Fly-tipping

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Neil Parish

Tuesday 17th April 2018 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend makes an interesting point. Such cases are probably down to the local authority, which can take action in the case of a local authority property, but if it is not such a property it is much more difficult. It is amazing to see what people dump in their gardens, and then the grass grows up through it and it is really unsightly; it can attract vermin and be hazardous. I will probably put myself into a minefield if I go too far down that route, buy it is essential that society behaves in a reasonable manner, so that our neighbours are able to live without unsightliness. Also, it is essential from an environmental health point of view.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for securing this important debate. Does he recognise that cuts have consequences? In York, since 2015, the fly-tipping service to pick up the rubbish has been cut from monthly to quarterly cycles and the number of complaints has doubled. In 2016, York Civic Trust’s annual report complained that York’s streets face decreasing standards of cleaning and rubbish collections.

[Neil Parish]

My hon. Friend—I will say hon. Friend—has made an interesting point. I understand that local authorities are strapped for cash and have to try to make every penny count, but sometimes it is a false economy when they cut the frequency of collections, because there is more chance of people fly-tipping. I shall go on to that later, but she raises a really good point. Sometimes it is counterproductive to cut back on the number of collections. When the local authority has to collect it later, there is a clear-up cost. If everything was taken in the round, it might be more cost-effective just to collect it in the first place.

Animal Welfare

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Neil Parish

Thursday 30th March 2017 Commons Chamber

[Neil Parish]

I thank the hon. Gentleman and agree entirely. Many aspects of animal cruelty are reported, but others are not. Having stronger sentencing would be a deterrent; we want to prevent the cruelty from happening in the first place. Having a sentence of at least five years would send the right message. Then it would be up to the courts to decide what sentence they dish out in the end.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the hon. Gentleman on securing this debate. Does he agree that it is much more important to prevent cruelty in the first place, and therefore changing the legislation on air guns is vital? Cats and dogs are often the targets for people using those weapons. Legislation has been changed by the devolved Administrations for their countries, and it is about time that it was changed in England, too.

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Lady raises a good point. The use of air guns against cats and dogs can have terrible consequences. Lead pellets often cause a lot of injury and subsequent pain.

To make a broader point, we need to do much more in schools and the education system to make sure people know how to look after an animal. Most people do know how to look after animals. Unfortunately, animal cruelty is going on in some families, and perhaps the children do not know of anything else but what is happening at home. We must try to tackle that.

Shale Gas

Debate between Rachael Maskell and Neil Parish

Tuesday 30th June 2015 Westminster Hall

[Neil Parish (Tiverton and Honiton) (Con)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Howarth. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton (Kevin Hollinrake) for securing this debate and for the balanced way in which he presented his case, as others have noted.

If I put my national hat on—and given that I am a Member of Parliament for Tiverton and Honiton down in Devon, where at the moment there is no notion that there will be fracking—it is easy for me to say that it is good for the country to have a great gas supply, so we must make sure that we get on with fracking. From the national perspective, that is absolutely right, but as a Government, we are keen on taking local people with us, and—dare I say it—at the moment we do not seem to be doing terribly well on that. All the locals are turning fracking down. We are going to have to rethink our approach to all this. We have to make sure that we do not simply talk about a sovereign fund that might help local people. We must be much more up front. How does an industry like fracking help local people? They have to see something tangible before they buy into it.

If I put on the hat of Chair of the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, we of course are concerned about our land, food production and groundwater. In the previous Parliament, the Committee was assured that when fracking takes place the water used is well beneath groundwater sources and the area from which we extract water to purify for drinking water—but is that the case? I agree with my hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Jeremy Quin) that we cannot simply have a blanket licence from the Environment Agency; each case has to be looked at individually.

Putting my Conservative hat on, I want to make sure that we are competitive and have an efficient industry. In this case, we must have an industry that extracts the gas—that is absolutely right. We still use an awful lot of gas and will still do so in future; if we do not use Russian gas, someone else will, so the gas we can extract for home consumption has to be good, but that gas should not be brought out of the ground at any price. If we need to put in more pipelines, reduce lorry movements and improve roads in villages and other areas where there are proposals for help with infrastructure, we have to do so. I was a Member of the European Parliament for 10 years, so everything in Europe is my fault—I just put that on the record. I look at the French: now, I do not always agree with the French, but I acknowledge that when it comes to exploiting resources, they put in all the infrastructure necessary for local people’s lives to be enhanced.

I say to the Minister, who is a very good Minister, that we must make sure that local people buy into fracking much more than they are doing at the moment. If we are going to stick to our principle that local people decide—I think we should—we are going to have to reassure them a great deal more about environmental safety, especially on water, and make sure that fracking is properly monitored. In evidence to our Committee, the Environment Agency said it had the capability to do that, but people need to be reassured that that is the case and that the agency will not be overstretched.

Another problem is that, while all of us can be experts beforehand on whether the gas will or will not come out, we cannot know until we have a number of wells in place whether the ground will actually give up the gas. We know the gas is there, but we are not certain that it can be got out. We may not, in the end, be able to produce the gas we expect, although we may be able to produce a lot more, which is very exciting.

There must be a balance: as we move forward, we must take local people with us, reassure them about the environmental position and reduce the number of lorry movements by piping more gas, however expensive that may be. In that way, the local population will, in the end, be able to buy into these projects, and our green and pleasant countryside will remain green and pleasant. We have a large population, and we want to keep our green spaces and our food production.

[Rachael Maskell (York Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

Is not the problem that we are taking a piecemeal approach to licensing exploration, as opposed to a strategic approach that looks at the real impact the industry will have across our land?

[Neil Parish]

The hon. Lady makes a good point, which I am sure the Minister will address.

I will leave my comments there, because others want to speak, and it is right that everybody has a chance to debate this issue. Again, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Thirsk and Malton.