HC Deb 16 May 1978 vol 950 cc429-40

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Tinn.]

12.25 a.m.

Mr. Michael Neubert (Romford)

Well over 10 million people now come to visit the British Isles each year, many of them to London. About 10 million people live in London, many of them working, as we do, in Westminster. At the centre of our capital city we are surrounded by a wealth of historic buildings and Royal parks, rightly renowned world-wide. Yet all too often the state of our streets is a disgrace. It used to be said that the streets of London were paved with gold. Too often these days too many of the streets of London are paved with plastic bags, empty Coke cans and cigarette packets.

As a Londoner, with some interest in travel and tourism, especially I regret the adverse impression that this must leave with many visitors to our city. There is one feature to which I particularly object and that is the new established practice of leaving refuse on public pavements and private forecourts for long periods for later collection. This has the effect of detracting very much from the London street scene. Unless it is vigorously resisted and arrested, the appearance of London can only get worse.

It is not only the fact that we have litter in our streets that causes me concern. That is a more evident problem. At least the strewing of litter is usually thoughtless and inconsiderate, whereas the practice of dumping rubbish on our streets in plastic bags and cardboard boxes is deliberate and becoming more widespread. This process must not be allowed to continue. If it does, the contrast between our noble buildings and our slovenly streets will widen, and the disparity between taxpayers' money spent on restoring the fabric of our buildings and ratepayers' money spent on the cleansing of our streets will sharpen. The amenities of living in London will be severely damaged.

For all these reasons, I seek to raise this issue tonight, in the hope that the process can not only be arrested but reversed. Unfortunately, even this apparently simple point, which I take the opportunity to put to the Minister, is not really as simple and straightforward as it might seem. There are many complex factors involved and it is not possible within the scope of this short debate to include all of them.

What are the main reasons for this state of affairs? There are three major difficulties facing anyone attempting to maintain high standards of cleanliness in London's streets: the nature of our historic buildings, the inadequacy of access to older property, and the traffic congestion which inhibits and slows down refuse rounds. These factors in themselves are not peculiar to London.

There seem to be three other factors which are particularly pertinent to this problem. The first derives from the origins of this practice, namely, the lowering of standards which took place in the 1969 "dirty jobs" strike, which is an illustration of how a strike can do damage that lives on long after the dispute is settled. The outward effects of this dispute were most unfortunate. It led people at that time, of necessity, to deposit their rubbish on the streets. They saw, day after day, rubbish and rotting refuse at their doorstep. They thought nothing of it. It became almost acceptable. Ever since that precedent was established there has not been the same resistance to such a state of affairs which there would otherwise have been and which existed before. In the past nine years or so this trend has been increasing.

We have then to consider the inadequacy of the present law. Many of these matters are still governed by the provisions of the Public Health Act 1936. It is not surprising that, 42 years later, those provisions are not meeting modern needs. Circumstances have radically changed in so many evident ways and the regulations under that legislation are no longer satisfactory to deal with the problem.

Let me give one example. "Waste" is defined as being in two categories—either domestic or trade. Hotels and restaurants are not apparently committed to the latter category, and they often enjoy a free service, whereas the demands made on that service by hotels and restaurants are by their nature exceptional and heavy. In the centre of London where we live and work that consideration is especially the case. There is a need to update the legislation, and I shall return to that matter later.

There is a third thread which is important. In such a service as refuse collection, which is labour intensive, the attitudes of the men working that service will be critical. This will require a constructive and co-operative approach to the problem by trade unionists, members and leaders alike, if the problems, are to be solved, particularly in central London.

I wish to draw the Minister's attention to the implications of the Health and Safety at Work, Etc. Act. I know that that legislation is not his responsibility, but I think he will agree that he will need to take those provisions into account. The provisions of that Act, if fully carried through, could prove calamitous to refuse collecting services in central London.

The principles of the legislation are unexceptionable, namely, the wish to ensure healthy and safe conditions for men and women at work. But the detailed provisions of the Act, if carried to the extreme, will prove highly costly and counter-productive in many respects in the service that is being undertaken. It is clear, for example, that any one of a number of objections could be made on present practice to dangerous steps to basements or to high rise buildings, defective back alleyways, low ceilings, inadequate lighting, ice and frost on stairs, rotting refuse, rodents, and broken handrails. Any one of those reasons could be taken by an eager beaver union representative, eager to make his mark, as an objection to carrying out the collection. If carried to extremes, it is clear that the practice of kerbside collections, so far from diminishing, will increase. Therefore, we have all these factors in the background.

What needs to be done? First, a higher priority must be accorded to this Cinderella service. Attitudes to refuse collection have always been gently derisory, and probably always will be, but the service is the very essence of our standard of living. Amenities play a very important part in that standard of living. Living standards depend not just on the size of the cigar or on the cubic capacity of the next new car, or even on holidays in Spain. Standards of living depend on humdrum, everyday events which all too often we take for granted. I refer to the twice-daily delivery of post, the daily delivery of a pint of milk, and, of course, the regular cleansing of our streets and the collection of refuse.

