 A i ddim yn fath aeth –uredd, o'ch bod y cyfnodd cymrydol yn fath i ddod i'ryearn cyfeirio'n prynlluniaid, mae fyddwch fod yn gwneud o'r cyfnoddmem o'r cyfnodd yn y lleolol. Ond mae'n ddigwydd o'r cyfrannu i fath i gyfnodd y cyfnodd, ond mae'n fath i ddweud o'r cyr Burie i gydurio'r cyfrannu lleolol a siaradau o'r cyfnodd a mae'n ddigwyddio ddweud o'r cyfrannu lleolol i gynnwys Petaer, yng nghymru. Scotland is dirty. There is no way round this, and the amount of litter bears this out, in spite of well-meaning local initiatives such as Letha's Don't Litter and many others across Scotland. These measures can make a difference in the local area, and they are setting the exact example that we need to see replicated on a national scale. Unfortunately, the problem of litter is more prevalent in Scotland than in almost any other developing country. Gerry and Souza Farrell of Letha's Don't Litter are, amongst others, running a determined campaign that is spreading the message about the problem we face and what we can all do to help. As they have highlighted, problems include general rubbish, dogfowing, overflowing bins, flytipping and takeaway cartons. As for tackling this problem, they are right to highlight the difference from adopting a street and using a simple litter picker if locals make that effort for their own communities and such initiatives spread across Scotland, we can see the lasting difference we need. Having said that, local authorities also have a large role to play here. As well as clearing up reported messes, they must do their utmost to clear litter before it has to be reported and, of course, improve their standards in bin collection. It is not just the duty of councils because the key here is education. We have to educate people not to leave litter, and this education has to start in nurses from the age of three or four. I heard recently that in Germany they actually have litter classes for primary children and they all grow up having due regard to the problem of litter. The fines here seem to make no difference at all, although they have recently been increased. The problem is that when you see so many people dropping litter and you ask them to pick it up and say that they shouldn't drop litter, some of them just give you the happy motoring sign or tell you to go and see a taxi-dermist. The public, therefore, are not willing to confront littered out or littered droppers. Somebody phoned me the other day to say that they had seen bottles being thrown out of a car window, which is totally unacceptable. All I could do about this was honk my horn loudly to show just approval, but even this can lead to aggressive road rage. The other problem that we have seen is that when grassverges are mown and cleared on a country lane, nobody stops to pick up the litter that has been left, so it just blows all over the place. During this summer, this is what started on the debate, I telephoned Edinburgh Airport to say that there was an awful lot of litter on the approach road to the airport, left after the grass had been cut. I was told that it was not their responsibility to sit around in the council, so I then phoned the council and said that it wasn't theirs, but the airport. However, I don't know what happened, but it was cleared up very quickly. The solution, I think, is that people should be employed who mow the lawns and tend the verges, could pick up the litter while they're at it. It doesn't make much initiative, surely, to have a bag, as they do in other countries, to strap down your waste for picking up litter while it's being left. Another problem is the collection of rubbish bags in the street, and with the council now cutting back on the collections, it is even more important that the bins or boxes are both gull proof, weather proof and out on the correct day. I don't think we need litter wardens, however much we might want them, because the council wouldn't be able to fund them and there's no way of controlling them anyway. After all, if the other countries don't have them, why do we need it? Why is it necessary in Scotland? The problem surely is becoming a scourge, and I feel we should be tackling it head on. So what do we do about it? We've had these debates before in the Parliament, I've looked them up and they've just gone on and on. As I said before, it's all about, I think, education. We have to educate people not to drop litter and to put it in their pockets until they get to a bin, rather like trying to deal with the proposal of dogfowling. It cannot be a coincidence that countries like Switzerland and Austria, and even to a lesser extent, northern Italy, have a lot less of a litter problem than we do. It gives Scotland such a bad name and all the tourist brochures extoning the virtues of this beautiful Scottish countryside, it just takes a few pieces of litter lying around to destroy that image. Personally, I don't think straight panels are the answer, as they have to be enforced, and this also seems to be a problem. They have to be enforceable. We need to shame people into not dropping litter and also encourage children from a young age not to drop any litter at all. Perhaps we could have more dedicated days in schools that encourage children to pick up litter. Some initiatives like