My Lords, I have great sympathy with some of the sentiment of the amendments. However, as usual, they put the price—the fines—up but miss the elephant in the room. Who is going to do the work to collect the fines, to see the dog walker that the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is looking for, and to be on every train and street corner? That is the issue we have with these amendments.
While no one likes litter, we are sceptical as to whether higher fines will act as a deterrent. The current fines are going to go up by £25. Will that really matter? I do not think that is the game-changer that the proposers of these amendments think they will be. Proper enforcement is key alongside accessible rubbish bins on public transport. We need cleaner carriages, buses, coaches and trams. We need the restoration of proper community funding and policing, giving officers the time and resources they need to focus in local areas, alongside funding for British Transport Police, which would be a help. We also need decent resources for local authorities to increase their work in the areas of anti-social behaviour, street cleaning and waste collection.
Some of the rail companies have done research on public attitudes to littering and what constitutes litter. In 2024, Northern Rail carried out research on the behavioural science of littering on trains. We know that train companies have to work hard to keep the carriages clear; there are tens of thousands of people who travel every day. When I used to travel up and down every day on Avanti trains, there was sometimes an extra assistant who would get on at Manchester and get off at Crewe or Stoke going down, and going back, get on at Stoke or Crewe and stay on to Manchester. They would have enormous clear plastic bags. The amount of rubbish they would collect through the train by the time they got to Manchester was absolutely mind-blowing. The trouble is that on the late trains going home, such as the 10 pm train that I got back, there is no one like that. If you walk through that train in Manchester at about 12.30 am or 12.45 am, you are literally walking through litter. It is everywhere: uneaten food on the seats and on the floor. That is the issue.
As part of the research done by Northern Rail, 2,000 customers who used coffee cups said that leaving them on the train was not considered littering. However, when they admitted littering, they also admitted that they felt guilty, especially for the impact on other passengers, which shows that habits can change, and that people can be encouraged to take their rubbish away and use bins.
Another important point on the issue of litter is that it is not only on train and tram carriages but on the tracks. Network Rail says that litter on the tracks can attract rats that chew the cables, leading to signal failures, delays and even accidents. Metal cans and foil short-circuit the signalling system, so this is perhaps an area where we should be putting our weight of focus, as it is where serious health hazards come.
On Amendment 39, increasing fines for dog fouling, none of us want that mess, but who is going to make the behavioural change that we need? The fact of the matter is, whether you have fines, it is in the Government’s hands to do this. They can invest in local authorities, town wardens and civic pride. I was leader of a council for six years, and I was proud that we were once council of the year, as audited by the Audit Commission who used to come to towns. I invested then, as I had the funds to invest. Now, in my local authority, £3 or £4 of every £5 we get goes on adult social care. The budgets have been squeezed.
Therefore, if you want to stop litter, you need to empower local authorities, perhaps with initiatives that do not cost millions of pounds, but which encourage civic pride. We could get local councillors in local wards to form their own small groups to patrol around, to just keep an eye out and see where the black spots and hotspots are, where more resources could be brought in to deal with it.
It is not always about charging people more; it is about getting people to understand, as has been said, that it is not low-level. The noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, is right that the broken window syndrome is true. When I was in charge, a number of Government Ministers came to Stockport with litter initiatives; they worked for a while, but when the funding stops, the initiative stops. If the Government are serious about dealing with litter, they should work with local authorities first and then try to assist the transport companies in what they do. Nobody wants this. Any sensible person you speak to in a pub would say that they are against littering, but somebody is dropping their rubbish and somebody is taking their dog out without a pooper-scoop bag. It is finding that small number of people and re-educating them that is a problem.
Finally, when the Underground strike was on, I was coming in on the bus every day from where I stay in Kensington, which was an experience, because they were rammed because there were no trams. A number of people I spoke to on the buses, many of them Americans, said that London streets were the cleanest they had seen—and those comments were unsolicited. So perhaps there is a different view and different parts to this debate. Sometimes it is not about running us down; it is about improving the things that we can do. What we can do, when we work together, can make a difference. It is a small number of people who cause havoc for a lot of people, and that is part of society’s problems. I do not envy the Minister in resolving that, but positive things can be done to make this less of a problem.
Read the Bill amendment in full here.