Litter and Fly-tipping: England

Clive Betts Excerpts

Thursday 25th February 2016 Westminster Hall

[Mr Clive Betts (Sheffield South East) (Lab)]

I beg to move,

That this House has considered the Seventh Report from the Communities and Local Government Committee of Session 2014-15, on Litter and fly-tipping in England, HC 607, and the Government response, Cm 9097.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. This was the last report by the Select Committee on Communities and Local Government in the previous Parliament. It was produced in March 2015, and we then had a little wait. As we flagged up in the report, we were not sure whether the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs or the Department for Communities and Local Government was responsible for this issue. The DCLG Minister is in his place today, although we are told that this was a DEFRA responsibility. I am sure he will sort out that confusion when he has the opportunity to do so.

Once the report was produced, the attempts to reach an agreement between the Departments continued for nine months—rather a long time, given that Select Committees normally get responses from the Government in eight weeks. Obviously there was a general election, so one might reasonably have expected a Government response by, say, July. December is a long way on from July. Indeed, the Government’s response to our recommendations took so long that I expected it to contain a bombshell. I thought we might see a proposal to increase littering fines to a level that would halve the deficit overnight, or perhaps the Government were going to be so generous as to hypothecate the total revenue from tobacco taxes to local authorities to help with their work—but no, not in the end. To be fair to the Government, they agreed with many of our recommendations, and where they did not they gave explanations. There are one or two areas that we want to push them on, to see whether we can make progress. It is difficult to understand why it took so long to produce a relatively straightforward and generally acceptable response to our sensible proposals.

In the end, litter is not an issue that we tend to have massive party political debates about, and that is not how the Committee approached it. The report was unanimously accepted by the Committee, which is par for the course—that is our general approach to things. We did not have to struggle to get that agreement. There was clear evidence, and we made clear recommendations on it.

Litter matters to the public enormously. They do not necessarily want politicians to squabble about it, but it is one of the issues that is likely to be raised with us on the doorstep. People are distressed and often appalled by its environmental impact. They are concerned about the inconsideration of the people who drop it without any thought of the consequences, and that they, as taxpayers, have to pay for it to be cleaned up. That money, certainly in the current circumstances, could be spent better on other services that are important to them. It is an issue that also gets raised with local councillors regularly, so it is right that we wrote a report and are having a debate about it.

There are some clear areas of agreement. We called for a national strategy, and the Government agreed. It will be interesting to see how that develops and what effect it has. We recommended a national clean-up day. The Government, perhaps anticipating that, got in before us and accepted our recommendation before we made it, so that is positive. We have a Clean for the Queen day this year, which we should all encourage community groups and individuals in our constituencies to participate in. Again, there is cross-party agreement on that: everyone believes it is a good thing for communities to do. It is just a pity that it has to be done and that people drop litter in the first place. Nevertheless, that is a positive achievement.

One of the initial problems we have in looking at litter—I am pleased that the Government accepted this; we now need to see what they do about it—is that we do not know how much there is, because there is no reasonable assessment. There is the “Local Environmental Quality Survey of England”—that is a bit of a mouthful; I hope we find a snappier title for whatever replaces it in due course—but the problem is that the surveys do one of two things. Some simply look for evidence of a particular kind of litter in an area, and then have a tick-box that says, “That litter is there”, without recording whether it is one, a dozen or 100 pieces of litter, so we do not know about the incidence. Others count the amount of litter, but do not distinguish between the type—so 100 cigarette butts are recorded as the equivalent of 100 plastic bags, even though it is pretty obvious that their environmental and visual impacts are different. The Government accepted that we need to think about how better to collect data and agreed with the recommendation in our report. We look forward to hearing how they are going to do that.

There was a disagreement—not a fundamental one—between the Committee and the Government about what the cost of litter clean-up is. We said it was somewhere between £700 million and £850 million. The Government said—I understand the logic of their explanation—that local government would need to sweep the streets anyway to clean up dust and dirt that is not due to littering, so the total cost of street sweeping is not a consequence of the litter that people drop. I accept that, but on the other hand no better figure is available. That is the only figure that the Committee had to work with.

Education is important, and we want schools and others to do their bit to encourage children. It will be great to see children out on the national Clean for the Queen day, because they can then start to appreciate the consequences of dropping litter and what dealing with it entails. Of course, however well we educate, some people will not want to listen and will carry on dropping litter. They deserve to be penalised. The Committee said that we should increase the rates for fixed penalty notices. Again, the Government agreed and are going to consult on the level they should be raised to. Personally, I think—and the Committee generally supports this—that the levels should be increased significantly. There has to be a real deterrent when people are caught littering.

