Motorways: Litter

Debate between Mike Penning and Louie French

Tuesday 25th April 2023 Westminster Hall

[Sir Mike Penning]

I think not only that it is not given enough consideration, but that it is a national disgrace. I specifically picked on motorways because of the legal responsibility Highways England, the Highways Agency or whatever it wants to call itself today—it has renamed itself several times since I was the Roads Minister. I do not know why it has spent so many thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money renaming itself. If the brand is decent, it should not be renamed. If the brand is bad, it should be renamed, and that seems to be exactly what Highways England or the Highways Agency—Highways something—has been doing. It has a legal responsibility for its network, which includes not just motorways but some A roads.

We should have better enforcement and use the technology that we have. If we can prosecute people for going two or three miles per hour over the speed limit—I am all for that; I was a Transport Minister—we can use the same cameras to prosecute people who throw litter. I am sure that, like me, colleagues have seen footage of people on the motorway driving down the road—there is the car, there is the numberplate, there is the face, there is the phone—and exactly the same technology can be used for people chucking litter out of the car.

Penalties almost certainly need to be stronger. Perhaps we should do something not dissimilar to what I did when I was the Minister and we brought in the driver awareness course. Fines and points were not working, but the evidence showed that drivers actually drive better and slower after they have done such a course.

At the end of the day, we have to do two things. We have to educate people through courses such as the driver awareness course, and we have to make sure the person or organisation responsible for these highways takes action. I picked the motorways because it is not like in our constituencies, where it could be a borough council, a district council, a county council or a unitary authority; there is a single body legally responsible for motorways and some A roads under section 89 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. We have got to the ridiculous stage where individuals—I will talk about John Read and the Clean Up Britain campaign—are almost certain to use section 91 of the Act to take National Highways to court. We have the right under the Act to say, “You are not doing what you are supposed to be doing, which is to clear up the mess on our highways.”

When I applied for this debate, I was thrilled by not only by the excellent paper produced by the House of Commons Library, but by John Read of Clean Up Britain, Policy Exchange and the RAC Foundation. I also thank the Sunday Express for helping to highlight this issue last weekend. They have all come together to say, “What can we do to stop this blight, predominantly on the English countryside, getting worse and worse?”

As I said earlier, the litter will soon start to be covered over as the plants grow, but in the autumn, when the frost comes, there it will all be. What surprised me enormously was some of the commentary coming from National Highways. It produced a lengthy paper saying that it regularly checks the highways, and that more than 60% do not have any rubbish on them. All I can say is that they should have gone to Specsavers, or other places that are available, to check their eyesight when they drive back and forth to work on our highways. Litter is a danger not only to our wildlife—I have seen aluminium tins on the side of the road that have been there for so many years that they are starting to degrade, and plastic does not degrade in the same way—but to the staff clearing it up, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said. There have to be road closures and it has to be done safely.

Interestingly, other countries seem to have solved this problem quite well. Any of us who go on holiday this summer to Germany, France or Spain will see that their highways are not covered in trash. Many people from this country will go to Florida, which has large five or six-lane roads. The hedges and grass are not covered in trash, and any litter is certainly not all chopped up when the grasscutters come along and it has not been picked up.

We have to ask ourselves why. Is it a cultural thing, or is it because the organisation that is legally responsible for clearing up rubbish is doing so? Frankly, if someone has broken the law and they get a community project, I cannot think of a better way of paying back into the community than being in a team that goes out and safely clears the rubbish from the sides of our roads. When I was in the Minister’s position, I was told that that was not possible because it was not safe. I used to be the Health and Safety Minister as well, at a different time, and it could be made safe. It is safe for workers to do it, and some of the stuff they have to pick up is truly horrible. We will not go into that in this debate, but Members can imagine what gets thrown out of car windows.

The question has to be, why is National Highways not taking this issue seriously? The organisation cannot be taking it seriously, because it has given contractors contracts but is not monitoring them. Following a freedom of information request to Mr John Read, National Highways came back and said:

“We don’t undertake audits of our contractors’ work for litter clearance.”

How do they know that 60% of the roads are clear if they are not monitoring their own contracts? It baffles me.

Under the Secretary of State, the Department for Transport has introduced key performance indicators for National Highways, but litter is not one of them; it is just part of something else and seen as not that important. I say to the Minister that it is important. How can we have a key performance indicator for the contract issued to National Highways by the Secretary of State that does not take into consideration the legal responsibility it has to the public? This is public money being spent on behalf of the public through the Secretary of State.

