Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill

Debate between Lord Marlesford and Viscount Goschen

Wednesday 20th November 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, in proposing the new clause in Amendment 22 to provide a new civil penalty for littering from vehicles I seek to insert part of my Private Member’s Bill, which was extraordinarily enthusiastically endorsed by the House, excluding the Minister from Defra, at Second Reading on 19 July. Eight speakers from all sides of the House were good enough to come in on that summer Friday to support it. Since then I have received two placebo letters from Ministers, one from my noble friend Lord De Mauley and the other from my noble friend Lord Taylor. In a sense, they both said the same thing. They both say—this is more or less a quotation—that the Government share my frustration with the problems of roadside litter. I suggest that Governments are not elected to share the frustration of electors. They are elected in the hope that they will deal with the cause of the frustration. We want action rather than words, and I am offering a rather simple form of action to help them.

I wish to replace the criminal offence of littering from vehicles, which does not work, with a civil offence, which would work. The criminal offence does not work because it is necessary to prove who threw the litter from the vehicle. My civil offence would make responsible the keeper of the vehicle from which litter is thrown. It would impose a small fine, which he or she could pass on to whichever person in the vehicle threw the litter, in exactly the same way as if somebody borrows my car and parks it where they should not I get the parking fine. That is not a criminal offence, and it is the right way to do it.

My noble friend Lord De Mauley, in his letter to me dated 16 September, rather surprisingly suggested that:

“Such an approach clearly raises questions of proportionality and civil liberties”.

I would have thought that it did the reverse. He goes on to say:

“Littering is an unnecessary and antisocial behaviour … Littering from vehicles, particularly moving vehicles, is a dangerous form of littering”.

He gets quite excited, because he goes on to say:

“The maximum fine which can be imposed on an individual convicted for littering is £2,500, which is clearly large enough to have an immediate effect on the financial situation of many individuals. Moreover, criminal convictions can result in higher insurance premiums or, in some cases, refusal of insurance. Unspent criminal convictions, including those for littering, also of course show up on any criminal record check carried out by a prospective employer, and must also be declared when applying for visas for travel to certain countries”.

That is a bit of a sledgehammer; I believe that my rather modest little proposal would be effective. The point about the sledgehammer is that not only is it not actually used, but it really is virtually impossible to use it. I hope that the Government, after this long period that we have waited—we have been discussing this for some while—could take some action.

My noble friend Lord Taylor wrote a very nice letter to me, in which he says:

“I recognise that it can be difficult for local authority enforcement officers to identify the offender when littering takes place from a vehicle, but providing for a civil penalty to be issued to the registered keeper … would … risk sending a message to the public that littering from vehicles is less serious compared to other littering”.

Yes, of course it is less serious. My noble friend Lord Goschen is about to introduce an amendment about the much more serious matter of fly-tipping. There is no comparison.

All these things are a matter of degree. We are fortunate in having several noble and learned former Law Lords in the House; I hesitate to say anything about the law because one knows nothing about it compared to everybody else here, but surely, proportionality and all that is very important. That is why I am hoping that the Government will recognise that something should be done about this problem.

Recently, my honourable friend Mr Dan Rogerson was given a new responsibility for the waste portfolio in the Government. He wrote to the waste sector saying that the Government was going to focus on,

“the essentials that only Government can and must do”.

He is putting forward,

“a limited programme of work on waste prevention, focusing our attention on the areas where action is clearly for Government”.

That fits in rather well with what I am proposing.

Since I have taken an interest in these matters, I have been on the close look-out when I have travelled. Certainly, in three countries in Europe this summer, in Arizona in the USA and last week in Hong Kong, I was very struck by how astonishingly clean they all were compared to Britain. It is really rather shocking that not only are we the way we are, but the Government are not enthusiastically supporting the measure I am suggesting or—which I would be perfectly happy with—proposing something better. I hope it will happen. I beg to move.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I support my noble friend Lord Marlesford’s amendment, which largely reflects a Private Member’s Bill that the House discussed a while ago. It seems an eminently sensible measure and I look forward to a similarly positive and supportive reply from the Minister. My Amendment 22AA, which is grouped with that of my noble friend, deals with a different issue at the other end of the waste scale: it is to do with fly-tipping.

Fly-tipping is the deliberate, planned commission of a criminal act by the illegal dumping of waste. This is a crime which blights rural areas, including the one in which I live; if I therefore have an interest, I am more than happy to declare it. The scale of the situation is scarcely credible. In 2012-13, according to statistics produced by Defra, there were 711,000 incidents, or crimes, at approximately 2,000 per day. I do not believe—and perhaps my noble friends can correct me if I am wrong—that that includes fly-tipping on private land, and private farmland in particular, which is an increasing phenomenon. That is a great deal of criminal activity but, in the same statistics pamphlet that the department has produced, there is an equally startling statistic. In the same period, only 2,200 prosecutions were undertaken. Another way of looking at it is that only crimes committed approximately on the equivalent of one day per year were brought before the courts. The odds are nowhere near sufficient to deter either the one-off or the serial offender.