[Kevin Hollinrake (Thirsk and Malton) (Con)]

I congratulate the Chair of the Select Committee on introducing this important debate. He mentions fixed penalty notices, which I understand can potentially lead to criminal convictions if further steps are taken. Some local authorities might be reluctant to take those steps on the basis that they might criminalise young people. Should we perhaps consider making fixed penalty notices a civil offence?

[Mr Betts]

That is an interesting idea. The Committee misunderstood the position—we do not always get everything absolutely right, but we try. We said that fixed penalty notices are easy because of their civil nature, but the Government corrected us and said that they are a criminal penalty. The Government should think about the hon. Gentleman’s suggestion, because that is an issue. If people are fined, we want to deter them and we want a process that is easier than going through the courts to get a fine. That could be looked at without reducing the intention to deter.

The advantage of fixed penalty notices is that the money goes back to the local authority. In the past, the Committee suggested that the Government should think about allowing money from other fines to go back to local authorities. The authority bears the costs, but the fines go to the Treasury. There is a disjuncture between the revenue from fixed penalty notices, which goes to the local authority, and fines, which go to the Treasury. Could we not have a more joined-up approach so that the local authorities, which incur the cost, get the returns from any action they take?

We then looked at the types of litter and tried to distinguish between them. Cigarettes are the most littered object. The problem is that many people do not see puffing away on a cigarette and then putting it out on the floor as littering—“It’s only a cigarette butt”—but it is. Cigarette butts are the most common item of litter. We had quite a discussion about that, and we were surprised when the then Minister, the hon. Member for Keighley (Kris Hopkins), said that the Department suggested to the Chancellor that part of any extra tax on tobacco products should go to local authorities. The Department dismissed that in its response, but the suggestion was made by a Government Minister. The hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) is nodding away because he was in the Committee and heard the evidence. I do not know whether the Government changed their mind or whether—surely not—one Government Department has a different view from another. We now understand that Ministers have different views. Indeed, we are getting quite used to that idea on certain subjects. Anyway, the Minister might like to reflect on those points.

[Jim Fitzpatrick (Poplar and Limehouse) (Lab)]

I thank my hon. Friend for giving way and will commend him and his Committee on the report if I am called to speak by Mr Turner in due course. I was interested to read in the report and the Government response about the difficulty of the relationship with tobacco companies. Councils did not want to get too close to them, but they were offering to assist. Will my hon. Friend elaborate on the discussions around that? It is unclear whether the Committee reached a conclusion about embracing tobacco companies, no matter how uncomfortable that might be, especially if they are going to provide some money for the clear-up, which is a significant cost to local authorities.

[Mr Betts]

We had a serious look at that and received a lot of evidence. We deliberated and came to a reasonable conclusion. The Local Government Association was absolutely clear in its evidence that it is signed up to the local government declaration on tobacco control and believes that that means that the LGA and local authorities must have nothing at all to do with tobacco companies. The view is that, because of the nature of tobacco and the need to get the message across, in particular to young people, that tobacco products kill, there should be no connection at all and that the tobacco industry should not get involved with democratically elected bodies. Indeed, I understand that the national health service takes exactly the same line nationally: no connection at all.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

Would that also apply to chewing gum manufacturers?

[Mr Betts]

No, it does not, because they are not part of the same declaration, but I will come on to chewing gum in a minute, because it is a different but interesting subject.

[Bob Blackman (Harrow East) (Con)]

A sticky subject!

[Mr Betts]

I was just about to say it, but the hon. Member for Harrow East got in before me—I was reflecting on whether it was appropriate, but it obviously was.

It is a difficult issue, but the Committee—most of us are generally localists—decided that we understood the declaration and the LGA’s position, and that it was up to local authorities to make a decision themselves. We also said that if they did so, they should not allow themselves to be used in any way by tobacco manufacturers to gain any advantage or engage in any promotion of tobacco products—to give any impression that tobacco was okay because the companies were making a contribution towards a public service.

[Victoria Prentis (Banbury) (Con)]

A wide group of commercial companies work hard on picking up litter. The hon. Gentleman was kind enough to mention Clean for the Queen earlier. Will he join me in praising Kärcher in my constituency? The company is committed to cleaning up “grot spots” around the country—I am glad to see that none of them is represented in this room, otherwise I would have to name and shame them. A clear set of companies are willing to put their money where their mouth is when it comes to the problem of litter. Bearing in mind the caveats that the hon. Gentleman mentioned, tobacco companies could join that number.

[Mr Betts]

The Committee did not say that no one should engage, but we placed strong caveats on any engagement, for obvious reasons. In the end, we said it was down to local authorities to make a decision, but we also thought the Government might make a contribution from the tobacco tax levies.

