Draft Waste and Agriculture (Legislative Functions) Regulations 2022

Ruth Jones Excerpts

Wednesday 9th February 2022 General Committees

[Ruth Jones (Newport West) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Bone. I am grateful to be back here with the Minister discussing more secondary legislation; in many ways, I do not feel that my week in London can be complete without a debate on delegated legislation from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I will put the Minister out of her misery and confirm that Labour will not be opposing the statutory instrument. However, before we pack up and go I want to say a few things that are important to keep in mind.

As we all know, the European Commission has powers related to directives concerning waste, including those specifically covering end-of-life vehicles, batteries and accumulators, and electrical and electronic equipment, as well as to the overarching waste framework directive. This instrument transfers several technical powers and functions relating to those resources and waste management directives from the European Commission to the Secretary of State—who I am sure is grateful to still be in his job—and, depending on the power, to his devolved Administration counterparts.

The transfer will allow for the correct functioning of the relevant retained EU legislation following the UK’s departure from the EU. This instrument seeks to enable the UK and the devolved Administrations to maintain their environmental standards on the safe handling of waste, levels of recovery, recycling and treatment of waste. The functions listed in the instrument are routine and in several cases, the standards, requirements or other functions set out are already in place and working well. The powers are purely to be able to change them in future should that be necessary, rather than seeking to actively update or amend them at the moment.

Although we on these Benches cannot see any immediately obvious pitfalls—and I can confirm that we have looked—the instrument does open the door to potential divergence in technical standards. It is also important to note that any regulations made under the new powers would be done via the negative procedure, so there would not be so much room for effective scrutiny. The Minister will know what we think about that.

The powers in question are to set or alter certain technical criteria related to waste and agriculture. In the waste sector, the technical functions relate to: standards for sampling of waste going to landfill, from the landfill directive; exemptions covering the use of heavy metals in vehicles; minimum requirements for the certificate of destruction; conditions for storage and treatment; material and component coding standards for vehicles from the end-of-life vehicles directive; guidelines for inspecting waste facilities and sampling methods; updating regulations in line with scientific and technical progress, from the mining waste directive; export criteria; exemptions from labelling requirements, from the batteries directive; definitions of “by-products” and “end of waste”; application of the efficiency formula for classifying incineration facilities, from the waste framework directive; minimum treatment technologies; technical requirements for WEEE treatment and storage; categorisation of products specified in the directive; and the crossed-out wheeled bin symbol, from the waste electricals and electronic equipment directive, or WEEE.

As the Minister will know, I am a champion of our country as a Union of four equal nations; that is why I am concerned about the potential for divergence on technical standards between the European Union and the United Kingdom, and of course internally between the four nations of our country. I accept that there could be positives, too. For instance, the standards around WEEE treatment and storage could be strengthened and made more compatible with a circular economy for electronics.

Can the Minister confirm whether she plans to strengthen those standards? I would welcome an explicit answer, if possible, today. I also ask her to think about the formula for waste incineration facilities. That formula could be applied more stringently in conjunction with planning rules to ensure that only the most efficient facilities are permitted. Can the Minister let me know what the situation there would be?

These are important issues, albeit viewed as niche by most people in the real world out there—not least by my constituents in Newport West; I suspect that goes for the people of Bury St Edmonds, too. But that is why these debates are important. Our departure from the European Union changed life as we know it and required real change in what we do and how we do it. This instrument testifies to that.

In winding up, I would like to acknowledge Heeran Buhecha Fordyce and Pamela Frost for their work at the Department. Too often, our staff in this place and civil servants do not get the acknowledgement that they deserve.