Deregulation Bill

Baroness Hanham Excerpts

Tuesday 3rd February 2015 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Baroness Hanham]

18: Clause 44, page 37, leave out lines 28 and 29

[Baroness Hanham (Con)]

My Lords, I shall speak also to Amendment 19 and in doing so remind the House that I am co-president of London Councils. It is on behalf of London that I shall speak this evening.

Clause 44 changes the penalties on a national basis for waste collection. It amends provisions in the Environmental Protection Act 1990 on waste collection and waste receptacles. It changes the system from one which was subject to a fixed penalty notice regime—that is, a system based on the criminal law—to one based on the civil processes of a penalty charge notice system. This change seems wholly proportionate and sensible, and I have no disagreement with it.

However, to make this a national system, two provisions have had to be put in the legislation to bring London into the whole pot; namely Clause 44(6) and Schedule 12. Both of those have had to be inserted into this part of the legislation to ensure that it is a national scheme. The reason is that London is already running such a scheme, based on the amended Environmental Protection Act and under the London Local Authorities Act 2007.

This system has been running perfectly happily. It is a decriminalised penalty notice system based on the normal penalty notice way of doing things. It has an appeals system. It is managed by a joint committee of London Councils. It has been the forerunner of what the Government are now trying to do. The system is now recognised by everybody who lives in London. I do not know whether people who are not involved in local authorities realise that it is not always easy either to identify somebody who is causing an infringement of the law or to make sure that they cough up when they are charged or recognised as having done so. As the system has been running perfectly successfully, London wants to stay that way.

My first reason for not wanting to see London included in the processes set out in the Bill, therefore, is that its system has been running perfectly well. The second is the bureaucracy that surrounds the Government’s proposals. There are four pages of legislation to tell enforcement officers how to issue a penalty charge notice. This is meant to be a Deregulation Bill, not a “pile it on high” Bill. With a penalty charge notice—as we all know, because we all get them from time—you receive it, you sigh deeply, you think about throwing it in the bin but, largely, you pay it because it tells you that if you pay up in two weeks you can do it more cheaply than if you wait for four weeks. If you feel really brassed off about it, you appeal. The process is neither very long nor very complicated, but there are four pages of legislation to introduce this new national system.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Tope]

Is the Minister able to answer the question that the noble Lord, Lord Harris, put to him about the number of prosecutions? As I understand it, he does not have that information to hand. The fact is that in the six or seven years of operating the scheme there has not been one single appeal against the issue of penalty charge notices. Would he conclude, as I do, that that suggests there have been very few issued and even fewer judged to have been unfairly issued?

[Baroness Hanham]

My Lords, I originally put the question to my noble friend of whether he would be prepared to meet us. He said he will and I thank him for that. I will take up his offer as soon as we can so that we can try and get some sense into this before Third Reading.

I have stood in the same position as the noble Lord, Lord De Mauley, and I have at times thought that the brief in front of me was absolute rubbish. I have to say that I think that this falls into that category. This is not about one person putting a bit of rubbish into somebody else’s recycling bag. This is about bringing into the whole country a decriminalised system of enforcement of waste in relation to receptacles, dustbins and whether or not you put your rubbish out in plain bags. If the five pages plus five pages of schedule on this legislation are intended to amend the problem of one unknown person putting one bit of rubbish into another bag, I think deregulation has lost its meaning.

I will not say any more. I am extremely disappointed with the noble Lord’s response. London has its own legislation on many fronts and it always acts responsibly. It has led the way with the decriminalisation of waste collection and changes to the Environmental Protection Act. It is not just being unfriendly and prosecuting people unnecessarily. The whole nature of what I was concerned about in the noble Lord’s briefing has been misunderstood. I hope that that was what it was. I look forward to meeting him and we will make sure that that happens. In the mean time I will withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 18 withdrawn.