A burning issue revisited

Today the Cornwall Council waste strategy panel met to decide whether to ask their contracted waste company SITA to submit revised plans for an incinerator. SITA's previous incinerator plan was rejected by the Council's planning committee before the local elections last year. SITA appealed against this decision. There will now be a public enquiry in March, followed by a decision by the secretary of state after the latest possible date for a general election.

It was the Liberal Democrat Cornwall County Council elected in 2005 who chose incineration as their preferred approach and contracted with SITA. The comments on today's meeting to a local newspaper by Matthew Taylor MP would be comical if it weren't for the fact that - for financial as well as environmental reasons - practical decisions need to be made. Conveniently ignoring that it was a Liberal Democrat Council that agreed the contract with SITA, Matthew Taylor MP was the first to throw stones in the glass house: "The Conservatives opposed the incinerator to get elected, but now they are in charge they are about to double-cross electors and back the incinerator."

The fact is that the panel of five Tories, four Liberal Democrats, four Independents, and one MK councillor today decided a recommendation that will go to the Council's Cabinet. The majority backed incineration as an approach by recommending SITA develop a revised proposal.

The argument about Cornwall's waste strategy has run through three Councils and (so far) two general elections. It is fair to say that the issue is not Party political, in that representatives of the three main Parties have spoken for and against incineration in different representative roles, where there are different local factors to take into consideration, and at different stages of the process; for Labour, the only government view is that the chosen approach to waste management should be a local decision. And if anyone failed to deliver that, it was the Liberal Democrats.

I agree with Matthew Taylor MP that "Other communities are developing better, more environmental options for dealing with waste." Like him, I have consistently supported objections to his Party's original choice of incineration and at every subsequent decision stage; and the political boundary changes have not weakened the opposition of my constituency Labour Party to a single, centralised incinerator.

The Liberal Democrats dug the Council into a hole by supporting incineration and then allowing SITA to submit a plan that was refused planning permission. Financially, today's meeting may start to move the Council into a more manageable position and make it more likely that costs can be stopped from escalating.

For Cornwall's environment and carbon emissions it is still the wrong decision, caused by the Liberal Democrats who could have stopped the incinerator many of their supporters oppose when they were elected five years ago, and by now delivered a sustainable waste strategy for Cornwall. And fortunately, it may still be possible to do that, provided a single, centralised incinerator can be stopped.