Chamber and committees

Scotland's National Waste Strategy was published by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency and adopted by the Scottish Executive in December 1999. The strategy sets out the framework to make waste management in Scotland more sustainable and to meet targets for reducing the reliance on landfill for waste disposal. Implementation of the strategy is now being taken forward.The Executive has introduced several initiatives to help take forward implementation of the strategy and thereby to make waste management more sustainable. These include:

making an additional £3 million available as a specific grant in 2000-01 for local authorities to increase recycling and composting;

making £50.4 million available through the Strategic Waste Fund for local authorities to begin implementation of the Area Waste Plans - which are currently being prepared, andsupport for the REMADE Scotland and Waste and Resource Action Programmes which aim to develop markets for recyclable materials and break down barriers to recycling.

As stated in the Scottish Climate Change Programme, the absence of Scottish emissions data, both historical and projected, and the complexities involved in monitoring the effects of both reserved and devolved policies means that Scottish reduction targets are not currently practical. The Executive is working with the UK Government to improve and expand on available Scottish data and, once a robust set of data is available, we will consider whether a Scottish target would be an appropriate response measure.

The Scottish Executive was involved with instigating the REMADE Scotland project which aims to encourage markets for recycled materials and has contributed £50,000 support each year since its inception in 1999. In addition, the Executive has agreed to contribute £2.1 million over three years towards the national Waste and Resources Action Plan set up to help overcome barriers to recycling. Both of these projects will be addressing problems of recycling several types of material, including paper.

These are operational matters for the Health and Safety Executive and the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, both of which regulate the incinerator at Baldovie. The information is not held centrally.

The SMART/SPUR grant schemes are not sector specific and applications are invited from a wide range of technologies including renewable energy. Three projects involving wind turbine and fuel cell technology are currently being supported under these schemes.

The Scottish water authorities have made substantial progress since 1996 in delivering value for money, and further improvements will be required during the next strategic review period.

We are still developing our policy on the implementation of the EC Water Framework Directive. The full resource implications are not likely to be clear for some time.However, additional grant-in-aid, totalling some £16.5 million over the 3-year period 2001-02 to 2003-04, has been announced for the Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA). The extra grant-in-aid takes account of the increased responsibilities and duties that will fall to SEPA in implementing European and domestic legislation and in fulfilling the Executive's Programme for Government commitments. This includes preparatory work for the implementation of the EC Water Framework Directive.

Scottish Executive policy is to meet statutory requirements in a manner that delivers value for money.

Figures from the Scottish Cancer Registration System confirm that during the period 1988-1997 cases of Non-Hodgkins Lymphoma for men living in Tayside were indeed 4.6% higher than the national average. However, the incidence for women living in the same area during this period was 6.4% lower than the national average. These variations from the national averages are within the range of normal fluctuations. There is no reason to believe that exposure to environmental factors in a particular locality would increase the risk in men but not in women. The Executive therefore has no plans for an investigation at this time.

Following adoption in 1999 of the National Waste Strategy: Scotland, 11 Area Waste Plans are being developed across Scotland to identify the best ways of dealing with waste and to identify the waste management facilities required.

As with other development proposals, planning applications for waste incinerators will be determined in accordance with the development plan unless material considerations indicate otherwise. Although the National Waste Strategy and Area Waste Plan are not land use planning documents, they are material considerations that decision makers should take into account when making development control decisions or preparing their development plans.

We will be publishing a Planning Advice Note on planning for waste management facilities by the end of this year. The PAN will both guide development plan policy formulation and inform development control decisions.