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Lord Greaves: My Lords, I welcome the Minister, who has come down from his rural fastnesses to what I consider to be the real world of local backstreet politics. The Liberal Democrats gained control of our local council at the elections in June, and we had an all-day strategy meeting to decide what to do with this newfound local political power. The overwhelming view of everyone there was that there were two huge issues that we had to tackle: one was dog dirt and the other was litter—I welcome the Minister to the real world. I will try to remember to continue calling him "the Minister" and not "Councillor Whitty", although it is interesting that of the small number of people here today for this Second Reading debate a high proportion are either councillors or former councillors, who will know what I am talking about.
On behalf of the Liberal Democrats in the House, I give the Bill a general welcome, although it appears likely that it will have an unsatisfactory passage through the House. There are a lot of detailed parts that those of us who think we know about such things in our little back streets would like to scrutinise rather more than we will be able to. Nevertheless the Bill, even if it has to go through the wash-up procedure, deserves to pass, and I hope that that will happen.
Part 1 includes the question of gating orders. All those who have been involved in the provision of what are called "alley gates", or in our part of the world "backstreet gates" know that, where they are done properly with the consent of the people who live there, they can be beneficial. I hope that the provision, which can apply to highways in general, will not be used to block the rights of way that would be used by recreational users of the kind who were enthused by the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000, which the Minister was instrumental in getting through the House. There is a question there about what will be done to prevent the occasional local authority misusing it in that way.
Part 2 is about vehicles for sale and repair on the road. People who have looked at the Bill can see the potential problem with the limit of not less than two vehicles in a particular road. In other words, you can have one vehicle in a particular road for sale, but you cannot have two. What will be done to stop people abusing that by putting a series of cars at a crossroads, for example, where lots of different roads come together, or in other circumstances where one road turns into another and the name changes? Will regulations come out to prevent that kind of abuse?
A great deal of the Bill is about litter and refuse. We welcome the extension of the litter control powers to all types of land, including water. The new litter clearing notices appear on the face of it to be a better way of doing things. Like everything else, it will all come out in the wash—or perhaps in the wash-up—and we will see whether it works in practice. It appears that what is being proposed here is a great advance.
The Bill does not tackle the problem of waste minimisation and reducing the sources of litter, which get larger day by day. Everyone says that we have got
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to reduce waste and we have got to go in for waste minimisation. A large amount of packaging is used, whether on take-aways that people chuck away half-eaten in the street or sweet packaging or all the other sorts of packaging. The Bill is not about that, but it is worth making the marker here that the Government are still not tackling the problem adequately.
There is a potential problem with the controls that will be available on the free distribution of printed matter. The exceptions are:
Will the Minister tell us what the definition of "political purposes" will be, and what the definition of "belief" might be? It may well be that those of us who hand out party political material for our sins—sad as we may be—will be okay, but what about people who are perhaps handing out material opposing a planning development or opposing the building of wind farms? They are taking a position on an issue that is not party political in that sense, but it is part of the local democratic process. Will they be caught by that? If they will be caught by it, there is a question of free speech.
We welcome the inclusion of fly-posting in the definition of graffiti. At the moment, in the town in which I live, Colne in Lancashire, the main street is plastered with fly-posting for something that calls itself a local night spot—whatever that may be. I think it is just a pub that has music. The whole street is plastered with posters. It is very difficult to catch the people who put up that stuff, because they are simply local lads who are paid to do it. If we can approach and prosecute or put fixed penalty notices on the people who benefit from it, who are clearly behind it, that will be a great step forward. The beneficiaries of fly-posting really ought not to be able to get away with it as they do, so we welcome that part of the Bill.
A great deal of the Bill is about fly-tipping. It is interesting; fly-tipping is merely a continuum of someone throwing a bit of litter away, to a plastic bag full of stuff, to a dustbin bag, ending with multiple lorry-loads. An excellent briefing that we had from the Environment Agency about the Bill told us that, throughout the country, more than 40 lorry-loads of stuff a day is fly-tipped. That is obviously dreadful. You can never find out who has done a great deal of the fly-tipping that takes place, because it is simply two or three dustbin bags or some builder's rubble that you cannot trace. The cost of clearing it up inevitably falls on the local authority, and it will never get it back. It is the kind of indirect cost on local authorities that a lot of people in local government think is not properly accounted for when the financial settlements come round.
We certainly welcome the repeal of the divestment clause so far as waste disposal authorities are concerned, to free them from that restriction. That is sensible.
The provisions in the Bill about dogs are almost entirely welcome. The suggestion that the multiplicity of confusing by-laws that there are around the country in relation to dogs will be replaced by dog control
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orders—they will be the same everywhere, so people will understand them—is a real step forward. The flexibility on penalties is welcome, although the local authorities involved will have very substantial costs in terms of staff and their training. One wonders whether the Government have taken that into account.
The whole control and regulation side on dogs is only half the question. The other half of it—they have to go hand in hand—is that, if local authorities are to tackle the problem properly, they have to operate what might be called a dog waste service. Dog bins should be provided throughout the area. People should be able to use them. The bins would obviously have to be emptied and the dog dirt collected. In our experience, you must also provide people with free pooper-scoopers, as they are called, and the technical equipment to scrape the stuff up and take it away.
