Greater London Authority Bill

I will try and give a short answer. I do not think that until relatively recently, many boroughs were seized of the importance of these matters. I shall be blunt. Environmental awareness and turning it into strategic policy priorities has happened in the past few years. Like other colleagues, I travel round the country. I now notice that waste, recycling and environmental issues are much more often on the agenda locally than they were three, four or five years ago, by miles. There has been a cultural shift. That has come about for all sorts of reasons, as we know—not least better education and greater awareness of the crisis that we face. The pressure is now on. If were in the same relative position in four or five years, my argument would be much weaker. I think there has been an awakening to the issue. The figures are not as black and white as the hon. Lady paints them in relation to London’s performance. I do not pretend to have seen all the figures, but I have seen the figures from the Mayor’s office and the GLA, and the figures from the London Councils group and others. London performance is improving. Yes, other comparable cities in the world may be improving more, but London is suddenly on the move and going in the right direction. My final point is that there would be a major cost disadvantage in going down the proposed route. The figure that I have suggests that there might be a £5.5 million per year differential. In a period of relatively scarce resources in local or regional government, £5.5 million a year could reasonably be spent on many other things. We are desperately short of affordable housing. Colleagues were talking this morning about more energy efficient housing. There are all sorts of things that we could spend the money on. We cannot afford a luxury model that most people do not want and which is not proven to be likely to be more successful, when people are improving the situation locally. We can always advance a nimbyish argument and say that we want to do it our way, however bad we are. The hon. Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey) makes a good point about London having a responsibility not to be a regular net exporter of waste to landfill sites. I understand that a third of the landfill is food waste, and the capital city probably produces more food waste because we are over-indulgent. There are all sorts of things that we need to do for ourselves and for everyone else to make sure that we reduce the waste that we produce. We need not be irresponsible neighbours. In boroughs like mine, we are beginning to go in the right direction, and we are saying to the Government, ““Please allow us to go on doing what we think we can show is rapidly improving the position, with innovative, modern, best practice schemes.”” My borough is up for it. We are ready to set the best practice. We want to continue to be encouraged by Government and allowed to get on with that.