Greater priority must ge given within local council budgets to this service. I pay tribute to the work that has been done in the face of enormous difficulties by the directors of cleansing in the three central London authorities which I have consulted. I refer to the City of Westminster, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and the City Corporation. Nothing in my remarks should be taken to disparage the work they are doing or the policy of their authorities.

But it is clear from figures given to me of expenditure on the service in the past four years that, although expenditure has increased substantially in cash terms, in real terms it has shown a cut-back. Although some of that may be due to special circumstances, or even perhaps to greater efficiency and achieving the same amount of work at smaller cost, I suspect that in a period of economic restraint inevitably this service has suffered, and it is all too easy for it to suffer.

I should like to see a recording of priorities not only by the councils themselves but by the Department, too. I make the point to the Minister that, as local government nowadays is so much Government-directed, he, too, might play some part in reordering priorities in this matter. Although humdrum, commonplace, everyday and taken for granted, this service is vital to the well being of our community, and especially in central London.

Second, and specifically, I draw attention to the fact that, four years after the passing of the Control of Pollution Act 1974, there remain outstanding provisions in Part I still to be implemented. It is regrettable that after this lapse of time they should remain unimplemented. The Act itself was a successor to the Protection of the Environment Bill introduced by the last Conservative Government, which fell at the time of the General Election early in 1974, and it is now time to consider early implementation of its outstanding provisions.

Those provisions would allow powers to councils to ensure that there were adequate facilities for the storage of refuse and its eventual disposal and that there were adequate facilities for the disposal of waste. In addition, the councils could levy charges, in particular on hotels and restaurants, which are the principal, though not the only, offenders.

Here is an example of how the present system works to the disadvantage of London. There is a small hotel in South Kensington which enjoys twice-weekly free service from the Royal borough, and it does so by means of an accumulation of bags of refuse which, during the course of the week, can total 500. There is a considerable amount of refuse, and there can be 250 bags at any given time, stacked neatly on the hotel's own ground but none the less an eyesore to those who pass down that side street on their way to the hotel or going about their business or pleasure in London.

If a charge were levied, it could provide revenue for a self-financing scheme, or the potential ability to apply a charge could be used as a deterrent to encourage such hotels and commercial entrprises to invest in compaction equipment which could reduce the volume of such rubbish by a ratio of four to one, thereby making better use of their own space and also removing some of the worst eyesores when rubbish overflows on to forecourts and pavements. In that way, a great deal could be done.

I call on the Minister tonight to bring about early implementation of those provisions. Although he is not directly responsible for the service, he has a vital role to play because only he can bring in the full implementation of Part I of the Act, and only he can effectively co-ordinate a campaign to improve the appearance of London. He must show a determination not to tolerate a lowering of standards in our capital city. I hope that he will take that opportunity tonight.

12.38 a.m.

The Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. Kenneth Marks)

I am sure that the House will allow me to start my speech tonight by taking the opportunity to pay tribute to my friend and colleague, the Member of Parliament for Manchester, Moss Side, Frank Hatton, whose death this morning was reported by Mr. Speaker at the start of today's business.

This debate is about just one of the many problems of people who live in our great cities. Many of Frank Hatton's constituents in Manchester faced a whole host of such problems. For many years he represented them on the Manchester City Council, and since 1973 in the House of Commons. The pages of Hansard, the minutes of meetings in various Ministries and innumerable letters and interviews record the constancy of his efforts on their behalf.

Despite illness and pain over a long period, Frank Hatton would have been here to put his constituents' case. They and the city of Manchester owe him a great deal. Manchester's high reputation in education owes much to his leadership. He was chairman of the education committee for several years, and a national figure in education. In the many discussions I had with him, as one of the teachers' representatives, I know that he was patient and understanding, yet decisive when the need arose.

On Thursday, boys from Frank Hatton's old school—the Manchester Central High School for Boys—will be visiting Parliament, and he had planned to meet them. His life, devoted to working for the benefit of others, is, I think, an example to all of them and I am sure that I speak not only for those who represent Manchester but for the whole House when I express sympathy for his wife. She has been his constant companion both in London and in Manchester, bearing a great share of his work, for a long period of worry and sadness; and our thoughts are with her.

I am grateful to the hon. Member for Romford (Mr. Neubert) for raising this subject. Much of the litter in our streets comes from members of the public—people who throw away sweet papers or cigarette cartons, beverage cans, and so on. But a big part—perhaps even the greater part—undoubtedly comes from dirty work practices. One of the worst of these is the very unpleasant habit of many shops and restaurants—and, indeed, offices and work shops—of piling up rubbish without any kind of container, and leaving it to blow about until whatever remains is collected.

