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Motorways and Trunk Roads (Litter)

I had not intended to take any interventions in this short debate, but I am now pleased that I did so. I have been to my hon. Friend's constituency and it is a beautiful part of the world, which he represents fantastically well. However, these plastic bags that he mentioned blight the countryside. My farmers talk to me about them on a regular basis, not least because if they have any cattle or sheep—I have a lot of sheep farmers in my constituency—they know that the number of animals killed each year by plastic bags is very high. One of the things that I noticed the other day in a hedgerow on the M1 was audio tape. Clearly, someone had tossed out of their vehicle a small audio tape; such tapes used to be the fashion in our cars, before compact discs and everything else that came along after. I do not know when the person tossed out the tape, but they seem to have tossed rather a lot of them. It is now a sort of moving graffiti—when the sun catches it, one cannot miss it—yet it seems to have been sitting there forever. How do we address the problem? We are in a tight fiscal situation. I am sure that agencies—particularly the Highways Agency, which the Minister is going to discuss in a moment—will say that they are short of money and cannot get to such places as often as they would like, but thousands of community punishment and rehabilitation orders are given every year. I have read the literature, and the orders seem absolutely perfect for the purpose. I also looked to see whether other countries use offenders for such tasks to pay back the community. It takes place around the world. As I dug deeper, I was surprised that not many people in this country are out there paying back. I got an e-mail from a magistrate in London who, for obvious reasons, does not want to be named in this debate. He discusses""the government's concerns on prison overcrowding and the pressure on the judiciary to use more community sentencing."" That is eminently sensible. I would prefer people who should be in prison to be there and people who can pay back in the community to do so. I am sure that we would all agree that a community payback project should not be the soft option, that it should be visible and that the people involved should work hard. Yet attached to the e-mail was another e-mail from a gentleman called Malcolm Jenkin, director of interventions for London Probation, who said:""Please be advised that, due to budget restraints, London Probation has temporarily ceased using casual status Project Supervisors in Community Payback."" It goes on to say, in effect, "Please don't do this." I do not blame the Minister, who I am sure can feed that back into the Justice Department, but it is absolutely ludicrous that magistrates are being told on one hand not to put young people—I apologise. Not all people who commit offences are young people; far from it. There are a lot of very good young people doing fantastic work in the community. I do not want to brand them. The courts are being told not to give so many custodial sentences and to use these wonderful community punishment and rehabilitation orders, but the people who are supposed to administer them are asking courts not to give them out. The e-mail says that community payback teams have:""Merged many groups to ensure that they are used to maximum capacity"" and""reserved weekend sessions, where possible, to offenders"." That is not what community payback was designed for. It was designed to be exactly what it says on the tin: a community punishment and rehabilitation order. It is imperative that the Government get a grip on that and put such people out in the community where it is safe to do so. Believe me, people can work on roads in safety. It is done regularly. Otherwise, we would not be able to pick up the 500 tonnes that I am sure the Minister will tell me about in a moment. If the Government did that, we could start to recapture the beauty of our countryside and towns. Motorways are driven through areas of outstanding natural beauty or areas that have experienced natural regeneration since the motorway was built. We must take the opportunity to keep such areas tidy for the sake of first and daily impressions, so that both visitors to and permanent residents of this country can care about it. There seems to be a complete lack of penalties available for people who litter from vehicles, although there are plenty on the statute book. How many people have been prosecuted in England in the past 12 months for littering from a car? Presumably they were picked up by Highways Agency vehicles, unless the Highways Agency cannot do so? I understand that it has no powers to issue such penalties. If someone on a motorway is chucking rubbish out the window of their car, who is responsible? If it is the traffic police, I must say that they are few and far between in my part of the world, having been mostly replaced by Highways Agency vehicles. This is a serious debate. I am sorry that I got only a half hour. I wanted an hour and a half, as I knew that some colleagues wanted to debate it as well. The issue affects everybody in this country. Those of us who are enormously proud of our country cannot understand why anybody would want to blight our countryside and roads by throwing refuse out their window. Those who do should be penalised, and those who let down their community and country should pay it back under the orders. I hope that the Minister will ask the relevant Justice Minister to explain why the orders are not being used in a sensible way.