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Labour will not ban food waste to landfill

The Labour Party has said it will not ban food waste to landfill if it gains power later this year, despite previously announcing that it would.

Labour will not ban food waste to landfill

In September 2013, Mary Creagh MP, then Shadow Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (who was replaced by Maria Eagle the following month), told the Labour Party Annual Conference 2013 in Brighton that the party would introduce a landfill ban on food waste if it were to come into power in 2015.

Pointing to the horse meat scandal, Creagh said that it was the Conservative Party’s ‘deregulation’ of food that had caused the problem to come about. She said: “I think it’s time we had a bit more regulation of our food.

“So here’s what Ed Miliband’s One Nation government will do… A One Nation Labour government will ban food from landfill so that less food gets wasted in the supermarket supply chain and more food gets eaten by hungry children.”

However, today (6 January), the Labour Party refuted claims made in the Conservative Party’s 82-page analysis of Labour spending plans, which claims that despite the Labour Party’s assurances to spend an extra £20.7 billion if it were elected into power, it has no way to pay this.

Ed Balls MP, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, said: “This dodgy Tory dossier is riddled with untruths and errors on every page. It isn’t an impartial exercise but a political smear based on false assumptions made by Tory advisers, including dozens of claims which are not even Labour’s policies.”

The Labour Party went on to outline: ‘They [the Conservative Party] say it’s Labour’s policy to ban food waste from landfill, based on an out-of-date 2013 quote. This is not Labour’s policy - it was not agreed at Labour’s National Policy Forum in July 2014 and is not in the NPF document.’

The party added that the commitment to ban food waste from landfill has been 'superseded' by a commitment to review resource security, which will include 'dealing with the economic potential of cutting waste in terms of jobs and growth' and that the policy on food to landfill will be decided in the light of this. As such, it will not be in the party manifesto.

According to the Conservative dossier, the landfill ban would have cost the government £477 million to implement in 2015/16, with the majority of this coming from ‘the reduced landfill tax revenues received by the Exchequer’. It added that there would also be ‘small costs incurred by Defra and costs beyond 2015/16 incurred by local authorities’.

Philip Simpson, Commercial Director at food waste management company ReFood, said that the 'backtrack' was "hugely disappointing news for the entire waste management sector", adding that "changing tactics due to a lack of revenue from Landfill Tax is a short-sighted approach, ignoring the monies that could be raised by having a ban in place".

He continued: "Food is a valuable resource and shouldn’t be squandered. Instead, it can be turned into renewable energy – for which we have national targets – and nutrient-rich fertiliser for use on new crops, making the food chain not only highly efficient, but also environmentally-friendly and self-sufficient. Ultimately, we need to achieve behavioural change across businesses, local authorities and individuals to increase recycling in the UK but, without wider government support, this will be unachievable.”

Find out more about the Labour Party's food waste ban announcement.

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