Speaking during a debate in the House of Commons, shadow environment secretary Mary Creagh expressed concern about the apparent open warfare between government departments over the environment. She pointed in particular to a story published yesterday (October 26)in the Guardian, entitled Osbornes anti-green agenda splits coalition which she said could damage the confidence of businesses looking to invest in the environmental sector in the UK.
As a result, Ms Creagh tabled a motion containing three proposals for how to improve the situation and drive green growth.
The proposals were:
- Bringing forward infrastructure spending on flooding defence and broadband
- Committing to mandatory carbon reporting
- The setting of higher waste targets to drive private sector job creation
Specifically, Ms Creagh called on the government to raise the UK recycling target to 70% by 2024 to create an additional 50,000 jobs a plea first made last yearby Friends of the Earth (see letsrecycle.com story) .
In opposition, Ms Creagh said that Labour had trebled household recycling from 11% to 40$ but that the current governments Waste Review was a disappointment.
She said: The Governments recent waste review was a missed opportunity to boost recycling and create new green jobs. It was overshadowed by the in-fighting over bin collections between the Secretary of State for chicken tikka masala and the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs.
She explained that while the three devolved governments had all adopted a target to recycle 60% of waste by 2020, with Scotland and Wales aiming for 70% by 2025, England had the weakest recycling target in the UK, which is the target for the UK as a whole to meet the bare legal European minimum of 50% by 2020.
There is a bitter irony in that, because the more the devolved administrations achieve, the less England will have to deliver to reach the UK target.
Response
In response, environment minister Richard Benyon said that the government was working towards becoming the greenest government ever pointing to initiatives such as the green investment bank, which will have 3 billion to invest in green technology.
And, on the issue of recycling, he questioned the idea of a 70% target claiming it was plucked from the air.
He said: It is reasonable for an opposition to push government in certain directions, but they cannot just pluck a recycling target of 70% from the air, even though I would certainly aspire to such a target.
However, recycling targets on their own are not a measure of how well a government are doing. Instead, it is vital that we consider the matter in the round and that we push waste issues up the hierarchy. We cannot simply imagine a day when we could move to 70% recycling without getting the industry working properly with us to ensure that there are markets for recyclates and that we have an absolute plan, which is what we have done through our waste initiatives.
Mr Benyon added that there were local factors to consider when increasing recycling rates, and that the issue should be dealt with locally.
Councils
During the debate, Dr Therese Coffey, Conservative MP for Suffolk Coastal, also said that there was no point in talking about recycling and setting high targets if councils did not deliver pointing to the fact that many Conservative councils have higher recycling rates than Labour-run local authorities.
She said: There is no point in a lot of hot air about aspirational targets if local councils do not deliver. We encourage our councils to get on with their programmes, to be innovative locally and to ensure that they happen. Conservative Members are proud to go back to our councils and to talk about recycling rates of 60%, while on the other side of the Thames, where MPs are championing recycling, their councils are delivering very little.
Ms Creaghs motion, which was also debated by MPs included green party leader Caroline Lucas MP and former environment secretary and Labour MP Joan Ruddock, was defeated, with 222 MPs voting for it and 302 MPs against.
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