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1.14 pm
Mr. Bernard Jenkin (Colchester, North): I am grateful for the opportunity to take part in the debate. With your permission, Madam Deputy Speaker, may I also be the first to welcome my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway) back to the Chamber from his duties in his constituency? May I be allowed to put on record the fact that everyone who has spoken has heaped praise on my hon. Friend for his work in preparing and introducing the Bill?
Much of the discussion has been about the scope of the Bill. I echo some of the sentiments of my hon. Friend the Member for Newark (Mr. Alexander) about its possible deficiencies, in that it confines itself to night-time noise and to neighbourly noise. Much of the noise that affects people's residences comes not from other people's residences but from commercial and publicly owned concerns outside the domestic environment with which the Bill deals.
I fully accept that we should perhaps tackle the issue in bite-sized pieces rather than try to be too comprehensive, but I still hope that those aspects will be taken on board. If my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North studies the record of the debate, he may find good meat to feast on when he is thinking about amendments for the Committee stage.
I shall now pick up something said earlier by my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), who unfortunately cannot be in the Chamber at the moment. He got dragged into a minor altercation about the role of local authority environmental health officers and their attitude to forms of regulation other than noise regulation. If we could persuade the environmental health officers to tackle the problem of noise abatement with the same terrifying enthusiasm with which they tackle food safety, we should probably have a riot on our hands about their intrusion into our lives.
It is worth analysing what drives environmental health officers on the food safety issue--it is usually a "more than my job's worth" mentality. The way in which the regulations have been framed--the European legislative and regulatory framework is as much at fault as ours--means that there is a liability on the officers if they fail to enforce them. For noise abatement there is no such liability. Perhaps there should be.
Perhaps there should be more than a mere discretionary duty on local authorities to enforce noise abatement. Perhaps there should be more of a legal requirement, so that in case of failure, sanctions could be imposed on the local authority. Perhaps, also, there should be less of a legal obligation on local authorities to reduce the temperature of our cheese to below 6 deg C, which spoils its flavour, and all the other silly things that people are forced to do. I offer that as a countervailing thought.
One of the factors that drove me to take part in the debate was the case of "Mrs. Smith". I call her that because I want to maintain her anonymity, but she will be a familiar figure to almost every right hon. and hon. Member of the House, because she is typical of the
problem that I hope the Bill will tackle. She is a dear, sweet lady who has saved enough money to live in her own home and maintain herself. This is not, incidentally, a problem caused by high-rise construction. She lives in a modern, well-spaced housing area called Highwoods, which is an attractive place to live.
She has been unfortunate, in that a rather selfish young man has moved in next door. He started out by causing a great deal of noise at night with music and cars revving. She naturally involved the environmental health department. It is appalling that, ultimately, the local authority will advise her to take out an injunction against the neighbour. It is absurd that ordinary law-abiding citizens must start spending their good money on legal advice to take out an injunction against somebody who is literally breaching the peace.
The sad thing is that the youth next door would probably be eligible for legal aid. The lady's solicitor did what a wise solicitor should do in the circumstances--he advised her not to go down that route, as the youth would have unlimited resources with which to contest the injunction, while she would be using up her valuable savings. It is absolutely right that we should tackle the matter. We do not expect the police to apply to the court for an injunction to stop somebody exceeding the speed limit, so why do we expect little old ladies to spend their savings to stop someone breaching the peace?
Mr. Couchman:
Does my hon. Friend agree that one of the few drawbacks of the right-to-buy legislation is that a property bought with hard-earned savings and a mortgage may be next door to a property that has not been bought? That is particularly true with blocks of flats.A tenant can then arrive at a property that is still owned by a local authority or housing association and make all the noise under the sun, thereby severely prejudicing the peace and happiness of the people who bought the next-door property and blighting the property so much that it becomes unsaleable.
Mr. Jenkin:
I agree with my hon. Friend. When properties are bought, the undertakings on noise and the countervailing pressures on tenants by a landlord are transferred. It should be easier for a landlord--whether social or council--to deal with people who are disrupting the peace. Surely there is less of a duty on a public housing authority to provide long-term accommodation for somebody who is not prepared to play by the rules or to fit in with the local community. It should be easier for councils to evict tenants who have breached the covenanted undertakings about noise that they made when they moved in.
I fully understand my hon. Friend's point, which ultimately depends on the interpretation of the courts.My authority, Colchester, argues that there is little purpose in applying for court orders to evict noisy tenants from premises, because magistrates tend to support the right of residence of the tenant rather than the rights of the other tenants and residents.
We have been dealing with the minutiae and the technical detail of the Bill, but I would like to take a step back in my last few comments.
This is an important piece of social legislation. In some respects, it is the equivalent of the Clean Air Act 1956, under which individuals who were polluting the
environment to the detriment of the common good were told that they could no longer do so. It was a good piece of Tory legislation. We want a clean airwaves Act, if that is the correct term. We want to be able to have around us clean sound, not sound pollution--to that extent, the Bill is important.
