Norman Baker MP said DEFRA was relatively powerless on waste matters because of a division of responsibility between itself, the DTI and the Treasury. And its inability to fight its corner, combined with the government prioritising other issues above waste, have hindered recycling in favour of incineration, he said.
“We have a division of responsibilities within government and the way it is structured, particularly within DEFRA and the DTI and the Treasury,” he explained.
He accused DEFRA of becoming the “department for fridges and abandoned cars” while the DTI took responsibility for most other waste matters, such as producer responsibility on End of Life Vehicles and WEEE and added: “government waste policy is like a ship sailing without somebody at the helm.”
Mr Barker was addressing the LARAC (Local Authority Recycling Advisory Committee) conference in a wide-ranging speech seemingly sympathetic to local authority concerns.
“I wish DEFRA was more powerful than it currently is,” he said. “Plenty of people within DEFRA haven’t got clout they should have. Neither have the ministers. They always get out-manoeuvred by the DTI and the Treasury.”
Priority
Mr Baker suggested the government saw waste and recycling as a low priority compared to health and education, and said its failure to pursue the waste hierarchy effectively and with sufficient funding had encouraged incineration.
“Those economic signals are still there that make landfill an attractive option,” he said. Unless Landfill Tax increases to 35 per tonne sooner than the ‘medium term’ currently planned by the government, he argued, the pressure to divert waste from landfill, contained in the Landfill Directive, would be hindered by insufficient funds for recycling. “As a result, many local authorities have (already) opted for incineration as a way to replace landfill as a part of their waste plans,” he said.
“The Landfill Tax needs to get to 35 per tonne rather quicker, because decisions about waste are being taken now by local authorities when the landfill tax is lower than 35 a tonne,” he added.
Zero Waste
Referring to the Liberal Democrats’ commitment to Zero Waste at their conference last month (see letsrecycle.com story), he said this was only a theoretical target. A recycling rate of 65% was possible rather than the 80% estimated by Friends of the Earth, he added.
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