The Guardian reports:
Ministers are expected to announce that they are scrapping Labour plans to introduce “pay as you throw” rubbish schemes. Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, and Caroline Spelman, the environment secretary, will confirm that they will end schemes in which people are charged for household waste collections or for producing too much rubbish.
In one sense this is a bit of a non-story. Labour didn’t, despite the Guardian’s misleading report, plan to introduce ‘pay as you throw’ rubbish schemes – what they did was enable councils to pilot such schemes if they wished. Unsurprisingly, not least given the furore surrounding fortnightly landfill collections which had the Daily Mail foaming at the mouth a couple of years ago, no council decided to be the first to opt-in.
And there are of course many practical difficulties associated with ‘pay as you throw’ – fears of invasion of privacy, cost, increase in fly-tipping, etc. ‘Pay as you throw’ was a typically New Labour authoritarian measure. Credit where it’s due, the Tories’ preferred ‘recycling reward’ scheme, piloted by Windsor and Maidenhead council, in which residents are paid for boosting their home recycling seems to be a far more liberal (and successful) approach to reducing landfill.
My only problem is this: why does the government feel it’s any of their business to tell local authorities how to run their rubbish and recycling services? These are local council services, and responsibility should be left with them – if a council, whether Labour, Lib Dem or Tory, wants to try out ‘pay as you throw’ why should central government try and stop them? It’s a matter between the council and its residents, who have the power to mete out their punishment at the ballot box if they don’t like it.
Nick Clegg has commented that the Lib-Con coalition has found itself surprisingly united on the issue of ‘localism’ – placing local people more in control of their own lives. Yet the Tories persist with interfering in the basic services which councils run, and are standing by their poorly thought through pledge to freeze council tax – another assault on local councils to set budgets and run services as they wish rather than as Whitehall wishes.
As so often with the Tories, their localism is very surface, and seems to amount to little more than telling local authorities to copy the policies of Tory councils they approve of.
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7 Comments
The quickest was to reduce levels of household waste would be to force manufacturers and retailers not to sell products with unnecessary packaging.
I absolutely agree with you about this.
Central government has no right to dictate to local authorities how they run their affairs.
If they want local authorities to be more representative of their communities, then the way to achieve that is to introduce proportional representation.
I share your general sentiments about this issue, I think it is a real pity that Eric Pickles continues to use the same aggressive language in Government as he did in Opposition. PAYT is no panacea, but it could be effective as part of a mix of policies to reduce landfill and increase recycling. If ‘localism’ was real, then councils would be allowed at least to choose whether they want to try this system or not. It works all over Europe, what makes us any different?
http://www.raygeorgesonresources.co.uk/blog/who_are_real_bin_bullies has more.
I’d prefer ‘pay as you throw’ to ‘paid to recycle’.
More recycling isn’t necessarily a good thing – REDUCE, REUSE, recycle; choose the wrong reward and you’ll only end up with people contaminating their recycling with standard waste.
Agree. Conservatives seem totally clueless when it comes to localism.
So why shouldn’t Local Authorities be able to choose their own voting systems. PR by STV in the UK was first introduced in a Private Bill – The Sligo Town Corporation Act of 1910.
Andrew is right of course – reduce and reuse should come before recycling, and this is another reason why ‘incentives to recycle’ may end up simply with more people focusing on collecting recyclables for rewards and not doing anything to reduce waste in the first place. Potentially a classic example of a well intentioned policy having an unintended consequence.