It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

It has not proved possible to respond to the hon. Member in the time available before Prorogation.

It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.

It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.

It has not proved possible to respond to this question in the time available before Prorogation. Ministers will correspond directly with the Member.

Under section 91 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990, any person who is aggrieved by the want of cleanliness of any relevant land or highway may bring proceedings in the magistrates’ court against the body responsible for cleaning it.

In the Litter Strategy, we made a commitment to review, by the end of this Parliament, the mechanism by which councils and other land-managers can be held to account for maintaining their land to the standards set out in the Code of Practice, considering a range of options to make it easier for citizens to hold land‑managers to account for delivering their responsibilities.

The Performance Framework for the second Road Investment Strategy (RIS2) covering the period 2020-21 to 2024-25 is being finalised.

In Draft Road Investment Strategy 2 - Government objectives published in October 2018, the Department recognised the contribution the Government’s 25 Year Environment Plan (A Green Future: Our 25 Year Plan to Improve the Environment) will make to framing the final RIS. The Plan seeks to improve the management of litter as part of a wider goal to make positive environmental enhancements from the investment we make.

It is for local authorities to fulfil their duties to clear roadside litter.

Section 91 of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 allows for proceedings in the magistrates’ court to be brought against the body responsible for clearing litter.

This is a devolved matter and the information provided therefore relates to England only.

The Government published the Litter Strategy for England in April 2017, setting out our aim to clean up the country and deliver a substantial reduction in litter and littering within a generation. The common aim of all the actions set out in the Strategy is to change the behaviour of people who currently feel that it is acceptable to drop litter, whether at the coast or anywhere else. Evidence shows that people drop less litter in a clean environment, and we therefore particularly support efforts to remove litter from coastal environments.

Last year saw the largest ever Great British Beach Clean, organised by the Marine Conservation Society (MCS), during which nearly 15,000 volunteers removed 8,550kg of litter from their local beaches. The Government funds the MCS to carry out regular beach litter monitoring studies and cleans. This data helps inform future policies, such as our commitment to a ban on plastic straws, drinks stirrers, and plastic stemmed cotton buds in England from April next year.

Earlier this year the Prime Minister also recognised three “points of light” for their outstanding voluntary efforts to tackle marine litter:

• Jason Alexander, who set up the organisation Rubbish Walks, highlighting the impact that plastic and cigarette butts are having on coastal environments, and inspiring people in his local community to take action.
• Emily Stevenson, a marine biology graduate, who has set up an industry partnership with Nissan to provide her 'Beach Guardian’ volunteers with transport to litter pick on remote beaches.
• Dhruv Boruah, organiser of The Thames Project, who uses a specially adapted bike to provide clean ups on the Thames and across the UK, as well as in the Netherlands and the USA, inspiring people worldwide to consider the damaging impact litter and plastics are having on our waterways.

The Government does not collect or monitor any data on the number of prosecutions or fixed penalty notices for littering from vehicles and has no plans to do so. The Government has given powers to local authorities that they requested and it is now for them to use.

On 30 November last year we launched our new campaign, “Keep it, Bin it”, with support from the environmental charity Keep Britain Tidy. The campaign imagery is being displayed in all seven Extra Motorway Service Areas (MSA) across England.

This year saw the fourth year that Highways England has supported Keep Britain Tidy’s Great British Spring Clean; 19,450 bags of litter were collected in this year’s spring clean, more than doubling last year’s collection of 8,000 bags.

We continue to work with Highways England to investigate new ways of reducing littering on our major roads. This includes introducing behavioural interventions such as trialling car and lorry-height funnel bins at the Roadchef MSA in Maidstone on 21 June last year, along the M20, to test whether they reduce littering. The number of bags of litter collected on the on-slips reduced by 47.1%.

The first round of the Litter Innovation Fund awarded grants to two projects trialling interventions to tackle roadside litter. The results will be published shortly.

The department does not collect data specifically on litter and debris causing road accidents. The department collects data on personal injury road accidents reported to the police, including contributory factors which the police select when they attend the scene. This does not assign blame for the accident but gives an indication of factors the attending officer thought contributed to the accident. This includes the contributory factors of ‘Deposit on road’ and ‘Animal or object in carriageway’, which might be used to record litter and debris.

‘Deposit on road’ includes any deposit arising from human (or animal) activity which has made sections of the road surface slippery or which has caused traction control problems for a vehicle. ‘Animal or object in carriageway’ includes any object which the driver would not expect to find in the carriageway (e.g. dislodged vehicle load, fallen tree) and which caused or contributed to the accident.

There were 1,058 road accidents with a contributory factor of ‘Deposit on road’ and 802 road accidents with a contributory factor of ‘Animal or object in carriageway’ in Great Britain in 2017.

Statistics on the number and proportion of accidents by contributory factor reported are available online in table RAS50001. All published tables on contributory factors are available in the RAS50 series on gov.uk.

The data we hold only covers reported personal injury road accidents in Great Britain, we do not have data for Northern Ireland.

The Government has made no specific assessment of the effects of discarded cigarettes on ocean plastic pollution. However, there is some evidence that in marine environments cigarette butts contribute to microplastics. The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science is working to look at the impact of cigarette butts in the marine environment. This project is due to be completed next year.

The Litter Strategy for England was published in April 2017.

We are considering how we can ensure that manufacturers are held responsible for covering the costs of clearing up litter from cigarette butts.

The Government has made no specific assessment of the effects of discarded cigarettes on ocean plastic pollution. However, there is some evidence that in marine environments cigarette butts contribute to microplastics. The Centre for Environment, Fisheries and Aquaculture Science is working to look at the impact of cigarette butts in the marine environment. This project is due to be completed next year.

The Litter Strategy for England was published in April 2017.

We are considering how we can ensure that manufacturers are held responsible for covering the costs of clearing up litter from cigarette butts.