Litter Action Groups

Wednesday 19th April 2023 Westminster Hall

16:34

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

I will call Mr Virendra Sharma to move the motion and will then call the Minister to respond. As is the convention in 30-minute debates, there will not be an opportunity for the Member in charge to wind up the debate, but I understand that there may be a couple of interventions, which have been signalled to the Member who will move the motion, and the Minister is also agreeable to that. I call Mr Sharma.

16:35

[Mr Virendra Sharma (Ealing, Southall) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the matter of support for litter action groups.

It is a great honour to speak under your chairmanship, Mr Paisley. I called this debate for two main reasons, the first of which is to recognise and thank those in my constituency who tirelessly volunteer to make it a better and safer place. They do not do that as a job; they do it because they see the great strain the council is under and the lack of awareness among too many people of the cost of littering and fly-tipping. In particular, therefore, I want to thank LAGER Can—Litter Action Group for Ealing Residents—and its leader and inspiration, Cathy Swift. Cathy is in the great tradition of British volunteers: she rolls up her sleeves, digs in and does not take no for an answer. National Rail, take note: that trackside still is not litter-free; you may not have granted her access to the trackside yet, but no is not the right answer. I hope you will forgive me, Mr Paisley, for gesturing to the Public Gallery and thanking everyone here today from LAGER Can, and the other volunteers, for their work.

[Gareth Thomas (Harrow West) (Lab/Co-op)]

Will my hon. Friend also take this opportunity to join me in commending the huge effort by Harrow Litter Pickers, a group set up and co-ordinated by the remarkable Casey Dalton, which last year collected more than 11,500 bags of litter in the London Borough of Harrow? Does he agree that the Minister should be clear that local authorities should work with litter-picking groups to support their efforts and that some sort of nationally devised standard to help quantify those relationships might be helpful in holding local councils accountable for the support they give or, sadly, potentially do not give litter-picking groups?

[Mr Sharma]

I really appreciate and acknowledge the contribution made by my hon. Friend. The Harrow team work closely with LAGER Can in my constituency; we work together to improve conditions. I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention, and I am sure the Minister has also taken note of his suggestion.

[Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)]

I commend the hon. Gentleman for bringing forward this debate. He is speaking about his constituency, and the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) is backing him up. In my constituency of Strangford, it is the youth groups, the community groups, the Boys’ Brigade and the Girls’ Brigade and action groups that have taken it upon themselves to go out and clean the place up, and they have done extremely well. What our council does, which might be interesting to other speakers, is give them the pickers, the safety bibs and the bags, and it picks the rubbish up afterwards. That is an example of the council and local volunteers working together.

[Mr Sharma]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for his suggestion, which I will come to later in my speech.

I want to raise awareness of the constructive relationship that LAGER Can has with Ealing Council. It makes them both more effective, saves hard-stretched resources and shows the value of volunteers and the esteem they are held in. Without them, much of the work would not get done and we would all be worse off. I thank Ealing Council. It has recognised the value of the partnership and has worked with LAGER Can, supporting that organisation in material ways that make a difference.

That is a success story, but it is not the same everywhere. People across the country could benefit from other councils adopting this model, as my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) and the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) have suggested.

We have a serious issue with fly-tipping in Ealing, Southall. Brilliant organisations such as LAGER Can are taking action to reduce the problem, and we, the politicians, must support their efforts and heed their advice.

[Kim Leadbeater (Batley and Spen) (Lab)]

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this important and timely debate on litter action groups. This issue is very close to my heart as the proud chair of the tidy Britain all-party parliamentary group. My hon. Friend might be aware of the recent Great British spring clean campaign, organised by Keep Britain Tidy, which was a huge success and saw groups across the country collect thousands of bags of litter. Will he join me in thanking Keep Britain Tidy and everyone who took part in the Great British spring clean, including the excellent groups in my constituency, such as Keep Hecky Tidy and Cleckheaton in Bloom, which volunteer year round to keep their neighbourhoods clean and free of litter?

[Mr Virendra Sharma]

I thank my hon. Friend for reminding us of the role that Keep Britain Tidy has played in the whole campaign, not just in one area of the country. I thank her for joining us in this debate as the chair of the APPG.

LAGER Can is identifying hotspots and clearing them. That intelligence and action helps Ealing Council. The group is not just tackling the problem as it presents itself, but working to reduce it in the future.