The other interesting thing about our discussion on the involvement of tobacco companies was that we had two Ministers—one from the Department for Communities and Local Government and one from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs—who gave us completely different evidence. They sat and disagreed with each other in front of the Committee. We had two different political parties coming up to a general election, so perhaps collective responsibility was breaking down in the last Parliament, for reasons different from those in this Parliament.

Again, in the end we said it was down to local authorities, but we emphasised over and over again that tobacco companies should in no way be allowed to pay out money as a salve for their consciences and to show that they are okay and not really the bad guys because they are making a public contribution. They are not okay; they sell a dangerous product, which the House has recognised through legislation in a number of ways in recent years, and I think we all support that. We do not want to do anything to give the tobacco companies a way into the public’s good books.

The Tobacco Manufacturers Association made the interesting suggestion that tobacco litter is not that bad because portable, fold-up ashtrays mean that people do not have to drop ash. We said, “Great! Why don’t you issue them free with all packets of cigarettes?” I have not noticed that that has happened in the months since they made that suggestion. Was it just a publicity gimmick to suggest that they are not as bad as everyone makes out? It is quite a good idea, but nothing has happened. We should encourage them to consider it again if they want to do something practical to alleviate the problem.

[Kevin Hollinrake]

The hon. Gentleman is speaking about tobacco companies, and I mentioned chewing gum, but my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) just reminded me of companies such as McDonald’s. Our highways are often a litter-strewn disgrace, and while there are duties under section 89 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 to keep those highways clean, there is conflict between local authorities, which have the duty, and Highways England, which is required to provide protection for local authority employees for health and safety reasons. Highways England charges for that, so highways are not being kept clean—they are cleaned only occasionally when someone complains. In my constituency, the A64 is a litter-strewn disgrace that deters the tourism that my areas relies on, yet there is no joined-up thinking about how to clean the highways. Do we need to consider that as part of the national strategy to which he referred?

[Mr Andrew Turner (in the Chair)]

Order. Interventions must be short.

[Mr Betts]

I understand that this is a very long road, Mr Turner.

The Committee did consider that point, and I am going to come on to fly-tipping, which often happens on highways, in addition to ordinary littering. We considered two issues about vehicles and highways. One was about the division of responsibility between local authorities picking the litter up and Highways England being responsible for safety on the highways. We suggested that responsibility for litter be transferred to Highways England after consultation. The Government said no and that they wanted to have another look at how that might work, so I will be interested to hear more details about that from the Minister. I am not saying that the Government are wrong, but we identified a problem and made a suggestion about how it could be resolved. It clearly needs a resolution, because what we have at present is unacceptable and is not working. If the Government come up with another idea, okay, but they ought to say that if their new approach does not work, they will come back and consider whether one agency should be responsible, because that is often the way to sort things out.

There is also the question of how we penalise the offence of dropping litter from cars. As I understand it, the offence is committed by the person who drops the litter, but the difficulty is that if a car whizzes past and litter comes out of it, can who dropped it be proved? The law in London is different, because the owner of the vehicle can be charged, irrespective of who throws the litter—it is for the owner to decide. The Committee suggested that that approach should apply nationally. The Government said that there was not enough evidence that the extra powers had led to an increase in fines in London, but I still urge the Minister to have a look at that option as it seems to be impossible to determine proof outside London, because if there are four people in a car and a cigarette packet or a sweet wrapper is thrown out of it, who actually threw that? We hope that the Government will consider adopting the London position.

We carefully considered the idea of taxing chewing gum to pay for the cost of clean-up. Cigarette material might be the most prevalent form of litter, but chewing gum is certainly the most difficult to clean—it is a nightmare. In the end, we said to the industry, “Look, this is the last-chance saloon. What are you going to do to help with the cost of this and the practicalities of clearing it up? Alternatively, how about producing chewing gum that is less difficult to get off the pavement if people drop it?”

The Government’s response referred to a wonderful-sounding organisation called the Chewing Gum Action Group. We hope that it is doing good work, but we would like to hear what it is going to do and how the Minister will judge its success. If, despite its work, chewing gum is still being thrown around to the same extent, with no change in the materials used in gum to make it easier to remove, and if the industry does not volunteer to take up its share of the burden, will the Minister consider alternatives? The Committee intends to reconsider the issue—and, indeed, quite a few of the points made in our report—to determine whether progress has been made.

Another big problem is fly-tipping. All the data we have, imperfect though they are, show that litter is a problem. In our report’s summary, we stated:

“England is a litter-ridden country compared to most of Europe, North America and Japan.”