I would go further: we are living in a society in which people have more and more rights and are more capable of indulging themselves. People are increasingly brought up to express their own aspirations and emotions, and there is less discipline in schools. People are less encouraged to have regard, for their immediate neighbours, and they have more technical means of inflicting their indulgences on others. If people abuse their rights, it must be the duty of the law to take those rights away. It is the duty of the law to ensure that it protects those who live in the community considerately, in co-operation with others, and who abide by what we would regard as social norms.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the Environment (Mr. James Clappison):
I welcome this opportunity to make a brief contribution to the Second Reading debate. Before welcoming the Bill, I should like to join other hon. Members in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Greenway)on choosing this as the subject of his private Member's Bill, following his success in the ballot. I also congratulate him on the clear and concise way in which he outlined the Bill to the House this morning. My hon. Friend deserves our congratulations and thanks. For my part, I fully associate myself with all the comments that have been made about the reasons for my hon. Friend's absence earlier. I extend my sympathy to him on that account.
The Government welcome the Bill, which is an important piece of legislation. We take on board the general welcome that has been extended to it in speeches from my hon. Friends the Members for Halesowen and Stourbridge (Mr. Hawksley), for Birmingham, Hall Green (Mr. Hargreaves), for Erith and Crayford (Mr. Evennett), for Hendon, South (Mr. Marshall), for Sutton and Cheam (Lady Olga Maitland) and for Newark (Mr. Alexander), as well as the hon. Members for Tooting (Mr. Cox),for Southwark and Bermondsey (Mr. Hughes) and for Newham, North-West (Mr. Banks). I note, too, that the hon. Member for Lewisham, Deptford (Ms Ruddock), who speaks for the Opposition, extended a broad welcome to the Bill. The measure has been debated in a good and constructive way and has had a well-deserved general welcome.
The Government recognise the extreme distress that can be caused by domestic noise, particularly at night.We also recognise the potential cost to the country of the lost sleep, illness and disrupted lives that result from such noise. Today, we have heard many examples of individual suffering. I hope that the Bill will help people who suffer from the problem, especially noise at night.
I am thinking of people such as the residents of Clare road in Greenford, to whom my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North referred in his opening speech. Those
residents have suffered from loud music, noisy parties and six months of sleepless nights. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford mentioned constituents whose cases he has taken up, including Viki Harrold and Daisy Clement. In particular, he has vigorously taken up the case of Val Gibson, the founder of the Right to Peace and Quiet Campaign.
At present, local authorities have a range of powers to abate noise nuisance in premises, including land, and from vehicles, machinery and equipment in streets, but it has become increasingly apparent that the controls on domestic noise are not working as well as they might.
The number of complaints to local authorities in England and Wales about noise from domestic premises continues to rise steadily. In 1993-94, there were more than 130,000 such complaints--more than a threefold increase over the previous decade. That concern is reflected by the large number of letters received by my Department asking that more be done to address the problem.
One of the themes that has emerged in the debate is that it has been the general experience of hon. Members that the number of complaints that come to them is rising. That was said my hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford and the hon. Member for Newham, North-West. That demonstrates the extent and prevalence of the problem, especially in urban areas such as Hendon, South, where residents in tower blocks are particularly affected.
Another theme has been that noise is a widespread problem that can have tragic consequences, as we heard in graphic detail from my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen and Stourbridge. He spoke of the disproportionate and violent response in some instances. The hon. Member for Southwark and Bermondsey spoke in similar vein, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Newark. They made clear the tragic consequences that can stem from noise.
Noise can come from many sources. We have heard about a wide variety of noises, from Nepalese bagpipes to the problems caused by riddling, but hon. Members have come back to the problem of noise from loud music, especially amplified noise and noise from musical equipment.
My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North(Mr. Carlisle) took us back to the era of flower power, which I had not previously associated with him. It was a trip of some nostalgia. My hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North showed a commendable knowledge of modern music and broadened my knowledge of rap, jungle, techno and hardcore, the latter three of which I have not come across before. I look forward to hearing more about them. He made the valuable point that one man's music is another man's noise. We need to be thoughtful and considerate about our tastes in music, and especially about the volume at which it is played.
It is fair to say that many young people who listen to those sorts of noise are considerate and do not cause problems. Many of our constituents enjoy such music peaceably and thoughtfully, but there are those who are not reasonable or neighbourly and, above all, not considerate. My hon. Friend the Member for Erith and Crayford made a valuable point in talking about thoughtlessness. That is the common denominator of much of the problem of noise. If neighbours would think of other neighbours, possibly by extending invitations to
parties, they might overcome some of the problems. Sometimes, neighbours are not prepared to be reasonable or accept mediation. There need to be actions that can be taken and powers for local authorities to deal with the serious problems of domestic noise nuisance.
The Bill would give local environmental health officers additional powers to deal with the problem. It takes forward part of the Government's response to the recommendations and proposals of the working party set up by my right hon. Friend the Member for South Ribble (Mr. Atkins) in October 1994. The resultant consultation paper, issued in March last year, was the subject of widespread positive comment.
The Bill establishes for the first time a noise offence based on an objective standard that will apply to noise from domestic premises during night hours between11 pm and 7 am. I will answer the other points made by the hon. Member for Deptford in due course, but she asked about the level of permitted noise. While this is the Second Reading of a private Member's Bill, the Government take the view that an appropriate level for the permitted level of noise--the expression used in the Bill--would be 35 dB. That standard is appropriate because it is objective and based on World Health Organisation guidance on the levels of noise that are consistent with preserving the restorative process of sleep. I think that it was my hon. Friend the Member for Sutton and Cheam who so rightly said that we all need a decent night's sleep. That is very important in the context of this Bill.
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