LAGER Can is partnering with schools and is having a great impact. Khalsa school in Norwood Green in my constituency won the Young Litter Heroes award this year, recognising pupils’ efforts and their commitment to promoting environmental awareness and reducing litter in communities. Khalsa school’s environmental message is about protecting our green spaces, and these brilliant litter heroes will be the next generation, reducing and tackling fly-tipping and littering for good.

Last year, LAGER Can volunteers donated at least 16,506 hours to Ealing Council, saving it approximately £282,000 in 2022, and similar amounts in 2020 and 2021. Of course, this is not a saving—the work just would not have been done without these volunteers, who are performing a valuable service for Ealing Council and everyone who lives in the borough. I declare my interest as one of those volunteers helping in my constituency, in Norwood Green, Southall Green, around the station and in the canal.

LAGER Can is clear and grateful in its words:

“Ealing Council provides excellent support to LAGER Can.”

As part of that support, Ealing Council provides the group with some essentials—litter grabbers, LAGER Can-branded rubbish sacks, work gloves and third-party and employer’s insurance—and ensures the prompt removal and disposal of the rubbish collected, even from private land. A volunteer provided with a litter grabber and a roll of bags will have repaid the council in less than one hour of volunteering—LAGER Can is great value for money.

However, the council does not just offer essentials; it works with LAGER Can. Ealing Council makes engagement a priority, and Cathy and other volunteers are able to speak to key decision makers in the council regularly to make suggestions and understand why decisions are taken. Ealing Council is usually highly responsive to requests made on behalf of members. It is rewarding for LAGER Can members to know that their requests are being taken seriously. Those involved do not agree on everything, but everyone sees the relationship as constructive and valuable, and working together as partners is conducive to good-faith working.

That amazing local example should be available to volunteers everywhere. I know that there are people across the city and around the country willing and ready to do the same, but they run up against bureaucracy time and time again. LAGER Can is part of national groups, and by working with a wide range of people it has identified key areas where the Minister can help other groups to grow. I would therefore like to put four questions and challenges to the Minister.

First, volunteers need more support. In some places, such as Ealing, volunteers are encouraged and nurtured, while, in others, groups are threatened with fines for taking the rubbish they collect to the local tip. The Government could help to co-ordinate the response, with national good-practice support for volunteer litter-picking groups. The savings available are clear to see, and that should surely encourage any of the more sceptical councils.

Secondly, attitudes towards enforcement appear to vary in different parts of the country. In some areas, councils react to fly-tipping by installing more CCTV and imposing more and bigger fines, while other, neighbouring boroughs take a more lenient approach. That only encourages “cross-border” fly-tipping, moving the problem around and leaving offenders to dump their waste in areas where they know that enforcement is weaker. We would like to see a national standard on fly-tipping, as suggested earlier, based on the approach taken by the stricter boroughs, which do not hesitate to name, shame and fine culprits.

Thirdly, the introduction of a deposit return scheme is welcome. That will lead to less littering. However, the failure to include glass bottles is a problem that we can avoid, and it should be rethought. The Government are also taking action on the consumption of nitrous oxide, but the canisters are still a problem. It is difficult to find anywhere to recycle them, although some scrap metal dealers are willing to. The Government should act to ensure that these containers are manufactured in a recyclable way.

Fourthly, there is the issue of wet wipes. The build-up of wet-wipe islands is devastating for wildlife and people. Many fish in our rivers have plastic fibres clogging up their digestive system, and the situation is only getting worse. The plastic fibres are contaminating rivers, and wipes are building up in large numbers on the foreshores of the Thames and other rivers. My hon. Friend the Member for Putney (Fleur Anderson) has campaigned tirelessly on that. There must be an end to plastic in wet wipes; I urge the Government to include a ban on it in upcoming legislation.

I am lucky enough to represent an area where there are good news stories that set an example to others. That does not mean that we are without our problems, but I hope that the good practice seen in my area can be emulated, so that there is improvement in other areas. Once again, my congratulations to LAGER Can and Cathy Swift, and many thanks to other hon. Members, including the Minister.

[Ian Paisley (in the Chair)]

Thank you, Mr Sharma, for your most uplifting speech.

