We now move on to a rubbish debate—about litter on motorways. I call Sir Mike Penning to move the motion.
Sir Mike Penning (Hemel Hempstead) (Con)
I beg to move,
That this House has considered litter on motorways.
On a very serious subject, hopefully we can also have some calming measures, if you know what I mean, Mr Hollobone. Other colleagues have indicated to me that they would join the debate this afternoon, so I wonder whether you could bear with them, Mr Hollobone, if some of them arrive a little later.
My constituency is boundaried by the M1, M25 and A41. The state of the rubbish on those motorways is an embarrassment to me as the constituency’s MP, and as an MP in general. I freely admit that the rubbish has probably been thrown out of the windows of cars—by passengers as well as drivers. Some of it comes off the back of refuse lorries that, inappropriately, do not have the correct tarpaulins to stop that happening.
Whatever the reason, the rubbish will start to disappear in the next few weeks. It is not going anywhere—it is just that the grass and weeds are growing, and they will cover it up. It is still not only a hindrance but a danger to our wildlife. Some of the areas where the motorways go are areas of outstanding natural beauty, on which wildlife very much rely. In my spare time, I love bird watching. It frightens me to look at some of the nests—especially at the end of the seasons, when we start clipping our hedgerows and other such things—and see what the birds think is safe to put into their nests.
I thank the right hon. Member for securing this important debate. Anyone who knows me will know that littering is my biggest bugbear; it is infuriating. A key concern that highways workers have relayed to me is the health and safety risk that litter poses to them when they have to clean it up. Does he agree that the issue is not given enough consideration?
Sir Mike Penning
I think not only that it is not given enough consideration, but that it is a national disgrace. I specifically picked on motorways because of the legal responsibility Highways England, the Highways Agency or whatever it wants to call itself today—it has renamed itself several times since I was the Roads Minister. I do not know why it has spent so many thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money renaming itself. If the brand is decent, it should not be renamed. If the brand is bad, it should be renamed, and that seems to be exactly what Highways England or the Highways Agency—Highways something—has been doing. It has a legal responsibility for its network, which includes not just motorways but some A roads.
We should have better enforcement and use the technology that we have. If we can prosecute people for going two or three miles per hour over the speed limit—I am all for that; I was a Transport Minister—we can use the same cameras to prosecute people who throw litter. I am sure that, like me, colleagues have seen footage of people on the motorway driving down the road—there is the car, there is the numberplate, there is the face, there is the phone—and exactly the same technology can be used for people chucking litter out of the car.
Penalties almost certainly need to be stronger. Perhaps we should do something not dissimilar to what I did when I was the Minister and we brought in the driver awareness course. Fines and points were not working, but the evidence showed that drivers actually drive better and slower after they have done such a course.
At the end of the day, we have to do two things. We have to educate people through courses such as the driver awareness course, and we have to make sure the person or organisation responsible for these highways takes action. I picked the motorways because it is not like in our constituencies, where it could be a borough council, a district council, a county council or a unitary authority; there is a single body legally responsible for motorways and some A roads under section 89 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. We have got to the ridiculous stage where individuals—I will talk about John Read and the Clean Up Britain campaign—are almost certain to use section 91 of the Act to take National Highways to court. We have the right under the Act to say, “You are not doing what you are supposed to be doing, which is to clear up the mess on our highways.”
When I applied for this debate, I was thrilled by not only by the excellent paper produced by the House of Commons Library, but by John Read of Clean Up Britain, Policy Exchange and the RAC Foundation. I also thank the Sunday Express for helping to highlight this issue last weekend. They have all come together to say, “What can we do to stop this blight, predominantly on the English countryside, getting worse and worse?”
I thank my right hon. Friend for securing this important debate. Many of my constituents express many of the concerns that he has already outlined. On the point about legal responsibilities and KPIs, we also have an issue that is applicable not just to motorways, but to A roads. In my constituency, we have the A2 and the A20, where there is general confusion about who is legally responsible for cleaning the litter from the hard shoulder and the verges. Transport for London often says that it is the local council’s responsibility, and local councils often dispute that, because they are obviously Transport for London roads.
