Litter

Debate between Theresa Villiers and Trudy Harrison

Wednesday 3rd May 2023 Commons Chamber

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

I could not agree more with your wise words, Mr Deputy Speaker, and I join you in thanking the volunteers in your constituency, as well as those in Chipping Barnet and right across the country. It feels appropriate to mark that sense of volunteerism that we excel at in this country. I know that the Big Help Out is a fundamental part of this coronation weekend, and I will certainly be involved in judging the best dressed house in my village of Bootle, perhaps making a number of enemies and fewer friends. The planting, painting and renovating and the picking up of litter that we do right across this country are testament to our fantastic community spirit, and it was a joy to hear about that today. It is perhaps inspired by the well-spent youth of my right hon. Friend the Member for Beckenham (Bob Stewart) and his part in street cleansing, which was lovely to hear about.

I pay tribute to my right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet (Theresa Villiers) not just for securing the debate, but for the work she has done as a Back Bencher and perhaps even more importantly when she led the great Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, where she served as Secretary of State. It was a pleasure to chat to officials today to learn of their experience of working with her. They reminded me that she brought the Environment Bill, now the Environment Act 2021, to this House. I had the great pleasure of being able to publish the environmental improvement plan on 31 January. It is a spin-off—a kind of five-year review of the Environment Act 2021. I thank her for all her hard work.

The Minister responsible for this area, the Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Taunton Deane (Rebecca Pow), is unfortunately unable to attend the debate, so I have the pleasure of responding. If I am unable to answer any of the more technical points in her portfolio, I will endeavour to ensure that I or she writes with further details.

Let me state unequivocally that this Government are absolutely committed to tackling the scourge of litter. My right hon. Friend the Member for Chipping Barnet referenced the importance that schools place on that, and the eco-schools programme is a fine example. Certainly when I visit primary schools and ask them what they think is the most important thing to help nature’s recovery, they say, “Stop litter.” They have seen the David Attenborough documentaries. “Wild Isles” is a fantastic example, and they absolutely appreciate what plastic pollution does to nature, both on land and in the sea.

Let me go through some of the actions we are taking on multiple fronts, as we said we would in our litter strategy. They include supporting local councils, which are often best placed to tackle local issues such as littering. For example, we have developed and shared best practice on the provision of litter bins and supported that with £1 million in grant funding, which has helped more than 40 councils purchase new litter bins. Councils are responsible for taking enforcement action, and in recent years we have bolstered their powers by introducing penalties for the keeper of the vehicle, as my right hon. Friend said. It is now possible that the keeper of the vehicle from which litter is thrown will suffer a penalty. In doing so, we have made it clear that councils are free to take action based on camera footage, including that supplied by members of the public, as long as councils are satisfied that the evidence meets the relevant standards, so I think that we have been listening.

[Theresa Villiers]

I know that the Government take this issue seriously. Can the Minister confirm that ANPR cameras can be used to capture an image that can be the basis of a fine for littering?

[Trudy Harrison]

I would like to write to my right hon. Friend with the absolutely correct information, but perhaps I can reassure her by the commitment of £1.2 million that we have provided to more than 30 councils to help them purchase equipment to tackle fly-tipping. Nearly all the projects are utilising CCTV in some way, including one focused on identifying offenders using AI technology in combination with ANPR cameras, which I know— because my right hon. Friend is absolutely insistent—is a very sensible idea. We are also starting to see some positive results from these grants. In Durham, for example, the county council has seen a reduction in fly-tipping of over 60% in the areas where CCTV was installed on existing lighting columns. Case studies will be made available in due course so that others can learn about the interventions that were most successful.

The Government’s new antisocial behaviour action plan sets out how we will go further by supporting councils to take even tougher action against those who seek to degrade our public spaces. This includes significantly raising the upper limit on fixed penalty notices to £1,000 for fly-tipping and £500 for littering and graffiti. Alongside these increases, there are new measures to help councils and others to carry out more enforcement activity. This includes funding to support police and crime commissioners, working with councils and others, to target enforcement in the areas where antisocial behaviour is most prevalent. Initially, the Government will support 10 trailblazer areas, scaling up to hotspot enforcement action across all police forces in England and Wales in 2024. Under the action plan, a new approach called immediate justice will be introduced to make perpetrators repair the damage they have done. They will be forced to pick up the litter, clear wastelands or clean up graffiti within as little as 48 hours of being caught. This will start in 10 places before being expanded across England and Wales in 2024.