Clearly, there are some real physical problems here. The smaller shops and work places in central London are frequently in old property virtually backing on to the shops or houses in the next street. They may have no room at all to store their refuse, or even where they have it may be quite impossible for the refuse collectors to get at it after the staff have gone home. The refuse can be collected only outside ordinary working hours because it is only then that the collection vehicles can get through. So there really is no alternative to refuse being left on the pavement in some cases.

But if refuse has to be piled up outside these places, it emphatically does not have to be piled up without a container. I am glad that the hon. Member is so clearly with me in believing that to put it out like this is irresponsible and anti-social. Once we can bring Section 13 of the Control of Pollution Act into force it can also become illegal. That section will give local authorities powers to require the waste to be put into a container wherever it is likely to cause a nusiance or be detrimental to the amenities of the locality. In other words, the authorities will be able to act on their own—without having to go to the courts for an enforcement order as they must under the nuisance provisions of the Public Health Acts—and they will be able to act before the event and not only after it. This will be a very big step forward.

We have been discussing implementation of this provision with the local authority associations. The section is linked with another section which places a formal duty on local authorities—as opposed to their present power—to collect trade waste wherever they are asked to do so. That is likely to involve some capital expenditure. There is also a need for some preliminary work on regulations. But we are anxious to implement the whole of Sections 12 to 14 of the Act as soon as we can, and the local authority associations are keen for us to do so, too, provided, of course, that the necessary provisions can be made in the rate support grant settlement. I am glad to be able to tell the hon. Member that we had a meeting with the local authority associations this morning, and as a result we hope to implement subsections (5) and (6) of Section 13 in two months' time.

There is one point that I want to stress. The new powers we are talking about will be effective only if they are enforced. That job will inevitably fall to the local authorities. But it is, of course, exactly this kind of effort on which the axe is swung first whenever expenditure or staff is cut back. Indeed, this is exactly what has caused the implementation of Section 13 to be delayed for so long. So if we is cut back. Indeed, this is exactly what hon. Member is seeking—and I fully share his enthusiasm for it—we shall have to pay for it. We cannot get it free. Getting rid of pollution, whatever form it takes, costs money and means public expenditure.

I make this point partly because it seems to me important in itself, but partly also in fairness to the local authorities concerned. It is very easy to criticise them for not doing more. But even when they have the powers they will not be able to do it without the resources.

I should like to look at the problems to which the hon. Member has drawn attention in a context rather wider than that of implementing Section 13 of the Act. I think that the hon. Member has performed such a useful service in raising this subject tonight because he has put his finger on a particular source of litter, which calls for a particular approach, and has allowed us to see it as such.

There are of course other sources of litter which call for a similar homing-in on a specific target: the mess which can be caused by street trading, again essentially an enforcement task for local authorities, in London under the London County Council (General Powers) Act; the activities of advertising agents who indiscriminately hand out advertising leaflets in our main tourist areas; and, I fear, some of the methods of collecting refuse, which seem designed to create litter rather than to remove it. I hope that as we become more systematic in our approach to litter we may be readier to identify special problems of this kind, to consider just what are the best ways of dealing with each, and perhaps whether we have all the powers we need to do so.

I mentioned earlier that we have already discussed the implementation of Section 13 of the Act with the local authority associations. We are also discussing with them the implementation of Section 24 of the Act, which requires counties, in co-operation with their districts and with interested environmental organisations, to draw up litter plans. I hope that these plans will lead the authorities to look very closely at those parts of the litter problem which derive from the practices the hon. Gentleman mentioned, as well as the litter-dropping habits of the general public, and to consider how best they can act directly on the sources responsible for them.

I recently helped to launch the litter plan in rural Northumberland. The people there had not waited for the implementation of the Act but had gone ahead and, with the co-operation of the Keep Britain Tidy Group, had examined the various causes of litter in their area and produced a plan to cope with it. I hope that in the near future all the county councils will be doing the same.

We also hope that some of the projects which are being carried through under our inner cities programme can include action to deal with litter. Litter is certainly not confined to the inner cities, but it is probably at its very worst in the city centres. It is of course for the local authorities concerned to decide what can be done best. I know that one at least has asked the Keep Britain Tidy Group to co-operate with it in a special campaign, and I hope that others may follow its example.

Behind all this will be the general educational work to change public attitudes to litter. We are greatly indebted for the work which has been done by the Keep Britain Tidy Group, the local authorities and various organisations. It may be that in future it will have to aim not only at dissuading people from dropping litter themselves but at making them less tolerant—as the hon. Gentleman rightly is not tolerant—of litter created in the ways we have been talking about tonight.

People who keep their houses clean and tidy are entitled to demand that there should not be squalor in the streets around them. The combination of litter, graffiti, vandalism and neglect, whether it is caused by individuals, shops and stalls, or works and offices, is an insult to them, and we shall seek to eradicate it.

I am grateful for the hon. Gentleman's contribution tonight. I have taken note particularly of his comments on the Health and Safety at Work, etc. Act, and shall consult my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Employment to consider what the hon. Gentleman has said.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twelve minutes to One o'clock.