Waste Management: Fly-tipping

Baroness Scott of Needham Market
asked Her Majesty’s Government what actions they are taking to tackle the issue of fly-tipping.

The noble Baroness said: Contrary to the Order Paper, this debate is about fly-tipping—not “fly-tapping”, which sounds much more interesting, but it is not a problem of which I am aware.

Fly-tipping makes one’s blood boil, particularly when out in the countryside, enjoying a walk and one comes across a pile of rubbish. It can absolutely incense people. It also appears to have given rise to a whole new industry. Last week, I saw a van with the words “Aquatic Retrieval Unit” on it. Mystified, I asked the driver what he did, and he said, “I fish Tesco trolleys out of the river”. That is another example of the costs generated by this very anti-social behaviour of fly-tipping.

I have mentioned the fact that it is a blight on the countryside, but 88 per cent of fly-tipping incidents occur in urban areas—it is just more obvious if one is in otherwise pristine countryside. According to figures issued by local authorities, there has been a 4.5 per cent increase in incidents in the past year.

I would have thought that reporting fly-tipping would be quite a straightforward matter, but as usual it is not. Having looked into the matter a little more, I have discovered that there are local authorities that will count someone who puts out their bin bag a day early as a fly-tipper. That makes it difficult to work out the exact figures. I am assured that such local authorities have been removed from the figures that I have just given. Clearly, there is a serious problem.

The costs are very high. Local authorities estimate that they spend £74 million clearing up fly-tipping and another £25 million on enforcement and the Environment Agency has costs on top of that. It is so depressing as this problem need not exist. It is not due to some enormous social or economic ill; it is a combination of certain circumstances, to which I shall turn later, and predominantly downright anti-social behaviour.

I am not excusing fly-tipping in the least, but we need to make it simpler for people to dispose of waste easily. I shall take a moment to tell the Committee what happened to me three years ago. I was clearing some ground at my new cottage and I was filling up a skip. A piece of asbestos—about the size of an A4 piece of paper—was in the rubbish. The skip lorry driver would not take it, which was fine, so I drove to the civic amenity site, where I was told that they could not take it and that I would have to go to the main tip. That was a 12-mile drive. There I was made to fill in a form, drive over the weighbridge, drive for 10 minutes through the site, come back, be weighed again and pay £70. That was for a piece of asbestos of that size. I suggest that very few people would have gone to that trouble. We have to make it easier for people who are genuinely trying to help.

To an extent, that exemplifies a problem that we see all through modern life: everyone is so keen to manage their own costs and keep within their own framework that they tend to shunt costs on to someone else or on to the public and do not think about the impact that such a policy might have on the behaviour of the public. Certainly, the Environment Agency has argued that the costs and complexity of managing waste lawfully encourages some people to dump their waste and to fly-tip. We should certainly not ignore the Environment Agency, which after all is the expert in this area. The law of unintended consequences is familiar to all of us.

Operators of civic amenity sites often install height barriers; they create bureaucratic systems. They do so for good reasons—for example, to sort out commercial from domestic waste—but there are many examples of people who get caught out by them. They are simply householders who are trying to behave in an orderly way and find themselves unable to do so. It is increasingly the case that small contractors who come to change the kitchen or perhaps the bathroom will not take the old goods away because they do not want to pay for them to be tipped, which leaves the householder with them. Some householders, who are unable or unwilling to deal with them in any other way, will simply dump them. I am not sure that the name “civic amenity site” is terribly useful. A lot of people do not know what it does. I am not sure why we call it that.

Local authorities probably do not pursue fly-tippers as vigorously as they might because there is a high cost involved. The debate is similar to that which we used to have about speeding fines, where the police would not stop people for speeding because it cost more to prosecute them than to let them speed. Is there not a solution in that? Should we not consider hypothecating fine income? What happens to fines for fly-tipping offences? The Environment Agency says that its court actions last year resulted in £422,000 being levied in fines. Does that go the Exchequer?

The Government’s waste strategy is very helpful—I know that they take it very seriously. Their proposals with regard to recycling, reducing packaging and a more draconian enforcement regime are welcome. There is a maximum penalty in the magistrates’ court of £50,000, but, according the Environment Agency, the average fine per prosecution is £3,298. Is that because there were no cases serious enough to warrant the maximum fine, or is it because magistrates are reluctant to impose high fines?

