of the local authority responsibility will relate to flood risk in general and include a lot of rivers that are not classified under the regulations as a “main river”.
In terms of the resources to be brought to bear, we believe that rather than imposing more costs on individuals, the Environment Agency should be saved about half a million pounds a year—a significant saving—and businesses about £14 million over 10 years. Those financial savings are only the beginning, from my point of view; the real saving is getting rid of the forms. Nothing is more eroding to trust in Government in the general sense of energy and common sense in action than having to fill out forms to put a ladder or a simple signpost into a river.
Alex Cunningham
I thank the Minister for his explanation. None of us doubts the wise measures in place as far as the smaller things are concerned, but I am concerned about monitoring some of the more extensive work that will not require the same level of permit as in the past.
Rory Stewart
In order to deal with the serious stuff, which is to do with major works on bridges, culverts, banks, utility crossings and outflows—water coming in—a full, bespoke Environment Agency permitting system is in place and covers nearly 50% of the applications. Officers in such cases will require full plans, drawings and impact assessments, will have to inspect the individual rivers and will look in detail at the proposed works case by case.
Alex Cunningham
I am sorry—I think I just invited the Minister to repeat what he said earlier—but I am talking about what will not require a permit under the regulations. He started to talk about the more extensive work, but he has addressed that; I am asking about the marginal stuff, where there will be changes. For example, 1.5 km of river is a fairly extensive piece of river, so I am interested in what monitoring of that will be like in future, so that we know the new regulations are working.
Rory Stewart
Dredging and the 1.5 km are perhaps a misleading example. That is about maintenance of silt levels in existing agricultural drainage ditches in areas that are not of environmental importance. The rest of the things that are excluded are, genuinely, very minor works indeed. We are literally getting down to the level of a ladder or a sign board being put daily into the river; a service crossing with an existing structure, or, in other words, someone putting an electric wire through a pipe that already exists in a bridge; a 48-hour temporary trial pit; an investigation borehole; or clearance of sediment traps. For anything above that, such as exposed gravel removal, a large outfall or headwall, or a large habitat structure, the full regulatory system remains in place. I hope that reassures the hon. Gentleman and the rest of the Committee. I commend the draft regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(8 years, 8 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his speech. Of the numerous issues he raised, I think there were three central ones. The first is resources for local authorities to ensure that they can achieve their objectives, which is an important point. The second is businesses and in particular how we ensure that we get things right for them. The third is what we can do to ensure that we engage with other countries through the European Union’s framework.
The hon. Gentleman was absolutely right to raise the resources challenge. As he pointed out, councils such as Stockton have managed to extract a profit from recycling. In ideal circumstances, things can be done. Huge savings can be made from reducing the amount councils send to landfill because they will not have to pay landfill tax and, if they get separation right, it is possible to generate income from the different components being recycled. However, that is not always easy, particularly in remote rural areas and sometimes in certain urban contexts: some people living in apartments are reluctant to separate waste because they simply do not have the room to do it.
The answer is to work more closely on harmonisation. Our initial work in London has led us to believe that if we could have a harmonised recycling system in London, local councils could save between £19 million and £20 million a year. In the case of London, increasing recycling rates would not just be good for the economy but save councils money.
Furthermore, if we are sufficiently imaginative and reach out to the industry by getting the economies of scale, we should be able to drop the charges imposed by companies, who should be able to use a standard fleet to collect waste. At the moment, any number of different trucks are driving around and there are any number of different bins. Some trucks are able to collect only commingled waste while others attempt to separate, but there are problems with crushing plastic as opposed to preserving glass. If we can sort that out through a more harmonised system, that should deliver savings and not impose costs on individual councils.
Alex Cunningham
The Minister has already talked about the challenges in different parts of the country. London is a close, tight-knit part of the world, which makes things easier, but there is a real issue in rural areas. What will happen to targets for rural as opposed to city local authorities? Will they be different?
Rory Stewart
Our objective is to deliver the EU target of 50% by 2020 and then to move on to the targets for 2030. To provide a real challenge to rural areas and to show that it can be done, Wales is showing an extraordinary improvement. The Welsh approach to recycling has very quickly driven recycling rates from the mid-40s per cent. up to the mid-50s per cent., and that is despite working in some of the most challenging geography in Britain. My gut instinct, therefore, is that if Wales can pull it off, we can do better in other rural areas in Britain.