This may not be the sort of stuff your Lordships normally talk about, but it is absolutely fundamental in keeping our streets clean. Although the provisions in the Bill are welcome so far as local authorities are concerned in giving them more powers, if local authorities want to do the job properly they have to do lots of things that are discretionary, so are not taken account of in the settlements. Nevertheless, they are essential if we are to have clean streets, parks, playgrounds and public spaces.
I have two main qualifications about the Bill. I have touched on the first—local authority resources—already. The Minister might like to say something about it when he replies, although it is not his department that will divvy out what money is available to local authorities next year for this and everything else. It is a fundamental issue. Local authorities can do a brilliant job on litter, fly-tipping, graffiti, fly-posting, dog dirt and all the other matters, but they need the funding to do it, from one source or another. It is easy stuff to cut when you are really under financial pressures—when your budget has to be cut. They are the discretionary things on which it is all too easy to say, "We'll cut back this year and hope that we can do it again next year". That is no good.
Alongside that, I hope that the regulations that will come out under the Bill in various ways will not be too prescriptive. Where there is room for flexibility, I hope that local authorities will be given it. There is a lot of good practice around at the moment, and a lot of scope for experimentation. Let us not use the regulations to control local authorities too tightly. This is exactly the kind of area where, if you let local authorities experiment with their own thing, you will get a lot of good practice that can then be copied by other people.
My second general qualification is not to oppose the Bill in any way, but to make the point that rules and enforcement generally are not enough. They are necessary, and we welcome most of the provisions in the Bill, but they are not sufficient to turn our neighbourhoods in all parts of the country into clean, healthy, pleasant and well maintained places where people want to live. Neighbourhood by neighbourhood—it cannot be imposed from above—we need to build a culture.
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If the culture in the neighbourhood is that there is a lot of rubbish and graffiti; that the street furniture and the things for which the council is responsible are not maintained properly; that the streets are dirty and the lights are left out; that there is a lot of petty crime around, which is certainly connected with such poor environment; that everyone chucks rubbish in their front gardens and backyards, or next-door's backyards; that the public spaces are neglected; that there is a lack of social and community facilities, particularly for young people; that, if in an idealistic move two, three or four years ago people planted trees to improve the area, but half those trees have been vandalised and the council has not come round and replanted them and refused to give in to the vandals—if that sort of culture exists in the neighbourhood, there is no hope.
If you see someone dumping rubbish in such an area, you cannot go up to them and say, "Excuse me, that's not what you should be doing". You can do that only if the neighbourhood is clean and there is not a culture of rubbish, because they will otherwise say, "Everybody else is doing it. Why shouldn't I?". If you want social controls, you have to build locally to have a neighbourhood that is not litter-strewn—where there are litter bins, so if you see someone dropping a fag packet, you can say, "Excuse me, there's a litter bin there", which nosy people like me do.
If people allow their dogs to leave dog dirt on the pavement and there are no dog bins locally, it is much more difficult to persuade those people to clean up after their dog and take the dirt home. If the neighbourhoods are clean, there are litter bins, the public and private spaces are well maintained and things are replaced when they are broken, it is possible to build up even in the most difficult neighbourhoods a culture in which people look after their area. They look after their own property and the property around them. They then have the confidence and ability to influence other people and build a local culture of pride in their area.
I have said before in the House that the Government have a huge number of initiatives from lots of departments, bodies, quangos and authorities, particularly in neighbourhoods that they consider disadvantaged. One is community policing, which is highly successful in the part of Lancashire in which I live. Others include: community support officers; neighbourhood wardens; all sorts of local networks and partnerships; outreach officers from the social services, the youth service and other departments; estate workers, perhaps from the housing department; and various community forums. All those people tend to do their thing individually. What is really needed in many places is to bring them together.
That is not something for which the Government can legislate in a Bill such as this, but it is something with which parish councils can get involved, and particularly elected local councils and councillors at district level. You have a lot of councillors at that level not representing very many people—perhaps 1,000 or 1,500 each—so you have a low ratio of electors to councillors. Councillors themselves can get involved and help to build the kind of comprehensive
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neighbourhood management that is essential in such an area. I am talking about bringing together people with the ability, credibility and legitimacy, led by perhaps parish or district councillors or other key people in the community to co-ordinate everything that is going on in a place that is part of the housing market renewal pathfinder areas—which is a different context—in north-east Lancashire. As part of that we are getting funding for neighbourhood management.
I am very optimistic and enthusiastic about that. I had better not say too much as people will start saying that I am praising the Labour Government, but praise where it is due. I am optimistic, and have to say that many of the Bill's provisions will be of great help in the work that we are trying to do on neighbourhood management. If it does not work, I shall come back and tell your Lordships, but I hope that I can say what a success it has been.
There is general support for the Bill. I am disappointed, as is the noble Lord, Lord Dixon-Smith, that we shall probably not be able to discuss and worry out the details of how it will work, which is the function of the House. Nevertheless, we wish it well.
8 p.m.
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