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House of Lords
Thursday, 10 May 2007.
The House met at eleven o’clock: the LORD SPEAKER on the Woolsack.
Prayers—Read by the Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds.
Criminal Justice: Approved Premises
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds asked Her Majesty’s Government:
What action they have taken to support the voluntary sector in the management of approved premises, formerly known as probation and bail hostels.
The Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice (Lord Falconer of Thoroton): My Lords, the voluntary-managed premises are grant-funded using a formula applied to all approved premises. They enjoy equal access to policy guidance and national training initiatives, and are subject to the standard performance framework. A new service specification has been introduced this year itemising the respective responsibilities of the NOMS Public Protection Unit, voluntary management committees and local probation boards. The Government fund the National Association of Probation & Bail Hostels, a representative organisation for the voluntary-managed sector. We are conducting a review of how approved premises are financed, which should be completed by the autumn.
The Lord Bishop of Ripon and Leeds: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that Answer. What provisions will be made to ensure equality of treatment for employees of the probation trusts envisaged under the Offender Management Bill, and what provisions will be made to ensure that the excellent work being done by the voluntary-managed premises is not destroyed in a finance-driven tendering process through the regional offender managers under that Bill?
Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, I share the right reverend Prelate’s view of the high quality of the work that is done. We want to preserve that high quality and ensure that we benefit from it. That is why we are doing the review to which I referred in my initial Answer. Secondly and separately, the right reverend Prelate asked about continuity of employment for those employed by the new probation trusts, which will be set up if and when the Offender Management Bill becomes law. Obviously there will be protection and continuity of employment, and other steps will be taken to ensure equality in that respect.
Lord Dholakia: My Lords, I thank the Minister for confirming that there will be a review of the way that the hostels are managed. Will the review take into account the grants paid to voluntary organisations
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Lord Falconer of Thoroton: My Lords, the noble Lord makes a very important point, but the review has to look, in particular, at the sustainability of the organisations that are providing the hostels, which I think underlies his point.
Waste Management: Fly-tipping
11.09 am
Baroness Trumpington asked Her Majesty’s Government:
The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker): My Lords, good progress is being made with the implementation of the Government’s waste crime strategy by, for example, focusing on better prevention measures, simplifying legislation and guidance designed to encourage compliance, and enabling more joined-up action and prosecutions by the Environment Agency and local authorities. A month ago, a fly-tipper was sent to prison for the offence. We will continue to work with the agency and local authorities to achieve a year-on-year reduction in fly-tipping.
Baroness Trumpington: My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I imagine that he and I agree that fly-tipping is an extremely expensive national disgrace. Is he at all disappointed by the lack of response to appeals by local authorities? The fact that over half the reported incidents are in alleyways inevitably means that there will be more vermin around.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, I am very grateful for the Question from the noble Baroness. She is quite right to raise the issue. In England and Wales, there is a fly-tipping incident about every 30 seconds. It is a crime. It costs a fortune to deal with in rural and urban areas. Certainly more than half the incidents involve household waste, disposed of not necessarily by the householder but by people who have collected it from householders. It is serious, but action is being taken. The national database has been put together, following the legislation that went through the House, so we can get a measure of it. The penalties have gone up from a maximum of £20,000 to £50,000 and that has been used as a publicity generator to highlight the issue. I also pay tribute to the recent campaign by the Countryside Alliance, which has been very successful in highlighting the matter.
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Lord Dykes: My Lords, is the Minister aware that the fly-tipping scourge in Britain has now reached proportions that are truly alarming? It is very difficult for the Government, local authorities and the Environment Agency to deal with these matters in a practical way, but will they take more urgent measures as soon as possible, including listening to the very interesting proposals from the CLA and other bodies that are concerned about this matter? Incidentally, we consign something like 30 million tonnes to landfill every year. Even Germany, with 82 million people, consigns only about 10 million tonnes, and France consigns 13.5 million tonnes. Does the Minister agree that we are way ahead of them? Why have we become the litter-strewn country of Europe?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, we have been disposing of waste in a very inefficient way in this country compared with others, by way of landfill, and we are dealing with that. There is a programme of action—the Environment Agency is taking forward a targeted programme of enforcement campaigns across England. They are currently running in Bristol, Chester, Derby, Merseyside, Kent and south-east London, and programmes have recently been completed in Luton, Preston and Stoke, which have had an effect. The issue is serious: 89,000 incidents a month have been measured by local authorities. When you work it out, that means that in England and Wales somebody is fly-tipping every half a minute. It is a crime. If it is approached as a criminal rather than purely a waste management issue, we stand a better chance of getting a grip.
