Clause 19 - Litter offence: fixed penalty notices
Clean Neighbourhoods and Environment Bill
2:30 pm
Ms Sue Doughty (Shadow Minister (the Environment), Environment, Food & Rural Affairs; Guildford, Liberal Democrat)
In principle, the giving out of fixed penalty notices is welcome; it has been recommended, as it immediately links the crime to the response that it is wrong. As we discussed earlier with regard to chewing gum, when we see a perpetrator committing a crime, someone should make that clear to them, there and then. Fixed penalty notices therefore have a use.
The purpose of the amendments is to identify when a financial penalty may not be the right penalty for a person on a particular income. Local authorities and others incur costs attempting to recover a penalty from someone who might not have been able to pay within the normal period. We propose that there should be other ways in which such people can meet their responsibilities—perhaps they can be given community service instead of a fixed penalty notice. The Law Society has already expressed concern about the use of fixed penalty notices. Were I, in a moment of aberration, to drop chewing gum—although I deny that I would ever do so—I could afford to pay a fixed penalty notice, although it might grieve me that I had to pay it. It would not greatly affect my ability to buy the basics for day-to-day living, although it might affect what I spent on other things. However, the financial situation of more deprived members of society might be made worse by the penalty. A fine of that the proposed level for someone on benefits is a huge proportion of their income, which should be spent on food, shelter, heating and the like. Although we, society—whose views were expressed in the consultation—and the Environment Audit Committee all agree that fines and the fact that dropping litter is a crime need to be made clear, some people would be disproportionately affected by the proposed penalty.
We want to give the Secretary of State the opportunity to allow councils to impose community service orders instead. We want those orders to be related to environmental problems and antisocial behaviour, and to link them to the opportunity to clear litter and graffiti. Councils often have rubbish-clearing events to give a much higher profile not only to the problems of rubbish, but to the fact that someone has to clear it up. There is nothing like being one of a rubbish-clearing team to bring home the impact of one's own and everyone else's litter-dropping. Time spent clearing up rubbish rather than doing something that they would prefer to do might bring home to people the fact that throwing away rubbish in the street is a bad thing.
We therefore propose community service orders, which would have to be proportionate to the fine in a fixed penalty notice to which they would be an alternative. There needs to be consultation with local authorities and the probation services on the best way of doing that, so that people are made to pay for their crime but in the best way possible. We do not prescribe how that would be done, but we want the Government to consider the social impact of such penalties.