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28 Mar 2003 : Column 617—continued
Mr. Pound: I thank my hon. Friend for that contribution. Were the success of the Bill to depend on my oratorical skills, I would not wish to put money on it. I am well aware, however, from the correspondence that I have shared with her, how desperately important this subject is. I can only hope, despite the fact that the majority of people are in favour of the Bill, that the House will support it.
Mr. Andrew Dismore (Hendon): Will my hon. Friend give way?
Mr. Pound: I was going to refer to other objections to the Bill, but I will certainly give way to one of its sponsors.
Mr. Dismore: May I associate myself with my hon. Friend's Bill? Having sat through many hours of parliamentary debate on previous occasions, he will be pleased that I shall not make a speech today because we have little time. I reassure him that many of my constituents have written to me in support of the Bill. Only one person wrote in opposition, but they did not understand the Bill and their position has changed since I explained it.
Mr. Pound: That was, by many hours, the shortest contribution that I have heard from my hon. Friend, and it benefited somewhat from its brevity. I appreciate that it is parliamentary convention to stand up and go through a Bill clause by clause, but we have done that four or five times in this House. The other place has had Second Reading, Committee, Report and Third Reading. Time is of the essence today, which is why I am trying to limit my speech.
Some people have objected that the Bill would lay an unfeasible burden on hard-pressed local authorities. Many local authority arboricultural, tree, planning and enforcement officers are already contacted by council tax payers about the subject. They are unable to do
anything about the problem and must spend an enormous amount of time telling people that. I hope that clause 21, which sets out the financial provisions, addresses people's worries that we would lay too large a financial burden on local authorities.
Mrs. Patsy Calton (Cheadle): I thank the hon. Gentleman for giving way and must tell him that my asthma is much improved since I moved from an office next door to his. May I draw attention to the terminology used in the Bill? The hon. Gentleman has mentioned leylandii three times and the Bill refers to evergreens. Will he clarify, for my constituents and others, that "evergreens" do not include only leylandii or conifers?
Mr. Pound: The hon. Lady makes an excellent point and demonstrates another reason why I miss her so much as a neighbour. I can only apologise for the noxious substances that drifted under her door. She is right that the Bill is not about cypress leylandii because that is only one of the most objectionable aspects of the problem caused by high hedges, however they are constituted. At this moment, a mad scientist—
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley) rose—
Mr. Pound: I shall give way to the distinguished scientist in a moment.
At this moment, a scientist might be producing a genetically modified sunflower that could create problems in a few weeks or years. The hon. Member for Cheadle (Mrs. Calton) made an excellent point because the Bill would specifically cover two or more trees, bushes or shrubs with a height of more than 2 m that cause a loss of light, amenity and outlook. As the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst will be delighted to hear, the Bill is not "Son of Dangerous Dogs 2".
Sir Paul Beresford: I am relieved that the hon. Gentleman is not picking on that specific plant. I am not a horticulturalist and I had not encountered the leylandii until I came to this country. I talked to a horticulturalist who is a leylandii specialist and has a 35-year-old beautiful golden leylandii hedge that has been 6 ft for 33 years. The problem lies not with the plant, but its owner.
Mr. Pound: The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, and I hope that the Bill addresses that issue specifically. It would not stop people growing anything of any height anywhere provided that it does not cause a problem, annoyance or nuisance to neighbours. The key point is that the Bill does not prohibit the growth of 6½ ft leylandii or anything else; it simply provides legal redress in cases where there is a problem.
The third category of complainants is slightly esoteric.
Richard Younger-Ross (Teignbridge): Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pound: I am just coming on to the question of naturists and holly bush hedges, but I will give way.
Richard Younger-Ross: The hon. Gentleman referred to local authority officers who are unable to deal with
tall hedges. That takes me back to the libertarian point made by the right hon. Member for Bromley and Chislehurst (Mr. Forth). If the hedge were built of brick, the planning authority could do something about it. People do not have an absolute right to do as they wish in their own gardens; for example, they cannot build high walls. Why should they be able to build a high wall in green?Will the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) give me an assurance? In Oxfordshire or Northamptonshire there is a village called Hinton-in-the-Hedges. [Interruption.] It is in Northamptonshire. Will the hon. Gentleman make sure that the village is not renamed Hinton-without-the-Hedges when the Bill becomes law?
Mr. Pound: I am responsible for many things in life, but the nomenclature of hamlets in Northamptonshire is not, and please God never will be, one of them. My hon. Friend the Member for Northampton, South (Mr. Clarke) speaks for the villages of Northamptonshire, and I am sure that he has heard the hon. Gentleman's point.
Returning to holly bush hedges and naturists—[Laughter.] This is a serious point. Some people have raised the objection that certain groups of naturists rely on high hedges to provide screening. May I tell naturists that nothing in the Bill should be seen as a threat to their way of life? Their bushes are safe. They have nothing to fear except, obviously, stinging nettles.
It is important to stress that the Bill is not intended to prevent people from making good, sensible and adult use of any form of high hedge. In its place, a high hedge is not a problem, but in the wrong place it is a problem for neighbours, and that is the issue that we have to address. I am tempted to bore the House into tedium and, hopefully, submission, but I will resist doing so.