The Government disagreed and said that there was no evidence for that, probably because the figures are not available, but most of us can see with our own eyes when we go to other countries that things there look better in general. However, it is absolutely clear that the problem of fly-tipping has become worse in this country. There is no doubt at all about that, because there has been a 20% increase in the previous 12 months, as we were told in evidence.

The Government accepted the suggestion of adopting fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping to add to the range of options for local authorities so that they may prosecute more simply. Fly-tipping is a serious problem, but while a builders’ merchant ought to be taken to court for a major incident such as dumping building material in a lay-by, for a discarded plastic bag, a fixed penalty notice would be the appropriate and proportionate response. It is extremely welcome that the Government will introduce such notices.

A further concern is that as local authorities get increasingly short of cash and look for savings, they charge for taking away bulky household goods. We encourage local authorities to team up with charities—a number of organisations do this—that will take away the goods, recycle and reuse what they can, and then take to the council site what they cannot. I talked to the British Heart Foundation, which operates such a scheme in certain parts of the country. That excellent scheme involves the charity recycling much of the furniture—sprucing it up, putting it on display and selling it off—and, by agreement with the local authority, taking what it cannot sell free of charge to the local council site.

I wish that more local authorities were involved in such schemes, because they could then tell people, “There is no charge for your bulky items. This organisation will take them for free.” Items could be put to good use and recycled, and the scheme is good for the charity as well, because it will make some money. The Government also welcomed that suggestion, but it could be publicised further. Perhaps the Local Government Association will do something to get the information out to its members.

We also suggested that retailers that sold a good should take the old one away free of charge, with the cost perhaps being built into the original price of the item. The Government said that existing electrical regulations meant that a company selling electrical products had to provide disposal of the old product free of charge. The catch is that the company does not have to take it away free of charge—only the disposal is free. That is a loophole, because someone then still has to pay for an old product to be taken from the home. Will the Government consider toughening up that measure? Furthermore, those regulations apply only to electrical products, not to things such as beds or sofas, which can be even harder to get rid of. Will the Government try to find a way forward?

We also suggested improving information not only about littering, but about fine collection and penalty notices. The Government accepted that recommendation and will consider how to do that.

The report, which was considered and focused on the main issues, had a generally positive response from Government, but we did not get a totally satisfactory or complete response to some of the items, which I have highlighted. I hope that the Minister will address the issues that still need to be dealt with. In short, we need better stats and a sense of how we really get to grips with cigarette, chewing gum and fly-tipping problems.

Everything, of course, has to be seen against the background that local authorities face further spending cuts. As councils concentrate on absolutely vital statutory services such as adult social care, areas such as cleaning up litter are those that can suffer and experience reductions in spending. We do not want further problems. Local authorities ought to be imaginative, so we suggested that they look at the modern bins available. Nottingham City Council has a lot of bins that give the council’s control centre an indication of when they are available for collection. That means that someone does not have to be paid to go around emptying bins that are not full, as the council will respond when a bin is full, rather than having a rota for collection at certain times. Local authorities can therefore act to meet the challenge, but there are many issues for the Government as well. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Bob Blackman]

Clearly the packaging that McDonald’s and other fast food restaurants use is a matter for them, but the consequences of packaging are not limited to fast food—there are whole ranges of unnecessary packaging. However, the point is whether we should look at duties on fast food restaurants to act in the same responsible way as McDonald’s.

In my constituency we have a perennial problem with a Kentucky Fried Chicken drive-through restaurant where people drive in, park up the road, eat their chicken and throw the bones on the floor—they literally drop them out of their car windows—for local residents to suffer. Surely we can ensure that the fast food restaurants have a duty to keep their areas clear. I leave the implementation of that to the great thoughts of my hon. Friend the Minister, but we must say, “The consequences of you selling your products are the costs of clearing up.” Let us look at some solutions to that.

[Mr Betts]

I did not cover this point in my introduction, but the hon. Gentleman is right. My Committee gave specific praise to McDonald’s because of what it does and said all fast food restaurants, takeaways and so on should have a legal responsibility to clean up in their areas. The Government came back and said that they did not want a general duty, but that local authorities have powers to act under the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 where there is a persistent problem. I wonder whether many local authorities use that power; I am not sure if figures are kept about that. Going down that route presumably has quite a considerable cost for local authorities. Does the hon. Gentleman think we ought to push the Government a little bit harder, to see what we can effectively do about this?

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the hon. Gentleman who chairs the Select Committee. We have to press the Government further on this issue, and we will clearly return to it in this term. If the Government do not take action, we will as a Committee almost certainly conclude that further action is required. If the Government do not come up with a scheme, we will suggest an alternative.

