The Unit's review was published on November 27, 2002, and made over 30 recommendations to the government on how best to take its Waste Strategy 2002 forward (see letsrecycle.com story).
The PSWG meeting was given a presentation by the leader of the Unit's waste team, Dr Paul Hollinshead, in which he made it clear the report was only a “to government” report and that it was down to the government to act on the recommendations.
However, a number of delegates claimed afterwards that there was nothing significantly new in the Unit's report and that the recommendations were far too vague to be of use. The suggestion was also made that the government itself had put pressure on the Unit to water down its recommendations.
Corporatist
Barry Sheerman, Labour MP for Huddersfield, accused the Unit of taking a “corporatist view” in its report.
He said: “The review has not been clear enough. We thought the Strategy Unit would provide a clear decision to allow us to make some real changes. For example, there had been some discussion of putting the landfill tax up by 5 or 6 a year – but the CBI pushed the DTI and the Treasury and the landfill tax was put up by only 3 a year.”
He went on: “The Strategy Unit report only recommended the vague '35 a tonne in the medium term'. But as we know, if it's going up by only 3 a year, it's going to take 12 years to get there. No-one's going to invest in the waste industry if it's like that.”
Restrictions
Biffa external affairs director Peter Jones said that when the Unit had gone to each government department to gather data for the report, the government had placed various restrictions on the information that could then be included in its final report.
“I don't think you were able to write what you wanted to put in the review,” Mr Jones said. “When you went to DEFRA to ask for data, they told you, sure, but make sure you don't write about this or that. When you went to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, they said fine, but don't put too much in your report about planning. And when you went to the Treasury – well, they just told you not to put anything in about funding or money.”
Other critics of the Unit's report included James Hurley of the Building Research Establishment, who said that the Unit had entirely failed to look at construction and demolition waste. Robert Jackson, MP for Wantage, said that the report had made it clear in its graphs that incineration would be needed to meet the UK's waste diversion targets, but the prose of the report was too vague about its feelings on the issue.
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