[Mr Louie French (Old Bexley and Sidcup) (Con)]

I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Many of my constituents express many of the concerns that he has already outlined. On the point about legal responsibilities and KPIs, we also have an issue that is applicable not just to motorways, but to A roads. In my constituency, we have the A2 and the A20, where there is general confusion about who is legally responsible for cleaning the litter from the hard shoulder and the verges. Transport for London often says that it is the local council’s responsibility, and local councils often dispute that, because they are obviously Transport for London roads.

Does my right hon. Friend agree that alongside strengthening the KPIs, we also need to have legal clarity about who is responsible for litter on motorways and our A roads? I echo his enthusiasm for encouraging community volunteer litter pickers who want to go out and help, but who are told no because of health and safety.

[Sir Mike Penning]

My hon. Friend has made several points that I completely agree with. As I said earlier, National Highways is responsible not only for motorways; it also has some A roads in my own part of the world. What was the M10 is now the A414, but it still has responsibility for that road. I do not think the organisation knows that, because it has not been anywhere the road since the day it ceased to be a motorway. I wrote to the Secretary of State and what I think was then known as Highways England, asking whether there was any chance that it could come along and pick up some of the signage that is lying on the roadsides, getting rusty and acting as a blight on animals and on the safety of someone who has pulled off the side of a road in an emergency. The signage is still there today.

The point that I think my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) is making about who is responsible is actually quite crucial. I mean, when I was the Roads Minister, I did not realise that with the M10—I live right next to the M10, although I know it is now the A414—the Highways Agency had kept responsibility for it and several other A roads. So that could be resolved very simply by the Minister dropping our hon. Friend a line to say that “the legal responsibility for the A2 lies with X”. I am sure that the Minister could get his officials to do that; that is what I might have done if I was the Minister. But who knows?

Regarding the other point that my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup made, there are lots of volunteers out there today, going out and picking litter up; I have some in my own constituency and they do a fantastic job. There is that issue and there is actually the payback issue. People who are blighting my community in myriad different ways and who may get a community order should have to be supervised out there to clean the roads.

If anyone goes to Florida, they will drive down wonderful, clean roads. One of the reasons is that Florida actually uses people who are incarcerated to go and clear the roads. They are not dangerous criminals, but they are people in for short-term sentences. Of course they are not chained up or anything like that, but if they scarper—the sort of language that my grandmother would have used—they will eventually be found and at the end of the day they would not have any parole. They are not going to be attacked if they scarper, and they are already starting the payback. In our open prisons, why could we not have that today in parts of the country? It would be slightly difficult with some of the open prisons in, say, Norfolk, because there are no motorways in Norfolk. Payback and should mean payback.

The Minister might say to me, “Well, actually, the contracts are set in stone over a period of time with National Highways and the KPI is set.” But if he looks carefully at the legislation, he will see that the Secretary of State has the powers at any time to deviate the contract, so the KPIs could be changed.

I think this is an issue of national importance. We can talk about it being rubbish, or trash, but we have some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, in my opinion. We should cherish it. There are people demonstrating out there, yesterday and today, because they passionately believe—I do not agree with their motives and how they are trying to do it, but I do agree that we have to protect our countryside.

Over the years, we have put lots of roads right the way through some of our countryside, and that countryside is being blighted, day in and day out. Frankly, looking at the correspondence, particularly from National Highways—I am sorry, Minister, but I do not think they get it. They just talk to me. Among the briefings, they are talking about the responsibility of local authorities. Well, no local authority in the country has responsibility for clearing up the motorways. They—National Highways —have it. The title of this debate was specific, so as not to have that debate about local government. The narrative here is purely about National Highways.

There are lots of things that are probably not fully in the Minister’s bailiwick, and I share his frustration with some of that, because I used to sit in that chair and think, “I’d love to have done that,” and, “I would love to do this.” But if we have the will, we have the way. Fines need to be increased. If people want to throw stuff out of car windows—some of it the most abhorrent products that we do not particularly want to discuss today—they should be penalised for it.

Similarly, however, if an organisation has the legal responsibility in law, set by this place, that it is their job to clear up that mess—go and give them some powers if we want to use the cameras in a way in which we can actually enforce the issue. They cannot cop out of this; it is actually in statute whose responsibility it is. The KPI can be changed, so that the regulator can step in and actually say, “You’re not fulfilling your contracts,” because if that does not happen, we will have individual members of the public taking this organisation—National Highways, which is funded by the British taxpayer—to court for a breach of the Act. To me, that is a crying shame, but if it happens I will fully support that commitment to go to the magistrates courts.