Environment Bill — House of Lords, 2021-06-30
Topic: Environment
John Lytton (Crossbench, Unknown): My Lords, as a rural resident and minor landowner, I very much welcome the opportunity to debate this issue. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville, for raising it. Fly-tipping is by any standards a national scourge, and in places it occurs on what might be called an industrial scale. It really is a problem that we have to address My noble kinsman, the noble Viscount, Lord Ridley, made all the points I would have made, except that I will reiterate something I mentioned at Second Reading. This business of landowner responsibility comes about by virtue of the environment Act of I think 1990. It was not just a question of polluter pays; if the polluter could not be found then the owner of the land was responsible. This always seemed manifestly unjust. It really does need to be dealt with I very much appreciate the notion that there should be some sort of co-responsibility, perhaps by putting sums into a fund that would enable this to be funded and operated by an NGO or by local government—I am not sure which; I do not wish to impose burdens on anybody. That seems to be one of the principles Some fly-tipping does not involve grab lorries that disgorge 20-tonne loads at a time, which is clearly an industrial-type process. People must have HGV licences and there are operators in places where these vehicles are legally stationed and parked up. There is quite a lot at stake for them if they are caught out. CCTV footage having to be disclosed should be unnecessary for this sort of thing. After all, one is dealing with the apprehension of a criminal act. It should be exposed as that The noble Baroness, Lady Bennett of Manor Castle, referred to obsolescence. I quite agree with that point. Having nursed a domestic appliance to its 27th year before it finally had to be taken away when its replacement arrived, I know exactly what she means. One of the ways that we need to deal with waste in particular, and plastic especially, is to lengthen the life of the product or make it multiuse or dual purpose. I am not saying that is the case for a washing machine or a household white good, but it can be for many other things I admit that I am a beneficiary of some of this perhaps less criminal but less well-informed fly-tipping. One of my gateways greatly benefited from a pile of clean rubble dumped in my woodland. I scooped it up and stuck it where it was actually useful. On another occasion not so very many months ago, I gained a clean and unruptured bag of cement, which, in this time of cement shortages and shortages of many other building materials, I was quite glad of However, this rather suggests that there is a huge amount of ignorance. If we had better sorting and recycling of some of this material, we would all be better off, but many household and other recycling facilities do not allow commercial vehicles in. As I said, if you are a householder you might have to book a slot to deposit your waste. This seems a significant indicator of a lack of capacity, but there is also a lack of imagination in how we deal with these things Ultimately, it has to become socially unacceptable to do this, so that the only socially acceptable thing is to ring up or look through Yellow Pages, for example, to get somebody to remove your household waste. There has be a certification process, rather like Checkatrade, that tells you that these people are certified, have the proper credentials and will dispose of your stuff safely and not just dump it somewhere between here and the municipal disposal facility, because they can save themselves £100 or £200 in so doing. We need to be a bit more alert when setting about dealing with this issue.