Litter and Fouling of Land by Dogs (Hansard, 14 January 2003)

§ Mr. Bob Blizzard (Waveney)

I beg to move, That leave be given to bring in a Bill to make further provision relating to litter and the fouling of land by dogs and to allow a local authority to retain the revenue from fixed penalty notices for such offences issued in its area for the purposes of enforcement Aficionados of ten-minute Bills may feel a sense of deja vu today, as they will remember that I introduced the same Bill in Nov 2001 in the previous Session of Parliament. Unfortunately, it met the fate of most such Bills. Those who take a special interest in seriously late Adjournment debates may remember a debate that I initiated at 5 o'clock in the morning in May 1999, when I first put forward the essential idea behind the Bill that I have introduced today—how we can enforce our litter and dog fouling laws, giving councils the means to do so by making the polluter pay.

Although 1999 may seem a long time ago, a good idea is worth pursuing. If at first we do not succeed, it is worth the long march when the prize is a road to march on that is free of litter and where we do not have to watch our step, if I can put it that way. However, it is now clear that we are close to success. I will not repeat all the arguments today, save to emphasise that litter, including dog fouling, is pollution. It is the most common and widespread form of pollution, perhaps so common that people often do not think of it as pollution. The cause is very simple—people drop it or permit their dogs to drop it through laziness, thoughtlessness, carelessness or plain loutishness. Visually, it spoils both the natural and the built environment. Litter is also a health risk; dog faeces even more so.

Litter pollution has a simple solution. It does not take an earth summit, an EU directive, complex technology, a climate change levy or even congestion charging to tackle it—just do not drop it. That is already recognised in law, as it is illegal to drop litter and dog dirt, but the statute book itself is littered with legislation that either is not used or is ineffectual. The Environmental Protection Act 1990 placed statutory duties on councils and introduced fixed penalty fines, which were doubled to £50 last year by the Government. The Dogs (Fouling of Land) Act 1996 put dog fouling on the same basis as litter. Yet as we know only too well, our streets and open spaces are nowhere near clean because the law is simply not being enforced. There are only a few hundred prosecutions a year in magistrates courts. Fewer than 3,000 fixed penalty notices for litter and fewer than 2,000 for dog fouling are handed out annually in the whole country. In my county of Suffolk, for instance, there seems to be only five or six convictions a year, and in my own district of Waveney I can find no recent record of prosecution or fixed penalties for litter, with just one recorded fixed penalty for dog fouling since the Act came into force.

Instead, the culture in this country is that people drop litter, we wade around in it, pay enormous amounts of money—£450 million a year—in taxes to clear it up, then moan that councils do not get it all cleared up properly. By any standard, that is a waste of money and human effort. We must make the polluter—the litter lout—pay, but councils must have the means to enforce 554 that. About 50 councils out of 450 employ any litter wardens at all, and they only employ two or three people each. Most councils have only one or two dog wardens—it looks like some kind of "Dad's Army" is trying to tackle the 1,000 tonnes of dog faeces dropped daily by Britain's 5.4 million dog-owning households.

As the law stands, all revenue from fixed penalty fines has to be returned to central Government. That sum currently amounts to just £70,000 a year, which is a measure of how little enforcement is going on. The essential measure in my Bill requiring councils to keep fines would incentivise them, as it would require them to enforce the law of the land and give them the means to do so. I put that idea to the Prime Minister at Prime Minister's questions last March, and he gave his support to the principle. Since then, the proposal has been piloted in 13 local authorities under public service agreements. My office conducted a survey to find out what has happened. There have been some real successes, particularly in Newcastle, where the number of fixed penalty notices increased from none in 2001 to 309 to the beginning of December 2002. Similarly, in Wigan the number has increased from none to 221.

These are still early days, but it is clear that where the local authority has the will, the system works. Newcastle publishes the names of people issued with fixed penalty notices in the local newspaper, which adds to the effectiveness of the new system. So why not change the law and roll out the new approach to litter across the whole country? I was delighted to see clause 116 tucked in at the end of the Local Government Bill, which was given a Second Reading in the House last Tuesday, as it includes the essence of my Bill. Presumably, we can look forward to the provision becoming law. However, there are two reasons why my Bill should still be reintroduced. Clause 116 of the Local Government Bill leaves the retention of fixed penalty fines to councils' discretion—it does not require them to do so. As the explanatory notes to the Bill make clear, the revenue from fines does not have to be spent exclusively on enforcement of litter and dog-fouling laws. They state that the new regulation making power will be sufficiently wide to give an authority complete freedom as to how it spends its receipts". I want to make two key points. First, I mentioned my survey of pilot authorities, and cited the successes. But there is another side to the story. Some pilot councils had done nothing, and some had made only a feeble attempt, even though they had volunteered for the scheme and had signed up to public service agreements. There is a lesson to be learned—unless councils are required to operate in the new way, we will not make the progress that we should in bearing down on litter louts and dog foulers. We have had enough postcode lotteries with NHS prescriptions and the like—we do not want postcode litter enforcement.

Secondly, the new revenue stream must be spent on enforcement, because it works. The money from the fines should certainly not be spent on services unrelated to litter, but even in the services that deal with it we must focus sharply on enforcement of the laws and not dodge the issue. We have had anti-litter campaigns for years—they do not work. As someone who was a teacher for 25 years, I can say that when it comes to litter, education does not work. Some of the most littered places I have seen are school playgrounds. Sadly, 555 although many young people are concerned about holes in the ozone layer and saving whales, they drop litter like confetti.

Then there is the old "no bin" excuse—"I had to drop it because there was no bin." But there is always one's own pocket or a bag. There are more bins in this country than ever before, but litter is still on the streets. I do not want money from fines to be spent on education campaigns and bins—I want it to be spent on enforcement, otherwise we will not change the culture that I described of dropping litter, then paying to have it cleared up. What will change the culture more than anything else, as with other crime, is people knowing that they are likely to get caught. The more litter wardens we have, the greater that chance.

The public want this measure. We all know from our doorstep work and our surgeries that people are concerned about such issues. When I introduced my previous Bill, Meridian Television carried out a telephone poll and received its biggest response ever, with 97 per cent. in favour of the proposal. It fits in with the Government's agenda, set out in the Queen's Speech, of tackling antisocial behaviour and improving the quality of everyday life in local communities. I hope that my Bill can play its part in that agenda and encourage the Government further to develop in Committee the essential provision in their Local Government Bill. I can tell the House that the Minister for Rural Affairs, my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael), has already offered me a meeting—outcomes will be important.

The prize is great—cleaner streets, parks and open spaces, and a cleaner countryside—and making the polluter pay costs the Government and the taxpayer nothing.