Littering from Vehicles Bill [HL]

Lord Cormack Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Lord Cormack]

My Lords, as always I am glad to follow the noble Lord, Lord Judd. I do not come armed with a battery of convincing statistics—and convincing they were—but I am sure that we were all grateful to him for them. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Marlesford for the admirable, moderate and modest way in which he introduced a very important measure. My only criticism of his Bill is that it is perhaps too moderate. However, it can be amended in Committee.

I endorse everything that my noble friend Lord Lawson said to the Minister. I hope that any negative brief has already been destroyed and that his reply will indicate an understanding of the problem and a determination both to get on with it and not to produce meaningless consultation exercises that give two days for people to reply. That sort of thing reinforces the scepticism of those of us who regard the Localism Act as a tokenism Act.

This is a serious problem. My noble friend Lord Marlesford was right to say that it is a question of behavioural attitudes. We need to moderate behaviour. We discussed this in a couple of debates in this House in recent weeks. I had the privilege of introducing one on citizenship three weeks ago. The debate the following week was introduced by my noble friend Lady Shephard. We talked about the need for young people to grow into citizens who have a sense of community and of their responsibilities as well as their rights. I advocated a citizenship scheme and a ceremony, and had great support from all parts of the House. My noble friend Lady Shephard, and those of us who supported her, talked about the need for educating school leavers into feeling that they were going out into a world in which they would be able to play a constructive part. Attitudes and behaviour are crucial.

When I was a young schoolboy at a choir school in Grimsby in 1947, I was summoned to the headmaster’s study. “Cormack, you were looking in the toy shop window in the Bull Ring yesterday”. “Yes, sir”. “While you were there, a funeral passed you. You did not turn round, take off your cap and stand in silent respect”. “No, sir”. “If I ever see you doing that again, you know what will happen”. “Yes, sir”. That is perhaps an extreme example, but we were brought up with an attitude of real respect for those with whom we lived and for the society in which we lived. Not one of us would have thought of dropping anything on the ground without picking it up.

When I was a Member of Parliament for South Staffordshire, which I had the honour to represent for 40 years, litter became a terrible problem, particularly in the latter two decades. I lived in a particularly glorious part of the country. The surrounding lanes were frequently fouled by litter: not just lemonade bottles and cigarette packets but suites of furniture and white goods such as refrigerators dumped in lay-bys. The cost to the local council was enormous, but what was so terrible was that some beautiful and absolutely lovely countryside was despoiled and fouled, sometimes for weeks on end. Any society that can tolerate that does not deserve the epithet civilised.

I have the privilege of living in the Minster Yard, in the Cathedral Close, in the great city of Lincoln. Only last week, coming back from a service with a friend who was staying with us, we found on one of the greens—and Lincoln works very hard to keep itself tidy—that people had been picnicking, and there were bottles and cartons which we picked up and put in my dustbin. Any society that can have that attitude towards its surroundings does not, as I say, deserve to call itself civilised.

This modest measure is about changing attitudes, but it will work only if there is an enforcement of the sort of measures that my noble friend is advocating and a determination in our schools to teach our children that there are certain things that you just do not do—and one of them is spoiling the environment in which we live for your neighbours, your friends and your family and, in a sense, above all, for those visitors, if you live in a part of the world that attracts tourists, who come to enjoy it. So let us hope that, when my noble friend comes to reply from the Front Bench, he will indicate that the Government regard this matter as a high priority. He is nodding furiously, so we are all waiting for his speech.

[Baroness O'Cathain]

He is shaking his head.

[Lord Cormack]

If he is shaking his head, by Jove we are going to be plunged into gloom at the end of this debate. I hope that he will show that the Government accept that this is a real problem which my noble friend has underlined and, above all, ensure that it is tackled rather more quickly than the appalling problem of Parliament Square. We saw the centre of the greatest city in the world despoiled and defaced by litter, year after year. Now, thank God, it has gone—and let us hope that when Marlesford, or Marlesford in the government version, passes into law, we shall be on the way to seeing lanes, byways and the streets of our country and county towns as clean as Parliament Square is today. I am delighted to support my noble friend’s Bill.