asked Her Majesty's Government:

What progress they are making in reducing incidents of fly-tipping.

My Lords, good progress is being made with the implementation of the Government's waste crime strategy by, for example, focusing on better prevention measures, simplifying legislation and guidance designed to encourage compliance, and enabling more joined-up action and prosecutions by the Environment Agency and local authorities. A month ago, a fly-tipper was sent to prison for the offence. We will continue to work with the agency and local authorities to achieve a year-on-year reduction in fly-tipping.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for that reply. I imagine that he and I agree that fly-tipping is an extremely expensive national disgrace. Is he at all disappointed by the lack of response to appeals by local authorities? The fact that over half the reported incidents are in alleyways inevitably means that there will be more vermin around.

My Lords, I am very grateful for the Question from the noble Baroness. She is quite right to raise the issue. In England and Wales, there is a fly-tipping incident about every 30 seconds. It is a crime. It costs a fortune to deal with in rural and urban areas. Certainly more than half the incidents involve household waste, disposed of not necessarily by the householder but by people who have collected it from householders. It is serious, but action is being taken. The national database has been put together, following the legislation that went through the House, so we can get a measure of it. The penalties have gone up from a maximum of £20,000 to £50,000 and that has been used as a publicity generator to highlight the issue. I also pay tribute to the recent campaign by the Countryside Alliance, which has been very successful in highlighting the matter.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that the fly-tipping scourge in Britain has now reached proportions that are truly alarming? It is very difficult for the Government, local authorities and the Environment Agency to deal with these matters in a practical way, but will they take more urgent measures as soon as possible, including listening to the very interesting proposals from the CLA and other bodies that are concerned about this matter? Incidentally, we consign something like 30 million tonnes to landfill every year. Even Germany, with 82 million people, consigns only about 10 million tonnes, and France consigns 13.5 million tonnes. Does the Minister agree that we are way ahead of them? Why have we become the litter-strewn country of Europe?

My Lords, we have been disposing of waste in a very inefficient way in this country compared with others, by way of landfill, and we are dealing with that. There is a programme of action—the Environment Agency is taking forward a targeted programme of enforcement campaigns across England. They are currently running in Bristol, Chester, Derby, Merseyside, Kent and south-east London, and programmes have recently been completed in Luton, Preston and Stoke, which have had an effect. The issue is serious: 89,000 incidents a month have been measured by local authorities. When you work it out, that means that in England and Wales somebody is fly-tipping every half a minute. It is a crime. If it is approached as a criminal rather than purely a waste management issue, we stand a better chance of getting a grip.

My Lords, does the Minister agree that there is a problem with small service providers such as jobbing gardeners and builders? They cannot necessarily afford to pay for the licence for tipping, yet they are not allowed to use the local tip because their waste is regarded as not domestic. Is there any way in which we could get around this problem and stop them dumping garden waste and small building materials in farm gateways?

My Lords, if they are running a business, they should pay the costs of running it, like everybody else. Householders are different—they can go to civic amenity sites and they have rubbish collections. But if you are running a business, you should pay the costs of the business. Whether a business is small or large, there is no excuse—it is a crime, and cleaning up the public realm is costing the taxpayer about £50 million. A lot of waste is also tipped on private land in rural areas by people from the cities, and that costs another £50 million to clear up.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware that there is an extra incentive for fly-tipping since so many parts of the country now have to put up with a fortnightly household rubbish collection? Does that concern him, because it certainly concerns me?

My Lords, the noble Baroness is absolutely right to raise the issue, because it is the obvious one. With respect to putting cost pressure on householders, it has to be done the other way around, by giving people a reduction for generating less waste and recycling. Research has been done across Europe and the evidence is that, where measures such as she mentioned have been introduced, there has been an increase in fly-tipping. Under the proposals for the waste management structure and strategy, local councils that make these changes will, as part and parcel of the way they change collection processes, have to have a specific programme to make sure that fly-tipping is dealt with proactively. It is generally known where a lot of the sites are and more monitoring is going on so that people can be caught. As I said, earlier this year someone was sent to prison for persistent fly-tipping down in the Portsmouth or Plymouth area.

