Litter

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Wednesday 1st July 2015 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Cormack]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle litter in both urban and rural areas.

[Lord Cormack (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to have this opportunity to ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle litter in urban and rural areas. I express my thanks at the outset to all those noble Lords who have put their names down to speak in this debate, and look forward to hearing their contributions. I am particularly glad that my noble friend Lord Marlesford, who has made this very much his own subject in the past, is taking part, and that my noble friend Lord Gardiner, who has done so much to advance the cause of the countryside over so many years, is to respond.

Those of you who know me will know that I am not a natural for Glastonbury—at least not for the festival. I was having a conversation about this extraordinary extravaganza, and somebody said to me, “The people who go there are the sort of people who care about the planet”. When I saw the photographs on Monday or Tuesday morning of the enormous piles of rubble and rubbish left behind by the revellers, I could not help but reflect that we judge people by what they leave behind. It was symbolic of a problem that is very real in our towns and countries. When I go to the early service at Lincoln Cathedral on a Sunday morning, which I do whenever I am there, it is a very rare Sunday morning when I do not observe rubbish between our home in Minster Yard and the cathedral. That is not because Minster Yard is badly kept—it is most scrupulously kept—but because revellers on a Saturday evening have seen fit to deposit all manner of detritus in a particularly lovely and holy place.

Again, one thinks of so many of our country lanes defaced, the verges absolutely obliterated in some cases by all manner of nasty things. Before I moved to Lincoln, I was for 40 years, as some of your Lordships know, a Member of Parliament in south Staffordshire. I lived for some 35 years in and near the lovely village of Enville. It was rare to drive around the country lanes without seeing discarded sofas, refrigerators and mattresses that had been fly-tipped by people, frequently over a weekend, and which cost a great deal of money to remove. This detritus is a product of carelessness but, much more than that, of selfishness—and, sometimes, of malevolence.

I was very glad when the Commons Communities and Local Government Select Committee produced a hard-hitting report just before the end of the last Parliament—so close to the end of it that the Government have not yet got around to replying to it. I am sure that they will; maybe my noble friend will be able to tell us when. It really was a sobering report to read, referring to England—because it was specifically concerned with England—as a “litter-ridden country”. About a month later, that very attractive and important magazine, Country Life, which has delighted people for well over a century, began its campaign against litter. It described the United Kingdom as,

“one of the filthiest countries in Europe”.

The first article was illustrated by a graphic picture of Loch Long in Scotland, showing the shore of the loch completely dominated by discarded rubbish and rubble.

Some 30 million tonnes of rubbish are gathered up from our towns and cities every year, enough to fill Wembley Stadium four times over. We have to remember, too, the nature of much of the rubbish in our streets. A cigarette butt, I am told, takes 12 years to break down completely; a plastic bag takes 20. Another graphic statistic appeared in a Country Life article, which said that it is reckoned that there are,

“46,000 pieces of plastic in every square mile of ocean”.

That is a terrible statistic, particularly when you think of the implications for wildlife. So many sea birds die as a result of ingesting bits of plastic. It really is a commentary on the carelessness of our age—carelessness in the worst possible sense: that people do not care.

It is not that there are no powers on the statute book to deal with these issues; indeed, there are a number. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs produced, again in March this year, a splendid account of what the responsibilities of councils and other public bodies are in clearing up litter and rubbish. It is an impressive document. It has been reprinted in an excellent brief that the Library has produced for noble Lords who may be taking part in this debate and others who are interested but cannot be here, of whom I know there are a good number. It illustrates that most of the powers are there but they are just not being properly enforced. So few on-the-spot fines are administered to those who discard their rubbish in the streets, very often from car windows. It is possible for people to be fined £2,500. I appreciate that that sanction cannot easily be applied to a careless child—I will say a little more about that in a moment. But we should enforce such things, and the department itself should hold councils to account for what they do.

We should also be considering anti-social behaviour orders—ASBOs—for those who deface our towns, cities and countryside in this way. We should be considering the confiscation of vehicles that have been found guilty of being used for fly-tipping. We should consider a takeaway-food tax for those who sell takeaway food and do not deal properly with what happens afterwards—there are exceptions, such as McDonald’s, which has a proud record of playing a part in tidying up the environment. There are other measures that can be taken. The call of the Commons in its Select Committee report for a national clean-up day ought to commend itself to the Government.

I have often talked in your Lordships’ House about the importance of citizenship and community service for our young people. I would like all of them, when they leave school, to have done some community service and to be given a citizenship certificate, which underlines not only their rights but their responsibilities; and one responsibility that we have to inculcate into the young is care for the environment. I should very much like to see the Government place a real emphasis on this issue; this would mean my noble friend talking to our noble friend Lord Nash and others. If there is to be a moral and a message from this brief debate, it ought to be: “Don’t fling it, bin it”. We need to inculcate this attitude into people of all ages, but particularly into the young, who can often be the best disciplinary influence on careless parents.

I am glad to have had this brief opportunity to introduce this subject of great importance, and I very much look forward to your Lordships’ contributions.

[The Earl of Courtown (Con)]

My Lords, I remind noble Lords that there is a five-minute limit on speeches in this debate. If the timer says five, you are on your sixth minute, so you are going on too long.