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Miss McIntosh: I omitted to say that I used to have an interest in Railtrack, although it is not registered or declarable. I am currently taking part in a placement with Network Rail under an Industry and Parliament Trust scheme.
The purpose of the amendments is to alert the Minister to the fact that, as was made clear to him during consultation, his Bill runs counter to what was achieved under the Anti-social Behaviour Act 2003. It would help if his departmental guidance was to the same effect as the Home Office guidance. After discussions with Network Rail on the 2003 Act, a clause was included in the Home Office guidance stating that if a local authority wished to serve a cleansing notice on Network Rail, they would contact the company to discuss a suitable time frame for removal.
The Minister will be the first to pay tribute to the substantial sums that Network Rail is paying to clean up litter around tracks. However, to put that in context, the delay to trains would be significant, and that greatly concerns Network Rail. Under the performance regimes contained in its regulated track access agreements, the average cost of delay to a train is £42 a minute. That payment applies to every train that Network Rail delays. Using that average delay cost, if 10 trains are delayed for one hour while litter is cleaned up, it would cost £25,200. If a London terminal station was closed for eight hours and 100 trains were delayed, the cost would be just over £2 million. I urge the Minister to consider the problem on Report, and we will maintain our position.
Sue Doughty: I thank the Minister for his explanation about what we will do about absentees and for the short discussion on how to ensure that the requirements are not excessively onerous on somebody who genuinely cannot act within the time scale.
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Miss McIntosh: I beg to ask leave to withdraw the amendment.
Amendment, by leave, withdrawn.
Clause 20 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 21
Street litter control notices
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Miss McIntosh: Will the Minister consider adding office buildings to the list of types of land to which street litter control notices will apply under sections 93 and 94 of the 1990 Act? Concerns have been raised with us about the cost of clearing street furniture and litter by local authorities and others obliged to do so.
A person commits an offence in relation to street litter control notices only if he fails to comply with an order of the magistrates court. Is the Minister saying that referral to a magistrates court would no longer be required? If there is no application to a magistrates court, will there be any possibility of appealing?
10.30 am
Alun Michael: I understand the hon. Lady's point, but I am not sure that this is the appropriate time to discuss further extension of the provision. The clause deals specifically with street litter control notices. It extends the application of such notices under sections 93 and 94 of the 1990 Act to cover vehicles, stalls and other moveable structures used for commercial or retail purposes. It has arisen from the experience of local authorities, because previously those provisions applied only to fixed premises and adjacent open land. Obviously it was an anomaly that someone could drive a vehicle on to the street and would not be covered by the provisions. I hope that the hon. Lady accepts that the clause clears that up.
The clause removes the requirement for litter authorities to seek a court order. The previous system required a court order, which in turn required compliance with such a notice. It will now immediately be an offence to fail to comply with the requirements in the notice without reasonable excuse. It is clear that that will be welcomed by local authorities because it will greatly streamline their capacity to get on with the job, which is what everyone wants.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 21 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clauses 25 and 26 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 27
''Litter''
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
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The Chairman: With this it will be convenient to discuss new clause 2——Producer responsibility for litter caused by discarded chewing gum etc.—
''(1) The Secretary of State must consult on producer responsibility measures to—
(a) discourage litter caused by discarded chewing gum and the discarded remains of other products designed for chewing; and
(b) provide financial redress to litter authorities for the costs incurred by removal of discarded chewing gum and the discarded remains of other products designed for chewing.
(2) The consultation must—
(a) include such bodies or persons appearing to him to be representative of the interests of litter authorities as he considers appropriate;
(b) include such bodies or persons appearing to him to be representative of the interests of producers and distributors of chewing gum and other products designed for chewing as he considers appropriate; and
(c) publish recommendations before 2007.
(3) The consultation must consider both voluntary and statutory schemes.'.
Sue Doughty: The new clause recognises the problems of producer responsibility. On Second Reading we heard a great deal about the cost of dealing with chewing gum. Certainly no one intends to put onerous clean-up costs on to local government. We are trying to look at the whole problem of why we are in this situation and how we deal with the onset of the problem rather than the tail end. While we support other aspects of the clause, we have real problems with its provisions in that regard.
