Fly-tipping in Rural Areas

Debate between Jo Churchill and Anne Marie Morris

Tuesday 21st November 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris]

My hon. Friend makes a sound point. I am sad to hear that this is happening not just in my constituency, but I am not surprised. He is right to say that shutting the tip has placed a much greater burden of cost on the local authority than simply keeping it open.

The overall responsibility for these matters lies with the Environment Agency. The question of who has to take action to clear up the mess and sort out the licensing is split between the Environment Agency, the local authority and, in regard to removing rubbish, private landowners.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

My beautiful constituency in Suffolk illustrates the fact that this problem exists across the country. We have had 658 incidents in my constituency in the past year, and the nub of the problem is that we need to catch those who dump. I have been talking to a constituent, Richard Vass of Burland Boxes, about how we can use innovation to target fly-tippers and capture their number plates in order to allow prosecutions to be brought. That would create an income stream, without which somebody else has to pay.

[Anne Marie Morris]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. The challenge is not just to collect the data. A constituent of mine with a large estate regularly finds that people have been fly-tipping on it. Once, while sorting through the rubbish, he found a receipt from a fast food drive-through that included a date and time stamp. He and the local police managed to find the vehicle registration number, but when they went to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency they were told that it could not release the name because of data protection. There has to be a way of using the evidence that we can get, because we cannot rely solely on catching the villains in the act, which is extraordinarily difficult, particularly in rural areas. Installing cameras everywhere would be prohibitively expensive, impractical and completely unrealistic. There has to be a better way of dealing with the evidence trail. My hon. Friend makes a sound point.

Health and Social Care

Debate between Jo Churchill and Anne Marie Morris

Monday 27th February 2017 Commons Chamber

[Anne Marie Morris (Newton Abbot) (Con)]

Let us be clear: estimates are a serious business; they must be realistic. Every year, Parliament votes on how much can be spent. If excess is needed, Departments have to go back to the House, so getting estimates right is mission-critical.

The challenge I have with these estimates is that I have little faith that the assumptions they are based on are realistic. As my hon. Friend the Member for Totnes (Dr Wollaston) said, there is an assumption that demand will go down. As the population increases, and as immigration increases, that seems a very unrealistic view to take. The Government need to look long and hard at the assumptions they have made, because I for one am not convinced that they have got them right.

We also need to look at what these estimates assume in terms of the negatives. They assume we can keep on course if we reduce public health spending. If we start reducing that spending, which prevents the need for NHS intervention—the most expensive form of intervention—will we really save money? It seems to me that we will not. The other assumption made in these estimates is that central administration will be cut. We should bear in mind the complexity of what is going on at the moment, with 44 STPs coming on board, as we all hope they will, and I agree with my hon. Friend that they are a good concept, although I have some real concerns about delivery. Overall, I am concerned that these estimates are not based on realistic assumptions, and Ministers will need to seriously address that.

As the hon. Member for Hackney South and Shoreditch (Meg Hillier), who leads the Public Accounts Committee, and my hon. Friend have said, the estimates must take into account what we need for health and social care. If we cut spending on social care, or do not adequately fund it, we will increase spending in the NHS.

However, underpinning all of that is the need to have measurements in place across the whole system, as my hon. Friend indicated, so that we know what the full scope of the demand is. We must measure the results achieved by the resource we put in and the outcomes for the population as a whole. We all talk about measures around A&E and the NHS. We all talk about waiting times, and the targets that are set are all around waiting times. However, nobody is looking at what impact that has on primary care—on our GPs—or on social care. If an estimate is to be right, therefore, we need to look at the whole system of measurement.

[Jo Churchill (Bury St Edmunds) (Con)]

My hon. Friend is making powerful points. At my local district general hospital, West Suffolk, winter preparedness plans included a 5% uplift in demand—this is exactly the point she is making—but there was a 20% increase. I have exactly the same thing in social care, where my social care providers tell me people are older and more poorly. We have increased demand across the piece for that reason.

[Anne Marie Morris]

I thank my hon. Friend for that helpful example. She is absolutely right.

If we look at the whole measurement system—this was acknowledged in one of our Public Accounts Committee sessions by the Department of Health—we see that there is limited measurement, and that there probably should be more. When I challenged the individual concerned on whether the Government would be looking at that, he stood from one foot to the other and could not give us much of an answer. These estimates have to be based on proper measurement of need, on what is operationally put into practice, and on the outcome for patients, but that simply is not the case.

We need to look at the differences between the NHS and social care as regards how the money is allocated. In the NHS, we have some ring-fencing, while in social care we do not, but because the two are inextricably linked, unless we look at the way in which each of those pots is managed, never mind how much is in them, we give rise to problems for the future. Social care is not ring-fenced. I am sure we are all grateful for the additional moneys that have been provided, but frankly they do not go far enough. The first chunk of money might cover the living wage, and the ability of local authorities to increase the precept by 3% is welcome, but as the Chair of the Public Accounts Committee said, that is taxpayers’ money.