HL Deb 26 November 1964 vol 261 cc968-78

4.57 p.m.

LORD HAWKE rose to ask Her Majesty's Government what recent developments there have been in dealing with the problem of the dumping of old motor cars and other major items of litter. The noble Lord said: My Lords, on January 23 last I asked in your Lordships' House an Unstarred Question: Whether Her Majesty's Government are aware that an increasing quantity of unwanted bedding, furniture, motor cars, et cetera, is being dumped on the verges of country roads near large towns …? In the course of asking that Question I made a speech of twenty minutes, which on re-reading it I think is a very beautiful speech; I could repeat it word for word to your Lordships probably without being "spotted", but I do not propose to do that.

My theme, of course, was not the stuff that is collected on the ordinary round of the dustman; I was concerned with the exceptional items. The burden of my speech was that until it is as cheap and convenient to get the stuff collected by some official channel as it is to dump it in the countryside it will continue to be dumped in the countryside, because the law is unenforceable. My noble friend Lord Hastings, then Parliamentary Secretary, made a very informative and thorough reply, and the burden of his reply was to the effect that powers exist but they are variedly exercised. The position to-day is more or less the same as it was in January last.

There is more publicity of the matter, I think. I received with my last rating demand a printed slip which I do not think I have received before, telling me how to get rid of this stuff; I have never noticed it before. When I last inspected my neighbour's gulley which I mentioned in my speech, it contained two armchairs. There are no armchairs there to-day. And certain parts of the country have been cleared by private enterprise, by Scouts and otherwise. But the dumping goes on. My noble friend said that in May, 1963, a Working Party was appointed on refuse collection To examine the facts of refuse collection; to what extent it is unsatisfactory what the difficulties are, and which methods are proving most successful and to consider what advice can be given to local authorities on how to obtain the best results.

The main object of my démarche this evening is to find out if the Working Party has reported, and what they have reported.

My noble friend said that the problem of the unwanted motor car is a rather separate one from the rest of the trouble. Obviously he is right in that. To-day we are dealing principally with motor cars of pre-war and immediate post-war vintage. The pre-war ones are getting scarcer and scarcer, and of the post-war vintage the number put on to the home market was small. But in ten years' time there is going to be a tremendous flood of these things to dispose of. My noble friend said there were various systems, some of which he outlined, and some cost money. He mentioned £5 or so to the owner. But when one considers who are the owners, one realises that £5 should not be treated in a light-hearted manner. On the whole, they are the impecunious and rather irresponsible youth or the poorer working man, neither of whom is going to pay £5 to dispose of his old motor car if he can lease it in some place on a dark night and get away with it.

I submit that we shall get nowhere until we get an official system for collecting these things—something in the nature of an official dump to which the vehicle can be pushed, towed or driven, there to find its last resting place without payment to anybody. Those of your Lordships who had the pleasure of seeing a film called Goldfinger will remember that at one stage in that exciting epic a car, complete with occupant, was being put into a machine. It was a big Ameri- can car and it was turned into a little square of metal, about 18 ins. cube. Such machines do exist. I cannot recollect whether this machine was mobile or not. It probably could be made mobile. But, clearly, a machine of that nature is required to tour these dumps and to squash these poor, unwanted motor cars—but without the owners.

I am not going to make a long speech. I merely say that the country dwellers are much exercised over the whole problem, which is increasing. As prosperity increases in the country, so people want to get rid of out-of-date and old-fashioned furniture, bedding and all sorts of things; and unless an official arrangement exists whereby they can get rid of these things without cost to themselves and without undue bother, they will continue to go out on a dark night and "plonk" them in the country. I therefore look forward to the Government reply as to the conclusions of the Working Party, because I feel that a Working Party set up in May, 1963, should have concluded something by now.

5.3 p.m.

LORD MANCROFT

My Lords, I think we are all most grateful to my noble friend Lord Hawke for once again raising this sordid subject. Like him, I, too, have made many beautiful speeches on this subject to your Lordships. I hope—and I am certain your Lordships share my hope—that I shall not have to make many beautiful speeches on the subject in the future. The noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, who is to reply, is, I think, new to this subject. We look to him for a progress report.

