Fly-tippers to get points on driving licences and nuisance tenants will be kicked out under Tory plans
People caught fly-tipping will get points on their driving licences if the Conservatives win the next general election.
Rishi Sunak will make the announcement on Friday as part of his party’s election campaign, promising to crackdown on anti-social behaviour.
Other measures will include a new “three strikes and you’re out” system for nuisance social housing tenants and the rolling out of its “hot spot” policing programme across England and Wales to increase patrolling in the worst affected areas.
The prime minister said the “bold action” would “stop anti-social behaviour in its tracks”.
But Labour’s shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper said the policies were “more empty words from a chaotic Tory Party” which had “let anti-social behaviour run rampant” while in power.
File pic: iStock
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Fly-tipping is already illegal and can see people facing a fine of £1,000. But the Conservatives said their “no tolerance” approach would mean offenders could end up losing their licences or even in prison due to the points being added.
For anti-social tenants, the party said local authorities and housing associations would be “expected” to evict tenants after three proven instances of anti-social behaviour.
And the policing programme would copy a pilot the government has run in 10 areas, which it said led to nearly 800 arrests, close to 2,000 stop and searches and almost 1,000 uses of anti-social behaviour powers, such as community protection notices and public protection orders.
Pic: iStock
“Everyone has the right to feel safe in their neighbourhood and a sense of pride in the place they call home,” Mr Sunak will say.
“The Conservatives are the only ones with a clear plan to ensure safety, security and prosperity in your local community and your high street.
“We will take the bold action needed to crack down on fly-tipping, evict nuisance tenants and stop anti-social behaviour in its tracks so we can build a secure future for everyone across the whole country.”
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But Ms Cooper claimed there had been more than one million fly-tipping incidents in the last year alone, “yet the Tories repeatedly failed to implement their own policies and promises”.
She added: “Who does Rishi Sunak think is going to enforce any action on anti-social behaviour when the Tories have cut 10,000 neighbourhood police and PCSOs in the last eight years?
“Labour will take back our streets from those piling misery onto our communities. We’ll put 13,000 more neighbourhood police and PCSOs back on the beat, with tough new powers to crackdown on those who cause havoc on our high streets, and a mission to reverse the collapse in the number of crimes being solved.”
The Liberal Democrats’ local government spokesperson Helen Morgan accused the Tories of “effectively legalising littering” during their tenure, saying fines were “so low that people are being let off scot-free up and down the country”.
She added: “The Conservatives have had years to get tough on fly-tippers and litterers but have failed at every turn.
“The Liberal Democrats are calling for real action against fly-tippers by increasing fines and using the profits to crack down on this anti-social crime.”
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While the Tories focus on tackling crime, Labour will make a pledge to get started on their Great British Energy plan “within months” of taking office.
First announced at the party’s conference in 2022, the publicly-owned company will focus on green renewable energy, such as wind and solar, in an attempt to cut bills and make the country self-reliant.
Elsewhere, the SNP will make a fresh demand on Labour if they win power – calling on them to commit to an emergency budget immediately after the election to “reverse Tory austerity cuts, boost NHS funding, and invest in economic growth”.
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Whitehall officials tried to convince Michael Gove to go to court to cover up the grooming scandal in 2011, Sky News can reveal.
Dominic Cummings, who was working for Lord Gove at the time, has told Sky News that officials in the Department for Education (DfE) wanted to help efforts by Rotherham Council to stop a national newspaper from exposing the scandal.
In an interview with Sky News, Mr Cummings said that officials wanted a “total cover-up”.
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The revelation shines a light on the institutional reluctance of some key officials in central government to publicly highlight the grooming gang scandal.
In 2011, Rotherham Council approached the Department for Education asking for help following inquiries by The Times. The paper’s then chief reporter, the late Andrew Norfolk, was asking about sexual abuse and trafficking of children in Rotherham.
The council went to Lord Gove’s Department for Education for help. Officials considered the request and then recommended to Lord Gove’s office that the minister back a judicial review which might, if successful, stop The Times publishing the story.
Lord Gove rejected the request on the advice of Mr Cummings. Sources have independently confirmed Mr Cummings’ account.
Education Secretary Michael Gove in 2011. Pic: PA
Mr Cummings told Sky News: “Officials came to me in the Department of Education and said: ‘There’s this Times journalist who wants to write the story about these gangs. The local authority wants to judicially review it and stop The Times publishing the story’.
“So I went to Michael Gove and said: ‘This council is trying to actually stop this and they’re going to use judicial review. You should tell the council that far from siding with the council to stop The Times you will write to the judge and hand over a whole bunch of documents and actually blow up the council’s JR (judicial review).’
“Some officials wanted a total cover-up and were on the side of the council…
“They wanted to help the local council do the cover-up and stop The Times’ reporting, but other officials, including in the DfE private office, said this is completely outrageous and we should blow it up. Gove did, the judicial review got blown up, Norfolk stories ran.”
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Grooming gangs victim speaks out
The judicial review wanted by officials would have asked a judge to decide about the lawfulness of The Times’ publication plans and the consequences that would flow from this information entering the public domain.
A second source told Sky News that the advice from officials was to side with Rotherham Council and its attempts to stop publication of details it did not want in the public domain.
One of the motivations cited for stopping publication would be to prevent the identities of abused children entering the public domain.
There was also a fear that publication could set back the existing attempts to halt the scandal, although incidents of abuse continued for many years after these cases.
Sources suggested that there is also a natural risk aversion amongst officials to publicity of this sort.
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Mr Cummings, who ran the Vote Leave Brexit campaign and was Boris Johnson’s right-hand man in Downing Street, has long pushed for a national inquiry into grooming gangs to expose failures at the heart of government.
He said the inquiry, announced today, “will be a total s**tshow for Whitehall because it will reveal how much Whitehall worked to try and cover up the whole thing.”
He also described Mr Johnson, with whom he has a long-standing animus, as a “moron’ for saying that money spent on inquiries into historic child sexual abuse had been “spaffed up the wall”.
Asked by Sky News political correspondent Liz Bates why he had not pushed for a public inquiry himself when he worked in Number 10 in 2019-20, Mr Cummings said Brexit and then COVID had taken precedence.
“There are a million things that I wanted to do but in 2019 we were dealing with the constitutional crisis,” he said.
The Department for Education and Rotherham Council have been approached for comment.
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