Littering and Fly-tipping

Debate between Lord Benyon and Christopher Pincher

Tuesday 22nd May 2012 Commons Chamber

[Richard Benyon]

I understand that all local authorities, like the Government, face difficulties and have to set priorities. If we are to be a truly localist Government, we have to leave decisions about priorities to be taken locally. In areas with unitary councils there is less misunderstanding on the part of the public about who is responsible. When I was a district councillor, people were always blaming the county council for things that were my responsibility, and vice versa. I know that this is a difficulty in areas with two-tier local authorities, but I understand the point my hon. Friend makes.

The charity Keep Britain Tidy carries out a survey for DEFRA each year, and this year the 10th report was produced. It provides an opportunity to look across the changes in the last decade and highlights the fact that litter levels are not much better than when the survey was first carried out, in 2001, with 15% of areas deemed “unsatisfactory” for litter. Yet since that time, the costs to local authorities of sweeping the streets, including dealing with litter, has risen by hundreds of millions of pounds, as my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire said, to little short of £900 million.

DEFRA and the Environment Agency host the collection data on fly-tipping, through the Flycapture reporting system, which helps to provide evidence of the nature and scale of fly-tipping and allows decisions to be made locally and nationally on the best interventions to tackle the problem. Fly-tipping continues to have too great a detrimental impact on the local environment. In 2010-11, there were 820,000 fly-tipping incidents in England. Although that is a reduction compared with the previous year, this is in part due to changes in reporting practices by some authorities. The true figure is likely to be considerably more, as it is recognised that many incidents, particularly those on private land, go unreported. We also know that a lot of fly-tipping involves domestic waste, which can ordinarily be collected by local authorities or taken, as has been said, to civic amenity sites.

So what can be done to make real inroads into the persistent levels of litter? The Government’s commitment in this regard is clearly set out in the coalition’s programme for government. We aim to reduce litter as part of our drive towards a zero-waste economy. Changing the attitude and behaviour of those who drop litter and casually fly-tip is essential, which is why the Government are committed to working with Keep Britain Tidy, businesses, local authorities and community groups on their “Love Where You Live” campaign. It appeals to all sectors of business and across all sectors of society, and support is coming from Wrigley, McDonald’s, Network Rail, Coca-Cola, Waitrose and many others. Businesses can contribute in many ways: by supporting the campaigning effort; by carrying their message to customers, staff and others; and, directly, through changing the design of their products, packaging and services to reduce the possibility of litter from the outset. The “Love Where You Live” campaign holds promise in being able to attract widespread support to capture the public’s imagination and inspire civic pride, especially in this year of the Queen’s diamond jubilee, and the London Olympic and Paralympic games.

[Christopher Pincher (Tamworth) (Con)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Richard Benyon]

I am very short of time and I must answer the questions put by my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, but I will certainly give way at the end if I have time.

I, like my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire, welcome the Daily Mail’s “Spring Clean for the Queen” campaign to encourage clean-up events for the Queen’s diamond jubilee.

I know that littering from vehicles is a particular problem for local authorities. In March, the Secretary of State met businesses, trade associations and local authority representatives to look at what more can be done to tackle this. There was great enthusiasm for voluntary action and for innovative ideas coming forward from business, including carrying branding and anti-litter messages in vehicles, in outlets and in communications with customers and staff to raise awareness of the issue. I was interested in what my hon. Friend was saying about the Highways Agency, because there is much more we can do, working with it.

Changing attitudes and behaviour is key. Much can be done through voluntary approaches to tackle littering from vehicles, but the Government’s mind is not closed to the regulatory route if that will work. London boroughs will soon start using powers under private legislation to issue a civil penalty against the registered keeper for littering. We want to see how that works in practice—to see if it helps to support behaviour change efforts elsewhere. If it works well, we will consider applying the approach more widely across the country.

The CPRE proposal for implementing a bottle deposit scheme has been mentioned. As part of the review of waste policies in 2011, the Department undertook a full analysis of the costs and benefits of implementing such a deposit system, based on the CPRE’s report “Have we got the bottle?” Although such a scheme may increase recycling rates for the materials covered and reduce litter, the estimated costs of running such a scheme are very high; they are much higher than alternative measures that could achieve the same aims. Taking that into account, it was decided not to take forward this option for the time being and instead to concentrate on other ways to increase recycling and address litter.

My hon. Friend mentioned bags. Concern about single-use carrier bags has also been raised frequently with my colleague Lord Taylor of Holbeach, who leads on this issue. We share the concern about the effect that those bags have on the environment, and about the increase in their distribution. We are looking carefully at all options to make sure that we further reduce their usage, and we are paying close attention to developments in Wales, where a 5p per bag minimum charge was introduced in October last year. The Welsh Government are currently evaluating their policy, and we will consider our position on carrier bags further following the evaluation of that scheme in July.

