Greater London Authority Bill

I like a challenge, and I have listened carefully to the arguments. I shall not be pressing new clause 1 to a Division because I have done the math, as the Americans would put it. However, I remain unconvinced by the arguments, which seem to relate to two themes. The first is local decisions being taken by local people. The other is an approach of, ““Trust us. We are getting better and we will deliver.”” I am still of the view that it is the Government, the official Opposition and the Liberal Democrats who are the optimistic ones. I have no intention of rehearsing the arguments yet again, but I should make some brief comments. On the issue of local decisions taken by local people, there are two points to be made. The first is that a local decision taken by one set of local people may not necessarily be in the interests of another set of local people—indeed, such a decision may be in their disinterests. That is at the heart of the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Milton Keynes, South-West (Dr. Starkey). We have a shared commitment to localism but we must recognise that localism has its limits, and we need to respond to that. More importantly, the local decisions taken by local people have to reflect a changing, growing concern about the impact of policies, particularly in the environmental sphere. As I have mentioned, very real financial risks also need to be considered, particularly when it comes to landfill. The Government have assured us that instability and a change of arrangement now could leave us at risk of not meeting our targets in 2010. I understand that, and I reflected that fact in my speech. However, my fundamental argument is that a bigger challenge lies a little further down the line. Although instability might come from making changes at this point, we could otherwise be vulnerable to a bigger risk in the future. The fundamental issue is whether we are doing well enough. We are not. Do I have grounds for confidence that the improvement in performance over the past couple of years is of a scale and intensity that will allow us to rise to the challenge? Frankly, no I do not. Our performance in London has deteriorated. Although there are excellent authorities and we can see real signs of progress, too many authorities are lagging behind and our city-wide performance is simply not good enough. Most importantly, we must consider the scale of the challenge in the future. As I said, by 2020 we will need four times the recycling capacity that we have now. We must plan for 100 new waste disposal sites in the coming decade, even though local authorities are disposing of such sites at present. We have no indication that we have in place the investment and strategic grasp that are required not only to turn around today’s laggardly performance, but to meet the challenge that we will face over the coming decade? There is a dangerous risk that the situation will be wrong a decade down the line. Although I will not press new clause 1 to a Division, for obvious reasons, I do not think that we have heard the last of this matter. The arguments that were put forward did not show a grasp of the scale of what is confronting us. I am worried that we will be held to account a few years down the line by Londoners who will be waking up to the challenge of recycling and to the environmental consequences of not considering new waste disposal technologies and not moving up the waste hierarchy. They will say, ““Why were you so complacent?”” I am afraid that we are far too complacent in the face of the challenge, and I am sure that we will return to the matter in future. I beg to ask leave to withdraw the motion. Motion and clause, by leave, withdrawn.