Another area of social change in this country is that we are shifting to a lot more people living in private rented accommodation. People quite frequently live in such accommodation for short periods of six months to one year and then move to another area, which may involve moving from one local authority to another. That has consequences.

As a true localist, I applaud local authorities collecting domestic rubbish as they so choose. However, if we go to any London borough or any local authority up and down the country, we will find different coloured bins for different types of waste—be it general waste, dry recycled waste, food waste or garden waste. In some local authorities, there are five different bins, all with different colours. No information is supplied to individuals living in households in the area as to which rubbish they should put in which bin, except when the local authority issues the bins.

The problem is that when people move, they may then put rubbish in the wrong bins, and it is particularly people who come from another country to live in this country—I am not blaming them for this. They want to do the right thing; they want to dispose of their rubbish. They put the rubbish in the bin that they think is the right one. They may have moved from one local authority to another, so they just use the same colour bin. However, when the rubbish comes to be collected, the bin men arrive and say, “Nope. It’s the wrong rubbish in the wrong bin,” and just leave it there and move on to the next house.

As a consequence, the bins rapidly fill up and overflow, causing rats, mice and other vermin to congregate. Worse still, particularly in shared households, what tends to happen is that people say, “I’ve got to get rid of my rubbish. What am I going to do with it? The local authority hasn’t collected my bin and hasn’t told me why. What I’ll do is put my rubbish in a plastic bag, wander down to the end of the road and deposit it on the corner.” Rats, foxes, dogs, cats and all sorts of vermin then chew the bags and the rubbish goes everywhere.

My suggestion is relatively simple. When someone moves into private rented accommodation, one of their duties is to register on the electoral register with the local authority. Surely local authorities should have a duty to issue people who move into the area and register for the first time with a simple guide to how to dispose of rubbish. It is not rocket science but, to my knowledge, that is not done anywhere in the country. Some enlightened places may do it, but the reality is that it is not generally happening. It would be so easy to do. It could be one sheet that goes out when someone registers to vote, saying, “Here’s advice on how you dispose of your rubbish.” At a stroke, we would remove quite a few of the problems that occur with fly-tipping. From what I can see, a lot of fly-tipping is a consequence of people not getting their domestic waste collected.

Another associated problem is that many local authorities are now choosing to charge for the collection of garden waste. I remember introducing wheelie bins for the first time in my local authority when I was a local authority leader. We had a great song and dance about it—“Throw all your rubbish in the bin. It’ll be collected once a week and we’ll sort it out for recycling and other purposes.” It was a great idea. For the first time, garden waste was collected, free of charge. The problem is that as local authorities then separated out the various different types of service, they cottoned on to the fact that they do not have to collect garden waste free of charge. They therefore then imposed a charge on collecting garden waste, which is deeply unpopular and is a monopoly service, because no one else provides it.

The reality is that the charges are very different depending on where they are in the country. I have done a study demonstrating that in London my own borough, which is introducing the charge from April, will have the highest level. That is a deterrent straight away to people registering for the service. People who have gardens and are therefore likely to generate garden waste will dispose of their garden waste somehow. One problem with the charge is that those people will say, “Actually, I’m not prepared to pay for a service that I think should be provided by the local authority free of charge”—and has been, by the way, for a number of years—“so I’ll find another way of disposing of it.” Fly-tipping will become more prevalent as a result.

It is certainly true that where charges have been imposed, fly-tipping of garden waste in particular has increased quite dramatically. That is a consequence of charging for services that people see as part of the council tax they pay. The Government need to look at that carefully. I take the view that the charges for such services should be kept under review, because it cannot be correct that equivalent authorities are charging very different prices for the same service. Something is going wrong somewhere when that is the case.

[Mr Betts]

I understand the problem. It certainly caused a great deal of concern in my constituency when charges were introduced. The problem was that it is not the council that introduced the charge; it is Veolia, the contractor. Veolia fixes the charge and refuses to take instalment payments, so people have to pay it up front. That is a deterrent to people, particularly those on low incomes. There is a challenge when contractors—ones that make a lot of money out of this—introduce that sort of charge for the service.

[Bob Blackman]

That is a clear concern. It depends, of course, on the contract that has been set up between the local authority and the supplier. In London—I cannot speak for the hon. Gentleman’s area—we have done quite a detailed study of this issue, and it is local authorities implementing the charges, not contractors. In my borough, it is a direct service—it is not even being provided by an outside contractor, which demonstrates that there is a particular problem.

[Bob Blackman]

I recognise the hon. Gentleman’s point. That has happened in a lot of local authorities up and down the country.