The second issue raised by the hon. Gentleman was to do with businesses and how much they pay. We have to get the balance right there, too. In Germany, for example, the equivalent of Tesco pays to collect the packaging of its own products, which can cost a great deal of money. Some estimates of what businesses collecting their own packaging are spending total billions of euros a year. In Britain, instead, we have adopted a producer responsibility, or PR, system of tradeable credits in recycling in which the collecting is done by the local authority, but the businesses pay for the credits. At the moment, we believe that to be a more cost-efficient and economical system. We continue to focus on that model, although it might need to be tweaked to deal with some of the volatility of prices.
The third question was about what we can do to reach out to other countries. That is a two-way street. Sometimes, it is a matter of us learning from other countries. As the hon. Member for Aberavon knows, Denmark leads us by a long way on this. On Friday, the Danish Environment Minister told me at the Environment Council that the Danes had got their landfilling down to 1.3%. I can hardly believe that to be true, but if it is, we have an enormous amount to learn from Denmark—that is an impressive figure. I was just congratulating Hampshire on 7%, but 1.3% is really going some. As the hon. Member for Stockton North pointed out, however, other member states—often those that have joined the European Union relatively recently—have landfill rates up at the 70% or 80% mark. Clearly, things can be done to share best practice with those states.
To conclude, the areas that we probably want to focus on include food waste—an issue on which the hon. Member for Bristol East (Kerry McCarthy), the shadow Secretary of State, has led a great deal. It is becoming more and more urgent for the public. People care more about food waste, and the days, 10 years ago, when people complained about slop buckets are going: people feel a moral obligation to deal with food waste, and councils that offer separate food waste collection are popular. We need to get better at that.
As far as the second thing that we need to focus on is concerned, we can take some satisfaction in where we have got to: Britain has taken household recycling rates from 11% to 45% since 2000. Getting to the point where we are recycling almost half our waste is relatively impressive. It is striking how attitudes are changing through all generations; people seem to be more comfortable and at ease with recycling.
Finally, we need to be practical. On Thursday, I was talking to the Dutch Government about something called the North sea resource roundabout, which is a new, voluntary initiative of the sort that we should be pursuing more—it is not the EU regulating, but a voluntary approach.
We have fantastic agreements going with Holland on moving bottom ash from Britain to Holland, where there is a much more sophisticated recycling process to extract metals, and on moving compost from Holland. The Dutch have a lot of manure coming out of their animals, but do not have much use for it, so we are moving it to Northumberland, where we can process it into fertiliser. Finally, we are also working with Flanders on the issue of chemicals in plastics.
In every case, concrete issues of shipping routes, costs, definition of waste—how waste is defined affects whether we are allowed to transport it across international bodies—and the way in which waste is counted are involved. As my right hon. Friend the Member for Basingstoke pointed out, how waste is counted affects whether people are incentivised to collect bottom ash.
If we can get such things right, we will see a revolutionary change moving towards what we want: a natural capital approach, making sure that things that are not counted, that the market does not recognise, are properly captured—the value in not only the primary products, but the secondary products coming out of the bottom of incineration. We will then protect our environment for the future and create an economy that is sustainable, low carbon, efficient and impervious to shocks from the global volatility of commodity prices. Such an economy will achieve what we want, which is a more prosperous and a more environmentally friendly future.
Question put and agreed to.
Draft Producer Responsibility Obligations (Packaging Waste) (Miscellaneous Amendments) Regulations 2016
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(8 years, 10 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
That is a deep and important question. It goes back all the way to the design of the scheme in the mid-1990s, when the decision was made to create a market-based system rather than a compulsory one. Our view is that we have the right balance at the moment between recycling rates and costs. It would put a huge burden on businesses and the public purse if we were to adopt a compulsory system, but I would be comfortable about sitting down with the hon. Gentleman outside this room and having a more fundamental discussion about the market-based system.
We are, however, here to talk about not the market-based system itself, but issues such as operational plans and how they are implemented. Moving on to the challenges rightly made by the hon. Member for Stockton North, I welcome the fact that he is taking on board three out of four of the changes: having a simple, single port of call; ensuring that the system is delegated down to the appropriate level within the company; and ensuring that the change of approving body goes through.
On the removal of operational plans, the central question is what we are trying to achieve. Obviously, we are trying to drive up our packaging recycling rates. We have moved away from an operational plan system to a compliance system because, unfortunately, although the operational plans sounded good in theory, we discovered that people were not reading or updating them, and they were not a very useful tool for monitoring how people did packaging recycling. Ultimately, 80% of the operational plans did not represent useful information for achieving what we want—to increase the packaging recycling rate.
