Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Maria Miller

Tuesday 17th October 2017 Commons Chamber

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

Reports from Cameroon describe barbaric clashes between security forces and civilian opposition. The internet and phone lines have been cut, and constituents of mine with family members in the country are rightly concerned about their welfare. What can my hon. Friend do to help stop the worsening crisis and help people find out about their family members?

[Rory Stewart]

Clearly, the situation in Cameroon is very disturbing. As my right hon. Friend suggests, the Anglophone community has been particularly victimised in terms of internet access, which has now been restored. We call on all parties to refrain from violence and to respect the rule of law, and call particularly on the Government of Cameroon to exercise restraint and address the root causes of the dispute.

Oral Answers to Questions

Debate between Rory Stewart and Maria Miller

Wednesday 12th July 2017 Commons Chamber

[Rory Stewart]

The hon. Lady has been a leader in this House on addressing food waste, which fundamentally needs to be driven by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and its Secretary of State, monitored by the Cabinet Office through the single departmental plan. DFID’s role is then to ensure that, internationally, we are consistent by showing exactly the kind of leadership on food waste that the hon. Lady has provided.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

I know that the commitment to implementing the sustainable development goals comes right from the top of Government. By when did my hon. Friend ask the Office for National Statistics to report on the UK’s progress?

[Rory Stewart]

The Office for National Statistics is compiling a report for the UN, and we will be submitting ourselves to a voluntary assessment of the UK’s performance on the sustainable development goals at home and abroad.

EU Action Plan for the Circular Economy

Debate between Rory Stewart and Maria Miller

Monday 7th March 2016 General Committees

[The Chair]

We now have until 5.33, an hour after the start of the Minister’s statement, for questions to the Minister. I remind Members that they should be brief. It is open to a Member, subject to the Chair’s discretion, to ask related supplementary questions.

[Mrs Maria Miller (Basingstoke) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to have listened to the hon. Member for Aberavon and the Minister introduce the debate. I have two simple questions. The first involves the recycling industry in the UK. Many local authorities, such as mine in Hampshire and that of my hon. Friend the Member for Portsmouth South, are looking for more certainty about the future of recycling. Bearing in mind the problems local authorities have with getting contracts to recycle Tetra and other materials, what work are the Government doing to provide more certainty for the recycling industry, so that more products can be recycled?

[Rory Stewart]

I thank my right hon. Friend for her question. The first key element is that to create a real recycling economy, we need certainty, vision and clear targets. If Hampshire County Council or, for example, South Gloucestershire Council wants to make the requisite investments in recycling facilities or trucks, it would be really helpful if we moved from the more than 300 different systems we currently have throughout the country towards a more harmonised system. If a critical mass of councils were collecting Tetra and separating their waste into its component parts, it would be much easier for the environmental industry to make bigger long-term investments.

Secondly, we need to ensure that Hampshire County Council works more closely with some of its neighbours. There are some fantastic examples in South Gloucestershire, South Oxfordshire and Surrey. I would like to see the development of clusters—perhaps a London cluster, perhaps one around Hampshire—that can think about what best practice is and how to get the economies of scale. That does not necessarily mean one company collecting all the waste across many counties, but it almost certainly does mean developing simple systems in which, in a highly mobile population with people moving from one local authority area to another, people at least know what to do, rather than having to re-learn the rules of the bespoke system in every area.

[Mrs Miller]

My second question is on energy recovery. In Hampshire, only 7% of waste is disposed of in landfill because there is extensive use of energy recovery. The by-product of energy recovery is incinerator bottom ash, which is currently not counted towards recycling targets in England, whereas it is in Wales and other parts of the EU. The proposals before us do not recommend a change to whether bottom ash is counted, although they do recommend a change for metal-related bottom ash. Does my hon. Friend the Minister agree that we have an opportunity to include bottom ash in our recycling targets, so that we are more likely to get the increased recycling rates that we need and, indeed, that I know the Minister wants?

[Rory Stewart]

There are two issues: a past one and a future one. Incinerator bottom ash was not included in recycling targets in the past because it is not, in the narrow sense of the word, recycling. Glass, for example, is taken and turned back into glass; with incinerator bottom ash, a product is destroyed and something else—generally a cinder block—is generated, and that is normally seen as recovery rather than recycling. However, as my hon. Friend pointed out, Wales, in a domestic context—it is not allowed to do this in an EU context— does count incinerator bottom ash as recycling, as does Germany.

There would be a good circular economy argument for why we might want to include incinerator bottom ash in recycling targets. If it is being reused, that is certainly a product going back into use. So to take up my right hon. Friend’s challenge, the Government undertake to look closely at the idea. Over the past few weeks we have asked officials to begin to examine it more closely, along with the potential for extracting precious metals from incinerator bottom ash. There is potential for fantastic trade between Britain and Holland, which might result in many hundreds of tonnes of precious metal being extracted. As my right hon. Friend pointed out, that could make a significant contribution to our recycling targets.

Finally, I pay tribute to Hampshire council, because 7% of waste going to landfill is a fantastic figure to have achieved. The EU has set a target of getting under 10% by 2030, so Hampshire’s achieving 7% is worthy of admiration throughout the country.