Sir Paul Beresford: Will the hon. Gentleman give way?
Mr. Pound: No, I will not take another intervention because I know that others wish to speak.
In the great scale of things, and particularly in these times, this may seem a minor matter. I cannot stress too strongly how much of a misery some decent people's lives are being made by the inability of local and central Government to respond to their legitimate concerns and frustrations. We have here the fourth or fifth opportunity to do something about that. Let us seize that opportunity and support the Bill, which has, I hope, the support of the majority, if not all, of the House. Returning to Mr. and Mrs. Paul in Hicks avenue, Greenford, I say to them, "You had faith in your Parliament. We have repaid that faith."
1.18 pm
Mr. Don Foster (Bath): I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) on introducing the Bill. We all thoroughly enjoyed his speech, probably as much as he enjoyed delivering it. We noted with interest that he bordered on subjects such as the Sexual Offences Bill, but we were delighted with the way in
which he demonstrated his enthusiasm for cutting things down—by cutting down the hon. Member for Hendon (Mr. Dismore).I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, North in particular on paying tribute not only to many organisations, including Hedgeline, but to many right hon. and hon. Members in the House and the other place for the work that they have done on this issue. I also join the hon. Gentleman in paying tribute to the hon. Member for Solihull (Mr. Taylor) for the work that he did less than two years ago. The hon. Member for Ealing, North is right to say that the Bill—having been fertilised, as he put it, in another place—comes back to us in a modified and improved form. I congratulate him on introducing it.
The hon. Gentleman described the Deputy Prime Minister's support as remarkable, fulsome and helpful. The hon. Gentleman should be a little wary of saying such things, because I am sure that he will be well aware that on 10 August 2000, the Deputy Prime Minister's then Department, the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions, issued a press release, which said:
- "We recognise that over-grown garden hedges have caused distress to thousands of people and we take these problems very seriously. Our consultation has confirmed the overwhelming support for tougher controls. And that is why we will work up new laws to give local authorities in England powers to intervene in neighbourhood hedge disputes. Legislation will be introduced as soon as parliamentary time can be found."
The hon. Member for Solihull introduced his Bill, and he was delighted. On its Second Reading on 9 March 2001, he said how grateful he was that the Government had prepared the explanatory notes to go with his Bill and were indicating their support for it. Sadly, that Bill failed at the last minute owing to lack of time caused by the calling of the general election. Given that we again have the Deputy Prime Minister's support, I very much hope that this Bill will be more successful than previous ones have been. This is a vitally important issue that desperately needs to be addressed.
The hon. Member for Ealing, North did not refer to the fact that, if the Bill is not successful, the only remedy for people suffering from the problems created by high hedges that he eloquently outlined is to take civil legal action. All the evidence shows that the cost of such civil action can be somewhere in the region of £25,000 to £40,000 for each case. Anything that we can do to remove such costs from what is the only remedy for people suffering from the problems caused by high hedges is clearly to be welcomed.
Like all hon. Members with similar experiences in their constituencies, the hon. Gentleman will be aware that the problem is not just the legal costs that might have to be incurred. People face a range of other problems and they have been known to lead to serious illness—and, indeed, in the worst disputes, to violent assault. It is important that we provide a quick, simple and cheap remedy to resolving such problems.
I presume that the hon. Gentleman has agreed to the explanatory notes even though they were prepared by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. The costing figures in the notes suggest that 10,000 cases in the United Kingdom are outstanding and waiting to be
resolved. I suggest that we could at least double that figure, because very many people will simply not have reported their concerns. They know that the only resolution is through an expensive civil action. I suspect that many more people than the 10,000 will be grateful if the hon. Gentleman's Bill is successful, as I hope it will be.I could provide many examples, and I am sure that other hon. Members will refer to cases in their constituencies. I have been looking back at the speech that I gave on this subject in 2001, in which I referred to a letter from a constituent. Its contents bear repeating because it sums up the totality of the wide range of problems that can be created. My constituent wrote:
- "The trees are now approximately 40 feet high. They overhang the garage roof and garden by about 8 feet. They have drawn moisture from the ground beneath the garage and have caused its wall to subside close to the boundary. They are constantly dropping dead material which clogs the garage gutter, blows around the paths close to the house back door, clogs drains. Much of the back garden which once formed a useful vegetable plot and also gave innocent pleasure is now shaded and cannot be used for growing. The tree closest to the house and kitchen window has grown to about 15 feet. It is taking light from the kitchen and my mother has to arrange for it to be clipped back from her path (obviously, she cannot do this herself)."
I am delighted that there is a provision in the Bill allowing it to be changed if related problems arise. I, for one, am disappointed that it does not cover difficulties caused by the roots of high hedges, which can cause significant problems for neighbours. My hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow (Matthew Green) has raised the interesting question of whether the 2 m height limit is always appropriate, as even a 2 m high hedge could cause a considerable light problem if it were close to a neighbour's window. We may need to address that in Committee.
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