May I, from my own point of view, give him a progress report of what has happened to me since I first raised this subject four years ago? The only point I ventured to raise, although a specific one, I think is illustrative of the whole problem. My trouble occurred clown the M.4 on the Cromwell Road Extension just before you get to St. Paul's School. I raised this matter in my capacity as President of the London Tourist Board, because we had received many complaints about what was left beside that road—that road being, of course, the principal artery out of London, the artery which runs down to London Airport and which is seen, both coming and going, by most of the tourists reaching this capital city.

At the time I raised this matter there were lying in that particular piece of the road a motor-bike, an old cistern and two armchairs. When I raised the matter I was told, in rather soothing terms, that I should soon see a change. That, I think, is true; I have seen a change. The last time I looked, which was admittedly four weeks ago, the motor-bike, the cistern and the two armchairs had gone; but their place had been taken by a bedstead, two fire extinguishers and a hip bath. This was not what I had in mind when I raised the matter in your Lordships' House four years ago.

This road is now becoming even more important. Yesterday we opened the first stretch of the flyover continuing from the Chiswick Flyover. Within a short time it produced the most monumental traffic jam that London has seen for many years. I had always been under the impression that an underpass was usually the shortest distance between two bottlenecks; but I have now come to the conclusion that a flyover closely rivals it. This road is one of the most important in the country, and the view from it has become an outrage. I therefore raised the matter four years ago, hoping to get some clear-up in this respect. I made the normal fuss. I am not an expert in the disposal of hardware, and I do not know whether the change has been for the better or not.

This road is on the periphery of London. My noble friend referred primarily to problems in the country, but the problems are the same whether they be in the country, on the periphery, or, indeed, far worse, in the centre of the Metropolis. I do not know whether many noble Lords know George Street, which is an important street, even apart from the fact that I live at the end of it; but it runs between Baker Street and Edgware Road. There is at this moment—or there was three hours ago—a disused red Humber motor car parked outside the old Methodist church in George Street, and there it has been, to my certain knowledge, for six weeks. I believe all your Lordships could produce another example of your own of a car parked right in the centre of London for a considerable time.

I mentioned just now that I live at the end of George Street; I live actually in Montagu Square. Some little while ago the Metropolitan Police saw fit to move my car from outside my house—the house in which I was born and have lived the whole of my life. They towed it away to the pound in the Marylebone Road, from which I eventually redeemed it for a fee of forty "bob." I was a little upset about this. The Commissioner of Police wrote to me a very nice letter indeed, one much nicer than I deserved because of the rather "niggly" way in which I approached him. I said that his policemen might have informed me that they were going to take it away, especially in view of the fact that I was in my house at the time and the neighbours had told them to whom the car belonged. But undoubtedly I was in the wrong. I was committing an offence and, if I do it again, undoubtedly my car will be towed away again. What I am frightened of is that people may get wind of this trend and, instead of parking their disused Humber motor cars outside the Methodist church in George Street, they will decide to leave them outside my house in Montagu Square, and the police will tow them away. This is not the solution I am advocating to the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison to-day.

It illustrates the real difficulty which faces us. The trouble is that this is everybody's problem but it is nobody's business. When we had the trouble in Cromwell Road the noble Lord, Lord Chesham, who replied for the Government at the time, made inquiries. It was clear to me afterwards that several people were involved: the Ministry of Transport, which had built the road; the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, as it then was, which was the planning authority; the L.C.C.; and the local authority itself—all of them and none of them. The buck was passed gently round, and that is the trouble.

The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, referred to the country problem. We all remember the picture that appeared in The Times showing old cars parked in a beautiful Kentish orchard. They had not been put there by the inhabitants of that village but by outsiders. It is not fair to expect the inhabitants of small country towns and villages to pay for the removal of derelict cars put there by strangers. In other words, the buck is once more passed round. This is a national problem. Just as the disposal of our refuse from dustbins is carried out on well understood grounds, so the disposal of these heavy pieces of junk should become a national matter and be dealt with on a national basis. It is no good passing laws and by-laws which nobody is going to respect, because one can never discover anybody dumping their cars on one's doorstep and waiting for the police tow them away.

