Joe Morris

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. Fly-tipping in residential and rural areas is a blight across the communities that I represent, whether it is the most rural communities, such as Belsay and Kirkley Hall, or areas such as Throckley, Newburn and Walbottle on the more urban side of my seat. I pay particular tribute to community organisations, such as the Ponteland Anti-Litter Squad and the Hexham Wombles, that take action to clear up local litter and against fly-tipping, most of which do excellent jobs. There are other groups in the 200 towns and villages throughout my constituency, but I would detain everyone for quite a long time if I named them all. I welcome the waste crime action plan. It sets an excellent foundation for taking action to tackle fly-tipping, which blights communities across the span of my constituency. However, I am slightly concerned that on the more rural side of my seat, there is a growing problem of individual areas becoming magnets for mega fly-tipping. While those areas are not hyper-residential, like the areas that many of my wise and well-informed colleagues have spoken about, mega fly-tipping is nevertheless a blight on the communities that live around them, use those green spaces, and enjoy the countryside and their surroundings. I have been really heartened to see statistics coming out of Northumberland and Newcastle that show the hard work of council workers in addressing fly-tipping. Unfortunately, I think there is a structural issue within Northumberland in particular, where the Conservative administration neglects the west of the county. It directs resources away from the area I represent to areas that it prefers. There is a slight sense, certainly in my constituency, that we are getting short-changed—that the Conservatives are putting up our council tax for very little in return in the west of the county. I want to touch briefly on the Walbottle Road tip in Newburn, which is a major driver of fly-tipping and of unease and unrest over fly-tipping in my constituency, simply because it is impossible to turn into. It has been a running sore for residents over many years, including when my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North (Catherine McKinnell) represented this part of Newcastle. I urge the Minister to think about how she can encourage councils to make their tips more accessible to address those concerns. One of the priorities for the new Reform councillors in Throckley, Walbottle and Newburn is to make sure that residents are able to access that tip and that the Mill Vale estate no longer has to deal with either the constant fumes and sheer noise from traffic idling just outside it or the fly-tipping we are seeing around it.