14:30

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)]

It is a pleasure to have you in the Chair, Mr Paisley. I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall (Mr Sharma) on securing this debate about litter, an issue that is so important to so many of us. It is great to have the opportunity to talk about it and what we are doing about it, and to highlight and commend the many volunteers and groups doing so much commendable work to tackle this criminal activity, and this blight on our communities.

It was really interesting to hear about the hon. Gentleman’s local group, the Litter Action Group for Ealing Residents, otherwise known as LAGER Can—a nice, easy name to remember. It should not be confused with the all-party beer group, or anything to do with it. That sounds like a really good model, and Cathy, whom he mentioned, should be commended; I share in his comments. We also heard of excellent work done by others, including the Harrow Litter Pickers—I thank the hon. Member for Harrow West (Gareth Thomas) for mentioning them; these people all need a really big shout out—and all the volunteers and groups in Strangford.

I would like to give a shout out to a chap called Tim Walker in my constituency, whom I have been out with a number of times. He started a big litter collection off his own bat; it was, I think, just before covid. He got together a community group through Facebook, which joined him every week. More and more people started to turn out. He was so determined to tackle litter and other environmental concerns that he has set up a shop in Taunton called My Carbon Coach, and he is influencing people on even wider environmental issues. All these people need a big “thank you”.

It is usually just a careless minority who cause the issue. Councils have responsibility for keeping our public places clear, but we simply cannot underestimate the role and work of volunteers, who are very much driven by a sense of civic duty, and by pride in their community, which they want to be the best place possible in which to live. In 2019, the Government provided £9.75 million for a high street community clean-up fund, to empower local authorities across England to support communities in undertaking community-led high-street clean-ups. I have checked, and as far as I know, I do not believe that Ealing Council got any of that money, but it sounds as though it was doing a good job anyway. Councils were able to use that one-off funding to support volunteers. I think that the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall, asked for more support for volunteers; certainly, a lot of our recent funds have gone towards them. For example, funds have gone towards supplying people with litter-picking kit, and on training for residents in how to remove graffiti, which is another blight.

More recently, the Environment Agency removed barriers for litter action groups by publishing a regulatory position statement that enables volunteers to litter-pick without a waste carrier licence. That allows local tips to accept litter from pickers. There was an extraordinary incident that gave rise to a bit of concern about that, but that has all been ironed out. I hope that the hon. Gentleman is pleased about that; I think that he referred to it. I call on all councils to provide as much support as they can to volunteer litter-pickers. Residents going to a waste site in all good faith to deposit the bags of litter that they have worked so hard to collect should not be turned away. 

While we are talking about all those who have done such good work, I want to mention the Prime Minister’s Points of Light awards. Through those, we have recognised the outstanding work of individual volunteers who have tackled litter in their community. Recipients of the award include Lizzie Carr MBE. She launched the successful “plastic patrol” campaign, which inspired thousands of people to take to their local waterways to prevent plastic pollution. Another recipient was Dom Ferris, who founded Trash Free Trails, which brings together runners, riders and rovers in Britain’s national parks and wild places to tackle plastic pollution.

Let me deal with the issue of councils. We are going about tackling litter on many fronts. We have developed and shared best practice on the provision of litter bins, and have supported that with £1 million of grant funding for 40 councils to purchase new bins. The hon. Member for Ealing, Southall, suggested that good models should be copied and followed, and actually a lot has been learned from the practices of councils such as Ealing. It is interesting; even I have learned that there are good and bad places to put a bin. I suppose that makes sense; we want it to be where people have just finished their drink, or want to stub out their cigarette butt or whatever. It has to be convenient.

We have also committed £1.2 million to helping another 30 councils purchase equipment to tackle fly-tipping. That includes a range of projects that try to identify the offenders. That is harder than might be imagined, but there are some very creative ideas out there. As I said, councils need to play their role; that is why we have committed to putting enforcement guidance on a statutory footing. That guidance will give those to which it applies a clear and explicit duty, which they must have regard to when exercising their enforcement functions. Councils have a range of enforcement functions, but it is important that we ensure that they use them.

One of my bugbears is fast food outlets. I am sure that it is the same in other Members’ constituencies: often, an amount of litter accumulates around those sites. The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities has recently updated planning guidance to clarify the powers available to councils to ensure that new hot food takeaways do not increase the impact of litter in their communities. Councils can also issue what are called community protection notices, which can be used to require the owners of premises such as fast food outlets to take certain actions to tackle the litter that is created by their activities. Those are all positive measures to tackle one of the types of location where we often find litter.

