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

Debate between Thelma Walker and Thérèse Coffey

Wednesday 31st January 2018 General Committees

[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.

[Thelma Walker (Colne Valley) (Lab)]

Do the Government have any plans to introduce other measures in support of the draft regulations, for instance educational resources for drivers on the economic, environmental and societal effects of littering, or a campaign bringing this to life for all road users?

[Dr Coffey]

We work closely with a number of organisations, and we push litter education programmes. I am very fond of something that the official Government comms do not like: I am prone to using the hashtag #dontbeatosser, which is a slogan that came from Australia and was adopted by my local radio station, BBC Suffolk—I think some people have different thoughts about what it might mean. I am quite keen to escalate the activities, which is why we are working closely with organisations such as Keep Britain Tidy.