Environment secretary Caroline Spelman has defended the government's decision to withdraw funding for seven PFI projects in an evidence session examining the impact of last month's Comprehensive Spending Review on Defra.
We remain committed to helping local authorities in dealing with waste
Caroline Spelman
Mrs Spelman was grilled by the cross-party environment, food and rural affairs select committee in a two-hour session in Westminster yesterday (November 16), which examined how the department will operate with its budget set to be slashed by 29% by 2014/15.
In a discussion that centred largely on funding flood defences and animal health, Mrs Spelman took the opportunity to reaffirm the government's commitment to tackling local authority waste in the wake of the withdrawal of PFI funding for seven projects (see letsrecycle.com story).
Mrs Spelman said that it had taken a “series of difficult decisions” in choosing to remove the funding and she added that PFI credits would not guarantee the delivery of those projects that had survived the cull.
She said: “It is not a guarantee that the local authorities – the 11 out of 18 projects – that were given the green light will necessarily proceed because of course those local authorities have to find the resources to match to make those projects proceed.
“Conversely, some of those projects that we didn't give the green light to or central support, will proceed because the local authorities have decided that they have the resources necessary to go ahead with the project. But we remain committed to helping local authorities in dealing with waste.”
The decision to remove PFI funding from seven projects despite the ongoing procurement process was met with shock at the time (see letsrecycle.com).
However, many of the affected councils have since vowed to continue their respective projects.
Technology
Also in the session, Neil Parish, Conservative MP for Tiverton and Honiton, asked Mrs Spelman how Defra would seek to promote anaerobic digestion and other energy-from-waste technologies, which, he said, were “not always greeted with glee” by local populations.
Drawing on the coalition government's ‘localism agenda', Mrs Spelman said: “On energy-from-waste I think it is a local decision. There are parts of the country that have embraced with enthusiasm the waste-to-energy model and are other parts of the country that are not comfortable with that model.
“The new coalition government has made it perfectly clear that they want to devolve more power, that we believe localism is the right approach to take, and one would expect to see a diverse role of outcomes.”
Discussing the role of different treatment technologies, the Secretary of State pointed to the ongoing work of recycling minister Lord Henley.
Lord Henley has visited a large number of waste treatment facilities since being handed his brief in May and Mrs Spelman said that the minister was an “enthusiast for both methods of waste disposal”.
Peter Unwin, director general for environment and rural at Defra, added that it would aid the spread of information about the technologies. He said: “Local authorities will make their own decisions, what we can do is help them with their decision putting out information on energy-from-waste and allay some of those public fears. In some cases that works and in some cases it doesn't.”
Also during the discussion, Mrs Spelman confirmed that the department would be cutting its staff by between 5,000 and 8,000 employees, as permanent secretary Dame Helen Ghosh revealed on the day of the Comprehensive Spending Review (see letsrecycle.com story).
Register for free to comment