LITTER BILL (Hansard, 30 June 1958)

§ LORD TWEEDSMUIR
My Lords, I beg to move that this Bill be read a third time. I shall not adduce any further arguments to add to those so powerfully adduced by my noble friend Lord Waldegrave, but I will avail myself of the opportunity of congratulating him on behalf of his many friends, both inside and outside this House, on his promotion to the Government and also, if I may say so, on a totally remarkable Parliamentary feat of submitting a measure for the approval of your Lordships and the Government and piloting it through nearly all its stages, and now confronting your Lordships at the Dispatch Box to give it Government approval.

VISCOUNT ELIBANK
My Lords, may I intervene for a few moments? As one who had the good fortune when in the House of Commons to pilot three Private Member's Bills through Parliament, the Worn-Out Horses Exportation Bill, the Plumage Bill and the Coursing of Rabbits and Hares in Enclosed Spaces Bill, I know somewhat intimately the difficulties of passing a Private Member's 384 Bill through the Legislature. It is therefore with all the greater warmth that I should like to congratulate to-day Mr. Rupert Speir and his associates in the House of Commons, and the noble Earl, Lord Waldegrave, for the success with which they have passed this Bill through its present stages up to Third Reading, which in effect means its passage into law. I earnestly hope that when the Bill becomes law it will be enforced rigorously and vigorously in order that we may get rid for all time of these abominable litter-mongers who have defaced the fair land of Britain for so many years.
There is one more thing I should like to say. A few years ago, the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, piloted through this House the Protection of Wild Birds Bill which had been initiated and admirably piloted through the House of Commons by his noble relative Lady Tweedsmuir. That Bill, though it did not contain the all-time protection for the kingfisher for which I pressed so vigorously, has been a most successful Act. I earnestly hope that this Bill, to which the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, has asked the House to give a Third Reading to-day, will be equally successful.

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY of AGRICULTURE, FISHERIES AND FOOD (EARL WALDEGRAVE)
My Lords, I am delighted that the House has welcomed this little Bill. I do not think it merits a normal Third Reading speech, but I should like to assure noble Lords who intervened on Committee stage out of, I will not say an excess of zeal, but out of great zeal, and who were concerned that no stone should be left unturned or avenue unexplored, or whatever the correct phrase is, to see that no one was left out and that it was going to be possible for anybody to prosecute who found litter being deposited, that the best advice we have been able to obtain is that it would be quite unnecessary to add any words, and that everybody is covered.
The only other thing I should like to say is that I never dreamt for a moment that we were going to have this position—I will not call it this back to front process —and that I was going to have two rôles in the passage of this Bill, as the noble Lord, Lord Tweedsmuir, said. I should like to mention that the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, raised a point in Committee 385 which I did not answer. He was, of course, perfectly right: that if someone deposited a bedstead—I think it was that which was worrying him—in a pond from the highway he would be caught by this Bill, but if the person managed to crawl through the fence with the bedstead and go on to private land before depositing it in the pond he would not be caught by this Bill. I am advised that he would be caught by plenty of other legislation, and, therefore, I think the noble Lord's point is met.