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Motorways and Trunk Roads (Litter)

May I also pay tribute to the work that you have done in this House, Mr. Wilshire, in your time as a Member of Parliament and as the Chair of important Committees and of Westminster Hall? I wish you well in whatever else you go on to do. I asked for this debate out of the anger and real frustration that I, my constituents and indeed everyone in the country has experienced at the fact that our great country and our excellent road network are being blighted by the rubbish that is continually being discarded; the network in my own part of the country is being particularly blighted. That rubbish is either being dumped from vehicles or it is escaping from the top of waste disposal vehicles or skips on to the highways. I am very aware that there is legislation in place to deal with this problem. Frankly, however, having driven around the highways and byways of Britain, particularly our motorways, I know that it is not working. At this stage, I would like to pay tribute to Keep Britain Tidy and the Campaign to Protect Rural England. Those organisations did not lobby me to secure this debate, but once I had secured it they were very quick off the mark to contribute and their briefings have been very useful. As someone enters this country, or as they enter a town or one of our great cities, there are first impressions that will stick in their mind. If someone leaves the great city of London and travels up the M1 from Brent Cross, they are driving through a rubbish tip—there is no other way to describe it. Sadly, as I travel on that motorway all too frequently, I know that traffic builds up and drivers sit there, waiting for the traffic to move on. As they do so, they glance to the side and they see a build-up of rubbish that has obviously been thrown from private vehicles or that has escaped from commercial vehicles. Clearly, that rubbish has been there for some considerable time. That is obvious, because a modern drinks can takes an awful long time to break down, as does a crisp packet. Indeed, the other day I was amazed to see a Marathon bar wrapper that had been discarded. Marathon bars have not been for sale in this country for some considerable time; they have been renamed "Snickers", or whatever the company wants to call them these days. I do not actually eat those bars, but I am aware that they have not been called Marathon for some time. I tried to find out when the brand or name of "Marathon" went out of use, but I could not find that out. However, it is certainly several years and yet these Marathon bar wrappers are still sitting on the side of our highways and byways. They are the type of awful litter that is blighting the countryside around us. That is unfair on towns such as Hemel Hempstead and in particular on local authorities such as my own, Dacorum, which do everything they can to clear up the refuse and litter that is thrown around, for whatever reason. My town of Hemel Hempstead is very clean; I am very proud of it. However, a driver might come off the M1 at junction 8 in my constituency. Before going further, I would like to pay tribute to the Government for the excellent road-widening that took place in my constituency, in particular the work done between junctions 6A and 10. I also pay tribute to Neil Owen, who was the team leader for the Highways Agency, and to John Hollaway, who was the project manager for Balfour Beatty. They have brought onstream a fantastic piece of motorway networking. That piece of motorway has only been open for about a year, but if a driver looks at it now as they enter my town it is absolutely covered in litter. I must ask who is looking after that piece of motorway? I asked my local authority whether it had any right to go down there and, even if it was not going to be paid for it, to clean up. I was told, "Oh, no, that's very much the responsibility of the Highways Agency". I then looked up what the Highways Agency has been doing. I found that every week 13 tonnes of litter is thrown or discarded from vehicles around the country.