Foreign and Commonwealth Office

Stephen Gilbert Excerpts

Tuesday 24th May 2011 Commons Chamber

[Stephen Gilbert (St Austell and Newquay) (LD)]

It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for Hayes and Harlington (John McDonnell), who is not the only one who has difficulty protecting his local heritage. We have that difficulty in rural areas too. Indeed, I rise tonight to express the deep anger, disappointment and dismay across my constituency that the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government has approved a mass burn incinerator for the village of St Dennis in the heart of the constituency.

There is anger because a Government who make much of their localism agenda have overruled the wishes of the local parish council, the former district council and the former county council’s planning committee, and ignored representations from Cornwall’s six MPs. There is disappointment because the Government have fundamentally undermined their claims to be the greenest Government ever. There is dismay because the incinerator is the wrong solution to Cornwall’s waste problems and might dominate the small village of St Dennis for four decades to come.

Let me put the incinerator in context. At 120 metres, its stack is twice the height of this building’s famous Clock Tower, which houses Big Ben, and taller than the Statue of Liberty. It will dominate a small Cornish village and will be seen from many of Cornwall’s beauty spots. As we enter an era of global warming, Cornwall’s incinerator will belch out thousands of tonnes of CO₂ emissions and other harmful particulates.

We know that inefficient incineration, in which the energy is not used, does not move waste up the waste hierarchy. It remains a disposal in the same category as landfill. It is therefore out of step with Government policy, but that is what is happening in Cornwall, and that is what the Secretary of State has approved. The incinerator will generate more than 200 extra fuel-guzzling lorry movements on Cornwall’s lanes and roads each and every day. It will depress reuse and recycling rates. Incineration has never been the right solution for Cornwall, only the quick fix for a council caught in a blind panic.

The difficult circumstances in St Dennis mask the great strength of the people. They have put up a tremendous fight against the plans in what has always been a David and Goliath situation. They are not nimbys and since 2005 they have only ever wanted a modern solution to a modern problem. They have fought with only half the information that other sides in the dispute have.

May I ask my hon. Friend the Deputy Leader of the House directly whether waste private finance initiative contracts and the potential liabilities to which they expose local authorities will now be material considerations in planning policy, as the inspector’s report suggests? Does that not fundamentally undermine the plan-led approach that the Government want to adopt? How can development be plan-led if local people who have no control over the contracts signed by a local authority will always be trumped by the provisions of that contract? How can it be right for a document for use in a public inquiry to be redacted? There should be no document needed for a public inquiry that is not available in full to all participants. I would appreciate it if my hon. Friend asked his colleagues in the Department to write to me on those points.

The community in mid-Cornwall is angry. Our faith in the democratic process has been shaken to its core. How can it be, when we have won our case every time we have put it to local decision makers, that our Secretary of State, who is responsible for localism, has overruled the local decision makers whom he says he seeks to empower? There is no doubt that Friday was a sad day for democracy in Cornwall, for Cornwall’s beautiful environment, and for future generations who will look back, bemused, at the folly that has been imposed on them.