this might work. We must also remember that education initiatives have to extend beyond schools into adult life. Promoting awareness of the scourge of litter and what we can do about it has also to reach parent, dogwaters, takeaway owners and indeed adults across Scotland. The many local worthwhile initiatives are excellent for raising awareness locally, but we have to make sure that their example is spread nationally through education. Accordingly, I hope that this debate will play a small part in the collective effort that is needed to spread the benefits of local initiatives, like lethers don't litter around the country, and try to keep litter off our streets. Many thanks. We now turn to the open debate speeches of four minutes or so. Please check Brody to be followed by Alec Rowley. I thank Cameron Buchanan for bringing this important debate to the chamber tonight. I brought a similar one some three years ago. Litter costs Scotland over £53 million, each year monies that could be better spent on other services. It's a scourge, it's a blight. It decries any sense of proper national behaviour with regard to rubbish. It affects public health, the environment and landscaping. Scotland brought forward its first national litter strategy in June 2014. It is not working. The strategy identified ways to encourage people to take personal responsibility through communication, infrastructure and enforcement. However, it does not. In my view, local authorities certainly do not. I did at the time propose that on chewing gum, for example, we should apply 10-pence levee on chewing gum to avoid the chicken pox that destroys our pavements and our streets. Of course, it is a matter of personal responsibility. In the end, we will pay for it either as taxpayers or as customers of goods and services. There is now an £80 penalty if people are caught, which can discourage future offending. However, still today, the mess that lies in the streets amounts to something like £1.2 million, which could be a recycle and generate income for the appropriate authorities. We can influence behaviour when we work together. I have to commend Glasgow Council for its time-or-fine initiative where, if you cannot afford to pay the fine, you spend time picking up the litter that has been created. When we look at our attitudes to recycling 10-15 years ago, there has certainly been a societal change on recycling. There is still a lot to do, but the awareness is much greater. We need to ensure that we promote the social change in littering and fly tipping to the same effect. We can do that in a number of ways, making better use of materials that may end up as litter or fly tipping. The whole packaging industry needs to consider biodegradability packaging much more so than it does now. Ensuring our communities that are cleaner and safer is essential, where we live and where we do business. That will ultimately lead to a reduction in the damaging consequences of litter and fly tipping to our wellbeing and environment. Information, of course, is key in delivering our goals. We need to explain to people what the right thing is to do with waste. That starts with the schools. We need to educate. Along with education, there is now a need to ensure that we have the proper infrastructure in place. We need to work with the business and designers to ensure that their products can be recycled in the first place. We need to ensure that there are incentives and support in place to support activity that delivers litter-free environments. However, along with that, there needs to be, and has to sit alongside it, a meaningful enforcement, effective laws and procedures that deter littering in the first place. To deliver the strategy that we need to businesses, the resource management industry itself, the Scottish Government, local authorities and, of course, the third sector, including environmental charities and local community groups. Local authorities in bid districts are encouraged to apply for funding. Where that has been implemented, it has actually resulted in an average of 38 per cent drop. I would encourage much more of our local authorities to specifically create social enterprises or community enterprises to take over the management and cleaning up litter. If Scotland is to be home to tourists, if it is to secure Scotland, there is a beautiful country that we know it is. Government, local authorities, businesses and schools have to work together to push for the changing culture and behaviour that is very much needed. I would also like to thank and congratulate Cameron Buchanan for securing this member's debate today. On what is a really important issue to people's everyday lives, it cannot be stressed enough the impact of living in a housing estate that is continually littered up on the ground. I would also like to say that I always make the assumption that the majority of people are responsible and the majority of people are caring and would not litter up their streets or their public parks and would not just simply walk away and would clean up at the back of their dogs. It is a minority that tends to cause the major problem, but a problem is that if you live in a housing estate, for example, and it is fully littered, it impacts on the environment in which