Waste Incinerators

I beg to move,

That leave be given to bring in a Bill to prohibit the carrying out of construction work in respect of new waste incinerators, other than in cases where substantial construction has already begun; to make provision about the taxation of waste disposed of by way of incineration; to prohibit local authorities from entering into any contract for the incineration of waste which requires them to pay financial penalties if a minimum amount of waste is not delivered for incineration; and for connected purposes.

I begin by paying tribute to colleagues from across the House who have spoken out against waste incinerators. My commendations go too to the United Kingdom Without Incineration Network and local campaign groups, including Westbury Gasification Action Group, which have been a thorn in the side of the incinerator industry. For too long, too many of our constituents have lived in the shadow of waste burners that pollute the air that we breathe. This Bill puts the reduction, reuse and recycling principles of the waste hierarchy back into waste management.

Since the landfill tax was introduced in 1996, consecutive Administrations—Labour, coalition and Conservative—have encouraged incineration and discouraged landfill. They have been helped by the burner industry, which has greenwashed its operations as “energy from waste”. The generation of a few tepid calories and a feeble stream of electrons has convinced Whitehall that waste burners are part of a transition to a green future and to net zero. They are not.

We are allergic to putting waste in the ground, but happy to consign it to the landfill in the sky—out of sight, out of mind and straight into the lungs of those living downwind and on to the nation’s carbon ledger. Not only does the incineration of plastic produce 175 times as much CO₂ as landfill, but the emissions per unit of energy produced from burning mixed waste is the same as coal and nearly double that of gas. It is the dirtiest way we generate electricity in this country by far. We have to change course.

We tax oil and gas, we have turned our back on coal entirely, we are turning off the taps in the North sea, we refrain from exploiting shale deposits while importing liquefied natural gas and our share of global emissions is less than 1% and falling. We are more than doing our bit, at considerable cost—in the short to medium term at least—to our economy and the people we serve, yet we do not tax incineration, which gives off the most world-warming, health-harming emissions, in return for a paltry amount of energy. A welcome inclusion of incineration in the UK emissions trading scheme is necessary, but it is not sufficient. The time has come to use the same infrastructure that raises the landfill tax to levy an incineration waste tax at rates that will promote the handling of rubbish in a way that puts it at the top of the waste hierarchy, not at the bottom.

Unfortunately, an incineration tax has not been among the kites flown in advance of the Budget, but I will gladly pull my Bill if the Chancellor pulls this rabbit out of the hat tomorrow. She knows that we have too many waste incinerators already. The Government’s own analysis, published in December last year, confirms that. With the 50 waste burners already operational in England and Wales, we already have more capacity today than we will need in 2035. In other words, the 12 plants being built and the 41 that had been granted planning permission as of last December were already surplus to requirements. Why do we need to almost double our capacity to burn waste when the Government know that it is already excessive?

Where is the social justice in the way we consign the nation’s waste to the atmosphere? Unsurprisingly, incinerators are sited disproportionately in poorer, densely populated places with a heavy burden of ill health. The growing monster at Edmonton, for example, which already takes waste from leafier, more favoured districts to burn in the capital, is belching a cocktail of gases and ultrafine particles with uncertain health consequences across a huge swathe of north London.

Having too many incinerators for the residual waste available might be tolerable if it were not for the clauses in contracts between local authorities and incinerator operators that demand councils consign a minimum amount of waste for burning to avoid financial penalties—so-called “deliver or pay” contracts. What happens if a council that is reducing, reusing and recycling waste, as it should, turns out not to have enough waste to feed the monstrous burner that has been foisted on its community? Waste will be imported—of course it will—because the monster must be fed. Geneva, of all places, trucks in waste from Milan to keep running a burner that, once built, failed to secure enough rubbish locally.

The more households reduce their waste and local authorities recycle, the less waste councils will have to send for incineration. That triggers penalties under “deliver or pay” that they cannot afford. It is little wonder that recycling has stalled for the last 15 years, and that where incineration rates are higher, recycling rates are lower, as Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs figures have made abundantly clear. It gets worse. Transitional arrangements laid last year will allow 31 waste collection authorities, including Wiltshire, to defer the separate food waste collections required from March next year under the otherwise excellent Environment Act 2021, in some cases to the 2040s. This means sending compostable waste to the burner.

We have a ludicrous situation in which councils are being actively encouraged to recycle less and even import waste just to keep running a set of wholly unnecessary incinerators that pollute far more than they power. This Bill will outlaw the importation of waste for burning, terminate “deliver or pay” contracts and rescind the Environment Act 2021 (Transitional Provisions) Regulations 2024. We must revoke planning permission for those 41 pending sites, including the monstrosity planned for Westbury in my constituency, where preliminary work has recently begun. We must immediately prohibit any more permissions and permits.

The last Government paused the issuing of environmental permits to new burners—the only attempt by any Government to alter course in the last three decades. My party’s manifesto last year contained a firm commitment to put a stop to them. The Welsh Labour Government wisely placed a moratorium on new burners in 2021. The Scottish Government did so the following year after a review highlighted the risks that incineration posed to human health and the environment. The review went on to say:

“Scotland should not construct more capacity than it needs and only some of the currently planned capacity should be built.”

The Government’s in-principle acceptance of this Bill, perhaps by launching a consultation on the future of incineration like the 2022 Scottish review, might be enough, because it would signal to investors that the incineration game is up. It would say that if they want to be in the waste business, they must stop burning and start operating higher up the waste hierarchy.

My Bill calls time on one of our biggest polluters, one that is hidden in plain sight. It would begin to lower the curtain on a filthy enterprise cynically passing itself off as green because it generates a few calories, a trickle of electrons and the promise of carbon capture at some point in the distant future. As the Government’s own figures show, we are already at overcapacity. Without the measures in this Bill, the industry will almost double its capacity in the decade to 2035. That means the hierarchy of waste will be inverted to soak up the excess capacity. This Bill would end Whitehall’s obsession with incineration. It would direct the UK waste industry to start operating much higher up the waste hierarchy. We must tax incineration, ban “deliver or pay” contracts, outlaw waste imports and, above all, build no more incinerators.

That Dr Andrew Murrison, Steve Barclay, Brian Mathew, John Glen, Danny Kruger, Euan Stainbank, Ben Obese-Jecty, Lee Barron, Lloyd Hatton and Robbie Moore present the Bill.

Dr Andrew Murrison accordingly presented the Bill.