The waste strategy also proposes an increase in the landfill tax escalator of £8 per year. Having served on the board of the regulator, Entrust, for eight years, I am familiar with the landfill tax. The landfill tax credit scheme has certainly provided funding for many useful projects. However, I am worried that the increase in the level of landfill tax will encourage people to fly-tip. The bulk of landfill tax money simply goes straight to the Treasury. Have the Government considered giving some of the income from the escalator to local authorities and the Environment Agency to clean up if more fly-tipping results from the increase?

Last year’s local elections were rather odd in that they did not seem to be won or lost on political lines. They were “bin” elections, where councils across the country won or lost according to whether they were moving to fortnightly waste collections. A lot of high-flown rubbish was written about what was going to happen, some of it apocalyptic. Where are the Government on that subject? How much do they know about what is likely to happen if we move to fortnightly waste collection? Is there any evidence that it encourages fly-tipping? That question is even more relevant to “chip and bin” schemes. Will the Minister update the Committee on the Government’s thinking, especially on how it is possible to create incentives which should in theory create less waste but may also provide an incentive to fly-tip?

I am grateful to other noble Lords who have agreed to speak in this short debate. I look forward to their contributions and to the response of the Minister.

15:09:00

Viscount Goschen
I welcome the words of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, and agree with everything that she said about this problem. It is an area where the balance between penalties and incentives is wrong. The problem is getting away from us. Incidences of fly-tipping are increasing dramatically, but we are not managing to defeat the problem by bringing prosecutions with the current level of fines. I believe that we have the balance wrong between the factors that affect law-abiding people who try to do the right thing by disposing of their waste correctly, the level of penalties that can be applied and the vigour used to pursue illegal fly-tippers.

Much of the problem is caused by jobbing builders of one sort or another—small-scale firms for which the hassle and cost of disposing of their waste is just too much for them. It is all very well to say—and I shall be absolutely staggered if the Minister does not say it at some stage during his remarks—that the polluter should pay. Of course the polluter should pay, but the way in which the incentives are structured at the moment, it is not the polluter that pays but householders, through their council tax, and landowners. The levy is just too easy to evade. The countryside is a big place and fly-tipping takes place in urban areas as well. People will be irresponsible and they will dispose of their waste similarly irresponsibly. I in no way condone that but we have to recognise that as a fact.

Therefore, first, I think that we should at least seriously consider whether it would be more economically and environmentally effective to allow trade waste up to perhaps a weight of one tonne or a volume of two cubic metres—approximately what can be carried in a pick-up truck or light van—to be disposed of for free, as for a householder. If we did that, we would remove at a stroke a significant degree of fly-tipping in this country. I should like to know whether the Government have done a cost-benefit analysis of making such a change—what it would cost and what the benefits might be in terms of a reduction in fly-tipping. Perhaps this could be trialled as a local issue and we could see the results. Such a suggestion would also be helpful to householders who turn up in anything that looks like a commercial vehicle. These days, plenty of people own pick-up trucks, SUVs or a trailer—perhaps a horse box or something of that nature—and want to dispose of rubbish, but they are faced with bureaucracy at waste disposal centres. The other day at Question Time I heard the Minister rebutting that but I have had experience of it. One is made to feel not quite a criminal but when trying to do the right thing one is put through the wringer before being allowed to dispose of waste.

Secondly, I think that we should forget all thoughts of bin taxes and recycling penalties for householders. That will lead only to more plastic bags being slung out of cars—and all to avoid a tiny penalty for something which then costs a fortune to clear up. If we apply financial incentives for misbehaving, we should not be surprised when that happens. The noble Baroness referred to the law of unintended consequences. They may be unintended but they are fully foreseen, and many people, including Members of your Lordships’ House, have warned about them. We see the landfill tax increasing, and if people have incentives for disposing of their rubbish illegally, I am sure that they will continue to do so. Therefore, let us make it easier for people to obey the law.

Thirdly, we have to get on top of the enforcement fees. Can the Minister tell us the ratio between instances of fly-tipping and successful prosecutions? According to the figures given by the noble Baroness, the figure for the latter is minuscule. I have some personal experience of this. Near to where a relative of mine lives, repeated fly-tipping takes place in the lane that is used to access the house. One day, this got too much for me. I sorted through the rubbish and found an envelope with a name and address on it. I then got out my map and went round to the householder whose address was on the envelope. I asked what had happened and was told that a firm of jobbing builders had come to pitch for some work replacing guttering—the rubbish that had been disposed of was guttering. Feeling like Hercule Poirot, I then contacted the local authority to say that I had the rubbish, the piece of paper, the evidence from the householder and the name and address of the building firm that had dumped the rubbish, and I asked the authority to move to a prosecution. I was asked, “Did you see them dumping it?”. I did not, but that is rather like saying that, unless you actually see someone murdering someone else, it is not possible to prosecute them. That struck me as an extraordinary attitude. It turned out that this family firm was very well known for this sort of thing. The local authority officers were intimidated by the extended family and decided to take no action.

