Dog Fouling
Debate between Teresa Pearce and Anne MainWestminster Hall is an alternative Chamber for MPs to hold debates, named after the adjoining Westminster Hall.
Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Teresa Pearce (Erith and Thamesmead) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank the hon. Member for St Albans (Mrs Main) for bringing the debate. It might not seem the most glamourous or exciting of topics, but keeping our communities clean and pleasant is a key part of local government’s remit. Ensuring that our streets, parks, playgrounds and open spaces are free from ugly, unhygienic dog mess is really important.
Dog mess is a source of nuisance to residents and an eyesore on many streets, from high streets in towns and city centres to country paths and village lanes. Roads littered with dog mess damage civic pride and tarnish the image of an area. It is unpleasant in both sight and smell, it is unhygienic, it spreads disease and it becomes a costly problem for local authorities to tackle. In fact, councils spend about £1 billion a year dealing with littering, including dog waste. Furthermore, dog owners who break the law on dog fouling and refuse to clean up after their dogs put the health of others at risk, particularly children.
It is children who are most at risk of contact with dog excrement, which can cause toxo—I cannot say the word.
Teresa Pearce
That’s it—I thank the hon. Lady for her intervention. It is a nasty infection that can lead to dizziness, nausea, asthma and even blindness and seizures.
It is not surprising that 47% of people in the UK think that dog fouling is one of the most annoying things they experience in public places. I recently met a group of cyclists who told me that one of the worst things they encounter, when cycling through country lanes, are these “baubles”, which the hon. Lady referred to, hanging from trees, which hit them in the face as they are riding and trying to enjoy the countryside. The public rank dog fouling as even more annoying than general littering, pollution, traffic and smoking. According to Keep Britain Tidy, dog fouling is
“a major concern to members of the public”.
A survey that it undertook of more than 10,000 sites found dog mess left in 7% of places. As such, it is a major issue for local authorities.
We seem to have got the “bag it and bin it” message out in towns, but there needs to be a different message in the countryside. In particular, it is important to keep local parks free from dog mess. Parks and green spaces play a crucial role in the health of our communities, including the mental health and general wellbeing of our residents. Parks provide spaces for exercise, cultural events, picnics, walks and everyday contact with the natural environment, which is proven to have a positive impact on mental health—particularly in towns and cities, where people’s lives are increasingly confined to home, work and commuting between the two.
Parks and open spaces are crucial to improving health and happiness in a society with increasing levels of obesity and disorders such as depression and anxiety. In that context, it is disappointing that parks and green spaces are facing unprecedented budgetary cuts that threaten their future existence. More than 90% of park managers expect decreased funding this year, while 97% of street cleaning services expect decreased funding over the next five years. That reduction will amount to more than 20% of their funding, which will have an impact on the presence of dog mess on our streets and in our parks.
The hon. Member for St Albans mentioned earlier that DEFRA no longer collects figures regarding dog mess. I agree with her that doing so might be an unnecessary burden; however, BBC figures show that 103 of 302 local authorities surveyed did not issue any fines for dog fouling at all in 2014-15. Enforcement is quite difficult. As was explained, it has to be witnessed and somebody has to report it. It is almost impossible: somebody would need to be very lucky to be in the right place at the right time.
Teresa Pearce
I completely agree. There are particularly bad dog owners in some parks quite near where I live. To be quite honest, one would not want to confront them—or the dog—on any issue, because they are quite aggressive people. I did a very unscientific survey among my friends earlier today. I asked if they understood what bin to put dog mess in, and a huge proportion thought it could only be put in the dog mess bin, which is not correct. These are regular dog walkers, yet they did not know that, so education is really important.
Many local authorities are using behaviour-change approaches to reduce dog fouling, but we need to make sure they are using the right message. As I said, “bag it and bin it” may be the right message in towns, but in the countryside it may be completely the wrong message and could actually cause further problems. I was particularly interested in the hon. Lady’s experiment with the chocolate éclair—I might see if I can find it on YouTube.
Mrs Main
I can tell the hon. Lady that she can do that. They also put down a can of chilli sauce and a bread roll soaked in water. They gave me a flimsy stick to try to demonstrate stick and flick, but it was not really the best representation of the way to do it, according to the Forestry Commission. The video is online.
