Lord Addington
Main Page: Lord Addington (Liberal Democrat - Excepted Hereditary)
Lord Addington (LD)
My Lords, this is a debate where I think most people will have some input, because they have walked beside a waterway. We all know that, if you are going to walk beside a waterway as a leisure activity and then face piles of rubbish and, let us face it, dog excrement sitting in its lovely little plastic containers draped around the place, along with crisp packets and drink cans, that is not a pleasant experience. We have the Canal & River Trust, which is supposed to make us use the waterways, and, if they are not pleasant, you will not use them—so why is it there? Case closed.
However, is the primary duty to make sure these are navigable waterways or something we can access along the side? I hope the Minister will be able to clarify this. It seems to me that the only argument about this would be that we know we need it to keep the waterways open. Let us face it: bins are not as expensive as lock gates. They do not have the same implications for water management and flood prevention. You name it—there is a whole structure there that we have to manage properly and that the Canal & River Trust will have responsibility for, at least in part. So, to get the best out of this, we have to maintain the paths as something not only accessible but pleasant.
We then come to what the Government should do about this. They could try—I would not recommend it—to say, “Well, this just isn’t our job”. Well, it clearly is, or at least they have some influence there. What are we doing to make sure that access to this is maintained in a usable format for these purposes of recreation, so that it is safe and pleasant? Bins will be used and will occasionally overflow, and it will depend on the time of year you are out there, and on the structure and the access going around it—so there will be no “one size fits all”.
If the noble Lord has found a nice stretch of waterway, possibly we should all get the address. But I have been down once when it was a warm day, and a few people had sat down there, possibly with one of those barbecues or something—the bane of many people’s lives—and a few beer cans. “Is there a bin around here? Sod it, they can clear it up afterwards”. That happens. It will always happen. Any planning structure that does not take account of it is guaranteed to fail.
Can the Minister say what advice the Government are giving or what structure they are putting in place to try to counter this? If volunteers are needed, we know that people like volunteering for nice, big, positive tasks; an incredibly repetitious task tends to get less enthusiasm. What structure should there be for volunteers, and what will be their impact? Clearing a canal, taking out the water, is a big task. You can sit down and have a big celebration at the end. Emptying a bin every third day in the summer, when it is hot and you would rather not be there, is something that you can guarantee will not attract quite the same enthusiasm. What are we doing to make sure that this happens?
I shudder to say—many of my colleagues on my Benches would probably lynch me if I did—that local government should take charge, because it is a very stretched commodity at the moment. What is the interaction with local government to make sure that there is some support for activity taken by the Canal & River Trust? It is basically very simple: if you maintain these products, you will get something good out of it—something environmentally positive and a recreational facility. If you do not, you will have something that may become, if not totally clogged up with weeds with some water running through it, environmentally unpleasant and more difficult to maintain.
Can the Minister give us some idea of the conversations being had within government on how the various bits of government can make sure that this is addressed? If we have commercial activity beside the canal benefiting from it, what share of the heavy lifting on this mundane and irritating but persistent task are they required to do? What encouragement, and indeed use of the law, is there to make sure that they will do it? The is lots of law about collecting and not dumping litter, but it tends to be unenforced. Thus, it is ignored and the problem carries on. Do the Government have any strategies to make sure that this does not happen in the case of our canals and rivers?
I look forward to the Minister’s reply. I probably do not terribly envy this job, but the Government have a series of levers to make the various groups here take some action. It will be interesting to hear just how hard they are being pulled by the Government.