What I hone the noble Lord, Lord Mitchison, will be able to tell us is that this problem will be accepted as a national problem and dealt with as such so that the man who has an old car, an old cistern, a hip bath and two armchairs to dispose of should not be regarded as a criminal, but as a man who is asking for a service which the country as a whole must now provide. Other countries do it. I do not know how Bond and "Goldfinger" disposed of their particular problem, but I believe that South Africa and the United States solve this problem by the compression of this junk and by towing it out to sea and dumping it. It is not a very complicated and expensive business so long as it is realised that it is somebody's job to do it, and not for the local authority to pass it to the Minister, to pass it to the police, and to pass it back to 48, Montagu Square.

The Government have quite wrongly, in my opinion, tried to get over many of their difficulties in the past few weeks by saying that such-and-such was a mess which they had inherited. This genuinely is a mess which the Government have inherited and the sooner they disinherit themselves the happier I shall be.

5.14 p.m.

LORD FORBES

My Lords, before the noble Lord replies, may I say one thing? I should very much like to support the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, in what he said about this being a national problem. The noble Lord, Lord Hawke, referred mainly to the urban areas, and the noble Lord, Lord Mancroft, referred to the city but I can assure your Lordships that this is a matter which affects the North of Scotland just as much as anywhere else. There are old cars dumped on the moors in Scotland, as there are elsewhere. One thing I have never quite understood is which Department is supposed to deal with litter. At one time the Ministry of Agriculture had something to do with litter. Whether they have passed it on as rubbish to the new Ministry of Land and Natural Resources, I do not quite know. It would be interesting to hear the answer.

5.16 p.m.

THE JOINT PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY, MINISTRY OF LAND AND NATURAL RESOURCES (LORD MITCHISON)

My Lords, I am sure that we are all much indebted, not only to the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, for introducing this subject, which is, of course, a very serious one, but also to the two noble Lords who have followed him. I listened with enthralled interest to the story of the passage of the two perfectly good armchairs which were first sighted at the bottom of the gulley in Lord Hawke's residence and were next discovered at the side of the Cromwell Road, from which place they vanished. This is really, of course, not only a serious matter but one which is going to need increasing attention for with more cars coming on to the roads, the disposal of defunct cars becomes more and more difficult and more and more essential.

I have been looking at the history of the matter. I would assure the noble Lord, Lord Hawke, that I read the whole of his speech. It lasted not for 20 minutes but for 29. It was excellent all through, even at the beginning and at the end. He did on a subsequent occasion receive an Answer: it was as late as May 13 this year. He told us the question he asked, but he omitted to tell us that the answer he was given about the Working Party was [OFFICIAL REPORT, Vol. 258 (No. 75), col. 231]: I do not yet know", the noble Lord, Lord Hastings, said, when the Working Party expect to report, but in view of the ground they have to cover they are not likely to complete their task before next year. Though no doubt there has been some improvement in government since then, we have not been able to improve on the date of the Report of the Working Party. which has not yet completed its investigations. It had rather sweeping terms of reference and, indeed, this question is fairly sweeping, because it covered the disposal of major litter, refuse, whatever you like to call it, as well as the motor cars. It included, in fact, the armchairs.

LORD HOBSON

And the hip bath.

LORD MITCHISON

It has been quite active and the state of affairs at present is this. In July of this year, after the Working Party had held a considerable number of meetings, a draft circular was sent round by the Ministry of Housing to local authorities to ask for their comments. It was also sent to other people who are concerned in this problem—that is to say, the firms whose business it is to deal with scrap of this kind. They are organised and have associations, and so on. Their comments were considered and the draft was revised, and on the 22nd of last month the circular went out again, I hope in a final form. I quite understand the feeling that I think all of us have, that this kind of problem ought to be dealt with as quickly as possible, but one must look at the realities of the matter.

It is perfectly true that technically a number of Ministries and authorities can be found to be concerned one way and another. There are, after all, a number of fields in which that happens nowadays, and it looks as though it cannot be avoided. But one has to see who are the people who are in a position to take effective action; and, while welcoming the conversion of noble Lords opposite to this form of somewhat centralised Socialism, which would treat it as a national matter and therefore a matter to be dealt with by the central Government, I am not quite sure that in this case I agree with them. It seems to me that this is one of those occasions where one must have a partnership between the local authorities and the central Government, and that in a matter of this sort it must be up to the local authorities to take effective action. This really is a case for people on the spot, and the authorities concerned are, of course, the borough councils, or corresponding authorities in the metropolis, and in the country the district councils—not the county councils, as I understand it.