you live in, which can impact on the health and wellbeing of that environment and the residents that live in it. That is how important the subject is. Therefore, it is disappointing that there is a national strategy that is in place that does not seem to be working and perhaps we need to be asking the question if it is not working and the minister can perhaps pick that up, if the national strategy is not working, what is it that we can do about that? I would say that, as a former council leader, where you are faced with making cuts in budgets and you have the choice between the grass verges that Cameron Buchanan mentioned being cut four times a year or once a year or cutting into school budgets, then I am afraid that the grass verges is going to come first every time. The reality of that is that, as we have seen in the summer when you see the grass verges getting cut perhaps once, is that because they have not been maintained and the grass is so long, people have a tendency just to throw rubbish into the long grass and when that is cut it is an nightmare. That, in itself, is difficult. We have also seen a reduction in the amount of wardens, for example, that are in place. Again, if your choice is to cut wardens or to cut education to your children, then I am afraid that the wardens will come first. It is important that the local authorities recognise the importance of that. If they are under pressure and their budgets are under pressure, I am afraid that often that will be what goes first. My experience has been in five. We have had problems with dogfile and I did street surgeries throughout my constituency throughout the summer. Dogfile and came up as an issue in many parts of the constituency. Where the council has been very proactive, where they have put signs up, where they have put phone numbers up to report people and where they are clearly willing to act and find people who will not clean up at the back of their dogs, then something is done about it and you can see improvements taking place. Enforcement is important and we need to recognise that if we are going to tackle the problem. It is true that education is also really important. If you look at the recycling rates in Scotland, I am pleased to say that it is the highest recycling rates in Scotland. Part of that came around because there was a big push through the schools on the eco schools and recycling was part of that. If you like, it was the education of the children that was basically pushing constantly with their parents, with their grandparents, within the community to recycle. That had a big impact on us achieving the type of recycling that we are very proud of in five. Education is important, but I remember visiting a school last year and the pupils had been across in Germany. I was asking them how they got on there. They stressed to me that one of the first things that, when they got off the bus in Germany, their guide said to them is, whatever you do, do not drop any litter, because it is simply not tolerated in this country. Therefore, perhaps we need to get to that point where in every community it is simply not tolerated here. I think I am out of time, Presiding Officer, but again I would say to come and we can and congratulations for bringing this debate here. Hopefully it just does not stop today, but we actually say what is working, what is not working, because this is a very serious issue for people and for communities across Scotland. I thank Cameron Buchanan for raising this motion and securing debating time on what I think we all agree is a very important issue. Scotland is a country that is well renowned for its beauty, not only our vast rural landscapes but our towns and parts of our cities. However, such places are all too often tainted by an abundance of litter on the streets and waterways of our towns and countryside. As someone who has never so much has dropped a sweetie paper in my life, I find it shocking, incomprehensible and quite frankly distressing that in 2016 this is still a problem. Some 250 million pieces of litter are picked up every single year, a figure so high that it is hard to fully contemplate the number of people who must actually have discarded it. Reducing litter must be tackled. Sadly, not everyone is aware of the impact that rubbish has not only in the environment in Scotland's wildlife but also in people's health and wellbeing. While short-term ways of dealing with litter may work for a while, the only lasting way to stop this problem is by going straight to the source. Public attitudes to littering must change. There is no way around the fact that the responsibility for littering must always come back to the culprits. The very definition of littering itself must be challenged for our most people appear to be absolutely against ever deliberately littering. They view accidental littering perhaps only being a small amount or there only being a little bit here and there or perhaps because of a lack of bins or whatever as a different matter, but it is attitudes such as these that must be challenged. People are generally embarrassed about admitting to littering, so charging any littering could be helpful. However, as Cameron Buchanan pointed out, this could be met with aggression, so people must