We believe that moving to a compliance system will allow the Environment Agency to take a more risk-based approach and will, above all, allow it to use more intelligently the market system that I have just been debating with the hon. Member for Coventry North West so that it can examine the data provided and the number of PRNs being traded, and ensure that we are achieving targets as they are set. We have heard a lot about that, for example in relation to aluminium this year. We do not believe that the operational plans are the correct way to achieve that.
That brings me to the challenge from the hon. Member for Coventry North West about how we will check that the system is working. There are two ways to do so. First, through my colleagues at DEFRA, who proposed the regulations and are working closely with the industry. The second point is that, to be honest, those in the industry with which we are working, from the packaging industry through to Tesco, are not quiet lambs who will go gently into a system that they believe to be bureaucratic, wasteful and not effective at achieving targets. One reason why we have introduced the changes is that we have had a lot of active, energised conversations with the industry over 10 or 15 years. I would expect those people to keep pushing hard. If they do not feel that they are achieving the savings that they want and the recycling rates that we need, they will come back to us in a tough way.
Alex Cunningham
Before the Minister concludes, I also asked questions about the how the management of the scheme by the new responsible body will be resourced and the consistency of implementation across the nation.
Rory Stewart
Those are two separate questions. Consistent implementation across the nations will be key, because what we are doing with the one-stop shop is to ensure that if England signs off on something, Scotland is prepared to accept that standard. To achieve that, we must ensure that our agencies work closely together, and we are working closely with the devolved Administrations.
The hon. Gentleman’s first point was about ensuring that the agencies are properly resourced when signing off on PRNs. Our current assessment is that they are properly resourced, and that the agencies are the right body to carry out that role. We have had long conversations with the agencies about taking that forward. However, I absolutely take note of that point, and we need to watch the situation carefully over the next three to five years to ensure that the job is being done properly.
We have had a distinguished turn-out of Committee members from both sides of the House, whom I thank for coming along. I am grateful for Members’ comments and questions, and I commend the regulations to the Committee.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(8 years, 11 months ago)
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Rory Stewart
First, I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who was a distinguished floods Minister and is right in what he says. We need to look also at upstream mitigation, which means the planting of trees, the restoration of poached soils, and examining peat bogs and river movement. This is not only about hard defences, and the work that we will be doing over the next few months will focus exactly on those natural measures.
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
The devastation of the communities in Keswick, Carlisle and Cockermouth hit by the floods was clear for all to see, but it does not tell the full story. I spent part of my visit to Cumbria meeting people in smaller communities, including Barepot and Hall Park View, near Workington, as well as Flimby and Dearham. Many people were just getting on with the job of clearing up, but they told me that they felt abandoned yet again, with no hope of any schemes to protect their homes, even though most of these schemes would be small and inexpensive. What plans does the Minister have to pay more attention to smaller communities also devastated by floods and to commit to the small schemes, which could make a big difference?
Rory Stewart
First, I pay tribute to the shadow Minister for his visit, which was very much appreciated. It is true that many people feel that the media attention has been on Carlisle and that the number of small villages affected have been ignored. As he says, we can see many communities like that across Cumbria and they will be having a horrifying time. They will have a very difficult winter. We are working to bundle schemes together. One particular example, which I would be very happy to discuss with him, is what is happening at Stockdalewath, where we have an upstream alleviation programme for a small hamlet. We need to extend that to other areas, too.
Oral Answers to Questions
Debate between Rory Stewart and Alex Cunningham(9 years, 5 months ago)
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Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
10. What steps she is taking to reduce the cost of living in rural Britain.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)
Reducing the cost of living in rural areas depends primarily on overcoming the challenges of distance and sparsity. That means boosting productivity and investing in a strong economy and infrastructure, such as road, rail and high-speed broadband. The rural fuel rebate means that some of the most rural areas now benefit from a 5p per litre fuel discount.
Alex Cunningham
People in villages such as Stillington, Carlton, Thorpe Thewles and Redmarshall in my constituency have seen their buses reduced to the odd one here and there, or they have gone altogether, as private companies have pulled out because local authorities no longer have the money to subsidise them. I am sure the Minister agrees that affordable transport links are essential for rural areas, so what can I tell my constituents that the Government will do to connect them to the rest of the area?
Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)
T10. Many of my constituents in rural areas desperately need faster broadband speeds to run their businesses and create jobs in an area where unemployment is 50% higher than the average. The Under-Secretary referred earlier to planned investment, but rather than have my constituents wait years under current plans will he meet the providers again and tell them to get a move on?
Rory Stewart
As the hon. Gentleman will be aware, the progress on superfast broadband has been pretty remarkable; we have gone from 40% to 80%, and we will be at 95% by 2017. If there are specific issues related to his constituency, I would, again, be very happy to sit down to discuss them in detail.