Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment (Amendment) Bill [HL]

Lord Selsdon Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2013 Lords Chamber

Moved by

[Lord Selsdon]

That the Bill be read a second time.

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, this is a relatively simple Bill that began in my life almost as soon as I joined the House 50 years ago. One of the things that I found, not having rubber soles on my shoes, was that when walking backwards and forwards as a most junior Member I collected a large amount of chewing gum on my feet. I have never chewed gum and I find it extremely difficult to get rid of. Some time later, I was asked whether I would make an issue of it, because I did not smoke or chew gum. I asked a simple Question on chewing gum, way back in, I suppose, 2009, which the Government could not answer.

Chewing gum and cigarettes are defined as litter under the 1990 Act, and litter is what we have been debating today. I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Marlesford for there being enough people to discuss the subject, because there is no need for an enormous Second Reading debate about something that is quite obvious. It is simply a matter of considering what regulations could be introduced to make the system work.

I suppose that I ought to try to explain to your Lordships why chewing gum and cigarettes—or rather the nuisance value they create—are of such importance. Chewing gum is used by 28 million people in the United Kingdom. One might have thought, when smoking was restricted, that cigarettes would become less of a problem. However, they are still more than a problem, with 200 million cigarette butts thrown away each day in the United Kingdom. More than 1 billion packs of chewing gum are sold every year, and chewing gum and cigarettes account for 40% of street litter. However, it is small litter, which is irritating. The problem is that the gum sticks to the paving stones, and 92% of all paving stones have had gum on them.

When I started on this issue, I suggested to Black Rod that we should make Parliament a chewing gum-free zone. I produced some posters to go outside and suggested that there should be little bins in which to put things. I did not get very far. There was a cynical look on his face, as there usually is when I make cynical suggestions.

I then set out on a campaign. I realised that most cigarette butts and gum appear near public buildings. In fact, there is a conflict of interest in that we want more and more people, particularly tourists, to visit public buildings but we therefore have more and more gum. I was moved out of the third floor here a little while ago because my room was too hot and too small and I was given a grand office in Millbank, which I share with my noble friend Lord Coe. He is never there, so I have a larger office than I am probably entitled to. I found walking backwards and forwards a bit of a nuisance, and sometimes it took longer than six minutes if you were going to avoid being run over on the way. I therefore started to think of other things to do and began counting the number of blobs of chewing gum on the pavement between here and 1 Millbank. The largest number I found was 1,020—roughly five or six per square foot.

This is not necessarily the fault of the chewing gum people. I discussed this issue with Wrigley, which immediately thought that we were trying to get rid of chewing gum. However, Wrigley advised me only yesterday that it is fairly far advanced in producing a biodegradable gum—gum currently takes five years to degrade. Removing the gum is quite an expensive exercise. Up to 3.5 billion deposits of gum have been either spat or dropped on to the streets. For an average town centre, the cost of cleaning it up is only about £20,000 but the situation in the inner areas is different. It takes 17 weeks to remove chewing gum from Oxford Street but only 10 days for the streets to be covered with it again. Therefore, it seems that there is a simple lesson of organisation to be learnt.

As I said, chewing gum and butts are litter and they account for 40% of all litter. Talk of cleaning up litter follows on logically from the earlier Bill, and I am grateful to my noble friend Lord Marlesford, who has saved me the trouble of giving an enormous great speech or monologue on the subject. However, I just want to ask for a little guidance.

The Bill does not try to introduce any new legislation; it simply seeks to amend existing legislation to increase the littering fine for dropped cigarette butts from £75 to £100. However, what is the point of having those sorts of regulations if there is nowhere to put the butts or the gum? One immediately comes to the question of where the disposal units are. Your Lordships will know that this is a major tourist area and it is possible to work out where the children and others are. If you go to a bus stop, you will find lots of butts and lots of gum; if you go to a school you will find the same.

One day, I walked here from Sloane Square and counted up to 10,000 butts as I went, although I suddenly found that I was staggering as I tried to cross the road. The butts and gum stick on the concrete and do not go away, even if they are cleaned up. It erodes over time but leaves a bit of a mess. Therefore, the Bill very simply says that local authorities should be required to put bins in place. There are now special types of bin. This would require competitive tendering and so on, but cigarette butts and gum could be placed in them and they could be cleaned out. The cleaning systems are working quite well. The City of London has started on this and now finds that it has much cleaner streets. The question is what legislation can be put in place to make the provision of bins possible. I am told that the bins could, with relevant local authority approval, have advertising on them and thus be self-funding.

The idea of this Second Reading was that nobody would speak except for my noble friend Lord Erroll, so that we could jump very quickly to the Committee stage in the autumn. I had not intended that the Bill should be here today but the Government said, “We’ve got a bit of space. Could you jump in?”. I wish that sometimes they would say that I did not always have to jump in at the last minute. However, I am one of those last-minute Lords. The thought is very simple: we do away with a detailed debate at Second Reading and move straight to Committee as soon as possible in the autumn.

Here comes the wild card. I have had a lot of pressure put on me to deal with a third ingredient that causes everyone anxiety. I am not sure how to describe it, but it relates to four-legged animals who pollute the streets. I cannot use the normal term, which I discussed with the clerks. Noble Lords who are professors in health said that the solution is very simple: one should revert to the old Latin words. We are talking of canine excreta, which is causing quite a lot of problems around the area. There is a need for bins for that as well.

When fouling by dogs takes place, local authorities have the opportunity to fine people. I complained bitterly to one local authority that it did not have enough signs, and it suddenly decided to increase the penalty from, I think, £150 to £2,500. We have a small dog in our house in London who I look after quite well. Suddenly, secretly in the night, a sign was put on the house opposite that said: “Fouling, £2,500”. I do not know under what licence the local authority can impose that. This is an interesting issue and we want the Government simply to agree with the Bill. I am sure that I will get a favourable response and we can discuss it later at some point in the autumn.

We have been in touch with all the local authorities around the country. The plan was that they would all come to a joint meeting, maybe with up to 100 people, where we would ask Ministers and others to discuss the matter. You do not want to put pressure on local authorities that cannot afford to do something, but you find some way to do it. One of the ideas discussed is that those who put up the bins might get tax allowances. There are all sorts of formulas to work out how economically it can be done. I have said enough so I will sit down for the moment. I beg to move.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Selsdon]

My Lords, I am most grateful to the Minister because he has fallen into the trap of assuming that I have not done more research than his department. He gave a classic ministerial response which was well delivered and charming. It is, of course, wrong, but that does not matter. He referred to another Bill about unsolicited phone calls. I am sure he has read my Bill on that subject, which will be coming before the House very shortly.

I take fully the points made by the noble Earl. The objective of the Bill is to raise the issue. We will do that through the Chewing Gum Action Group and all the local authorities. It costs them £415 million a year to clean up the streets at the moment. Having worked in that sort of economic world, one would not even suggest things unless it was economic so to do. It is not just the nuisance value. There is an education programme that the Minister could perhaps advance. It is in front of public buildings—government and others—that the biggest amount of dropping takes place. That requires only a schoolteacher to say, “Put it in a bin” or for schools to have bins there, because that is where it takes place, or outside concert halls. It is not a difficult problem.

I am very grateful for the support I have here and outside. The idea is that we move this on to the Committee stage when various issues can be debated. I will arrange for everyone who is interested to be able to attend the meeting. I have the latest brief from Wrigley on the progress it is making. It was delivered this morning. When I was an economist in an advertising agency, Wrigley was one of our clients.

Bill read a second time and committed to a Committee of the Whole House.