The Countess of Mar: My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is a problem with small service providers such as jobbing gardeners and builders? They cannot necessarily afford to pay for the licence for tipping, yet they are not allowed to use the local tip because their waste is regarded as not domestic. Is there any way in which we could get around this problem and stop them dumping garden waste and small building materials in farm gateways?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, if they are running a business, they should pay the costs of running it, like everybody else. Householders are different—they can go to civic amenity sites and they have rubbish collections. But if you are running a business, you should pay the costs of the business. Whether a business is small or large, there is no excuse—it is a crime, and cleaning up the public realm is costing the taxpayer about £50 million. A lot of waste is also tipped on private land in rural areas by people from the cities, and that costs another £50 million to clear up.
Baroness Knight of Collingtree: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is an extra incentive for fly-tipping since so many parts of the country now have to put up with a fortnightly household rubbish collection? Does that concern him, because it certainly concerns me?
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Lord Rooker: My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise the issue, because it is the obvious one. With respect to putting cost pressure on householders, it has to be done the other way around, by giving people a reduction for generating less waste and recycling. Research has been done across Europe and the evidence is that, where measures such as she mentioned have been introduced, there has been an increase in fly-tipping. Under the proposals for the waste management structure and strategy, local councils that make these changes will, as part and parcel of the way they change collection processes, have to have a specific programme to make sure that fly-tipping is dealt with proactively. It is generally known where a lot of the sites are and more monitoring is going on so that people can be caught. As I said, earlier this year someone was sent to prison for persistent fly-tipping down in the Portsmouth or Plymouth area.
Earl Cathcart: My Lords, the vast majority of local councils say that the annual ratcheting up of landfill tax has made and will make fly-tipping worse. Together with the cost of the waste carrier’s licence, there are now proposals for a bin tax for households. Does the Minister agree that, with only 1 per cent of fly-tippers prosecuted, more will choose to avoid the escalating cost of legitimate disposal by fly-tipping? Surely we should be looking at ways of preventing fly-tipping from happening in the first place, by creating incentives for the legitimate disposal of waste.
Lord Rooker: Yes, my Lords, the noble Earl is quite right; there is no sense in giving up on this. It has been worked out that there are over 1 million incidents of fly-tipping annually. It is a serious crime in the public realm, as well as causing disruption to people’s livelihoods. Therefore, we have to be proactive in dealing with it. We have to be careful that actions taken in waste management in one area do not have unintended consequences in another—that is, leading to an increase in fly-tipping that is unmanaged and gets totally out of control. That would be a complete failure, which is why this House and the other place have recently passed legislation to make it more of a crime, raising offences and giving an incentive to the Environment Agency and to local government to get a grip on it. There is no proposal for a bin tax as such, but account must be taken that any changes that are made to collections must not cause an increase in fly-tipping as a consequence.
Lord Northbourne: My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the cost of depositing a small commercial load of garden waste? In my Dover district, it is £16 for a small trailer-load. Following the previous question, would it not be sensible to develop ways in which much of this waste could be usefully composted and reused in gardens?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, it is reused as compost. The fact is that if the garden waste has been taken away by someone who charged the customer for doing
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Lord Campbell-Savours: My Lords, is the Minister aware that many local authorities simply do not advertise the fact that they offer this service free of charge?
Lord Rooker: My Lords, local authorities are now required to measure fly-tipping incidents; it is also connected to the Comprehensive Spending Review targets. So there is far more work going on in local authorities to collect and manage waste, and to get reductions in waste. The evidence from around the country and across the European Union is that the more we go for recycling, the more we can reduce the amount of waste that we generate in the first place.
Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords—
Lord Livsey of Talgarth: My Lords, is the Minister aware of any plans to educate young people more about the dumping of waste, particularly in the countryside? It seems to be a case of, “If you see a hedge, throw a bottle or an empty can over it”. I have personally collected bagfuls of stuff from behind hedges. This is common in all parts of the countryside. There is a need for a big education programme with young people on the disposal of waste.