Does my right hon. Friend agree that alongside strengthening the KPIs, we also need to have legal clarity about who is responsible for litter on motorways and our A roads? I echo his enthusiasm for encouraging community volunteer litter pickers who want to go out and help, but who are told no because of health and safety.
Sir Mike Penning
My hon. Friend has made several points that I completely agree with. As I said earlier, National Highways is responsible not only for motorways; it also has some A roads in my own part of the world. What was the M10 is now the A414, but it still has responsibility for that road. I do not think the organisation knows that, because it has not been anywhere the road since the day it ceased to be a motorway. I wrote to the Secretary of State and what I think was then known as Highways England, asking whether there was any chance that it could come along and pick up some of the signage that is lying on the roadsides, getting rusty and acting as a blight on animals and on the safety of someone who has pulled off the side of a road in an emergency. The signage is still there today.
The point that I think my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) is making about who is responsible is actually quite crucial. I mean, when I was the Roads Minister, I did not realise that with the M10—I live right next to the M10, although I know it is now the A414—the Highways Agency had kept responsibility for it and several other A roads. So that could be resolved very simply by the Minister dropping our hon. Friend a line to say that “the legal responsibility for the A2 lies with X”. I am sure that the Minister could get his officials to do that; that is what I might have done if I was the Minister. But who knows?
Regarding the other point that my hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup made, there are lots of volunteers out there today, going out and picking litter up; I have some in my own constituency and they do a fantastic job. There is that issue and there is actually the payback issue. People who are blighting my community in myriad different ways and who may get a community order should have to be supervised out there to clean the roads.
If anyone goes to Florida, they will drive down wonderful, clean roads. One of the reasons is that Florida actually uses people who are incarcerated to go and clear the roads. They are not dangerous criminals, but they are people in for short-term sentences. Of course they are not chained up or anything like that, but if they scarper—the sort of language that my grandmother would have used—they will eventually be found and at the end of the day they would not have any parole. They are not going to be attacked if they scarper, and they are already starting the payback. In our open prisons, why could we not have that today in parts of the country? It would be slightly difficult with some of the open prisons in, say, Norfolk, because there are no motorways in Norfolk. Payback and should mean payback.
I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing this debate. I agree with almost everything he said.
Litter is something I have repeatedly raised concerns about with National Highways and, previously, Highways England. It is unacceptable for my office to have to repeatedly raise the issues of litter, lack of effective maintenance and general poor standards of work with National Highways. I am pleased that the Transport Committee, which I am a member of, recently wrote to Nick Harris, chief executive of National Highways, about some of these issues, particularly the nearly 40% of the strategic road network that either has widespread litter or is heavily affected by litter.
Many of my constituents in Stoke-on-Trent South frequently raise concerns with me about the disgraceful levels of litter and the bad impression that people get when visiting or travelling through our area on the strategic road network. One of my constituents said to me recently when I was out in the community that one of their relatives had visited from overseas and was completely shocked to see the standard of our highways and the scale of litter accumulating at the side of the road. As my right hon. Friend said, overseas we do not see the same scale of littering at the side of the highway.
Staffordshire is at the heart of the UK, with several key routes passing through it. We have seen major problems with litter and poor maintenance on this road network, and there are concerns with our motorway network, particularly on the M6 and around its junctions. The issue is not reserved to the motorway network. There are also major concerns about trunk roads, which are also under the auspices of National Highways. The A50 and A500 cut right through the middle of Stoke-on-Trent, and that has a significant impact on the surrounding communities. While these routes provide important strategic connectivity, they also cause many problems, including air pollution and litter.
On the point of vermin, littered food attracts wild animals such as mice, rats and foxes. Drawn so close to vehicles moving at speed, these animals have a higher risk of being killed. Many of them carry germs and disease, and it is not a nice job to have to clean up roadkill. Does the hon. Member share my concerns about the increased risk of animal deaths resulting from litter?
I agree that those are very serious concerns. Health and safety concerns were mentioned earlier regarding the impacts of the litter and the disease that could be carried by rats and other animals. That is a serious concern.
