7:00PM GMT 24 Mar 2012 Back in 1994, the Commission issued a directive on packaging waste, 94/62, supposedly designed to promote the recycling of anything that can be described as “packaging”, from bottles to plastic containers. To this end a whole new layer of bureaucracy was created, actively promoted by John Gummer when he was environment minister. After losing office, he became chairman of Valpak, one of the bodies set up to assist firms to comply with the directive. Last January, Gummer, now Lord Deben, led a successful buy-out of Valpak, after offering £2.5 million for a company with an annual turnover of £55 million and £8 million in cash in the bank. Meanwhile, the Commission’s officials had inevitably been looking for ways to extend their directive’s scope, by expanding the list of things that could be classified as “packaging”. One of these was the metal cylinders used to hold liquid gases. Firms such as Calor pointed out that this was absurd, since the whole point of their cylinders is that they are not packaging but refillable containers used again and again for decades. When they reach the end of their natural life, they are recycled to make new ones. This logic was so incontrovertible that, initially, the Commission appeared to take note. But the fourth rule of bureaucracy is that, when officials claim to be “consulting”, they end up doing just what they proposed to do in the first place. Just before Christmas, when the Commission pushed its new directive into law, there on the list were “refillable steel cylinders used for various types of gas”, alongside “graveside lights (containers for candles)”, “clothes hangers (sold with a clothing item)”, “refillable pepper mills”, “cake doilies sold with a cake”, “the release paper of self-adhesive labels” and “matchboxes”. Anyone who makes these items will now have to pay for a licence – and even more for the services of a firm such as that chaired by Lord Deben, to show by voluminous paperwork that a percentage of all their products may eventually be recycled, whether they be matchboxes, or Calor gas cylinders so durable that most of them will probably outlast even Lord Gumboot. Amid all the excitement aroused by George Osborne’s “granny tax” – that abolition of tax allowances that will cost pensioners £3.5 billion over the next four years – what rather got missed was the Treasury’s admission, just before the Budget, that last month the Government had to borrow a further £15.2 billion to finance its continued overspending. In other words, while Mr Osborne was preparing to take £3.5 billion off the pensioners over four years, he was already having to borrow more than that, £3.8 billion, every week to chuck into the ever-growing hole that is our National Debt. The fact is that, for all his scrabbling around to take a few billion off OAPs and airline passengers, nothing in his Budget did anything to address that mighty elephant in the room left by Gordon Brown’s crazed decision, in 1998, to double our public spending in 10 years. As a result of this, our National Debt recently topped £1 trillion, having doubled in only five years.A dotty EU directive will help make Gummer richer
Lord Deben - formerly John Selwyn Gummer - has found a comfortable niche in recycling.
Sunday 25 March 2012
The first three rules of any bureaucracy are: 1) that it is always looking for ways to extend its powers; 2) everything it does is for a socially desirable reason, even if it serves no useful purpose; and 3) however many mistakes it makes, it is always right. Naturally, the European Commission, as the world’s most famous bureaucracy, is no exception to these rules.
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