My third suggestion is that we should consider whether private contractors should be allowed to pursue fly-tippers on a “bounty” basis to bring forward successful actions. We know the vigour, for example, in London with which one is pursued for being more than one second over the time allowed on a parking meter. One is suddenly presented with a fine of £100 for that terrible offence. Compare that with the illegal dumping of rubbish. These are two totally different things, but, if one has a firm with people highly incentivised to pursue misdemeanours, why can they not use the investigative qualities demonstrated in that instance? It would be welcome if the Minister could address that.

Finally, I would like to ask the Minister about rats. We are told that instances of rodent infestation were up 32 per cent in the last period. Is there any thought that this is connected with the improper disposal of rubbish?

Fly-tipping is a serious problem. It blights the countryside. The economic costs are huge. With a better balance between the stick and carrot I believe that we can make some progress on it.

15:16:00

Lord Dear
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for introducing this short debate. Fly-tipping is a serious problem whether you live in urban or country areas. I understand that 93 per cent of rubbish is fly-tipped in urban areas, and that leaves 7 per cent in rural areas. It seems in the rural areas to be bigger; it is certainly more unsightly and more obvious. It is that small area that I want to focus on this afternoon.

I declare an interest as a member of Countryside Alliance, which has produced this very good and timely leaflet that has already been mentioned—Time for Action. It contains a lot of information and a lot of useful and worthwhile suggestions. The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, has already talked about landowners. I want to amplify some of his points. Fly-tipping is a big problem for landowners. The acreage involved for the landowner is immaterial. All you need to have is a driveway, a gateway or a lay-by alongside your land and you will be a target for the fly-tipper. We understand that it is a major problem for three-quarters of all landowners. Put another way, it affects 67 per cent of all farmers. I live in a rural area, and all the farmers I have spoken to have, without exception, said, “We have a big problem”.

The cost of getting rid of the problem, so far as Defra is concerned, is the £47 million visited on the farmer or the landowner, but I would think that that is a highly conservative estimate; one could easily speculate that it could be half as much again, or even more.

What do you see? We have all seen everything from cars and used nappies to fridges, furniture, and mattresses. Fifty per cent of rubbish tipped is in black bags, which you can conclude comes from domestic sources and not just from the jobbing builder; and 53 per cent—again roughly half—of what is dumped is estimated by volume to have come from a small van or a car. There is an indication of the sort of people who are fly-tipping in the countryside.

We have speculated on the reasons for fly-tipping. They are fairly obvious. It could be because of increased charges for disposal of rubbish from your home; laziness plays a big part; perhaps increased regimentation in how councils are beginning to put out a whole range of different coloured bins for us to sort our rubbish, and some people just do not want to do that; and of course the hike in the landfill tax, which has already been mentioned.

What is the landowner to do? I focus on the landowner, as I said at the beginning of this short address. He will find that local authorities will vary between those who are sympathetic to his plight to those who are at the other end of the scale—almost bone-headed.

The landowner has the problem. The rubbish is dumped, by definition, on private land; if he moves it to the verge, which is an obvious answer for him, he immediately runs the risk of committing an offence of depositing litter in a public place from a private place. He is open to prosecution. He is all right if he has already entered into some sort of verbal contract with the local authority, because some local authorities will pick the rubbish up from the verge and take it away for him. It is lucky for the landowner if that is what happens, but many local authorities will not do that. He is then faced with either leaving the litter on his land and ignoring it, certain in the knowledge that one lot of litter will attract more to it like a magnet, or he can pick it up in his own trailer, pick-up truck or lorry and move it to a civic amenity site. There, as we have already heard, he can be met with a variety of responses. He may get a helpful response, which allows him to dump it on the civic amenity site, but more often than not at the site—which may be managed directly by the local authority or by an agent on its behalf—he will be met with an interrogation which frequently finishes either with him paying a fee to dump it as a commercial user or with him being turned away. What does he do with the rubbish then? One option is to dump it in some other neighbour’s yard or field—but I leave that question open because the point that I make is fairly self-evident.

