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

Naz Shah Excerpts

Wednesday 31st January 2018 General Committees

[Dr Coffey]

There is certainly a clear message in raising the issue that councils will have powers to do that. For our highways, and particularly our strategic road network, Highways England has an arrangement with the litter authority, whereby the litter authority is still responsible for clearing the litter from that side. It is perfectly possible for councils to work closely with Highways England once they have these powers, to use the camera footage that will be available to try to tackle and identify those who litter. The key thing we want to do is deter the behaviour in the first place.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

What do the Government propose to do for taxi drivers? If a passenger throws litter out the back of a car, will the taxi driver be fined, or will they try to find the passenger?

[Dr Coffey]

The hon. Lady has pre-empted part of my explanation of the draft regulations, which specifically includes that point. Let me first finish the point I was making about the process of issuing fines.

The process for issuing the penalty notice and the payment and appeals process are akin to those for other penalty notices levied by councils, such as parking tickets. A number of grounds for making representations deal with circumstances in which the person was not the keeper of the vehicle at the time, for example because the vehicle had been sold, stolen or was hired to somebody else. In addition, public service vehicles, including buses, taxis and private hire vehicles, are exempt from liability of a civil penalty notice if the offence is committed by a passenger.

To answer the hon. Lady’s point, I suggest that if there was appropriate evidence to show that the litter was tossed from the driver’s window in a taxi, I would expect there to be reasonable grounds to believe that it was the driver of the vehicle. If the litter came from different windows, there would be good grounds to accept that that would be a passenger.

Oral Answers to Questions

Naz Shah Excerpts

Thursday 17th March 2016 Commons Chamber

[Ruth Cadbury (Brentford and Isleworth) (Lab)]

10. What steps she is taking to improve monitoring of levels of air pollution.

[Naz Shah (Bradford West) (Lab)]

11. What steps she is taking to improve monitoring of levels of air pollution.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rory Stewart)]

The Department continues to improve its monitoring of levels of air pollution in line with the EU ambient air quality directive, and the computer programme to calculate emissions from road transport, or Copert. We have increased the number of nitrogen dioxide monitoring stations by more than 30% over the past three years.

[Rory Stewart]

The current objective is to focus on nitrogen dioxide thresholds and ensure that we reduce ambient air quality rates below 40 micrograms per cubic metre. Heathrow is a totally separate question that must be assessed independently by the Environment Agency and our air quality monitors, to see whether ambient air quality targets are met.

[Naz Shah]

Air pollution kills 50,000 people a year, yet the Government are concerned with only five cities. Will the Minister explain why?

[Rory Stewart]

That is a very good question. In those five cities, the ambient air quality level of 40 micrograms per cubic metre is due to be exceeded. Therefore, our objective is to ensure that by 2020, in Birmingham, Leeds, Nottingham, Derby and Southampton, we drop that level below 40 micrograms per cubic metre.