Tories condemn 'Bin Brother' spy chip checks on our rubbish

Leeds Council uses microchips to link wheelie bins to specific addresses and to weigh the contents automatically every time they are emptied.

Privacy campaigners have hit out at mounting "intrusion" by local authorities after new data showed the number of councils to have fitted hidden microchips in their residents' bins has leapt by 62 per cent in just 12 months.

The microchips can be used as tracking devices and are capable of storing, receiving and transmitting data, such as how much rubbish is thrown out each week.

Last night Conservative politicians warned of "the secret and covert march of Bin Brother", and said such measures would be the precursor to a new "bin tax" if Labour were to be returned to power. The Government denied any such plan, however, and said the issue was a matter for individual councils.

The latest figures show around 400,000 households in Yorkshire now have microchips hidden inside their bins, spread across five local authority areas – Leeds, Doncaster, Hull, Rotherham and Wakefield.

They are among 68 councils nationwide to have installed the chips, up from 42 a year ago. A total of 2.6 million wheelie bins across the UK are believed to have been fitted with the devices, at a cost of more than 1m over the past 12 months.

The vast majority of authorities, however, insist they are not currently monitoring or collecting any information.

A spokesman for the Local Government Association said the chips "simply identify the house to which a bin belongs" and "do not mean councils can analyse what people are throwing away, or issue fines".

But Leeds City Council has been revealed as the first authority in Yorkshire to have started measuring how much rubbish each household throws away.

In a Freedom of Information response to privacy campaigners Big Brother Watch, Leeds said each of its 215,000 microchips contains a special code linking it to a specific address. Each time the bin is lifted onto a refuse lorry, its weight is recorded by an onboard computer before being beamed back to a vast database at the council offices containing every address in the city.

Alex Deane, director of Big Brother Watch – an off-shoot of the Taxpayers' Alliance pressure group – said: "It is disgraceful some people are already being spied on by councils using these bin microchips.

"The information being gathered by cities like Leeds are letting bureaucrats build databases which could lead to us being charged for how much rubbish we throw away."

A spokeswoman for Leeds Council denied this was the case, however, insisting the information was used to improve services.

She said: "We have no plans whatsoever to charge residents for the amount of rubbish they throw away.

"The information we collect is not used to monitor waste from individual households, but to help us understand the total amount of waste being collected so we can effectively plan our future services, and make sure residents' bins are being emptied as scheduled."

The other four authorities in Yorkshire to have fitted microchips said they were not currently being used to collect data, as did most councils across the UK.

But Big Brother Watch warned the devices may be a precursor to future waste monitoring, suggesting councils were "quietly installing the infrastructure to monitor waste habits" and are "ready to go further" when the time is right.

The Conservatives agreed, describing the microchips as "a sneaky way for Gordon Brown to hike up local taxes".

Caroline Spelman, Shadow Communities Secretary, said: "Labour ministers are secretly planning to roll out bin taxes across the country after the election if Gordon Brown can cling to power."

But a Government spokesman insisted there are "no Government plans to introduce microchips in bins."

He said: "Any use of microchips is a local authority decision – some councils use them to monitor levels of waste across their area. The microchips do not monitor what goes into the bin, and this is not about 'spying' on people or fining them."