The problem is similarly met by do-it-yourself handymen, who have a sink, a bath and a couple of bits and pieces of rubble. They are met with the same problem at civic amenity sites. That leads me to say the obvious—that there is a need for a sympathetic standardisation of approach at civic amenity sites for people seeking quite properly to get rid of their rubbish in that way. It is very unfair to penalise and make life difficult for the landowner, who is after all at the very end of the litter trail. We do not penalise people who have been inconvenienced or sustained damage to their properties in a burglary or assault. Those are both criminal offences—and this, too, is a criminal offence. The victim in this sense is the landowner who has found the car or mattress on his land, who is penalised because he very often has no redress and it is a lottery according to which local authority area he lives in.

We should not ask the Government to legislate on this, as we have too much legislation in the public domain already, but the Government are well placed to use their best offices to influence local authorities—probably through the LGA—to sort out a code of best practice for themselves to make life easier for those trying to use those civic amenity sites. As has been said, we should try to encourage magistrates to take the subject seriously, not through Defra but through government ministries. Then we could see just what a problem it is, where according to statistics half the litter in the country is fly-tipped. I hesitate to say whether those figures are true or not, but that is what we are led to believe. There is a problem, however, and magistrates need to be aware of the size of it.

Putting a cart before a horse, I think that we should press for more and better enforcement from local authorities. The noble Viscount has already spoken about that—although there has been a 46 per cent increase in enforcement from 2005-06 to 2006-07. We need to look at local authorities providing more adequate civic amenity sites. I live in a rural area in north Gloucestershire, where we have just gone through the exercise of having new bins and a new regime to collect rubbish, for which we are paying. In the literature that came to me through my door last week, I was told with a note of pride that there are two civic amenity sites that I can use; the nearest are in Cirencester and Wotton-under-Edge. That is fine, except that one is 30 miles away and the other is 48 miles away, for me or anyone else who wants to use them. The distance to be travelled really defies anyone wanting to use that sort of service.

I conclude by echoing the words that have been said and precursing some of the words that will be said in this short debate. It is not really for government to do anything other than influence others, but the real problem lies with the local authorities and can be remedied by them. I ask the Government to use their best offices in that direction to encourage them in a more standardised and sympathetic approach.

15:25:00

The Duke of Montrose
I, too, am grateful to the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, for bringing this issue once again to the notice of the “House”.

She mentioned the fly-tipping of domestic waste. This practice has an educational element because an unfortunate by-product of the increasingly rigorous categorisation of waste, and the EU directives on which much of it is founded, is that fly-tipping becomes a way of getting around it.

I declare an interest as a farmer whose business has benefited from the recovery of old railway sleepers, telegraph poles and a great deal of second-hand equipment. I hope that the Environment Agency does not try to gold-plate some of the regulations, one of which is that anything that has not been used for 12 months should be classified as waste. On a farm, as long as items are kept tidy, a use can be found for them long after 12 months of not being used.

The noble Lord, Lord Dear, mentioned that 67 per cent of farmers suffer from fly-tipping, some of which can be costly to remove. There is a question of how to distinguish between fly-tipping, which is the main subject today, and litter. A great deal of the disfigurement of the countryside is caused by litter, which people throw from their car or from their backpacks and leave lying around. The most extreme example in our area—this raises embarrassment with the police—is that people go to a shop such as Millets, buy a tent, camp out in a remote area and then walk away and leave the tent when they have had their night’s camping. Someone will see that the tent has been sitting there for a day or two and inform the police that there might be a dead body inside it. Several policemen then have to investigate the situation, only to find that the tent has been abandoned. These are the kind of strange developments that our throwaway society can produce.

One of the current problems for the ordinary public is to know what rules and regulations the local authority has at its disposal sites. Do the Government publish any guidance on best practice—I am treading on the same area as the noble Lord, Lord Dear—which would enable greater publicity and transparency for the public? Obviously each local authority will invent its own rules but it would help if there was a general guidance which set out what materials a local authority tip will accept. Again, the question of quantity and whether a tip will accept only a certain amount may arise. It is obviously terribly frustrating to turn up with rubbish and for someone to say, “I am afraid your car is too big. We cannot let you in here. It is a question for the commercial dump”. We should somehow urge local authorities to show more flexibility and gear the hours when the sites are open to more useful times of the day so that people can carry out their own domestic disposal.