LORD HAWKE

My Lords, may I amplify one point there? Could the noble Lord say something about the principle of financial responsibility? Admittedly, the man on the spot has to do the clearing up, except possibly with the motor car. But why should the poor rural people have to pay for the urban junk? That is the crux of the matter.

LORD MITCHISON

My Lords, one always get into this kind of difficulty, but I think the only way out of it is to reflect upon who can, in fact, do the job. The people who can do the job are, in the country, the smaller authorities. Of course it is in the nature of motor cars that they go about from one place to another, and when they are "dead" they may be dumped in a place which has had no previous connection with them. I appreciate that.

But surely the whole essence of the matter is that the local authority concerned should not be too large an authority, and it should be the authority in the place where the mischief has actually arisen—the dumped car, the dumped armchair or whatever it is. Therefore, although one can go into the legislation and talk about it, it seems to me that the substantial point is that this job has got to be done by the local authorities. They must have general directions from the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, the Ministry principally concerned in this, as at the end of the day it is their business.

Actually, there is not much money involved, one way or another. The scrap dealers who get the stuff sometimes want to be paid for taking it away, and they sometimes can make something out of it—it depends what it is. I was rather scared of the suggestion that not only the "dead" motor car itself but its passengers also, should be placed in a press of some sort and turned into a cube of a small amount of metal. But what happens in films may not always happen in real life. There is, of course, the difficulty that the car itself has coachwork and so on, and there really is nothing to be done with that.

One of the minor nuisances of this business is that the refuse gets burnt over the countryside and very often makes a very unpleasant smell. When one has a lump of metal at the end of the day—this has been tried out in America, I think, as the noble Lord said—the difficulty is that one has mixed metal, which is often not much use to anybody. There are parts that the steel industry, for instance, can use as scrap; but if one just takes whatever is there and piles it up together, there is not likely to be a very useful product. It is altogether not a very simple question.

Returning for a moment to the way matters stand at present, I would say that this draft circular is now under consideration, and I hope that a circular will be issued round about the turn of the year—perhaps before, perhaps just afterwards. Local authorities take a little time to move, and one can understand the difficulty; they have to put things up to meetings that are very often held monthly, and so on. But I think it is essential that the lines of the circular should be right.

There are some encouraging features about this matter. The local authorities who have been consulted over this have shown real good will in the matter. They appreciate that this must be their job and their responsibility, and I am sure that most of your Lordships, at any rate, will feel that that is the right way—in fact the only way—to tackle the matter in practice.

I turn from that to one other aspect of the matter. What about the man who has a highly decayed motor car and wants to get rid of it? The advice I would give him, and I have asked about this, is that he should ring up the local council—that is to say, the district council in the country or the borough council in the town—and ask them what they can do about it. In some places—not perhaps quite everywhere, which ought to be the case—they are doing quite a bit about the problem. Clearly, the issue of this circular is going to bring that side of the matter to a head, and I hope that this debate will also have its effect. If that happens I understand that the local authority is likely to be able to tell the man what to do with the car. If he gets in difficulty about that, I suggest that he might write either to his Member or to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government, if he so wishes, and see that something is done and some scheme put into action for dealing with this refuse.

I want to say one more thing to noble Lords about the matter. I think it is too much to expect local authorities, or indeed anybody, to go round and collect disused motor cars. Somehow or another they must be brought to some place where they can be properly handled and dealt with. I noticed two expressions used by the noble Lord, Lord Hawke. He first of all spoke about "the collection of cars", and he then referred to a "dump". I think the dump is the obvious choice to which one is driven.

I have tried to be as helpful as I can be in what is a very serious matter, regardless of whether or not it has been discussed before, and one which, unless it is attended to and kept alive by the assiduity of public-spirited noble Lords like the noble Lord, Lord Hawke (if he will allow me to say so), stands a risk of being neglected while other matters are dealt with. Therefore, I am very glad that the question has been raised. I have done the best I can to help, and the best I can to find out the realistic answer, as I believe it to be, to the general difficulties and to the particular problem of the man who has got a piece of rather intractable refuse to get rid of.