Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills (Wendy Morton) for bringing forward this really timely and important debate. As she rightly and eloquently illustrated, fly-tipping is an absolute crime. It blights our landscape, risks pollution and disease, and costs thousands of pounds to clear up. It is shocking that many people actively choose to dump their waste, causing huge cost. That is not only to the taxpayer for clearance but also the detrimental impact on the many local communities where not only fly-tipping but littering takes place.
What a timely day to bring forward this debate, as many of our litter pickers have been getting out there as part of the Great British spring clean. I would therefore like to comment on the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Berwickshire, Roxburgh and Selkirk (John Lamont) on his work with Keeping Duns Blooming Marvellous. He has been not only advocating on their behalf but getting out with many other litter pickers across his constituency. My right hon. Friend the Member for Aldridge-Brownhills commented on Walsall Wood Wombles and many others who she has been out helping in her constituency. I am pleased to hear that the hon. Member for Birmingham Northfield (Laurence Turner) was also out litter picking this weekend. I am surprised he managed to get back to Westminster given the huge amount of rubbish that is on the streets of Birmingham this week, but it is noted that he was out litter picking on Sunday.
I should like to pick up on the points made on litter picking before moving on to the bigger challenges that are faced across the west Midlands. It is right to make the point that our parish councils, which are at the grassroots of facing these challenges, do need extra support to try to deal with some of the litter waste that exists within their communities. I want put on the record my thanks to the Ilkley litter pickers, who meet every month. I have been lucky enough to go out litter picking with them across Ilkley and up at The Cow and Calf regularly, helping them. They have vast numbers—about 60 people now—regularly turning up on a Sunday, when they meet, and it is incredible to see.
The situation in the west midlands is absolutely shocking, and it is no wonder that fly-tipping is getting considerably worse as a result, but the diagnosis of Labour mismanagement is no shock at all to me, because Labour-run Bradford council outrageously closed not only Golden Butts household waste recycling centre in Ilkley but Sugden End household waste recycling centre up in the Worth valley in my constituency early last year, despite massive protests by local people and a petition, which I organised, receiving more than 9,000 signatures. And guess what? In Craven, Ilkley, Worth Valley and Keighley West wards, the wards closest to the shut tips, we have seen fly-tipping increase as a result in the following year. By contrast, for those wards that are nearest the tip that remains open in the centre of Keighley—despite Labour-run Bradford council’s wanting to close it in 2023—fly-tipping reports are fewer.
Quite simply, Labour local authorities cannot see the wood for the trees. They cut waste services supposedly to save money, but they do not take account of the vast increases in fly-tipping that there will be as a result, and who has to pick up the cost for that? The taxpayer. Waste is far more expensive to remove once it is fly-tipped. It would be more properly disposed of at a proper waste facility. Just because Labour has removed waste services does not mean that waste will stop piling up. That is exactly what we are seeing in Birmingham, because Birmingham city council is failing to get to grips with the huge challenges over the last month, and who is being impacted by that? The residents, the council tax payers, on the back of their council taxes dramatically increasing in recent years.