The Bill will give explicit powers to local authorities to cease collecting domestic waste from households which have not paid the imposed charges, overturning a Supreme Court judgment of 2001 which ruled that they did not have the power to do so. The Supreme Court judgment did not challenge the right of local authorities to levy charges but its effect was that they could only recover unpaid charges as normal contract debt except where charges were waived in cases of financial hardship. The only function left to elected local representatives in this matter is to vote against the annual budgets. This would mean risking abolition, as threatened by the Minister during votes on the budgets of many local authorities before Christmas.