[Gareth Thomas]

I am grateful to the Minister for much of what she has said. I am sure that she will acknowledge what Harrow Litter Pickers has found, which is that on occasion, there are basically organised fly-tippers going around and causing problems for local councils, and litter pickers have to help the councils respond to those problems. To what extent is the Department willing to support intelligence-gathering efforts about those rogue fly-tippers, to help make councils’ enforcement a little more effective?

[Rebecca Pow]

The hon. Gentleman’s point is very much linked to the wider littering issue, and I will come on to it in a minute, because fly-tipping is an important part of this debate. Before I do so, I want to mention the Government’s new antisocial behaviour plan, which takes even tougher action against those who seek to degrade our public places. For example, it raises the upper limit on fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping to £1,000. That was a manifesto commitment, so I am really pleased that we brought that forward. The penalty for littering and graffiti has also been raised to £500. Those penalties can be issued wherever there is evidence linking someone to one of those crimes.

Alongside those increases, there are also new measures to help councils issue more penalties. Under the action plan, there will be a league table for local authorities on fly-tipping rates. In other words, we will ask: how much are they actually enforcing this? How often are they using the powers? I genuinely think that would be helpful; we would see which are the active councils, such as Ealing Council and potentially Harrow Council. It is almost naming and shaming. This problem really annoys people, and if they saw that their council was using these powers, that would be popular.

The Government have pledged a further £93 million of additional investment in what is called community payback, so that criminals sentenced to probation and supervised community sentences at court across England and Wales can complete up to 8 million hours of unpaid community payback per year in hi-vis jackets, under supervision. They will have to clean up graffiti, pick litter, clear wasteland, and redecorate public places and buildings. That will include offenders’ involvement in Keep Britain Tidy projects.

The Great British spring clean was mentioned. That saw 1,500 offenders spend almost 10,000 hours on 300 community clean-up projects. This year, we will build on that success, and will run a second clean-up week in the autumn. Under the action plan, a new approach called immediate justice will be introduced to make perpetrators repair the damage that they have done. They will be forced to pick up litter, wash police cars or clean up graffiti within 48 hours of being caught. That will start in 10 places across England and Wales next year. Local people will have their say on that scheme. The Probation Service is relaunching the community payback nominations website early next year. By law, it will be required to consult key community leaders and local authorities on how and where payback schemes should be used to improve the area, in terms of litter and other things that I have mentioned.

We have taken some major legislative reforms in trying to tackle fly-tipping, one of which is that last year we consulted on preventing charges for the disposal of DIY waste at household waste recycling centres. We will publish the results of that soon. That is potentially a lot of the stuff that gets fly-tipped, because people are trying to avoid paying to take it to the right place. We are also taking forward our commitment to develop proposals for the reform of the waste carrier, broker and dealer regime. That should make it easier for regulators to enforce against non-compliant operators, while making it much harder for those who are not registered properly to find work in the sector. We have consulted on that, and we will publish the response shortly. We are introducing mandatory waste tracking. All those things will make a difference to tackling the pernicious issue of fly-tipping.

We also have a range of other measures around reducing waste overall that will help to reduce litter, such as our extended producer responsibility scheme for packaging and the deposit return scheme for drinks containers. That is particularly aimed at in-scope containers, an awful lot of which are on-the-go products that are bought in a local shop, consumed in the street and then chucked away. The deposit return scheme is really designed to help tackle that.

Similarly, we have really cracked down on the issue of chewing gum on pavements. That is another absolute bugbear of mine. We have established a chewing gum taskforce, which has provided £1.25 million of funding to help more than 40 councils clean chewing gum off the pavements. It has had superb results: it has achieved reductions in gum littering of up to 80% in the first two months.

Behaviour change is really important in all this, as is education, which was mentioned comprehensively by the hon. Member for Ealing, Southall. I fully support him and all those schools that are doing such great work to teach their kids that it is not right to throw down litter.

I will end there. I thank the hon. Gentleman so much for bringing this debate to us. Huge congratulations and thanks to all those volunteers and community groups, including in Ealing, Southall, who have done such great work on cleaning up litter.

Question put and agreed to.