Littering from Vehicles Bill [HL]

Viscount Falkland Excerpts

Friday 19th July 2013 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Falkland]

My Lords, extravagant praise has been given to the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford, for introducing this Bill, and I join in that. I put my name down for the debate, knowing full well that the details of his very precisely architected Bill would be dealt with more ably by others. My interest in the subject leads on to wider matters, which I hope the noble Lord will agree are suitable for a Second Reading debate.

Why is it that people nowadays behave in the way they do, having won the freedoms as individuals that they have? Why does the balance between individual freedom and the common good seem to have got out of kilter? Yesterday I drifted into the Chamber, as one sometimes does when there is a debate, thinking that there might be something helpful in the debate on civil society. I had nearly dropped off to sleep when suddenly, to my surprise, I heard the most astonishing speech by the right reverend Prelate the Bishop of Derby. I recommend that all those noble Lords in this debate who are interested in why people behave in the way that they do, and something of the culture and history behind that, should read his excellent speech. It is quite short. Surprise, surprise, he mentioned TS Eliot—and I thought, “Things are really improving here in the House. We are moving to different levels of intellectual gravitas”. I did not know that TS Eliot was so concerned with,

“the building blocks of a civil society”.

The right reverend Prelate added:

“The more we are concerned about individual good, the bigger the problem with the common good. The more people have individual freedom, the more chance there is of becoming isolated, lonely and marginalised”.—[Official Report, 18/7/13; col. 931.]

I think that the right reverend Prelate is absolutely right. How many of us have walked down the street—those of us of a certain age, and I think that I am roughly of the same generation as the noble Lord, Lord Marlesford —and really been astonished, on a fine day in a street with fine buildings, to see young people walking with an electronic apparatus screwed firmly into their ear, with a glazed look in their eye, completely disassociated from what surrounds them? This is something that is quite alien to me, with the way I was brought up, because, of course, we did not have all those electronic gadgets. Nowadays, when one walks along the street and one sees what I have described, one has to avoid people engaged in sending text messages on the pavement, zigzagging in and out without looking where they are going. So there is a problem with our society, because these people are much worse mannered than they were when I was growing up.

As the noble Lord, Lord Cormack, has said, we were encouraged to be aware of litter. In fact, there was advertising about litter bugs and people of that kind, and people were aware of it. Local government should be involved in engaging people more with their local society, but how can it, with the constraints placed on it, take up the social responsibilities of getting more engaged in people’s lives so that they are less likely to be ill? Depression nowadays among the young is a very big problem; I have had it in my own family, with one son. With his friends and colleagues at school—I do not know what brought it on—he became enormously lacking in confidence. He is quite a talented boy, actually, but he began to lack confidence and become, frankly, neurotic and depressed. So I have become very interested in this subject.

In yesterday’s debate, another noble Lord introduced the concept of the three legs of the stool, which used to govern our behaviour in our society—the nation, the family, and the church. We may have rebelled against some or all of what was contained in those three legs of the stool, but we knew where we were. There were always rebels and miscreants in society but, generally speaking, people worked according to what was expected of them in that way.

I think that I know what the Minister who is answering the debate will say, despite the encouragement of his neighbour. I realise how difficult it is for government to legislate for individual behaviour. In his usual elegant and polite way, I am sure that he will find a very good way round that with his brief and, perhaps, one or two comments of his own.

We all travel now during the holidays, I think, although I do not travel far; I usually go to France. I confess that I am rather a Francophile. It is quite noticeable in France, and in other European countries, that they are markedly cleaner than we are in terms of what we are discussing today. Normandy, for example, which I particularly like, and where I go to wander round the countryside and go to the seaside and the races in the short time that I spend there, is a very enjoyable experience. Of course, the French know that this is an important issue because France relies on tourism, albeit that is a decreasing contributor to its economy. According to the old American economic mantra, every dollar that is spent by people coming to an area becomes $7 through the economic activity generated in that area. I think there is an element of truth in that. I know that we do not like learning from the French but it is a question of political will and priorities and of trying to make life more agreeable so that people become less depressed and more hopeful.

It is no good the Government coming out with meaningless slogans such as “the big society”. That is wrong in every respect. Things in Britain which are big are usually a problem. Someone should tell the Mayor of London that. People are now calling London Dubai-on-Thames—I did not make that up—because of the plans to build skyscrapers and the like here which will dwarf our wonderful domestic architecture.

The most cheerful thing this week for me was listening to a debate on television on the butchery of the Buckinghamshire countryside to create a fast rail link which will cut 15 minutes off the journey to Birmingham in the hope that that will lead to an increase in economic activity to the north of that fine city. However, it has now been discovered that the estimated cost of that project, which will be completed long after we are all dead, certainly after my death, is complete nonsense. We should get away from big projects and stop talking about the big society. As regards the slogan, “We are all in this together”, we are not all in this together. How can we be when you have the kind of bankers’ bonuses that are being paid, people in the public sector being rewarded for failure and the BBC in the vanguard of people throwing money about hither and thither, and yet, at the other end of the scale, some people hardly have enough money in their pockets to feed themselves and their children? We are not all in this together.

I see a friend of mine in the House who I sensed was becoming rather a Francophobe. I suggested that he might go to Normandy for a holiday. He did so and was so taken with it that he bought a house there. He thinks that it is a beautiful place and has told me, “It is absolutely marvellous. They take the rubbish away six days a week”. There is a different picture in different countries and we do not look good in comparison. We should not dance to the tune of the Government’s advertising slogans but get back to local government and listen to the comments of people such as the right reverend Prelate who spoke yesterday. I thank the noble Lord for introducing the Bill. I hope that it makes progress but I would not like to bet on it becoming law. I thank him for letting me hang my remarks on it.