Has any correlation been made between fly-tipping and the scarcity of local authority disposal points? This is as much an urban question as a rural one, although in rural areas people are geared up to drive a little further than people in urban areas.

We have touched on the introduction of bin taxes. The Minister will be familiar with our dealings on the Climate Change Bill and the introduction of his five pilot schemes. It is important that the Government should monitor whether there is some correlation between fly-tipping and the areas where the pilot schemes are running to see whether they are having any effect.

On the question of the increased categorisation of what constitutes waste, the Minister will know that his colleague in another place announced that the statistics for Flycapture, the Government’s scheme, showed a massive increase in the incidence of fly-tipping between 2004-05 and 2005-06. In fact it went up from just under 1 million to over 2.5 million incidents in one year. Statistics are always open to interpretation.

Another point was referred to by my noble friend Lord Goschen: if someone is found fly-tipping, what powers does a farmer or an occupant have? He referred to the fact that if you have not actually seen someone fly-tipping, there is nothing you can do. Even if you see it happening, the problem is that a guy with the back of a lorry open just has to put his foot on the accelerator and you will have a hard job catching up with him.

I think we would like to see—it may be up to the individuals concerned—more information for magistrates on what powers are available to them. I know that vehicles can be confiscated—I hope that that will be applied to repeat offenders—but it is obviously a very stern disincentive to anyone who might carry out that activity. There are those who have a reputation for fly-tipping. I gather that the Environment Agency may have a power to take vehicles when the offence is discovered. Perhaps the Minister could tell us how that is likely to apply.

15:31:00

Lord Taylor of Holbeach
I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market, for bringing this subject to debate. She is to be congratulated. People feel strongly about the subject and many feel that nothing is being done. I do not accuse the Government of that. Much may be being done but the perception is otherwise. I too am grateful to the Countryside Alliance for their briefing.

I shall start my contribution by relating direct experience. I declare an interest as a farmer and someone who, in many ways, is a victim of fly-tipping. This morning, I spoke to my nephew who has to deal with it daily. He said, “Can I have a video link so that I can tell them?” I thought it might be more dispassionate if I relate what he said to me.

I wish to do justice to the anger felt by those who regularly have to deal with fly-tipping on their property. As he said they are losing the battle and the problem is getting worse. I do not live near a large metropolitan area; I live near a country market town; but my nephew tells me that at least once a month he has to send out a tractor and trailer with a couple of chaps to clear up the rubbish that he has discovered around the place. He is not prone to exaggeration and I believe that that is an accurate account of how frequently he has to do that. He also has a truck and frequently picks up stuff. He has to collect litter from roadside verges, green lanes, hedges, dykes, gateways and sometimes well into a field. People will not take rubbish to a tip but they will put it 50 yards into a field. It is quite unbelievable. It can be just general rubbish, as my noble friend the Duke of Montrose has mentioned, but much is in plastic bin liners, so people have put it in bags but have failed to put it out for domestic collection and it is dumped on someone else's land. There are tyres, fridges, TVs and general builders’ rubble, frequently containing asbestos and sometimes clearly hazardous waste. That is dangerous for cattle and livestock, it is damaging to farm machinery and it blocks drains, dykes, sluices and pumps in the fens, which is a major problem for drainage boards that have to deal with such waterborne rubbish.

Theoretically, local authorities will come along and clear roadside verges, but they are overwhelmed. If one does nothing about it and waits for them, one just encourages more litter. As the noble Lord, Lord Dear, said, litter encourages litter, and fly-tipping encourages fly-tipping. Local authorities will collect things from the yard, such as WEEE items, but we have to pay. For asbestos, we may have to ask a specialist contractor to take it away; otherwise, we have to take it to the site to get rid of it.

As has been said, 67 per cent of farmers report incidents of fly-tipping, though I suspect even more experience it. The Flycapture report states that local authorities prosecuted in 2006-07 only 1,371 people. There seems to be a disparity between people’s experience of the problem and how often people are brought to book for it. My nephew tells me that he has found envelopes with addresses on them, taken them to the authorities and said, “Look, this person has dumped rubbish on my land”, but no prosecution has ever resulted from such an incident.

A Written Answer of 3 December 2007—in Commons Hansard at col. 777W— lists fly-tipping incidents reported in the West Midlands during the three years ending in 2007. The region contains 34 councils which are responsible for waste disposal, 20 of which, including Birmingham City Council, did not report a single prosecution. Some incidents involved very hazardous and polluting materials—we are talking of genuine criminal activity in certain cases.