always be cautious. Of course, there have been moves in the right direction. Introducing a charging scheme for single use carrier bags in 2014 was a huge step forward towards cleaner and healthier streets in Scotland. Figures from the first year following the introduction of the charge showed that the number of plastic bags given out in shops fell by a massive 80 per cent, equivalent to 650 million bags. Not only that, but the scheme saved over 4,000 tonnes of material when taking account of factors such as increased use of bags for life and, as we all know, significant amounts of money were generated for charity too. Schemes like this help to change the public's attitude to the environment and what they are doing with our resources. This allows at least some pressure to be taken from local authorities who lie heavily under the burden of cleaning up litter. 15,000 tonnes of litter are cleared by local authorities every single year, and this work is costly. Included is around 4,000 tonnes of tobacco-related litter such as packaging and cigarette butts, so another reason to give up smoking. It is therefore extremely important to applaud the work of charities and volunteer groups who dedicate their efforts to helping to keep the streets of Scotland clean. The work that those communities do is invaluable, and they not only set an example to others on how to keep their streets clean, they can encourage others to fall in their footsteps. My own constituency I have carried out a Cumbria beach clean once a year for nine consecutive years involving the local community. Wearing Hive as Vest with Volunteer and Keep Scotland Beautiful helps to make people think, called Burning Community Council, carries out six such days a year, and others take place across my constituency from Beath to Fairleigh to Arran. The Arran litter volunteer network is at the forefront of such action, organising groups wherever possible. Such groups must be applauded as they work, they do not only keep Scotland streets clean and safer, but it helps to alleviate pressure on local authorities and allows them to use their time and resources on other things. I have long been an advocate of the Adopt a Road scheme, which works so successfully in North America, where groups, individuals or businesses take responsibility for keeping a given stretch of road free of litter working closely with local authorities. Schools work hard to inculcate responsibility for not littering. Indeed, adults are more likely to be responsible and so is their attitudes that must be focused upon. Scotland is rightly considered beautiful by many visitors, but it also finds it dirty by the standards of other European countries. In 1985, I had a German girlfriend who invited her parents to stay in Scotland for a fortnight with her. They left after three days because the country was just too dirty in their view. I found it profoundly embarrassing. We must work together to reduce litter and thereby change perceptions of Scotland for the better. I would like to congratulate Crawford McAnon for bringing forward this very important debate, but I also apologise to him, the cabinet secretary. I have to leave as soon as I have finished speaking. I should not really be speaking on this debate because I am due at a meeting very soon in my constituency, but I could not speak when I saw the motion because, obviously, of the reference to lethers do not litter. I will briefly mention education and enforcement, but I think that what struck me most recently is the contribution of voluntary groups to this effort. Of course, that has been brought to my attention because the amazing campaign of lethers do not litter has only been going for a few months and yet it has engaged large numbers of people in the community. It is certainly something that, when I have a bit more time on my hands in seven weeks' time, I personally would want to get involved in. One of the key things that they are doing is adopting a street, which is, of course, the concept that Kenny Gibson described a moment ago. If you go on to the Facebook page, people can sign up to adopt a street. Clearly, there is a focus on litter, but there is also a focus on dogfowling. They had a post a few days ago that there had been dog poo found even in a children's playground. That has prompted them to organise a demonstration of responsible dog walkers inleth. That, obviously, is again part of a community effort to put pressure on those who do behave in an antisocial way in relation to dogfowling, in this case, to change their behaviour. That is one of the best community initiatives that I have seen. I cannot speak highly enough of all the many people in my constituency who are involved in that effort. Clearly, they want to keep leth beautiful. Leth is beautiful. It is only spoiled by litter and dogfowling. If litter is bad, in my mind, dogfowling is even worse. I spoke about the example in the children's playground. I had an example from my own family last week, where my three-year-old granddaughter went to nursery school. I had a massive amount of dog poo over her boots that were under the soles that were up the side of the boots, and she had to go to nursery school like that. That is absolutely shocking from every point of view, from a