Teresa Pearce
I thank the hon. Lady for the clarification. Local authorities have been campaigning with public sector bodies such as Keep Britain Tidy and third sector organisations such as Dogs Trust on the issue of dog fouling. Keep Britain Tidy’s 2010 campaign, “There’s no such thing as the dog poo fairy”, led to some communities seeing a 90% decrease in dog mess. The Dogs Trust’s “The Big Scoop” campaign involves posters, installations in parks and dispensers of free dog poo bags—although as we have heard, that might not be the answer in some areas.
In 2012, West Dunbartonshire Council armed its local clean-up workers with cans of bright spray paint to tag abandoned dog waste in a highly visible colour scheme to shame guilty dog owners and notify pedestrians that the dog waste was there. Leeds City Council’s litter and dog fouling campaign includes a reward scheme for people seen by enforcement officers using litter bins, and Manchester City Council ran a campaign with posters reinforcing responsibility for littering. However, dealing with these issues is expensive, and local authority budgets are restricted at this time, so we need to change behaviours. I was a dog owner for many years; unfortunately we lost our little Jack Russell, Mrs Biggles, last year. I would never have dreamt of bagging and not binning. If I could not bin, I would take it home. However, I was not on a long country walk, which is a different circumstance altogether; I was always relatively near where I live.
Unless there is continued investment in campaigns to deter dog owners from shirking their responsibilities, we will see regression in a culture that has actually been steadily improving for years. Lack of bins, particularly on public footpaths through the countryside, can also prevent dog owners from collecting dog mess. However, it is not only the lack of bins; it is about disposing of the dog mess properly. It is incomprehensible that anybody could think it was okay to bag and then just throw or flick. It is the equivalent of someone throwing a fast food bag out of the car as they drive along. It is basically pushing the responsibility for clearing it up on to somebody else. I was particularly struck by the reference to plastic shopping bags and how this is becoming a similar issue. One of my local councils recently suggested that it could increase its income by putting advertising on dog poo bags, because so many are sold. I am not quite sure whether that is a good idea or not—it is innovative, if nothing else.
Dog mess is the most unacceptable and offensive type of litter on our streets, and dog fouling is one of the most annoying and avoidable issues that concerns the public. However, the problem will not disappear on its own. An estimated 8 million dogs produce more than 1,000 tonnes of mess every day in the UK alone. Nearly a quarter of British people find dog mess in their local city, town or village at least once a day, and almost three quarters of people experience that on a weekly basis. We need to educate dog owners. The “bag it and bin it” message seems to have been successful, but this new phenomenon needs tackling. The hon. Lady said that she is not coming up with the answer today, but she is identifying and publicising the problem, which is the first step in finding an answer. I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Housing and Planning Bill
Debate between Teresa Pearce and Anne Main(8 years, 10 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Teresa Pearce
I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention, and that is exactly right. Across the private rented sector, many good landlords do all the things we would wish of them. It is for the minority that we need to legislate. As I mentioned, the Minister said in Committee that the Government were considering this and I know that there have been conversations with the sector, so I would be pleased to hear how far they have gone and whether something will be introduced in future.
New clause 54 would remove the three-storey condition for HMOs. That would require mandatory HMO licences for all buildings that meet all the other requirements of an HMO but are not three storeys high. HMOs come in a variety of forms and the current definition does not fit the actuality on the ground.
I know that the Government are consulting on extending mandatory licensing of HMOs and I shall be interested to hear where the Minister thinks that consultation might go. HMOs make up one of the main forms of private sector housing for students, young professionals and single people on low incomes and the three-storey threshold means that many actual HMOs do not require a licence. Indeed, down my road there is a bungalow—it clearly does not have three storeys—that has over the previous year had as many as 10 unrelated people living in it. Clearly, it would be classed as an HMO in any other regard apart from the fact that it is not three storeys high.
Private rented housing is an important part of the housing sector and with the reduction of housing benefit for the under-35s allowing only shared occupancy, more and more properties are in effect HMOs apart from the fact that they do not meet the three-storey provision. The new clause and wider Government consultation provide an opportunity to evaluate the purpose of HMO licensing simply to provide for a more robust, secure and safe private rented sector through the licensing of houses in multiple occupancy that operate with shared facilities.