My Lords, the vast majority of local councils say that the annual ratcheting up of landfill tax has made and will make fly-tipping worse. Together with the cost of the waste carrier's licence, there are now proposals for a bin tax for households. Does the Minister agree that, with only 1 per cent of fly-tippers prosecuted, more will choose to avoid the escalating cost of legitimate disposal by fly-tipping? Surely we should be looking at ways of preventing fly-tipping from happening in the first place, by creating incentives for the legitimate disposal of waste.

Yes, my Lords, the noble Earl is quite right; there is no sense in giving up on this. It has been worked out that there are over 1 million incidents of fly-tipping annually. It is a serious crime in the public realm, as well as causing disruption to people's livelihoods. Therefore, we have to be proactive in dealing with it. We have to be careful that actions taken in waste management in one area do not have unintended consequences in another—that is, leading to an increase in fly-tipping that is unmanaged and gets totally out of control. That would be a complete failure, which is why this House and the other place have recently passed legislation to make it more of a crime, raising offences and giving an incentive to the Environment Agency and to local government to get a grip on it. There is no proposal for a bin tax as such, but account must be taken that any changes that are made to collections must not cause an increase in fly-tipping as a consequence.

My Lords, is the noble Lord aware of the cost of depositing a small commercial load of garden waste? In my Dover district, it is £16 for a small trailer-load. Following the previous question, would it not be sensible to develop ways in which much of this waste could be usefully composted and reused in gardens?

My Lords, it is reused as compost. The fact is that if the garden waste has been taken away by someone who charged the customer for doing the garden and removing the waste but then dumps it, that person has cheated the customer, because they are running a business. If the householders themselves are doing it, the reality is that they can take it away to the local authority dump where it will be composted at no cost to them. Anyone who goes to one of the well run local authority sites around the country—I was in one in Stroud last week depositing waste, and another nearby—will see them crowded with people getting rid of their waste in a systematic way, to enable it to be recycled. If the waste removal is done as a business, it is part of the costs of that business; that small trailer that someone had to pay for has been charged to the householder, so they will have been cheated if the waste was not disposed of properly.

My Lords, is the Minister aware that many local authorities simply do not advertise the fact that they offer this service free of charge?

My Lords, local authorities are now required to measure fly-tipping incidents; it is also connected to the Comprehensive Spending Review targets. So there is far more work going on in local authorities to collect and manage waste, and to get reductions in waste. The evidence from around the country and across the European Union is that the more we go for recycling, the more we can reduce the amount of waste that we generate in the first place.

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My Lords, is the Minister aware of any plans to educate young people more about the dumping of waste, particularly in the countryside? It seems to be a case of, "If you see a hedge, throw a bottle or an empty can over it". I have personally collected bagfuls of stuff from behind hedges. This is common in all parts of the countryside. There is a need for a big education programme with young people on the disposal of waste.

My Lords, there is active discussion between Defra, the National Farmers' Union, the Country Land and Business Association and the Countryside Alliance. We realise that this is a major issue, which is why it is being dealt with proactively. The launch at the end of April of anti-fly-tipping week, organised by the Countryside Alliance, was part of a six-month programme that will have that effect of educating and explaining that there is an alternative to fly-tipping and that you do not have to fly-tip.

My Lords, the Minister said earlier that progress has been made, and I appreciate some of his comments, but it clearly does not matter how big the fine is if the people who are throwing this litter away are not caught. Some of them are professional dumpers. What are the Government doing about that?

My Lords, we allocated some £2 million for 2006-07 to help the Environment Agency to tackle fly-tipping and to make it simpler for businesses to check whether carriers taking away their waste are disposing of it properly. The Environment Agency is also taking forward a targeted campaign of enforcement across England, north, south, east and west. As I said, the fines are increasing. A recent press release from the Environment Agency, dated the end of March, gave incidents at one court of 100 hours' community service and over £92,000 in fines. I know that there is an argument about not filling the prisons up with people, but this is a serious criminal offence and a prison sentence is a good example to others. Action is going on: there is targeted enforcement—that is, checking on and monitoring areas that are known for fly-tipping—and local authorities are doing proactive work such as following people who are collecting waste to ensure that it is systematically going to the correct place for disposal.