Bin Charges: South Gloucestershire

Chris Skidmore Excerpts

Monday 30th June 2014 Commons Chamber

[Chris Skidmore (Kingswood) (Con)]

I rise to speak about an issue that has divided local opinion in south Gloucestershire: the introduction of green bin charges. On one side of the divide, my hon. Friend the Member for Filton and Bradley Stoke (Jack Lopresti) and I, the local MP for Kingswood, along with local Conservative councillors, are determined to stand up for hard-working residents, who have had little say over the increase in the money they have to pay for services that used to be included in their council tax. On the other side of the divide are the local Labour and Lib Dem councillors, whose votes ushered in the £36 charge for green bins and who are determined to retain the charge in spite of overwhelming local opposition that has dubbed the charge the “green bin tax”.

Let us be clear: no resident locally voted for a party pledging the introduction of the green bin tax in south Gloucestershire. No party stood for the local elections in 2011 on a platform of introducing the charge, which takes even more money from local people’s pockets. The way in which the green bin tax has been introduced amounts to nothing less than a stealth tax for which nobody voted and which nobody wants.

The green bin tax came into being late last year, in September 2013, when the communities committee of South Gloucestershire council voted to introduce the £36 charge for green bins. The committee was split on its decision to introduce the charge, with six Conservative councillors opposing the policy. Despite this, the green bin tax was voted in by seven Labour and Lib Dem councillors, with a majority of one. 1 recognise that local councils have the freedom to introduce charges, but it cannot be right that just 10% of all councillors in South Gloucestershire—seven out of a total of 70—voted in the green bin tax.

After local Conservative councillors were outvoted in this way, I, as the local MP, set up a petition for local residents calling on South Gloucestershire council to reconsider its green bin charge. The petition was signed by over 4,200 local people in the Kingswood constituency alone. I presented the petition to South Gloucestershire council and to Parliament. This triggered a debate in the council. However, Lib Dem and Labour councillors teamed up to ensure that the debate took place not in full council, where local people would be able to see how their local councillor voted—for or against the green bin tax—but, again, within the small cabal of the communities committee.

The green bin tax was introduced in South Gloucestershire on 31 March this year. So far it has cost £650,000 to implement, while the most recent figures show that just 36,000 out of 109,000 households have paid for their green bins. On their website, Lib Dem councillors have dubbed this a “success”. Celebrating charging residents more by forcing them to pay for their green bin waste collection seems to me an odd way of defining success. On the doorstep, time and again, I meet local residents who are furious that Labour and Lib Dem councillors have introduced the green bin tax despite having no electoral mandate to do so. For these councillors to declare their forced policy a “success” simply adds insult to injury.

On 29 April this year, I formally submitted my petition of 4,200 local residents to Parliament. On 3 June, I received a welcome formal response from the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, who stated:

“Ministers believe that councils should not be introducing stealth taxes by imposing new charges on local residents. Instead, councils should be making sensible savings by better procurement, more joint working and cutting fraud, in order to protect frontline services and keeping council tax and charges down”.

I was grateful that in his reply he stated on the record that he

“endorses the Petitioners’ suggestion that the council reconsider its actions in imposing these new charges.”—[Official Report, 4 June 2014; Vol. 582, c. 1P.]

During the debate in the communities committee of South Gloucestershire council triggered by the 4,200-signature petition of local residents, councillors voted to review the impact of the green bin tax on local residents. I hope that they will listen closely to the Secretary of State’s comments on the petition. I would welcome any comments that the Minister has for South Gloucestershire councillors on what they should be doing to focus on further efficiency savings rather than simply increasing and passing on the costs to local residents.

The introduction of the green bin tax in South Gloucestershire has important implications for whether councils can legitimately claim that they have frozen council tax. This Government have rightly urged councils to freeze council tax, and that has taken place in South Gloucestershire over the past three years, in marked contrast to what happened under the Labour Government, when band D council tax rose from £635 to £1,245. In fact, the Government have provided incentives for councils to freeze council tax, at the same time introducing a referendum trigger if they increase it by more than 2%. South Gloucestershire council claims to have frozen council tax this year, yet when the £36 green bin charge is added to the bill of a band D council tax payer, that results in a total increase of more than 2% being paid to the council—something that would have triggered a referendum if the bin charges had been included in council tax alone. The many residents who have pointed that out to me are surely right to claim that the bin tax is nothing but a stealth tax, imposed through the back door to avoid the scrutiny of local democracy or giving residents a say through local referendums.

Rather than confining the trigger for a referendum to council tax alone, I urge the Minister to consider whether the mechanism should be expanded to include any additional charges imposed by local councils, so that the overall cost of local government and the overall amount of money that councils are taking out of local people’s pockets can be more accurately reflected. In that way, rather than the green bin tax being introduced by just seven Labour and Lib Dem councillors, local people would have been able to vote for the waste services they want and the cost of delivering them.

On a similar point, although local authorities have the freedom to introduce charges, I believe that should be done only through a named vote at a meeting of full council, so that local residents can be fully aware of how their own local councillor voted on additional charges that will cost them personally. Surely this is a simple matter of openness and transparency, so local councillors should be able to vote individually on these matters on behalf of their residents. Local people in Kingswood deserve to know if their local councillor would vote for or against charging. Few people could argue that the vote of just seven Labour and Lib Dem councillors reflects the decision of an entire council on behalf of its residents.

Both I and local Conservatives will continue to campaign for the reversal of the green bin tax in south Gloucestershire. As a result of the combined determination of Labour and Lib Dem councillors to defend the bin tax for which they voted, we may have to wait until the next time local residents have a chance to voice their own opinion on the matter at the next local elections in May 2015.

The experience of the introduction of the green bin tax in south Gloucestershire points to a worrying decline in local accountability over exactly how local authorities can impose charging on residents. I hope the Minister will continue to monitor the situation regarding local authority charging policy on waste, both in south Gloucestershire and nationally, and consider taking appropriate action in due course.