Amendment 154 would lead to the retention of sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004, under which every local authority must, when carrying out a review under section 8 of the Housing Act 1985, carry out an assessment of the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers who reside in the area, and provide for the Secretary of State to issue guidance on how local housing authorities can meet those needs. Clearly there has been and continues to be a need to recognise the differing housing needs of Gypsies and Travellers. Anyone with an understanding of the community will appreciate that they have different housing needs and the Government’s impact assessment for the Bill recognises a perception of differential treatment of Gypsies and Travellers. In Committee there was a great deal of written and oral evidence of the devastating impact that the withdrawal of sections 225 and 226 could have on Gypsy and Traveller communities. This amendment would retain those sections.
The Joseph Rowntree Foundation noted that the former Commission for Racial Equality concluded in 2006 that Gypsies and Irish Travellers were the most excluded groups in Britain. Concern was expressed that the existing provisions weakened the understanding of those groups’ specific accommodation needs. As the Department for Communities and Local Government’s “Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs assessments: guidance” of 2007 states:
“In the past, the accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers . . . have not routinely formed part of the process by which local authorities assess people’s housing needs. The consequences of this have been that the current and projected accommodation needs of Gypsies and Travellers have often not been well understood.”
If the requirement specifically to assess their accommodation needs is removed, there will be an even higher rate of homelessness, even fewer sites to meet their assessed need will be delivered, and even less land will be allocated in local plans to meet their need.
As a result of the shortage of authorised sites, Gypsies and Travellers will have no alternative but to camp in an unauthorised manner, which impacts not only on their community but on the settled communities around them. Without authorised sites they will have difficulty accessing running water, toilets, refuse collection, schools and employment opportunities. Local authorities already spend millions of pounds each year on unauthorised encampments in legal costs, evictions, blocking off land from encampments and clear-up costs, so this is a lose-lose situation. Where Gypsies and Travellers’ needs are not assessed or met, local communities are impacted upon as a consequence. The Community Law Partnership is concerned that as a result of the clause Gypsy and Traveller accommodation needs will be buried within general housing need. CLP highlights the fact that this community consists of traditionally hard to reach groups, and calls for focused guidance for local authorities to assess their needs.
Gypsies and Travellers already experience some of the poorest social outcomes of any group in our society, and accommodation is a key determinant of those wider inequalities. We have seen written evidence from the Showmen’s Guild of Great Britain, the main representative body for travelling show people, which shared extreme concern about these clauses and the impact on its work. I would be grateful if the Minister outlined the impact on travelling show people and provided reassurance to the guild and show people that the clauses will not affect them.
The policy in this area is different across the nations. The Welsh Government are taking a different approach, introducing a statutory duty on local authorities to facilitate site provision. Why does the Minister think Gypsies and Travellers should face such a postcode lottery? We believe the amendment is necessary to continue support for Traveller and Gypsy communities, which are some of the most excluded groups in Britain.
There are legal concerns, too. The public sector equality duty recognises Romany Gypsies and Irish Travellers as ethnic minorities, and the European Court of Human Rights has held that the UK has an obligation to facilitate the traditional way of life of Gypsies and Travellers. Will the Minister clarify whether the removal of the clause would go against that?
Our amendment would retain sections 225 and 226 of the Housing Act 2004, which would ensure that the housing needs of Gypsies and Travellers were assessed by local authorities. This would make sure that safe sites could continue to be identified and would avoid the lose-lose situation set out in the Bill, where an under-represented group faces the prospect of its housing needs being swallowed up within the general housing need. As the clause stands, it would lead to many unintended consequences—a shortage of authorised sites for Gypsies and Travellers, a rise in unauthorised sites, worse safety standards, and greater pressure on local authorities and on local communities. I hope the Government will consider the amendment.
