|
Miss McIntosh: The Minister is on weak ground. We have identified two areas—there are others—on which there has been insufficient or no consultation: the National Dog Warden Association and sports facilities. We have established that the dog interest groups were invited only when the Bill was in Committee.
Alun Michael: I invited them because it was clear when they wrote to MPs that they were under a considerable misapprehension about the terms of the Bill and its implications. I have reported on generously meeting the groups to remove those misapprehensions, so it is rather odd of the hon. Lady to say that I have not met everybody with whom—it is a limited group—she seems to have had some contact.
The Chairman: Order. I do not think that we should revisit the issue of consultation—on whatever matter. We are discussing clause 109 stand part. The clause is specifically about money and the payment of money provided by Parliament.
Miss McIntosh: It is clear that no money will be provided by Parliament to enable the provisions of the Bill to be met. The Minister says that there were various misapprehensions. That was because there was no explanation of what the provisions would be. I yield to no one in our desire to want to clean up the environment. We have consistently been doing that. The Conservative record speaks for itself—18 years in
Column Number: 340
government. It was Mrs. Thatcher who first established that we were only custodians of the environment for future generations. It was the Conservative party that introduced the flagship Environmental Protection Act 1990, which this Government continue to tinker with.
The Chairman: Order. I, in turn, yield to nobody in my admiration for Lady Thatcher, but I do not think that she should play any part in this Committee's deliberations—at least not today.
Miss McIntosh: I am also a huge admirer of what town and parish councils seek to achieve. They have onerous responsibilities, which this Government have imposed upon them. Indeed, my own parish council in the Vale of York has resigned en masse as a result, and I believe it is going to be placed in a very difficult situation. The Minister says that we should trust local authorities' judgment in implementing the Bill. Without the resources being made available by Parliament or transferred from other bodies as appropriate, they will simply be unable to do so.
We stand by our reasoned amendment, and will take every opportunity to waft it in the face of our parliamentary opponents at the forthcoming election, which may come sooner than we think. We shall be prepared for it.
Alun Michael: I am not sure that I need a long response to that fresh Second Reading contribution, as the hon. Lady tries to rescue herself from her comments denigrating parish and town councils. I do need, however, to rebut the generality of her remarks.
The previous Conservative Government had an awful record on local government, and on giving local government the capacity to do its job. Many of us saw the suffering created at a local level by that Government. I am not going to make any comment about Mrs. Thatcher. I simply do not share the views either of the hon. Lady or any other member of this Committee who holds Mrs. Thatcher in such high regard. To each his or her views. The fact is that this good Bill will enable local authorities to work efficiently and effectively in partnership with central and local government—a partnership that we have been at pains to reconstruct after the damage of the locust years to which the hon. Lady referred.
Question put and agreed to.
Clause 109 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 110 ordered to stand part of the Bill.
Clause 111
Short title
Question proposed, That the clause stand part of the Bill.
Miss McIntosh: I beg to move amendment No.1, in clause 111, page 80, line 3, leave out 'Clean Neighbourhoods and' and insert 'Cleaner and Safer'.
Column Number: 341
I was hoping to shorten the title of the Bill to the environment Bill, so that it would be known as the environment Act. As ever, one does not always accord with the procedures of the House. I want to place on the record, and invite the Minister to comment on the fact, that ''clean neighbourhoods'' does seem to direct its attention specifically at neighbourhoods, as in towns, villages and urban areas.
Many of us on this side of the Committee, and on other Benches in other quarters, represent areas where one could not point to a specific neighbourhood. That is reflected, in the crime protection field, for example, in the fact that we do not have just neighbourhood watches but farm watches as well. There are many rural areas where it is quite difficult to talk about neighbourhoods as such. In some parts of the Bill, the emphasis is perhaps too much on urban problems and does not sufficiently look at issues such as abandoned vehicles. These vehicles are not just left in residential areas—which can intensely irritating to the residents—but can be dumped in rural areas, quite illegally and without the knowledge or permission of the landowner or farmer.
In this probing amendment, I seek an assurance from the Minister that it is not his intention to have a partial bias, throughout the main thrust of the provisions of this Bill, on urban areas—as the ''clean neighbourhoods'' title could suggest. ''Cleaner and Safer Neighbourhoods and Environment Bill'' is a step in the right direction, but perhaps the neatest of all would be the short, catchy title of the environment Bill. The Minister will be aware, however, through comments we have consistently made both on Second Reading and on closer scrutiny in Committee, that we are aware that there are particular problems with the farming community. We considered, for example, the situation of artificial lighting very briefly, and any malicious charges that could be made against farmers in that regard. We would like there to be a more comprehensive and joined-up approach in the Bill that recognises that the countryside is part of the wider environment and that farmers, landowners and country dwellers are custodians and should not be unnecessarily hounded by the Government.
10.30 am
We want some background on why the term ''clean neighbourhoods'' features so strategically and prominently in the title, as it did throughout the consultation process. I represent a more deeply rural area. One hesitates to mention the hunt, but in case that is an indication of how rural an area is, I point out that the Vale of York enjoys nine separate hunts on its terrain. As I mentioned, we have neighbourhood watches. We also have a network of farm watches with which the police and other antisocial behaviour partners try to tackle antisocial behaviour. Farmers and landowners will, we believe, remain victims of many of the practices that the Bill seeks to address.