Furthermore, DEFRA is working in partnership with Keep Britain Tidy. I pay tribute to it, because the Keep Britain Tidy campaign is incredibly well known and very successful across the country. I also pay tribute to the chewing gum producers for establishing the chewing gum taskforce. In 2022, the taskforce provided funding of £1.2 million to help more than 40 councils clean gum off pavements and invest in long-term behavioural change to prevent gum from being dropped in the first place. The first year of grants saw some fantastic results, with behavioural change projects reducing gum litter by over 35% on average. The taskforce is running a similar scheme in 2023 and, in total, gum producers will be investing up to £10 million over five years in the taskforce.

I know my right hon. Friend wants to see roadside litter tackled robustly. It is absolutely infuriating to see bags of fast food packaging, sometimes bagged up into a carrier bag, tossed out of a vehicle, and I find them on country walks. I just wonder what goes through people’s minds when they behave like that in our countryside. I absolutely share my right hon. Friend’s despair at those kinds of acts, which are blighting our countryside. So I am very pleased to be working with National Highways, which is working with Keep Britain Tidy, to fully understand who litters and why littering occurs from vehicles. Using the insight from the research, National Highways will be carrying out targeted behavioural change interventions. It is also collecting evidence of littering across the network and working with litter authorities to encourage prosecution.

While local councils have the responsibility for keeping our public spaces clear of litter, the role of volunteer litter picking groups should not be underestimated. As I have said, and I think Members across this House will have great examples in their constituencies, they are certainly held in very high esteem by this Government. We have also supported volunteers in other ways. In 2019, the Government provided £9.75 million for our high streets community clean-up fund. Councils were able to use that one-off funding to support volunteers, for example by supplying litter pickers. I am pleased that Barnet Council, which sits in my right hon. Friend’s Chipping Barnet constituency, was one recipient of that fund.

[Theresa Villiers]

I have used the bags myself.

[Trudy Harrison]

My right hon. Friend uses the bags herself, and I am delighted that she is a cheery recipient of that fund. More recently, the Environment Agency published a regulatory position statement, which allows local tips to accept litter from voluntary litter pickers, and enables volunteers to collect litter without needing a waste carriers licence. We will continue to use our influence to support and endorse national clean-up initiatives such as Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean, and encourage as many as are willing to participate in such events in the future. Our commitments extend to reforming how packaging waste is managed, which should help to prevent litter at source.

My right hon. Friend asked for an update on our extended producer responsibility for packaging scheme. That will move the cost of managing packaging disposed of in street bins away from local taxpayers and councils, and on to the producers of that packaging, hopefully reducing it. In January, we set out policy decisions and next steps for introducing a deposit return scheme for drink containers. The implementation of that scheme is expected substantially to reduce the littering of in-scope drink containers by up to 90% in year three of the scheme. We remain committed to our delivery timetable, and will continue to manage any associated risks in a way that supports the goals of the extended producer responsibility for packaging and deposit return schemes.

This is about encouraging people to do the right thing. In 2018, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs launched the “Keep it, Bin it” anti-litter campaign with Keep Britain Tidy. The campaign encourages people, including young people, to dispose of their litter responsibly. We use social media to raise awareness of the impact of litter, and to encourage individuals to put their rubbish in the bin or take it home. Projects funded as part of our fly-tipping grant scheme for councils include the integration of CCTV and a digital fly-tipping awareness course for those caught fly-tipping in Durham. Once again, we have been listening to my right hon. Friend, and many of her suggestions, and the actions she undertook while in the Department, have proven positive and effective.

Since the introduction of our carrier bag charge, the number of single-use plastic bags sold by the main retailers reduced by over 97% between 2014 and 2022. That has translated to less litter. According to the Marine Conservation Society, there has been a 55% drop in plastic bags found on UK beaches since the charge was introduced, so it has been highly effective.