Many of the problems that trouble private landowners and public authorities—they, too, are victims of fly-tipping—are low-level. They are a consequence of idleness, unwillingness to pay and a minimal risk of being found out. However, someone has to pay; in many cases, it is the farmer. A report for the Environment Agency, which the Countryside Alliance has reproduced, cites £47 million as the per-annum cost to land managers and farmers. I believe that it may be more.

The guidance on fly-tipping from the Environment Agency, produced in 2004, states that,

“if someone dumps rubbish on private land the landowner must get permission from the appropriate agency before paying a registered waste carrier to take it away … if someone dumps rubbish on private land the landowner must devise a transfer note to accompany the rubbish should he wish to accumulate it on a neighbour’s property … if someone dumps rubbish on private land and the landowner decides it will rot down he must register the site for composting”.

Is this guidance still operational? If so, does the poor landowner have to pay for the various permissions and does the Minister find such charges fair? Does the Minister agree with Joan Ruddock, who said in a Written Answer on 20 February that,

“to place a duty on the authorities and the Environment Agency to remove waste from private land would create a fly-tippers' charter”.—[Official Report, Commons, 27/02/08; col. 1625W.]

If so, will he explain the reasoning behind that comment?

As I said, I do not accuse the Government of doing nothing. The Minister will no doubt tell us that the Environmental Protection Act 1990 and the Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 give local authorities and the Environment Agency powers to tackle fly-tipping, and courts the power to impose penalties. The Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Act 2005 introduced specific measures to deal with fly-tipping—I have the details in front of me. The Government have a waste strategy for England which they produced last year. So I do not accuse the Government of doing nothing, but we can do more. There is no quick fix, but we can do some things, which I hope have emerged in the debate today.

Everyone has mentioned the issue of improved access to civic amenity sites. The noble Baroness, Lady Scott, gave a vivid illustration of the difficulties she had with her single sheet of asbestos. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, made it quite clear that in some cases the tips are so far away from where people live that it is difficult for them to get there. My noble friend the Duke of Montrose mentioned the hours that the tips are open. They are civic amenity sites and should provide a civic amenity.

I am fortunate to have a sunshine home in France, which I enjoy greatly. There they have a different approach which may be worth considering. This does not remove all fly-tipping but it localises the centralisation of the municipal tip. The déchetterie is nearby—most people can get to it—and you can recycle everything. There is no doorstep collection in rural areas in France; people have to take their waste to a central depot. So what they are saving in that they are reinvesting in this. There is less fly-tipping there than here at home.

We should also encourage greater support for the relationship between local authorities, farmers and public bodies who have to deal with this problem. It should be solved by co-operation, not by putting landowners under the pressure of feeling almost the guilty party when they seek to dispose of waste that has been illegally dumped on their property. I hope we can give a proper briefing to prosecuting authorities and magistrates on the cost of fly-tipping and the damage it causes.

I do not know whether the Flycapture database includes every reported incident that takes place on private land. It has been mentioned before that the statistics are questionable. Certainly a million incidents in Liverpool seems beyond belief. It is difficult to reconcile with figures from elsewhere.

My noble friend the Duke of Montrose referred to the Climate Change Bill and the five pilots therein. It is important that we encourage the local authorities which commit to these pilots to monitor fly-tipping incidents in parallel, both before and after the introduction of the schemes, because we would not want a situation arising whereby in order to provide more efficient local waste collection systems we also increase the amount of fly-tipping. There needs to be a reconciliation between these issues. The noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, has some interesting ideas about ways in which we might ameliorate this problem.

All noble Lords agree that this is a serious issue which needs high priority attention. I hope the Minister can assure us that the Government share this view.

15:43:00

The Minister of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Lord Rooker)
Along with others, I welcome the debate introduced by the noble Baroness, Lady Scott of Needham Market. It has been really useful. We could have spent more time discussing this issue in the Climate Change Bill, although it is ancillary to the five pilots. No pilot will be allowed to go ahead unless it has an active plan for dealing with fly-tipping; that is part of the process. Any council which wants to become one of the five pilots to test out different systems for household collection recycling has to have certain rules for the kerbside collection of a number of different items and a good plan for dealing with fly-tipping.

I, too, compliment the Countryside Alliance on its report. It is first class. It came out some time ago now and nobody has done anything better. If I could stand here and say that we could accept and implement all the recommendations I would be happy to do so. They are all sensible and practical. Of course there are cost issues on some of them.