Column Number: 342
Paddy Tipping: Does the hon. Lady share my recollection that both the National Farmers Union and the Country Land and Business Association support the Bill?
Miss McIntosh: They support parts of the Bill, but they have written extensively to us to express their real concerns about other parts of it. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman has received a briefing, although perhaps not with quite so much detail as our one, that will guide him on that. Given his background and concern for the countryside, I am sure that he will share my hesitation in condoning something as limited as clean neighbourhoods, in recognition of the fact that, in many parts of my constituency, it is impossible to point to a neighbourhood as such, because there is only one house or hamlet. I welcome his comments.
I hope that the Minister will understand why we would have preferred greater recognition of the particular problems of antisocial behaviour in the countryside. We fear that those problems will be compounded by provisions coming through in other Bills, such as those allowing later licensing for drinks. We are reliably informed that the local police are concerned that antisocial behaviour may move later into the night in market towns and that, therefore, when antisocial behaviour occurs in the middle of the night in deeply rural areas that will not be classified as neighbourhoods, the police will be unable to visit and detain.
Alun Michael: When I first saw the amendment, I thought with some delight that the Conservative party had finally woken up and was trying to recognise the Government slogan ''cleaner, safer, greener'', with which we want to create a decent environment for everybody in every part of the country. It is a pity that the hon. Lady left greener out, or she would have been trying to write the whole of our excellent, cross-departmental campaigning slogan into the title of the Bill. She might then have had problems with the House authorities, because the short title of a Bill must meet certain requirements. It does not reflect the contents of a Bill as a whole but must give an accurate indication of what the Bill is about. The long title is the description of the contents of a Bill as a whole.
However, the amendment was not about that. It was an attempt by the hon. Member for Vale of York to redeem herself for the crass mistake that was made in the reasoned amendment on Second Reading, when the Conservative party appeared not to understand that the provisions of the Bill apply to rural communities and have been considered by the Government in regard to rural communities as much as to urban communities. She would have been better off simply apologising to those who live in rural areas. Despite the fact that she represents a very rural constituency, she does not seem to know this, so perhaps I ought to break it to her that rural areas do have neighbourhoods. There are many small towns with neighbourhoods in them. There are about 8,700 villages in England. If one takes into account the community council areas in Wales, the number
Column Number: 343
increases to about 10,000. Some of them cover more than one neighbourhood, so the numbers in rural areas are considerable.
The hon. Member for Vale of York should accept that this Government have recognised the needs of rural people consistently, carefully and in partnership with them in recent years. The rural White Paper in 2000 set out a programme for partnership with rural communities. A tremendous amount of work has also been done since the establishment of the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. During the foot and mouth outbreak, for example, we enabled rural communities to recover from the impact of the disease, which affected not only farmers but, in many cases, the whole community. In the light of the announcement made by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in July, we are transforming the landscape of support: we are devolving responsibility for finance to the regional development agencies, and integrating the way in which we approach the needs of the countryside such as biodiversity, the landscape and access.
In that context, there is every indication of a vibrant rural economy, and of satisfaction with services that is very often greater than satisfaction with services provided in urban communities, which shows the effectiveness of the 180 Labour MPs who represent rural and semi-rural constituencies.
The hon. Lady referred in passing to farm watch, which is an approach that I promoted as a Home Office Minister but is not relevant to the Bill. The neighbourhood watch approach and more specialised approaches such as farm watch are particularly appropriate in rural areas. The Bill sets out a partnership approach between the local authority and the police, which includes within its ambit the way in which we deal with problems in local neighbourhoods, such as graffiti, fly-tipping, fly-posting and litter, and will be an effective measure for ensuring that we make progress on providing cleaner and safer neighbourhoods.
The hon. Lady's preferred title of the environment Bill, if it had passed the requirements of the House, would have been too wide and too general. People might have expected the Bill to deal with issues that fall way outside the ambit of its long title. They might have asked why it did not deal, for example, with global warming. The answer is that we believe that the priority should be to reflect what we hear from our constituents. Indeed, that was what was reflected in the 18 speeches by Labour Back Benchers on Second Reading, but not in the two rather pathetic speeches that were made from the Conservative Back Benches. In fairness, I should say that the Liberal Democrats scored nil in the number of speeches that they made from their Back Benches.
As I said, we reflected the concerns that affect people's everyday lives in their neighbourhoods and communities. That is why the Bill's short title is the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Bill. It does, of course, include other items to which the long title refers. I do not believe that there has ever been a short title that completely reflected all the contents, unless it
Column Number: 344
was a very short Bill. Certainly most complex Bills have a short title that is not perfect but which gives some indication of what the Bill is about. This Bill is about creating clean neighbourhoods. When I described clause 1, I said that achieving a clean neighbourhood contributes to creating a safer one. I have passionately believed that for many years, and I am delighted that the Government have supported the measures in the Bill to enable that comprehensive approach to the problems of local communities.
I reject the hon. Lady's amendment. I am flattered that she has chosen an approach outlined by the Government so that she could select a couple of words for the amendment, but the title that we have given the Bill is appropriate, and it should stand.
| 