I will move on to bulky waste, to which the Chair of the Select Committee also alluded. There are duties for certain items to be collected when someone buys a replacement, but I think we will all have seen beds, sofas, garden furniture and ordinary furniture just dumped on the streets and left to rot. The reality is that much of that, and mattresses in particular, could be collected at the same time as people are buying new ones. I have seen certain local authorities that routinely go around and collect mattresses that have been left in particular areas. In areas with houses in multiple occupation, landlords will turn out the beds on a routine basis, especially when there has been a turnover of people living in those properties. When there are mattresses on the street, they have to be collected and dealt with. Surely there should be a duty on suppliers, as part and parcel of the process of delivering mattresses, sofas and other items, to collect and take away the old ones and dispose of them free of charge to the individual who is buying the new product. The Government should look at that in order to reduce costs.

The other issue with fly-tipping is that it is definitely on the increase. We have to combat it in every way, shape or form. Two types of fly-tipping are of particular concern. There is fly-tipping on the public highway, which hon. Members have mentioned, along with fly-tipping on street corners and all sorts of areas of the public highway that tend to be out of sight. People just wander along and either dump their rubbish from a car or, alternatively, dump it on service roads, whether to shops or domestic properties, as access points to garages. They are often the biggest problem of all, for the simple reason that they are on private land, so local authorities will say, “Nothing to do with us; you have to pay for that rubbish to be removed,” whereas residents say, “Well, it’s nothing to do with us. We didn’t dump it there in the first place.” The rubbish then builds up and up, till it becomes a health hazard and finally the local authority has to step in, remove it and try and identify who was responsible. It is often good luck if they find anything associated with the individual who dumped it in the first place. Often that is not possible.

I suspect this will be difficult, but we will have to look at what the duties are to collect fly-tipping on private land and whether any can be passed on to local authorities or whether there is some other way of dealing with fly-tipping on service roads. I know this is of great concern to many residents up and down the country, and there do not seem to be proper regulations to control it.

[Mr Betts]

To deter fly-tipping, we said we wanted to see powers to impound vehicles engaged in fly-tipping. One very positive thing that we probably ought to report—and, again, congratulate the Government on—is that they brought those regulations into force on 6 April. That was really welcome. In serious cases, a vehicle engaged in fly-tipping can be impounded and taken away, which is a really strong penalty and deterrent.

[Bob Blackman]

I thank the Chair of the Select Committee again for making that point about a good thing that the Government have done.

All in all, this is a comprehensive report, with some simple recommendations about which most right-minded people would say, “Well, let’s implement those.” There are some dilemmas for the Government in their deliberations on fly-tipping and littering, but I would welcome the Minister’s views on how some of the ideas we have floated today can be taken forward and implemented across the country, while allowing local authorities to develop new strategies to deal with fly-tipping and littering as appropriate in their local communities. It is also about making it clear that there are duties to keep areas clean and duties on individuals to ensure that they do not dump rubbish and act in an antisocial manner.

In conclusion, it was a pleasure to work on this report. It upsets most residents across the country to see rubbish thrown everywhere. Clearly this is an area where a clean-up is necessary.

--- Later in debate ---

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Marcus Jones)]

It is always a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Turner. I thank the Communities and Local Government Committee for its report on litter and fly-tipping and thank the Chairman of the Committee, the hon. Member for Sheffield South East (Mr Betts), and other hon. Members for an excellent debate. It is one of those debates that is relatively unusual in the House, in that it is on a subject that, on balance, probably unites us more than divides us.

Littering and fly-tipping cause great concern to residents, councils and this Government. They are antisocial environmental crimes that pose risks to human health and animal welfare, spoil relationships between neighbours and their wider community, and affect the way people feel about the place that they call home. There is evidence that high levels of litter can restrict the economic growth of an area, reduce property prices and increase residents’ fear of crime. For local authorities, it is also a significant issue. It costs them hundreds of millions of pounds every year to clear litter and illegally dumped waste from our streets and public spaces. As far as this Government are concerned, they should not have to do that. Litter and fly-tipping are avoidable problems. It is simply not right that the behaviour of a selfish minority ends up blighting our landscapes while imposing costs on landowners and local taxpayers. A change in our culture is needed to get Britain back to the “green and pleasant land” that we are so renowned for across the globe.

This is about personal responsibility, which means consciously not littering, even when it is mildly inconvenient to dispose of our rubbish properly. Integrity is doing the right thing even when no one is watching. Of course there are practical ways in which the Government can help. We welcome the Select Committee’s report and agree with many of its recommendations to combat the problems of litter and fly-tipping.

