Littering From Vehicles Outside London (Keepers: Civil Penalties) Regulations 2018

Debate between Baroness Stowell of Beeston and Viscount Simon

Thursday 1st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Stowell of Beeston (Con)]

My Lords, I will make a brief contribution to this debate. I welcome these regulations, which tackle an important matter. However, I will use this opportunity to say something a bit more broadly about the topic of litter. While it is important that regulations are available to local authorities to go after people who commit these offences—doing things that are so unacceptable to us—it is also worth thinking about what more we can do to prevent litter in the first place.

Earlier this week there was a significant debate here in the Chamber about the Government’s environmental plan, and I was disappointed only that I was not able to participate in it. I absolutely share the commitment of the Government—and so many people—to a lot of the initiatives we are adopting to preserve our environment, and it is right that the Government, schools and everybody else use interest in preserving marine life and so on to encourage interest among young people and everybody else in the environmental issues that form part of the Government’s environmental plan. However, in the last few weeks the Government’s litter strategy, published just before the 2017 general election, caught my attention. It is incredibly important.

One thing that is a nuisance for us is the increasing litter we see, not just on our roads and our pavements, outside shops and fast food restaurants, but on public transport. We are not doing enough to encourage ourselves as citizens to take on responsibility for tackling these sorts of things. A few weeks ago I managed to gate-crash a meeting of a local authority about litter and the litter strategy, where I had the huge privilege of meeting the environmental manager for the area I live. This gentleman had worked for the local authority and is now in one of the subcontracted companies, and is responsible for litter. He cared very much about our area and was absolutely passionate about keeping our streets clean. I liked this chap. Through him, we managed to get some additional litter bins on our public roads in the area.

I wanted to have a conversation with one of the local shopkeepers, whose outside area can be rather unkempt and which rather lets us down because of the increasing litter. I spoke to him about the litter outside his shop and said, “You know, you are a very important man in our community. You are responsible for one of the most important hubs of our local environment”. I was able to encourage him and his sense of his importance in keeping our area clean and devoid of litter, and I do not think that he had ever understood and appreciated just how much of an important role he plays in his society.

While it is important that we have regulations that tackle people who adopt these kind of nuisance behaviours, that should not mean that we should avoid encouraging people to accept responsibility. We should acknowledge the importance of people, whether they are shop managers or bus drivers who find people abusing the vehicles that they are proud to drive themselves, and get behind them to support them to maintain the standards that are so important to us. That should prevent these kind of regulations ever having to be deployed.

[Viscount Simon (Lab)]

My Lords, I will be brief. In many other countries there is no litter on the ground or the roads at all. How come? Their drivers are encouraged to have litter bins in their cars. Why cannot we do the same?