On Second Reading, we referred to the London borough of Kensington and Chelsea. We know of the enormous amounts of money that are involved in dealing with chewing gum. Community support officers in the borough issued 175 warnings for litter and council enforcement officers issued 700 fines, but they still have the problem of chewing gum. In 1994, Westminster City council found 300,000 blobs of chewing gum on Oxford street. I hope that it ascertained that by statistical means rather than by sending a man out to count. It has spent a huge amount on dealing with the problem and was involved in a huge clean-up on Oxford street, but several months later it was as bad as ever.
Chewing gum stains pavements so it is not only a problem while it is there. I had a nasty fall caused by a piece of discarded chewing gum that became attached to my foot. As I thought I was walking forward, my second foot at first failed to leave the ground, then moved very suddenly and the rest of me went straight forward. It ruined a rather nice pair of boots and my dignity and I acquired some rather bad bruises. Chewing gum does not just look ugly and horrible, but causes injuries.
We also have a problem with the market. The chewing gum market is now worth £258 million a year. That is an estimate from Wrigley's. Chewing gum sales in the last five years have gone up by 33 per cent., so it is a growing problem. I know that there have been discussions with Wrigley's about whether it could do something about introducing biodegradable gum or making gum less sticky, because it is the sheer stickiness that causes the problem. Wrigley's claims
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that it cannot do that, although London Liberal Democrats did some research and found out that a more environmentally friendly gum is available which could meet the demand. That sort of thing needs to be worked up because we need to put pressure on the gum manufacturers to go right back to the beginning, not only to how gum is disposed of, but to what happens to it. People just keep throwing gum on the ground.
Mr. Evans: It is registered that I have a retail business that happens to sell chewing gum. We have, sadly, a minute part of that £250 million, or whatever the figure was. I hear what the hon. Lady says, and if more biodegradable chewing gum could be produced, that would do the job that people want. Surely the real responsibility, however, lies with the people who discard gum. There is encouragement on the packet, which says, ''Please put the gum back into the silver foil and dispose of it properly.'' The industry is sending the right message. It is the people who discard gum on the floor who should pay the penalty.
Sue Doughty: I have a lot of sympathy with the hon. Gentleman's view. There are two problems, however. People throw it away and we need to jump on them for doing that. [Interruption.] Well, we need designated officers to jump on them. I fully support measures to deal with that.
Mr. Evans: That will be the subject of another new clause.
Sue Doughty: Not another new clause, as the matter is perfectly adequately covered. However, the problem is the cost. It cost £200 million to remove chewing gum from London Underground's trains and stations. Given the state of our public transport system, that is £200 million of money that could be put to good use on the railways and other transport undertakings.
The problem has been going on for a long time. In 1996, the Conservative Government were asked whether the Department of the Environment was consulting manufacturers about cleaning chewing gum. That was eight years ago. At that stage, the Keep Britain Tidy group, now ENCAMS, considered the opportunities for cleaning gum up. I know that the Minister has spent a lot of time dealing with the subject, so I am telling him something of which he is already aware, but for the record, it is important that we recognise the problem.
DEFRA set up the chewing gum action group to review what was happening. It decided to find out about people throwing gum on the ground. It is not unreasonable that we must understand the problem before we can solve it. There were five classifications of people who do it. The group said that the idea of chewing gum stuck on your hair, face or shoes is disgusting, but people still throw it away. The selfish say, ''When I have finished with my gum, I don't want it anywhere near me. I just want rid of it.'' In other words, they throw it away rather than wrapping it up and taking it home with them. That is a psychological issue.
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Some people are called bravado users. They like kicking it out of the way and are characterised as saying, ''It is good fun spitting and kicking chewing gum when I have finished with it.'' Excuses, excuses. They say, ''I know it's wrong but I do it discreetly. I hope nobody sees me.'' The research showed that everybody who buys chewing gum drops it at some stage or other. That is absolutely horrifying. It must be a small piece of chewing gum. They would not drop it if it were bigger because people would see them doing it and they would have to think twice about it.
There were some interesting comments on Second Reading about whether the packaging could be designed so that used chewing gum could be put back in. The research said that people were unlikely to carry it to a bin, and I am quite happy to deal with people whom I spot throwing it away. There should be publicity saying that that is wrong. Much more needs to be done, because it is a major problem. We could consider fining chewing gum manufacturers or putting a levy on the product that would go towards the cost of cleaning up. We need more work to be done into how we can get the manufacturers to take account of what people throw away. It is horrible to find it on the ground.
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