Local authorities are at the heart of our communities. They deliver front-line services to the public and are vital in meeting the challenge of eradicating litter and fly-tipping. Although litter and fly-tipping are clearly problems, the majority of local authorities can be commended for the fact that they are consistent in maintaining standards. In many cases, that has even been the case during a difficult period in which local government has had to do more with less, which does not make the Government at all complacent in its determination to reduce litter and fly-tipping. We need to clean up and change people’s culture, values and attitude to their environments.

This should not be a top-down approach. The Government are committed to localism and the transfer of power to local communities to deal with litter and fly-tipping problems, which require a local approach tailored to the characteristics of the area and the community in which the problems occur. Like the rest of the public sector, local authorities have worked hard over the last five years, but they still need to be thinking innovatively about how they can make litter and fly-tipping-related savings while protecting existing street cleansing services and standards.

The Chair of the Select Committee mentioned the work in Nottingham. The same has been happening in Bath and North East Somerset, where they use Bigbelly smart bins, which are electronic-type bins that tell the council when they are full. Bath and North East Somerset Council estimates that the way the bins work—the council goes out to empty them only when they need to be emptied—has saved 390 labour hours a month, which is a significant saving. I would like more local authorities to take the same sort of lead as Nottingham City Council, and Bath and North East Somerset Council. Many councils are putting in a significant amount of money. There have been a number of different estimates of that money, but we think they are probably putting about £700 million a year into dealing with litter.

As the Chair of the Select Committee mentioned, there is pressure on the provision of social care, bearing in mind that the population is getting older, yet it is important to point out that while growing old is inevitable, littering and fly-tipping are not. In the end there is a choice, and I would much rather that councils were able very easily to make the choice to put additional money into social care provision, rather than having to put so much money into the problem of litter and fly-tipping.

The Government still have a role to play, because no matter how good and innovative councils become, they need the support and the backing of the Government to tackle the problem. During the Select Committee inquiry, the Government agreed that their role was to enable local action in three ways: setting clear overall standards for cleanliness, ensuring legal powers to enable councils to take effective action, and ensuring that costs can be passed to those responsible for causing the problem. Our immediate priorities to achieve this will deliver on our manifesto commitments to review the case for increasing the fines for littering offences and to allow local authorities to tackle small-scale fly-tipping through fixed penalties as an alternative to prosecutions. That is something that a number of hon. Members, including the hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton (Liz McInnes), have raised today, and I am glad that there is significant support for that approach.

We want to work with local government and relevant stakeholders to develop a national litter strategy. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse (Jim Fitzpatrick) was a little concerned about the wording in the Select Committee report, but I reassure him that we want a robust strategy to deal with litter and fly-tipping. The Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Penrith and The Border (Rory Stewart), and I are absolutely focused on trying to achieve a robust litter strategy and we are working very closely to do so. We want a strategy that will enable effective and co-ordinated anti-litter work across England, focusing on affordable and measurable ways to change behaviour, reduce litter and improve the local environment. That is a priority for our communities, which deserve a lasting legacy of clutter-free towns and cities, and a countryside of which we can all be proud.

We have already begun to work with producers of commonly littered items, major retailers, some of the leading charities and NGOs in the sector, and local councils. We need to do more with those organisations to ensure that we really get to grips with and tackle the problem. In addition to those immediate priorities, the Government have agreed with the Committee’s recommendation to try to make a national litter-pick an annual event.

I am delighted that so much publicity has been given to the Clean for the Queen event. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton and I have not disagreed on much, but personally I think that Clean for the Queen is a fantastic statement for us to make. However, we should not split too many hairs. The point is that on 3, 4 and 5 March, we will all come together as communities up and down the country, supporting each other to clean up those areas. I encourage any hon. Members who are not already signed up to a clean-up on that weekend to get involved. It is great to see so many hon. Members involved, and it was good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury (Victoria Prentis) here. She has done a lot with Keep Britain Tidy over the past few weeks to encourage hon. Members to get involved.

I note the comments of the Chairman of the Select Committee about the time it took for the Government to respond to the report. I apologise for the delay. I regret that we did not reply within a more reasonable timeframe. He acknowledged that the report was released very shortly before the purdah period and the ensuing general election, and I think he mentioned that the report cuts across several Departments. It actually cuts across many Government Departments and, although our response was positive, it was not provided as quickly as usually would be the case. I hope he takes my comments in the spirit in which they are intended.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned data. That is a hugely important point. We are certainly working with an advisory group. The hon. Member for Poplar and Limehouse mentioned Keep Britain Tidy, which is part of that advisory group alongside a number of other important organisations in the area. We are trying to bring forward a package to ensure that we collect the necessary data so that the work of our litter and fly-tipping strategy is measured in relation to its success.

