(1 day, 8 hours ago)
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Lord Beamish
To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle waste crime.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)
My Lords, the Government are committed to tackling waste crime. We are preparing significant reforms to the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime and the waste permit exemptions regime. We are also introducing digital waste tracking to make it harder than ever to misidentify waste or dispose of it inappropriately. We have increased the Environment Agency’s funding, including the amount available to tackle waste crime, to continue to increase the pressure on illegal waste operators.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
I thank my noble friend for that Answer. I asked her a Question about what evaluation has been made of the joint waste crime unit. Her reply was that there has been none. I also asked the justice department about the incidence of prosecutions for landfill tax fraud over four years, only to be referred to a website with statistics that does not categorise landfill tax fraud as a crime. The 2022 NAO report into waste crime said that waste crime costs the economy £900 million a year, £200 million of that in landfill tax fraud. It also said that 41 of the 60 organised crime groups in the UK are involved in waste crime. When are we going to get really serious about this? I have been campaigning on this for many years, not only because of the cost of fraud to the economy but because of the cost to the environment.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
My noble friend is absolutely right to say that this is a really serious problem, and the Government need to get to grips with it. That is why we are taking specific actions to try to start making a real difference in the amount and impact of waste crime in order to genuinely start to reduce what is a terrible blight on our country. We want to crack down. As I said, we have increased the EA’s budget for waste crime enforcement by over 50% this year. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime has nearly doubled in size due to the extra funding we have given. The Environment Agency has been able to increase its front-line criminal enforcement resource. We are also looking for further recruitment to enable enforcement work in the new duties that they will be given. The Environment Agency’s economic crime unit was launched last year and is specifically targeting the financial motivations behind waste crime, which are often huge, so that we can bring in asset freezing and freeze the proceeds of crime actions. We are looking to do a number of things to genuinely get to the bottom of this and tackle the outcomes.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, the Minister will no doubt be familiar with the case of Hoads Wood in Kent that was exposed by the BBC a while back. Hoads Wood is a site of special scientific interest in which trees were cut down and 30,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste were deposited. It took four years for the Environment Agency to impose a restriction order to prevent this continuing, and now we are faced with a £15 million bill for clean-up. The Environment Agency has said that there are six other sites like Hoads Wood where illegal waste dumping is happening on a large scale. Can the Minister please tell this House, either now or in writing, where these sites are and what is being done to clean them up and prevent continued illegal waste dumping?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
I will have to write to the noble Lord and the House about exactly where the sites are because I do not have that information in front of me. When we came into government, we acted to put pressure on to get that area, Hoads Wood, dealt with, because it had been dragging on for far too long, as the noble Lord is aware. That is also why we have brought in the changes that we are making, increasing the Environment Agency’s budget and looking to do more about enforcement, because we do not want these situations dragging on. The blight on the countryside is just too grim.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, does the Minister share my concern that, despite the excellent work of the Environment Agency, a report in July showed that only 27% of waste crimes, and 12% of crimes on private land, are reported? What can the Government and the Environment Agency do to ensure that these waste crimes, often connected to organised crime, are reported and acted on at the earliest opportunity?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Baroness makes a really good point. One of the issues around non-reporting is that people think it is pointless. That has been the case in the past. There has just not been enough action taken, not just in tackling waste crime but in supporting people who are victims of it. That is why we are investing in the new schemes, why we are looking at data tracking to better understand it and why we are hoping that the investment in the Environment Agency is going to improve enforcement. If people can believe that it is worth reporting, they are more likely to. That is one of the reasons why we need to get people to trust that if they report a crime, something is going to happen about it.
Baroness Grender (LD)
My Lords, does the Minister agree that we cannot continue, in effect, to subsidise organised crime in England on waste, costing our taxpayers £1 billion a year? Will the Government ensure that the Environment Agency can use environmental permitting income and start to tackle this criminality, given that so far we have not had a single conviction?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
Clearly, the lack of convictions has been a problem, which returns me to my answer to the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh. This is the fundamental reason why we have increased the Environment Agency’s budget for front-line criminal enforcement: so that we can actually start to do this. The purpose for having that specific funding is to exactly address the issue the noble Baroness raises.
Lord Roborough (Con)
My Lords, Clause 9 of the Crime and Policing Bill grants Ministers the discretionary power to issue guidance to local authorities on fly-tipping enforcement. As we all know, fly-tipping is a serious problem, blighting communities, impacting everyone’s quality of life and polluting our natural environment. Can the Minister give the House a timeline for the issuing of new guidance and explain why Clause 9 will not come into effect on Royal Assent? I refer the House to my registered interest as a landowner.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Lord is absolutely right to raise the issue of fly-tipping. A lot of people think it is just a mattress dumped in a hedge, but it can be incredibly serious and expensive and challenging for landowners to clear up. In specific answer to his question, following Royal Assent the intention is to consult. We will consult, as required by Clause 9, prior to publishing any statutory guidance. We want to make sure that any guidance that we produce and publish is as useful as it can be, and we want to hear the views of local authorities and others to ensure that it is going to be effective. Once we have had the responses and the opportunity to analyse them, we will then publish it as soon as practical—as soon as we can. The clause will be commenced ahead of the guidance being finalised.
The Earl of Devon (CB)
My Lords, to continue the theme of fly-tipping, do His Majesty’s Government recognise the unfortunate link between environmental regulation, fly-tipping and the regrettable decrease in permissive access to rural areas? As regulation of waste increases, so does the cost of disposing of it and therefore fly-tipping increases, which requires landowners to fence and barbed-wire access points to nature that might otherwise be enjoyed by local communities. I note my interest in the register as a victim of fly-tipping.
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The noble Earl is absolutely right that this can be a really dreadful problem for landowners, and it can be very expensive and difficult to clear up. He may be interested to know that we are working with a range of interested parties to specifically look at these issues through the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group. That includes organisations such as the National Farmers’ Union, the CPRE, the Countryside Alliance and the CLA, because we need to work with landowners on how they can prevent fly-tipping on private land. I know it is not always possible, but the better guidance people have and the more they can work with organisations, the better. We are also developing practical tools on how councils and others can then bring robust cases to court, because that is important as well. We have a large fly-tipping issue, and it is important that the perpetrators are punished.
Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)
My Lords, one way to reduce waste crime is to reduce waste. Have the Government set a date for a ban on single-use plastics?
Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)
The Government are working hard on reducing waste, particularly through the circular economy strategy that we are developing at the moment. We are committed to reducing the amount of plastic waste, and the noble Baroness will see progress and development on that as time goes on.