And, speaking exclusively to letsrecycle.com after her appointment by Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn, Ms McCarthy criticised Defra minister Rory Stewart’s desire to standardise local authority recycling collection regimes across England is at odds with its localism agenda.
In a wide-ranging interview, she also hinted at possible future Labour support for tackling food waste either through a landfill ban or mandatory food waste collections.
And, while the Labour MP for Bristol East said she was unable to set out any concrete new policies for the sector as these are still being decided, she was nevertheless critical of Defra under the leadership of Environment Secretary Liz Truss for not focusing enough on resource efficiency.
She also cast some doubt over whether she would continue to spearhead her bill on tackling food waste from supermarkets – which is due for its second reading in the Commons in January – now that she is on the Labour front bench.
Collections
On collections, Ms McCarthy was critical of Mr Stewart’s approach aimed at standardising collections schemes among local authorities. The MP for Bristol East claimed that the policy is at odds with the government’s general drive to give more power to councils and the significant financial squeeze being placed on local authority budgets.
As a result, she argued that Mr Stewart is “not really in a position to drive that agenda forward”.
Ms McCarthy said: “It is difficult because you have got the whole devolution agenda, which is meant to be about empowering communities to make the decisions they want to make. The added difficulty with that is if you take lots of money away from them you haven’t got much money to do anything at all.”
She was also asked about the impact of austerity on councils, such as top composting council Three Rivers’ recent consultation over whether to start charging for its green waste collections, or to stop the service altogether (see letsrecycle.com story).
She replied: “It is down to local councils to decide, but we are generally concerned that some councils are not even going to have enough money to fulfil their statutory duties let alone having enough money towards trying to meet the bigger targets.”
“We are generally concerned that some councils are not even going to have enough money to fulfil their statutory duties let alone having enough money towards trying to meet the bigger targets”
Shadow environment secretary Kerry McCarthy
Labour Party
Food waste bill
Ms McCarthy was appointed to the shadow environment brief in September following Mr Corbyn’s election as Labour leader, but she had previously made a name for herself in the waste sector for championing the Food Waste (Reduction) Bill, which is currently set for its second reading in January (see letsrecycle.com story).
However, she told letsrecycle.com: “Because I’ve now got the front bench position I need to have discussions with the leader’s office about whether it’s appropriate for me to take it forward. If I go ahead with it on January 29 that would mean it was official Labour policy, but we’ve got to have that conversation first, so it’s slightly premature to do that.”
According to Ms McCarthy, the 30% food waste reduction aim included in the bill was designed to reflect the target in the EU Circular Economy legislation due out this week, but it has been suggested that these will be dropped from the package in favour of more general sustainable development goals.
She said: “There’s not a clear pathway for how we are going to achieve that goal now, which is pretty disappointing, especially when you hear rumours that it was the UK government which was not very keen on it, and when the public is so behind the food waste issue.”
Landfill
Asked whether she would support a ban on biodegradable waste being sent to landfill – a policy dropped by Labour ahead of the May 2015 General Election – she said: “It’s definitely something that we are still keen to pursue. It’s something we need to discuss further with various colleagues, but I think this is the way it is generally going – the idea that biodegradable waste – whether it be food or wood – shouldn’t be going to landfill.”
Commenting on calls for England to follow Scotland by looking towards mandatory separate food waste collections in urban areas, she added: “Again, I think this is something that Labour is quite keen on.”
Defra
Elsewhere in the interview, Ms McCarthy criticised Environment Secretary Liz Truss lack of focus on resources, waste and recycling, suggesting that “you very rarely hear her talk about much else” beyond British food and farming, despite what she described as “an awful lot of other stuff going on at Defra”.
She also said that spending cuts at Defra would likely result in “a real consolidation of resources and having to narrow their vision even further”, which would not leave Defra “a lot of scope to be very imaginative or innovative” and could jeopardise progress to the 50% by 2020 recycling target.
Vision
Ms McCarthy suggested it was still “a bit early” in her new role to have a specific vision for the waste and recycling sector, but said it was important to look at how products can be better designed to reduce packaging or make them better suited to reuse and recycling.
She concluded: “Labour has talked about a vision for a far more resource efficient economy where there is far more focus on reuse and recycling, but that doesn’t seem to be spoken about. You don’t really get that sort of language from the department [Defra] but that is where we ought to be.”
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