The hon. Member for Sheffield South East mentioned fixed penalty notices, which I assure him we are carefully considering. Fixed penalty notices should be a last resort, but they are an extremely important enforcement tool in the box to make people think twice about dropping litter. We are carefully considering what we can do to increase penalties to ensure that fixed penalty notices are a significant deterrent. We will not impose additional penalties without properly consulting the public first, which is right.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned smoking litter, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman)—I will address his points in a moment. I agree with what the Chair of the Select Committee says about that problem. He mentioned a tobacco levy, on which the Government consulted last year. It is obvious from that consultation that if we put any sort of levy on the tobacco companies, they would pass it straight on to the end user, which we have to take seriously. Effectively, he is looking to levy an additional tax on tobacco and cigarettes that would come back to the Treasury and, through my Department, go directly to local authorities to address some of these issues. It is slightly above my pay grade to make such commitments—it is an issue for the Treasury—but his point is on the record.

[Mr Betts]

I was nodding across the room to the hon. Member for Harrow East (Bob Blackman) when the Minister said that the levy would be passed on to smokers. Ultimately, they are the ones who drop the litter. A little contribution from them towards local authority costs does not seem completely unreasonable, does it?

[Mr Jones]

I will only say that there would be an additional cost to end users, who already contribute significant amounts to the Treasury in taxation. When that money comes into the Treasury, some of it goes to local authorities in relation to their duties. Some of that money, by implication, must be spent on addressing the problem. I am not suggesting that the points the hon. Gentleman and my hon. Friend the Member for Harrow East are making should never be considered, but they are taxation matters, which should be considered carefully by the Treasury.

[Mr Betts]

I will take the Minister a little further down that road into areas that he probably does not want to go into. When we get to 2019-20 and the full localisation of business rates, there will not be any Treasury contribution towards local authorities from tobacco tax or any other form of tax. Would that not be a different situation, in which there might be a need to reconsider whether there should be some Treasury contribution from tobacco tax towards the clean-up of tobacco litter?

--- Later in debate ---

[Mr Betts]

It has been a good, constructive and generally agreeable debate, in the sense that we agreed on most of the issues. I thank the Minister for his apology, which I accept—and I am sure I can do that on behalf of the Committee. I suspect that responsibility was not totally within his Department, as he has delicately explained with reference to the complications of getting many Departments to agree on a reply.

We started with general agreement about the need for a national strategy and the national clean-up day. We can probably see the effects of the clean-up day fairly quickly; the national strategy may take a bit longer, but I am sure that the Committee will keep a close eye on it.

The Minister was right to say that local authorities are at the heart of the whole issue. They have the responsibility for dealing with litter directly or co-ordinating the activities of others who deal with it. Our recommendations were mostly directed at Government, but generally they were about asking for extra powers for local authorities, to enable them to do their job in a variety of ways. We had generally positive responses and agreement on fixed penalty notices—their extension to fly-tipping and the increase in the level of penalties—on which the Minister said there is consultation; the impounding of vehicles used for fly-tipping; and pilots on trunk roads to look at littering from cars. All those things seem to be positive ways to move forward, and the Government have responded to the Select Committee recommendations either by agreeing to carry them out—in some cases having done so already—or by looking at how they can be carried out in the future.

There are things that local authorities can do irrespective of those issues. The smart bins that we talked about, on which there is general agreement, and engagement with charities on the collection of bulky household items are among them. Individual authorities can implement them, and can learn from other local authorities. That is at the heart of localism in the end; things may be done well in one area, and other areas say, “Yes, that’s a good idea. We will do it also.”

The Select Committee will want to return to the matter and consider various issues. In the end it is one thing to debate here, but another to get improvements on littering and dealing with litter. I am sure that we will want to keep an eye on, in particular, the serious problems of tobacco littering, chewing gum, fly-tipping and fast food, which we identified as real problems. We will be interested in the Government’s progress on the trunk road issue and littering from cars, which the Minister said the Government would look at again. In the end, to be effective the Select Committee will need better data on which to monitor performance. The Minister has accepted that and I think he has a working party looking at the question. We will be interested to see what comes out of it, because it will be crucial. Although there may be anecdotal evidence, we can only really tell whether things are improving from the data that are collected. We need better data for the future.

I think we have all enjoyed the debate. I hope we have, and that it has also been constructive and useful.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That this House has considered the Seventh Report from the Communities and Local Government Committee of Session 2014-15, on Litter and fly-tipping in England, HC 607, and the Government response, Cm 9097.