Let me deal with other issues that my hon. Friend raised, particularly the action we are taking against fly-tipping. The Government’s review of waste policy in England, published in June 2011, set out a range of measures to tackle fly-tipping. The approach advocated in the review is to make it easier for businesses and others to do the right thing with their waste, while also ensuring that the sanctions available act as a real deterrent to those responsible for waste crime.

A major area of concern is the cost incurred by public landowners for clearing up fly-tipping on their land where local authorities are not under any obligation to act. We do not have an accurate figure for fly-tipping on private land or for clearance costs, as landowners are not required to report them to Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for South West Bedfordshire says, however, the Country Land and Business Association estimates that it might cost their members, or landowners across the country, in the region of £50 million to £100 million a year to dispose of fly-tipped waste.

This issue was highlighted in recommendations made by the Farming Regulation Task Force in 2011. We are working towards the development of best practice on the prevention, reporting, investigation and clear-up of fly-tipping through the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group and the taskforce implementation group. The aim is to allow local solutions that will free landowners of much of the “hassle” associated with clearing fly-tipped waste from their land. We are also looking at developing a partnership approach between landowners and local authorities that will encourage clearance of fly-tipped waste and the adoption of measures to improve local environmental quality. We will be presenting our approach at a ministerial summit to be held with key stakeholder groups later this summer.

As for sanctions for fly-tipping, these include stronger powers for the Environment Agency and local authorities to seize vehicles further to investigate suspected involvement in fly-tipping, as well as revoking the registration of waste carriers who repeatedly flout the law. While the penalties for fly-tipping are sufficient—up to a £50,000 fine on summary conviction—we want to ensure that the levels of fines and sentences handed down by the courts act as a deterrent. We have provided evidence to the Sentencing Council, which is considering producing a separate sentencing guideline for magistrates on fly-tipping. I am now happy to give way to my hon. Friend the Member for Tamworth (Christopher Pincher), if he still wishes to intervene.

[Christopher Pincher]

If the offer is still on the table, I will; I am grateful to the Minister for sweeping me up in his remarks. He rightly says that public attitudes need to be changed. Does he agree that the flexible attitude of some councils to supporting volunteers is to be commended? In my Tamworth constituency, Streetscene, the street cleaners, offer volunteers bags, litter pickers and gloves, and come back at the end of the litter-picking exercise to take the bags away. Is not that sort of positive flexibility to be commended?

[Richard Benyon]

It certainly is. I commend those sorts of schemes, which I have seen happening elsewhere. There is also good partnership working to be had between parish councils, town councils and higher tiers of local authorities where equipment can be shared and know-how and guidance can be supplied to volunteer groups and communities that wish to carry out their own spring cleans. This is clearly to be welcomed.

What about people who put their waste out for collection incorrectly? This is a matter of concern. Hard-working people, who already have enough worries, should not face the threat of being punished for innocent mistakes such as putting their bins out an hour or two early. It can be a problem when that is wrongly labelled as somehow similar to fly-tipping. That is why we want to change the law so that only the small minority whose behaviour causes problems for their neighbours and harms the local environment as my hon. Friend described will be punished; we want to make the fines more proportionate. As a first step, we are changing the law to reduce the level of fines under the current fixed penalty notice regime. These changes are due to come into force on 30 May. We intend to make longer-term changes, including removing the current criminal sanctions, as parliamentary time allows.

My hon. Friend raised the issue of sanctions. He is right that littering is an offence under the Environmental Protection Act 1990. The litterer can be prosecuted in magistrates courts and can on conviction face a fine of up to £2,500, as well as getting a criminal record. As an alternative to prosecution, local authority enforcement officers can issue a fixed penalty notice of between £50 and £80; it can be set locally, and is soon to rise. So there are sanctions, and they do hurt the perpetrators of this crime—for it is a crime.

Underlying all that, however, is the need for us as a Government, and, perhaps, us as a society, to view the problem as a culture of littering which has been allowed to develop and which we see regularly in some corners of our constituencies. It requires education in schools, it requires education of the adult population, and it requires a true partnership between those who love and respect their communities—and who constitute the vast majority—and the inconsiderate minority who are apparently happy to see their communities trashed. I am a great believer in the “broken windows” theory of policing, and dealing with littering is at the heart of that. I hope that what I have said tonight provides clear evidence of the Government’s commitment to tackling the blight caused by litter, fly-tipping and waste.