Amendment 99 to clause 92 would ensure that those with an entry on the database of rogue landlords and letting agents would not be granted a licence to run an HMO. Although those subject to a banning order would not be able to receive an HMO licence as they would be in breach of the banning order, there may be others on the rogue landlord and letting agents database who could still apply and receive an HMO licence. As the House is aware, a local housing authority may include other persons on the database, rather than applying for a banning order in a case where a person’s offences are slightly less serious and the local authority considers that monitoring the person is more appropriate than seeking a banning order. This amendment seeks assurance that those people would not be considered for an HMO licence. It would have the added bonus of ensuring that the local housing authority checked with the rogue landlords and letting agents database to ensure that the application was allowed and that nobody subject to a banning order could slip through. If in future the database of rogue landlords and letting agents were expanded, that would provide further protection for tenants against such landlords.
As was mentioned in earlier debates, including in Committee, we support measures to tackle rogue landlords to ensure security and safety for tenants in the sector and to penalise criminal landlords. However, we would like this further measure to be added, to ensure that in no circumstances can rogue landlords be granted an HMO licence. The amendment would help drive up standards across the sector and protect tenants in HMOs from rogue landlords.
Amendment 67 relates to clause 93, which would change the Housing Act 2004
“to allow financial penalties to be imposed as an alternative to prosecution for certain offences.”
Our amendment would ensure that financial penalties could be sought “in addition” to prosecution rather than as an alternative. Although we support the measures that tackle rogue landlords, we believe that the Bill could go further to penalise criminal landlords, to make it harder for them to get away with housing-related offences and deter them from committing the crimes and from returning to the sector, as well as providing an adequate punishment for their offence.
At present, the Bill would allow for a financial penalty to be sought instead of a criminal prosecution in cases ranging from failure to comply with improvement notices to letting an unlicensed HMO, among other offences. Clearly there will be cases in which a financial penalty is more appropriate, just as a prosecution route will be in others. However, there may well be further situations where both routes would be appropriate. Our amendment would allow that to happen.
The amendment would also help in situations where the impact of the offence was unclear. A local authority may deem a financial penalty appropriate, but for repeat offenders, or if the impact of the original offence escalates, it may also wish to use an additional prosecution route. Making provision for both routes will allow greater flexibility: local authorities could choose to fine, prosecute or do both. The amendment would increase the options available to local authorities. In that way, we hope to ensure further security and safety for tenants in the sector and to help drive up standards.
If the Government do not agree to it, we will divide the House on new clause 52. Amendments 79, 76 and 77, tabled by the hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Robert Neill), among others, seek to test the House’s will on the compulsory purchase order provisions. We believe that those amendments would water down those provisions, so the Opposition will oppose them in a vote.
Mrs Main
I rise to speak in favour of new clause 42. It is a contradictory situation, but in very high-value areas such as St Albans people often want to live in mobile home parks because that is the most affordable route to securing their own home. There are many mobile home sites in my constituency, as well as some of the highest house prices and lowest affordability in the country.
I was pleased when the coalition Government sought to tackle some of the abuses of rogue site owners, but the issue of people being able to sell their own mobile home freely without being shackled with enormous costs really needs tackling. New clause 42 probes that issue and I would be interested to hear the Minister’s views.
Residents at Newlands Park, a mobile home park in my constituency, have told me that when a home becomes available it is often so difficult to sell that the site owner ends up buying it. Gradually, more and more park homes are becoming the property of the site owner, who then rents them out for very high rents. On many sites in the United Kingdom not only is the cost of selling mobile homes hugely disproportionate to the value of the units, but restrictions are placed on those selling them. For example, in Newlands Park there is an insistence that the site owner should vet the potential new buyer of the mobile home. There are also restrictions on how and when advertisements for selling the mobile home can be displayed, and on the associated wording. As a result, mobile home or park home sites that are poorly run, or run by landlords imposing onerous demands, can start to become controlled by the site owner. This Bill—or, if not this one, perhaps another relating to the Mobile Homes Act 2013—could provide a tool to try to restrict the control that unscrupulous owners may choose to try to exercise over those who wish to divest themselves of a park home site.
Crown Prosecution Service
Debate between Teresa Pearce and Anne Main(9 years, 4 months ago)
Westminster HallRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
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Each debate is chaired by an MP from the Panel of Chairs, rather than the Speaker or Deputy Speaker. A Government Minister will give the final speech, and no votes may be called on the debate topic.