health point of view, apart from every other objection to that. I really think that on that particular issue we have to have a special effort to change people's behaviour. I quite often say, not entirely jokingly, that any politician who could get rid of dogfowling in my constituency would instantly be elected to this Parliament, because I think that so many people feel so strongly about that issue. I think that enforcement is important. Education is obviously in schools, and I hope that perhaps there can be national campaigns about that, but perhaps particularly around the issue of dogfowling, I would suggest that there should be a national initiative and a national campaign. However, it has to be backed up by enforcement, and I do not see how culture change will be brought about unless there is a stronger element of enforcement. One of the problems is that there are not sufficient environmental wardens to catch people, and we understand the reasons for that, given council budget. However, another problem is that the fixed penalty notices that are imposed by environmental wardens are not always paid. In fact, on a very large number of occasions they are not paid, and then the fiscals are not willing to intervene. In a way, that offence has to be given a higher status. It is very serious antisocial behaviour, and there has to be an organised effort at the enforcement and legal level to deal with it, as well as the wider initiatives for cultural change. In the last 10 seconds, I will again pay tribute to Leithersdon litter. I cannot speak highly enough of the work that they have done and are continuing to do. Many thanks. Can I now invite Richard Lochhead to respond to the debate, cabinet secretary? Seven minutes please. First, I thank Cameron Buchanan for raising the issue once again in the Scottish Parliament, as many people have over the years in relation to the amount of litter on our streets. I can clearly see that all the members who have spoken in today's debate feel very strongly that litter is indeed a blight on our amazing country, and that those who continue to litter in Scotland are highly irresponsible individuals. Litter does affect the way we feel about where we live. Work can spend our leisure time, which in turn has a huge impact on a health and wellbeing. The numbers involved are truly jaw-dropping, with over 250 million items of easily visible litter dropped each and every year, as members have already mentioned. That is 26,000 tonnes of littered material. High-value littered items, such as plastic bottles and cans, would be worth more than £1.2 million if recycled again, as members have mentioned. Over £53 million of public money is spent each and every year tackling litter and fly-tipping. That is money that could be better spent on other important services in our society. Items that are littered or fly-tipped also pose a health hazard to both humans and animals alike, and we all know about the impact that marine litter can have on marine wildlife. Recognising all those negative impacts, the Government has launched a litter-free Scotland policy in June 2014, which was only about 18 months ago—our first-ever national litter strategy since devolution. So, 18 months is not a long time to properly evaluate its success or otherwise, given that this is an issue about cultural change in Scotland. As I said before, that is the first-ever national litter strategy in Scotland. As part of that, we did run a national media campaign against littering behaviour across television, radio and social media as well. As I mentioned, we also increased the fines for littering from £50 to £80 and for fly-tipping from £50 to £200 after the consultation that we had a couple of years ago. In October 2014, we introduced a charge in single-use carrier bags, a highly visible form of litter. That resulted in an 80 per cent decrease so far in the number of bags distributed over the first year of the charge, again, as Kenny Gibson mentioned. That is £650 million less bags being taken every year by shoppers in Scotland, which is good news in anyone's book. We have also committed over £575,000 towards Keep Scotland Beautiful's Clean Up Scotland campaign from 2013 to 2016. If members in this chamber have a view as to whether or not that organisation has delivered the goods for that resource or otherwise, we should hear about that. We are still hearing about the problem of littering in Scotland but, yet, Keep Scotland Beautiful and other organisations are being funded to make sure that a lot of activity is happening. A lot of that activity is happening to be fair and we all know that from the activity in our own communities. From April 2015, we introduced powers for Loch Lomond Nartroswch's National Park as well and other public bodies to issue fixed penalty notices. We are also continuing to explore the role that deposit return could play in Scotland in reducing littering and improving recycling quality at the same time. I certainly agree with many members that we need to find a fresh approach where necessary for some of those topics within the litter strategy. We also need to learn from what other countries are doing successfully that perhaps we are not doing in this country. So deposit return is not a new idea. It is new