Littering From Vehicles Outside London (Keepers: Civil Penalties) Regulations 2018

Lord Marlesford Excerpts

Thursday 1st February 2018 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Vere of Norbiton (Con)]

My Lords, I am pleased to introduce these regulations in your Lordships’ House today. I must begin by thanking my noble friend Lord Marlesford for his tireless campaigning over several years to bring these regulations to the statute book. I know from previous debates on this subject how strongly Members of this House feel about litter and littering. We launched the first ever litter strategy for England in April last year, which sets out our aim to clean up the country and deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering within a generation. While improvements in education and disposal infrastructure are essential elements of our strategy, we must also ensure that councils have appropriate enforcement powers to back up the fundamental message that littering is not acceptable.

This brings me to the regulations before your Lordships’ House today. The purpose of these regulations is to make it easier for councils to take appropriate enforcement action to tackle littering from vehicles, by holding the keeper of the vehicle responsible. These regulations will give powers to councils in England, outside London, to issue a civil fixed penalty notice to the keeper of a vehicle when an enforcement officer has reason to believe that a littering offence has been committed from the vehicle. As set out in the underlying primary legislation, these powers may be given only to bodies that are under a statutory duty to keep their relevant land clear of litter and refuse. The powers will therefore be conferred on district councils—or the county council in an area for which there is no district council—in England, outside London, as well as the Council of the Isles of Scilly. In this context, a district council includes authorities that may call themselves district, metropolitan, borough, unitary or any other name; it simply means the council for that district. London boroughs, as your Lordships know, already have similar powers under private legislation.

I emphasise that the person liable to pay the penalty is the keeper of the vehicle from which litter is thrown at the time of the offence. This is presumed to be the registered keeper unless proven otherwise: for example, because the vehicle has been sold or stolen, or was hired out to someone else. Vehicles such as buses, taxis and private hire vehicles are exempt from liability if the offence is committed by a passenger.

The penalty amount payable is set by the litter authority and must be the same as the level of fixed penalty for littering in the area. From 1 April 2018, the Environmental Offences (Fixed Penalties) (England) Regulations 2018 will increase the maximum fixed penalty for littering from £80 to £150, with an increase in the default level of penalty from £75 to £100. From April 2019, the minimum fixed penalty for littering will also increase, from £50 to £65. The regulations on littering from vehicles therefore reflect these higher penalty amounts.

If the penalty is not paid within 28 days, and the recipient has not made any representation against the penalty notice, the regulations provide for the amount of the penalty to be increased by 100%—in other words, to double. If it is still unpaid, it can be recovered by the litter authority in the county court. Similarly, the regulations enable litter authorities to encourage prompt payment by offering a discount if the penalty is paid within 14 days. However, the discounted penalty must not be less than £50.

The penalty notice must give details of the alleged offence, the amount of the penalty and deadlines for payment, and information about what will happen in the case of late payment. It must also set out how the recipient may make representations or appeals against the penalty notice. It is of course crucial that any enforcement action is proportionate and in the public interest. The regulations provide for a number of grounds on which the recipient of a penalty notice may make representations to the litter authority against the issue of a penalty. If the recipient makes representations to the litter authority on one of the listed grounds, the authority must consider the representations and respond. If it agrees, it must cancel the penalty notice—and if it rejects the representations, it must also advise the recipient of the penalty that they have a right to appeal that decision to an independent adjudicator within 28 days. We are grateful to the Traffic Penalty Tribunal for agreeing to hear these appeals.

By giving councils this additional power to take action, we believe that these regulations will operate as a greater deterrent to those who may be tempted to litter and will reduce the build-up of litter on our roadsides and verges. I commend the draft regulations to the House.

[Lord Marlesford (Con)]

My Lords, obviously I welcome this very small step in the battle against litter and I am most grateful to my noble friend for introducing it. There are several lessons in it. It has taken an awfully long time. This requirement was introduced in the then Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Bill, which received Royal Assent on 18 March 2014—so it is now nearly four years old. That must be nearly a record for slowness in complying with the will of Parliament. It is, of course, a long way from the record of 10 years achieved when I persuaded this House, when I first arrived here, to introduce a requirement for an electronic central register of firearms. It was 10 years before that happened. The department did not like it and decided to ignore it for as long as it could. I had support from all parties and 10 years later it happened. That was about 12 years ago and it works extremely well—but that is beside the point.

I suspect the reason the department has delayed this provision for so long is that neither the Home Office nor the environment department wanted it. Eventually I obtained help from the then Home Secretary—now my right honourable friend the Prime Minister—and the then excellent Environment Secretary, the right honourable Owen Paterson, who personally intervened. Indeed, my noble friend the present Chief Whip of your Lordships’ House was the Minister who put it into practice—for which I am extremely grateful. But it has taken an awfully long time. The essence of this is that for a long while it has been a criminal offence to throw litter out of a car—but nothing is ever done about it because you have to prove who threw the litter.

I pay tribute to CPRE, of which I was chairman for five years some years ago, for campaigning for this measure from 2008. It will operate like a parking offence. If I lend you my car and you park it in the wrong place, I will get the parking ticket. That is sensible. There is no dispute and I can then, I hope, get the money back from you. Another plus of these regulations is that they decriminalise this offence. Previously, it was a criminal offence, which was virtually never successfully prosecuted. Now it is a civil offence with a civil penalty, which I hope will work. The penalty is actually very low. We have heard about the £100 basic penalty. This can go up if people do not pay it and can be halved if they pay it quickly. It is a small sum.

The Minister referred in particular to proportionality. It is important to administer this penalty proportionately. We do not want to discredit it by applying it to someone throwing a matchstick out of a car; we want to catch people who throw out containers, Big Mac packs and all that stuff. Another way of tackling this, which I hope the Government will soon introduce, is to bring in rules about deposits on returnable containers. This was introduced in the United States 30 years ago, originally in Oregon, and works very well because when the affluent discard these containers the less affluent pick them up and hand them into shops to collect the money.