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Gareth Johnson (Dartford) (Con)
I congratulate the hon. Lady on securing this debate. I certainly agree with her that we need to put the victims of crime at the centre of the criminal justice system and its work.
I have worked at Bexley magistrates court, to which the hon. Lady referred. Does she welcome the work of the witness support service there, which has assisted, over many years now, both prosecution and defence witnesses when they attend court? And does she also—
Mrs Anne Main (in the Chair)
Order. I remind the hon. Gentleman that interventions are usually brief and of a singular nature.
Teresa Pearce
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. Yes, I welcome the work of the witness support service at Bexley magistrates court; it does a fantastic job. Often, when people consider coming forward as a witness or to report a crime, they are not aware that such support exists and we must do more to publicise it, because the witness support service does a very important job.
Being a witness in a criminal proceeding is hard enough. The pressures of enduring cross-examination, bewigged barristers and the alien environment of a sterile courtroom are all enough to make a witness feel massively intimidated. However, sometimes getting even basic support from a witness care manager can make the difference between having a difficult time and enduring an absolutely impossible ordeal.
In the light of the reduction of nearly 43% in witness care manager numbers, what will the Minister do to safeguard the right of every witness to receive support? If witnesses continue to be unsupported, they are less likely to come forward in the first place. They are also less likely to turn up at court, less likely to give good evidence when they are cross-examined, and less likely to look back on the experience as being anything other than demoralising.
The costs of rescheduling hearings, postponing trials and abandoning prosecutions midway through will surely outweigh any savings made through cuts. This is an area where we could actually “spend to save”, because cutting the number of witness care managers is a false economy of the worst kind.
I will say just a few words about a special category of crime that the CPS prosecutes—historical sexual abuse cases. Perhaps there are few more compelling examples of victims who need support than the victims in such cases. If we fail them, we really must look again at the logic of cutting the CPS budget.
Historical sexual abuse is a crime that, regrettably, is coming to define our times. It represents a moral stain on society’s character. The late Lord Bingham, a former senior Law Lord, was right to hold up what he called “Equality before the law” as a “cornerstone of our society”. Too often, victims of crimes that took place sometimes decades ago have felt they have been treated unequally and ignored by our society and our criminal justice system. We legislators cannot undo the terrible things that victims have had to endure, but we can strive for justice for them. We can try hard to address their concerns and their years of not being listened to—and the way we do this is by properly funding the CPS in these cases.
The Director of Public Prosecutions has requested that the Chancellor provide £50 million-worth of funding to effectively prosecute cases of historical sexual abuse. Will the Minister commit to doing everything possible to provide the funding requested for these cases and make sure that the victims are fully taken care of while undergoing such an ordeal?
It is clear that the CPS is a demand-led service and cannot function appropriately if it is not adequately resourced. The opposing forces of increasing crime and decreasing funding mean that the system is struggling to cope, and the rise in the number of terrorist suspects being investigated is a further burden on the service. Alison Saunders, the Director of Public Prosecutions, has been forced to consider doubling the number of prosecutors to cope with the magnitude of the challenge of complex, terrorist-related cases and suspects. The complex nature of these offences means that much more time and resources have to be put into preparing them.
It is imperative that we reflect on what the CPS does well and what it is failing to do as a result of these cuts. We must ask ourselves what we can possibly expect of the service, in rising to increasing challenges, during a time of austerity and budget cuts of 28%.
It would be wrong to blame the CPS solely. Poor casework preparation and delays are not always its fault, but with staff cuts and growing workloads, administrative errors are more likely and, increasingly, cases are being dropped because of unnecessary mistakes. The CPS is trying its best to modernise: it is pursuing digital working, moving from a paper-based system to a digital one. If that is successful, it stands to save taxpayers money in the future. However, there have been huge criticisms of that service and it must be reviewed to ensure that it really is providing value for money, because expensive mistakes must be avoided.
We, as a society, depend on the CPS to bring to justice those who cannot or will not observe the laws that we make for ourselves. Will the Minister undertake to look again at where the CPS cuts are falling, not least to make sure that savings are not outweighed by money lost because of delays and lack of witness support?