One of the things we have seen in our area because of the lack of effective maintenance is anti-social behaviour, with resultant massive build-ups of litter, including alcohol bottles and drug paraphernalia on National Highways land. As regards health and safety and the operatives who will have to remove some of that drug paraphernalia, that is extremely concerning. If there are syringes and things like that there, they will have to wear specialist safety equipment. I recognise that some projects have been undertaken to address some of the vegetation management in our area, but we need a far more comprehensive and proactive routine maintenance approach—and to a much higher standard than some of what we have experienced so far.
The situation is overly complicated, with differing responsibilities for different roads, and we heard earlier about some of the confusions in Bexley. That is repeated in a number of places around the country. Motorways are entirely the responsibility of National Highways. However, it is suggested that National Highways takes responsibility for litter collection on only some of its major A roads, even though the land is in its ownership. On many National Highways A roads, local authorities have to clear litter, so we see different standards across the country.
Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead, I commend many of the volunteers—particularly those in Stoke-on-Trent South, who have been doing an incredible job across the constituency in addressing some of the litter issues. However, they simply cannot do that on many highway locations, where safety is a serious concern and where we need National Highways or others to remove some of the litter.
Sir Mike Penning
On the point about collaboration with local authorities, the financial burden should not fall on local authorities for something that is the legal responsibility of a different organisation. If that happens, it will spread around the country. That would be wrong, because it is not the financial burden of the local authority.
I entirely agree with my right hon. Friend. We see lots of pressures on things such as social care and everything else that local authorities have to deal with, so it is totally unacceptable that, in addition, they have to routinely clear up litter on many of those roads.
As I mentioned earlier, Stoke-on-Trent City Council has to cut the grass on many of the areas for which National Highways should take responsibility. Yet because its policy is for one annual cut, which is totally insufficient and results in massive build-ups of litter, we do not see the standard of service we need, and the financial impact for local authorities that have to deal with that is significant. In many cases, it just does not happen at all and we see the continued build-up of vast quantities of litter on much of the highway network.
I hope these partnerships, alongside other measures being undertaken by National Highways, result in a step change in the standards we need to see and in dramatic improvements, which have to happen, on what we have experienced previously. Forty per cent. is far too much of a blight on the network. Indeed, as my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead said, there is far more than that and it is potentially an underestimate of the scale of the challenge. It is vitally important for people in Stoke-on-Trent, those visiting and the wider environment that we have an effective approach to maintenance and litter control on the strategic network. I thank my right hon. Friend for the debate. It is about an important matter, and I hope the Minister will address all the issues.
First, I apologise to you, Mr Hollobone, for not giving advance notice of my intention to speak in the debate. I want to make a fairly short contribution. I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing the debate and I apologise also to him for not being here for the very beginning of his speech, which I am sure was as outstanding as the latter part.
This is a genuinely serious issue. I cover the M25 and have the A2 in my constituency; nearby are the A20 and M20. There is no doubt that this is a growing problem; it is a worsening situation, which is very challenging to deal with. I am, frankly, sick to death of driving down the A2 and seeing this sea of litter along the side, particularly at junctions. The Darenth interchange is in my constituency, which is in an appalling state.
I am blessed in my constituency to have a large number of litter picker-type groups, which have done a fantastic job assisting the council and complementing the work that it does in picking up litter. The volunteer groups go out and collect litter. Some have been clearing litter from the junctions, but there is clearly a danger there—a significant risk.
When they contact National Highways, they are told not to go to the junctions—“Don’t go there; we advise against that because of the obvious dangers.” Some have been to those junctions and have taken away bags of rubbish, but there are all sorts of hazardous issues in doing that, not just traffic. So we are very reliant on National Highways taking the lead on this growing problem. It needs to show the lead. We are very reliant on it to clear up the litter.
Of course, National Highways do not drop the litter. People drop the litter, and I agree that that is the responsibility of those ignorant people who are throwing rubbish out of the window when they are driving along. I accept that sometimes it can be inadvertent, or negligent, but sometimes it is deliberate. Items are being thrown out of car windows and lorry windows, ensuring that the sides of the roads are an eyesore that we are all, unfortunately, getting used to seeing.
Does the hon. Member think that more frequent signage reminding motorists not to litter and the potential consequences of a fixed penalty notice would make any material difference to the levels of littering seen on the motorways? Would that be a worthwhile investment?
