Mark Menzies
Main Page: Mark Menzies (Independent - Fylde)
Mark Menzies (Fylde) (Con)
1. What steps his Department is taking to encourage local authorities to provide weekly refuse collections.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (Mr Eric Pickles)
The public have a reasonable expectation that their household waste, in all its various forms, will be collected weekly. That is why we have already ditched the last Government’s policy of imposing fortnightly collections, and we are now going to work with local councils to increase the frequency and quality of rubbish collections. We want to make it easier to recycle.
Mark Menzies
Does my right hon. Friend agree that by stopping Labour’s planned bin taxes, we are saving hard-working pensioners and families a lot of money?
Mr Pickles
My hon. Friend is absolutely correct about abolishing Labour’s plans for bin taxes, which would have hammered hard-working families. They were also ridiculous because they would have led to an increase in fly-tipping. The Keep Britain Tidy group has remarked that people would simply have dumped their garbage illegally in a bid to avoid the taxes. It seemed to me to be utterly unreasonable to pit neighbour against neighbour.