Fly-tipping: Residential Areas
Hannah Spencer Excerpts(1 month ago)
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Hannah Spencer (Gorton and Denton) (Green)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) on securing the debate.
In Manchester alone last year, there were around 15,000 reports of fly-tipping. That is more than 40 incidents every single day. In my constituency the situation is particularly bad. In Levenshulme, there was one fly-tipping complaint for every four households. In Longsight, there were more than 1,000 incidents last year, the highest in Manchester, with Levenshulme close behind on 952. Behind every single one of these reports is a person who cares about where they live and who deserves so much better than having to live with illegally dumped waste in their backyards. The chances are that it is even worse than the numbers show. I regularly speak to constituents who, understandably, have lost all faith in reporting at all, because, too often, it does not lead to any action and the waste remains in our alleyways, in our kids’ parks and on our street corners.
This is not about blaming communities. It is about ensuring that people have clean, safe streets wherever they live, regardless of their postcode. Tackling fly-tipping means proper enforcement against rogue waste operators and fraudulent businesses, but it also means giving local authorities the money that they need to actually deal with it, and that is where things just do not add up. In Greater Manchester, we have seen huge development in recent years, with property and construction firms making huge profits. Yet very little of that wealth is being returned to the communities that made it possible. I see clean streets around glossy new developments, while surrounding areas and neighbourhoods are left littered with waste.
A YouGov and Oxfam survey found that 78% of people support a 2% wealth tax on net assets over £10 million. If we are serious about fairness and cleaning up our communities, properly taxing extreme wealth is part of our solution. That is how we give councils the tools and the money they need to fix problems like fly-tipping. Today, I ask the Minister whether they will discuss with the Chancellor how to ensure that people who are getting super-rich from property development contribute fairly to the communities they profit from to fund the clean-up of issues like fly-tipping.