I agree with the hon. Lady that that would make responsible people more aware of the issue, and they would act even more in a responsible manner. However, I do not feel it would have much of an impact on the ignorant people I spoke about earlier, who do not give a damn, frankly, about anybody else. It is someone else’s problem—“I am going to throw this rubbish out of the window and someone else is going to have to deal with it.” Unfortunately, those people are not going to change because of a sign.
The hon. Lady is absolutely right on the issue of fines. My right hon. Friend the Member for Hemel Hempstead touched on this point in his speech. We now have camera technology that can give motorists fines for blocking box junctions, going through red traffic lights, speeding and so on. My hon. Friend the Member for Old Bexley and Sidcup (Mr French) will know about the ultra-low emission zone cameras, as will the Minister, although we will leave that issue to one side at the moment.
The technology is able to pick up motorists doing almost anything it seems, apart from when they litter. I would certainly welcome a change in policy so that we use the camera technology that already exists to target those vehicles responsible for rubbish being deliberately thrown on to our motorway verges and to issue fixed penalty notices to the registered keeper of those vehicles. That would have some impact on the blight that is hitting our country, alongside our motorways, up and down the country. I would like to see more of that happening.
This is a big and growing problem in my constituency, and not just there, but around the whole of the country. It is not just Dartford or Hemel Hempstead or Bexley or Stoke-on-Trent that suffers; it is the whole country. We are seeing a lackadaisical attitude from National Highways, which should be taking the lead and upping its game. The current situation is not tenable.
It is a pleasure to work under your chairpersonship, Mr Hollobone. I congratulate the right hon. Member for Hemel Hempstead (Sir Mike Penning) on securing this debate. I know he has raised this important issue many times in the past and it is an issue to which he is fully committed. I thank all hon. Members for their contributions.
Motorways provide vital links between towns and cities across the country. They contribute tens of billions to our economy by helping to make sure our shelves are stocked with food, medical supplies and everything else that we need. However, litter on these roads is a serious issue that affects all those who use them, as well as the wider environment.
Littered motorways pose a risk to safety. Objects can obstruct drivers’ views or cause problems with grip, if caught between a wheel and the road. Furthermore, the impact of litter discarded on motorways stretches far beyond the roads themselves. It adds to pollution, which, as we have all seen, has a devastating impact on wildlife, especially in our oceans, seas and rivers. We have all seen shocking images of rubbish piled up on and around our motorways. There has been a failure to properly deal with it.
For instance, in 2020, a Channel 4 report showed huge piles of rubbish covering areas around the M25. Taxpayers’ money has been handed out to private firms to keep our motorways clear of litter, but incidents like this raise important questions that need answering. Although the vast majority of drivers do the right thing and dispose of their rubbish properly, a small minority cause problems.
Resources for picking up litter are important. However, preventing litter from being dropped in the first place is a lasting solution. I am aware of calls for greater penalties and better enforcement of anti-littering laws to incentivise drivers not to throw litter out of their car windows. Can the Minister confirm, either in his speech or in writing, the number of fines handed out for motorway littering? What steps has he taken to ensure that all those who litter are held accountable?
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As I said earlier, the litter will soon start to be covered over as the plants grow, but in the autumn, when the frost comes, there it will all be. What surprised me enormously was some of the commentary coming from National Highways. It produced a lengthy paper saying that it regularly checks the highways, and that more than 60% do not have any rubbish on them. All I can say is that they should have gone to Specsavers, or other places that are available, to check their eyesight when they drive back and forth to work on our highways. Litter is a danger not only to our wildlife—I have seen aluminium tins on the side of the road that have been there for so many years that they are starting to degrade, and plastic does not degrade in the same way—but to the staff clearing it up, as the hon. Member for Rutherglen and Hamilton West (Margaret Ferrier) said. There have to be road closures and it has to be done safely.
Interestingly, other countries seem to have solved this problem quite well. Any of us who go on holiday this summer to Germany, France or Spain will see that their highways are not covered in trash. Many people from this country will go to Florida, which has large five or six-lane roads. The hedges and grass are not covered in trash, and any litter is certainly not all chopped up when the grasscutters come along and it has not been picked up.
