New clause 6 - Graffiti removal notices
Anti-social Behaviour Bill
3:00 pm
Ms Siobhain McDonagh (Mitcham and Morden, Labour)
I thank my hon. Friend for her comments. I am very glad that her local authority has taken up the FLAG initiative, but who funds it? Who removes graffiti from council-owned property and the property of individual home owners? It is individual councils and individual council tax payers, who are being hit twice because they have to look after their own homes as well as having to contribute to the overall programme of graffiti removal.
In a selection of London boroughs controlled by any one of the three major parties, Wandsworth council spends £625,000 a year removing graffiti, Lambeth spends £600,000, Hammersmith and Fulham spends £250,000 and Camden spends £350,000. However well those local authorities attempt to operate, London is blighted by graffiti.
This morning, the Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department, my hon. Friend the Member for Coventry, North-East (Mr. Ainsworth), suggested that London spends £24 million of council tax payers' money on removing graffiti. Who is not contributing to finance the removal of that scourge? We all agree that we would prefer that it did not exist or that we could catch the people responsible for it, but we know from our own experiences that people doing graffiti are not caught. They do it at night, and quickly. Even if we quadrupled our police force, there would still be graffiti.
Therefore I am tackling the issue of the privatised utilities and statutory undertakers. We all receive leaflets from them about their corporate social
responsibility programmes, but that responsibility does not appear to extend to cleaning street furniture in all our neighbourhoods. Let me give two examples. When my local authority, Merton, suggested that it would pay to have graffiti removed from the street furniture of Telewest, the cable television company, the company replied that if the authority dared to do so, it would take the authority to court. All the London boroughs that are part of South West Action Against Graffiti are trying to tackle Telewest and get an answer, but they cannot get an answer.
Similarly, Railtrack, when it was Railtrack, would not work with my local authority. The company had to be named and shamed in the local papers before there was any change of attitude. That is why I suggest in the new clauses that local authorities should have the power to remove graffiti when such companies will not. In the end, they do not have to live with the graffiti and a deterioration in their environment.
The views contained in the new clauses are not out of keeping with the Government's. Last year, DEFRA undertook a consultation on measures that could help to improve the environment. The document was entitled ''Living Places—Powers, Rights and Responsibilities''. Launching it, my right hon. Friend the Minister for Rural Affairs and Urban Quality of Life said that
''we want to ensure that those who are responsible for ensuring that our public places are clean and safe have the powers that they need . . . We need everyone from businesses to community groups and individuals to share a common sense of pride and respect for our shared spaces.''
One proposal in the document was to create a new duty on the owners of street furniture to keep their property clear of graffiti, and to extend the powers of local authorities to intervene and deal with graffiti.