Lord Rooker: My Lords, there is active discussion between Defra, the National Farmers’ Union, the Country Land and Business Association and the Countryside Alliance. We realise that this is a major issue, which is why it is being dealt with proactively. The launch at the end of April of anti-fly-tipping week, organised by the Countryside Alliance, was part of a six-month programme that will have that effect of educating and explaining that there is an alternative to fly-tipping and that you do not have to fly-tip.
Baroness Byford: My Lords, the Minister said earlier that progress has been made, and I appreciate some of his comments, but it clearly does not matter how big the fine is if the people who are throwing this litter away are not caught. Some of them are professional dumpers. What are the Government doing about that?
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Lord Rooker: My Lords, we allocated some £2 million for 2006-07 to help the Environment Agency to tackle fly-tipping and to make it simpler for businesses to check whether carriers taking away their waste are disposing of it properly. The Environment Agency is also taking forward a targeted campaign of enforcement across England, north, south, east and west. As I said, the fines are increasing. A recent press release from the Environment Agency, dated the end of March, gave incidents at one court of 100 hours’ community service and over £92,000 in fines. I know that there is an argument about not filling the prisons up with people, but this is a serious criminal offence and a prison sentence is a good example to others. Action is going on: there is targeted enforcement—that is, checking on and monitoring areas that are known for fly-tipping—and local authorities are doing proactive work such as following people who are collecting waste to ensure that it is systematically going to the correct place for disposal.
Afghanistan: National Army and Police
11.22 am
Lord Astor of Hever asked Her Majesty’s Government:
What contribution United Kingdom forces deployed to Afghanistan are making to assist the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police.
The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Lord Drayson): My Lords, UK forces deployed in Afghanistan provide six operational mentoring and liaison teams that train and mentor the Afghan national army. UK forces also provide officer and junior NCO training at the Kabul military training centre. As part of the wider ISAF mission, UK forces also play a limited supporting role in the development of the Afghan national police in Helmand province.
Lord Astor of Hever: My Lords, I am grateful to the Minister for that reply. This is an important issue because our exit strategy will depend on creating viable Afghan security forces. At the moment, allies have discretion over ANA training, with mixed results. Are there any plans to create a unified training regime with central recruiting, training and command? Can the Minister comment on the increasing evidence that a proportion of the police are openly assisting, rather than deterring, the drug trade?
Lord Drayson: My Lords, I am not aware of any initiative to provide a central recruiting facility for the ANA. Our assessment is that the progress of training the ANA is going well. We are now at a level of approximately 30,000 Afghan soldiers. The way in which the Afghan national army has been able to be deployed successfully alongside coalition forces and the bravery and effectiveness that it has shown give us real encouragement.
It is not the same in the case of the Afghan national police, as the noble Lord indicated. We are quite concerned about the levels of corruption and
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Lord Ashdown of Norton-sub-Hamdon: My Lords, if there is a single golden rule about these kinds of operations it is that the international community must speak with a single voice and act with a single will. When it comes to civil administration and reconstruction, I fear that that is not the case. The international community’s actions on the civil reconstruction side are unco-ordinated, unsystematic, bilateral and deeply confusing to the Afghans. Does the Minister realise that we are putting one-25th of the number of troops and one-50th of the amount of aid per head of population into Afghanistan that we put into Bosnia and Kosovo? Maybe we can still succeed by putting fewer resources into Afghanistan than into any other successful peace stabilisation mission, but that “maybe” becomes never if the international community will not act with a single voice and a single will in civil reconstruction in Afghanistan, and that is the case at present. Why?
Lord Drayson: My Lords, the noble Lord, with his experience, is absolutely right in making the comparison to Kosovo with regards to the level of resources per head of population. Nevertheless, the contribution that this country is making, in terms of military support, through aid, and to governance and effectiveness—the way in which we are acting in a joined-up sense from this country’s point of view—provides a good model. However, this is a NATO mission; it is an opportunity for NATO to show that it can, as an international community, act in a joined-up way and the noble Lord is right to highlight the difficulties. The only answer to those difficulties is for us to continue to press coalition partners to provide the resources for the development of such forms of co-operation, to improve effectiveness. That is what is needed. It is a key test for NATO and the international community to show that it can do this.
Lord Ahmed: My Lords, what percentage of Pashtun are involved in the Afghan national army and the Afghan national police? As I understand it, the Pashtun community is represented equally in parliament, but not equally in many of the important ministries in Afghanistan and it feels isolated. What role do the Northern Alliance warlords, such as General Dostum, play in the Afghan national army?
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