We have to ask ourselves why. Is it a cultural thing, or is it because the organisation that is legally responsible for clearing up rubbish is doing so? Frankly, if someone has broken the law and they get a community project, I cannot think of a better way of paying back into the community than being in a team that goes out and safely clears the rubbish from the sides of our roads. When I was in the Minister’s position, I was told that that was not possible because it was not safe. I used to be the Health and Safety Minister as well, at a different time, and it could be made safe. It is safe for workers to do it, and some of the stuff they have to pick up is truly horrible. We will not go into that in this debate, but Members can imagine what gets thrown out of car windows.
The question has to be, why is National Highways not taking this issue seriously? The organisation cannot be taking it seriously, because it has given contractors contracts but is not monitoring them. Following a freedom of information request to Mr John Read, National Highways came back and said:
“We don’t undertake audits of our contractors’ work for litter clearance.”
How do they know that 60% of the roads are clear if they are not monitoring their own contracts? It baffles me.
Under the Secretary of State, the Department for Transport has introduced key performance indicators for National Highways, but litter is not one of them; it is just part of something else and seen as not that important. I say to the Minister that it is important. How can we have a key performance indicator for the contract issued to National Highways by the Secretary of State that does not take into consideration the legal responsibility it has to the public? This is public money being spent on behalf of the public through the Secretary of State.
The Minister might say to me, “Well, actually, the contracts are set in stone over a period of time with National Highways and the KPI is set.” But if he looks carefully at the legislation, he will see that the Secretary of State has the powers at any time to deviate the contract, so the KPIs could be changed.
I think this is an issue of national importance. We can talk about it being rubbish, or trash, but we have some of the most beautiful countryside in the world, in my opinion. We should cherish it. There are people demonstrating out there, yesterday and today, because they passionately believe—I do not agree with their motives and how they are trying to do it, but I do agree that we have to protect our countryside.
Over the years, we have put lots of roads right the way through some of our countryside, and that countryside is being blighted, day in and day out. Frankly, looking at the correspondence, particularly from National Highways—I am sorry, Minister, but I do not think they get it. They just talk to me. Among the briefings, they are talking about the responsibility of local authorities. Well, no local authority in the country has responsibility for clearing up the motorways. They—National Highways —have it. The title of this debate was specific, so as not to have that debate about local government. The narrative here is purely about National Highways.
There are lots of things that are probably not fully in the Minister’s bailiwick, and I share his frustration with some of that, because I used to sit in that chair and think, “I’d love to have done that,” and, “I would love to do this.” But if we have the will, we have the way. Fines need to be increased. If people want to throw stuff out of car windows—some of it the most abhorrent products that we do not particularly want to discuss today—they should be penalised for it.
Similarly, however, if an organisation has the legal responsibility in law, set by this place, that it is their job to clear up that mess—go and give them some powers if we want to use the cameras in a way in which we can actually enforce the issue. They cannot cop out of this; it is actually in statute whose responsibility it is. The KPI can be changed, so that the regulator can step in and actually say, “You’re not fulfilling your contracts,” because if that does not happen, we will have individual members of the public taking this organisation—National Highways, which is funded by the British taxpayer—to court for a breach of the Act. To me, that is a crying shame, but if it happens I will fully support that commitment to go to the magistrates courts.
The problems with litter have at times reached epic proportions, and I am extremely concerned about some of the wider maintenance standards, such as with vegetation management. The severe lack of grass cutting by National Highways has resulted in roundabouts and verges in the centre of Longton and Meir being totally neglected. Given that these roads cut through predominantly urban areas, standards of maintenance need to be different from those used in more sparsely populated areas. National Highways currently conducts only an annual cut, meaning verges become totally overgrown and completely filled with litter.
The lack of effective vegetation management has resulted in significant litter build-ups gathering in the overgrowth and attracting vermin. Following our calls, Stoke-on-Trent City Council has thankfully stepped in to cut some of these areas, including the most sensitive locations in town centres, which are still the responsibility of National Highways, but this really should not be happening. National Highways should take proper responsibility for the land that it owns.
National Highways has now started to form litter partnerships with local authorities, which is a positive step forward. Those partnerships are important given that it would be totally unsafe—impossible, in many cases—to undertake litter collections on parts of the National Highways network without road closures. There needs to be effective co-ordination for litter picking to take place when those roads are closed for wider maintenance.