This week, Joan Ruddock, the Minister for fly-tipping—and this is the first time this week that no one has blamed Defra, which is nice—met the Countryside Alliance to discuss its report. So there are ongoing discussions about this. As I have informed my colleagues, when they get the Climate Change Bill in the other place I suspect that there will be a lot more interest from the elected Members of Parliament on the clauses at the end of the Bill relating to waste, than there was in this House, simply because of the pressure from local authorities and constituents. I suspect that they will hone in very much on that.

Funnily enough, this morning I was on a brief visit to look at some areas of catchment-sensitive farming practices alongside the River Kennet near Hungerford. Although it was not the purpose for my visit, as I was leaving I said to one of the two farmers that I had met, “I have got to go now and get back to the House of Lords, but, by the way, what is the story on fly-tipping around here?” His immediate estimate was that it had doubled in the previous two or three years. I did not see any rubbish this morning. I was around tracks; it was certainly fly-tipping country. I do not want to encourage anybody, but the view was that it had doubled and was becoming a real nuisance. So it is a serious issue.

I think that I can answer most of the points when I turn to my speaking notes. I turn to the statistics. Noble Lords will have read the briefings and those from the department, and I read the very interesting brief from the Countryside Alliance. I knew that Liverpool was the culture capital of Europe this year, but I do not think that it really wanted to be the fly-tipping capital of England. The way the figures are recorded has made it so. It is quite clear that it has penalised and counted people as fly-tippers who have put out rubbish a day early. It is not good for us in terms of policy making if you do not have common statistics. Nobody has made a point about different local authorities, and I do not want to bandy those statistics around, but there are some serious issues.

There is no argument that, whether it is rural or urban, fly-tipping undermines the quality of life. The noble Lord, Lord Dear, is right that although the percentages look smaller for the countryside, the impact on life is greater because the rubbish is not hidden up back alleys and so on. It is visible and dumped in such a way that it encourages others.

We are in the early stages of collecting data on this. There is no doubt that over recent years fly-tipping has increased. We have 1.3 million recordable cases in England. We use the figure of 1.3 million. It would be ludicrous to use the 2.6 million because the other 1.3 are all from Liverpool. It just does not make sense. We have examples. I will not name the authority, but I will give an example. A small district council in 2005-06 had 41 recorded incidents. The other district councils in that county had around about 300 to 400, and one had 900. The following year, 2006-07, all the other councils were still about the same, but the council that had 41 now had 277. Clearly, the 41 figure was wrong; it was undercounted. It is a serious issue. It really does not matter what the statistics are. It is costing landowners and local authorities a fortune, and it is diminishing the quality of life for people in urban and rural areas. We have to do more about it.

The Waste Strategy for England, published in May last year, included a waste crime action plan. That sets out measures that we are introducing over a period of time to deal with fly-tipping. It focuses on better prevention measures and simplifying legislation and guidance to encourage compliance. That is fundamental, as is simplifying access to the recycling sites. I agree that they should all be called recycling centres. It is a complete nonsense to have different titles for what are, in effect, the same things.

The plan also focuses on enabling more joined-up action and prosecutions by the Environment Agency and local authorities. There is a fear in local authorities that the lawyers and compliance people will say to them, “You can’t spend all that money on prosecutions. It isn’t worth it. You don’t get the money back, because the money goes to the Treasury. Give them a warning”. Some local authorities are more active than others in this regard. I do not have the figures to back this up but I am told that Leeds, in particular, is very vigorous and has succeeded in cutting the amount of fly-tipping. This morning, I was given the example of two adjoining counties, one of which has a much more vigorous attitude to prosecution. The local people I was with from the Environment Agency and Natural England said that there was less fly-tipping in the county where it was known that prosecutions were followed vigorously. Therefore, taking such a stance can have an effect on people’s behaviour, and we want to ensure that the enforcement tools are practical.

Next month, site waste management plans will become mandatory for all construction projects in England worth over £300,000. I accept that I am not talking about a small jobbing builder working on someone’s loft conversion, but we have to make a start. The plans will strengthen the duty of care requirements and force construction businesses to track more closely the waste that they produce. In enforcing the plans, local authorities will have an extra tool at their disposal for dealing with the 30 per cent of fly-tips which involve construction waste.