to Scotland and the rest of the UK. Of course, it works well in other countries and the Scottish Government has put in a lot of effort to ascertain whether that would work in Scottish circumstances. Zeroway Scotland was commissioned to carry out that work and we are now undertaking further research to look at issues such as the impact of deposit return in smaller businesses, corner shops, small grocers and so on. They would have to take back the returns cans or bottles and be part of that arrangement. Most likely, if that was to go ahead, we would have to make sure that we understood exactly how that would work in Scottish circumstances. However, this is a system that does work in other countries and if you attach a value to cans or bottles, people are less likely to litter it because they can go and get their money back. Or indeed others are incentivised to collect it from our streets and our communities because in turn they can raise money from doing that as well. That is certainly the experience in other countries. So deposit return could be if we decided to go for that in this country and that decision is yet to be taken part of a litter strategy as well. Tackling litter, again, as members have said, is about behavioural change. That is also very much a core part of our litter strategy. We are working with our partners to provide information, improve infrastructure and making enforcement more of a deterrent. We are encouraging people to take responsibility for their own behaviour. In addition to the national campaign mentioned earlier, Zeroway Scotland has developed a toolkit of signs that organisations around Scotland can then customise and use fee of charge. We are improving the infrastructure itself through our communities by funding an installation of over 3,300 recycling on the go bins since 2011, so more of them are now present in our communities. And we are supporting their use with the recycle for Scotland branding. Work is also on going to update the code of practice and litter and refuse, which covers the various ways in which local authorities in particular can intervene. We are bringing that guidance up to date to ensure that it supports our wider litter strategy. So we do know that real change will take time, innovation and commitment from everyone involved. I should also say another £500 million since 2014 has been invested in supporting innovative projects by local authorities and community groups to move away from simply cleaning up to also focusing on prevention. And these groups are helping to drive the behaviour change that we need to see. That has included Scottish Waterways Trust who are working to develop a crowdsourced approach to monitoring litter and raise awareness through working with school children. Other initiatives that have been funded through that are Greenspace Scotland, working with three communities to tackle litter and flytipping through a range of community-led green space and street improvements. So there's a whole range of actions under way at the moment and we know that littering behaviour costs Scotland £78 million in direct costs to our society and economy, as I've indicated previously. I think a bottom-up approach is very, very important as part of this debate and of course in Cameron's motion he talks about lethers don't litter. And I want to commend both Cameron for bringing that to our attention but also the people behind that fantastic initiative that Malcolm Chippen spoke about as well. I personally congratulate Mr and Mrs Farrell who founded that initiative and clearly looking at all the various actions that have undertaken and hearing about them today in the chamber. It's a fantastically successful idea and hopefully that's an example for other communities across Scotland to follow at the same time. I should make a personal mention of Pete Miners in Murray, my constituency, who tirelessly patrols the Lossymouth Riverbanks and collects lots of coastal litter in the Lossymouth area in Murray and gets a lot of press coverage for doing that. That's the kind of activity that we love to see local people volunteering to do and we owe them a huge debt. Indeed a young man called Joe Pernay phoned me at my office last week who is starting up with some others forest community cleanup group. And this is a young man who feels so strongly about what is to clean up the streets of forests and elsewhere that he's now started this campaign in that town. And I said to him of course that I look forward to working with him doing that. But all our experiences can give examples of people at grass roots level putting their efforts where their mouth is and going out there and cleaning up streets in the local community. And I think we have to do a lot more to encourage that and resource that in the years ahead. So we do a national voluntary effort across every town, village and city in Scotland. And I do believe that that will take us far along the road to having a much cleaner Scotland which is something we all want to see. And I thank members for their contribution today and I will certainly take away the good ideas I've heard about during this debate. Thank you. That concludes Cameron Buchanan's debate, keeping litter off streets and I now close this meeting of Parliament.