Later in the spring, we will consult on our plans to strengthen the powers of local authorities to stop, search and seize vehicles suspected of being involved in illegal waste activity. I think that that partly covers one of the questions that I was asked about seizure. Effectively, there will be a consultation process. These powers will allow local authorities to take habitual offenders out of action much more easily and, it is hoped, undermine their illegal activity. I fully accept that local authority officers can sometimes be intimidated by these people, and I appreciate their difficulties.

We will also consult on our plans to reform controls on the transfer of waste. We need to ensure that waste producers and carriers take responsibility for the waste in their care. Householders and businesses can be duped into paying illegal operators whom they believe will deal with their waste and relieve them of their responsibility, but then these operators dump the waste around the corner. The waste duty of care is the main control that we have to ensure that waste is handled responsibly, and we have to ensure that the registration system is more effective and user-friendly. We also need to make sure that people are more aware of their responsibilities by giving them access to the information that they need to be certain that their waste is being removed legally. The fact that there is a duty to do that is important.

Believe it or not, we are still going to spend money on research into why illegal waste activity occurs. It is evident from what noble Lords have said that it tends to happen where the sites are some distance away. However, the one that I use near Bishop’s Cleeve seems to be a bit closer to where the noble Lord, Lord Dear, lives. It is within Gloucestershire, so it should be all right for him to use it. Although I cannot say that people are not turned away, I have never seen it happen. There may also be an issue of practicality—for example, there may be a problem relating to the size of vehicles or the opening hours. Some sites open seven days a week and close only on Christmas Day. However, others do not open seven days a week and that causes real difficulties. Opening is also restricted during hours of darkness.

We hope to do some further research into organised waste crime. In some parts of the country, waste disposal is an organised criminal activity. There is a lot of money to be made from it because payment of the necessary taxes can be avoided. I know that we are dealing with England but my experience in Northern Ireland was certainly that organising the illegal disposal of waste was a major activity. On the other hand, the more we can do to encourage recycling and the creation of businesses and assets out of recycling, the more people will realise that there is gold in waste. There are plenty of examples of that around the country but on a much smaller scale.

Many authorities work closely with landowners. I fully accept the difficulty that landowners face. With regard to the fly-tippers’ charter, it was thought that if everyone knew that what got dumped in the countryside would be taken away, that would simply encourage people to avoid the proper landfill arrangements because they could have their waste taken away for free. However, the present situation is clearly unsatisfactory. We need to build up a better picture of the problem of fly-tipping on private land, and we are exploring the possible development of the Flycapture database to capture such incidents.

At a national level, Defra and the Environment Agency meet bi-monthly with major stakeholders such as the NFU, the CLA, Network Rail and the National Trust through the National Fly-tipping Prevention Group. Their objective is to explore ways of improving the system of controls over fly-tipping. I understand the concerns that have been raised, and I will write to noble Lords regarding the detail of some of the points. If a landowner has to move fly-tipped waste from his land, he must use a registered waste carrier, and it is very unfair on him if he has to make arrangements to do that.

Standardising practice in recycling centres, as I call them, is difficult because each local authority has to deal with its own area and you cannot have a one-size-fits-all system. It might be possible to do something about the days and hours of opening and about not excluding cars. Someone said that their car was too long to be able to use a recycling site. However, if it was a car, it was not a van, and there is a limit to what you can get into a car, however big it is. It is ludicrous for someone to be turned away because their car is too big. If you take an estate car to these sites, you should not be turned away. We shall need to look at this matter because difficulties can arise where people live on boundaries between local authorities.

The ratio of prosecutions to fly-tipping incidents is low but, as I said, local authorities will have to be told that they must act proportionately, and they will be given that information by their lawyers.

Data show that there is no obvious correlation between collections on alternate weeks and an increase in fly-tipping, but there might be if the nature of the collections, charges and penalties and so on were changed. Therefore, the five pilot areas must have an anti-fly-tipping strategy in place; otherwise, they will not be allowed to act as pilot areas.

We will certainly take any ideas that have been put forward today and put them into the pot for the Minister. We may need to look at different methods of enforcement. If you give people a financial incentive and create businesses, it is possible to snuff out—or at least control—an activity. That has happened with parking, although the system is abused by the clampers, but it has certainly been better at keeping the traffic moving than was the case in the past.

I have gone over my time, for which I apologise. We will make a note of any issues that I have not dealt with and I promise to write to noble Lords.

[The Sitting was suspended from 3.58 to 4 pm.]