Grand Committee
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Arrangement of Business
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The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, if there is a Division in the Chamber while we are sitting, this Committee will adjourn as soon as the Division Bells are rung and resume after 10 minutes.
Donations to Political Parties
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Lord Sikka
To ask His Majesty’s Government what plans they have to reform the law on donations to political parties.
Lord Sikka (Lab)
My Lords, this week Transparency International published its global index on corruption. The UK has dropped to its lowest ever score and now is more corrupt than Estonia, Hong Kong, Uruguay, Japan, Ireland and Australia. The main reason is that political parties and too many legislators are available for hire to corporations and the super-rich. Of course, corporations and the super-rich do not donate; they invest and expect a return. The grateful politicians oblige by organising threatening issues off the political agenda, feather-duster regulatory systems, tax perks to the rich, crony contracts, VIP lanes, honours and even peerages. This skulduggery happens behind a wall of organised secrecy.
In the 2023 OECD Open, Useful and Re-usable data (OURdata) Index, the UK was ranked 25th. It is now less open and transparent than Colombia, Denmark, Estonia, France, Ireland, Korea, Lithuania, Poland, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden—what a state of affairs. In the year before the 2024 general election, companies handed £42 million to political parties and individual legislators. The Conservatives accepted £15 million from Phoenix Partnership, which is wholly owned by Frank Hester, even though he said that MP Diane Abbott made him “want to hate all black women” and that she “should be shot”. Since 2016, Hester’s company has received £591 million from public contracts. Labour received £4.7 million from Quadrature Capital, a company controlled from the Cayman Islands. Not so long ago, Elon Musk promised £100 million to Reform UK to secure his ideological objectives.
The Electoral Commission does not know the origins of money used as political donations. Any person on the electoral register can pass money, whether from Elon Musk or the Mafia, as political donations. No one knows where foreign-resident UK voters get their money from. Even if the Electoral Commission could investigate, it will not get access to foreign bank accounts and cannot follow the money trail, so there is no way of stopping any foreign money. Companies registered in the UK can hand money to parties, but this does not have to come from their trade or profits in the UK. Even if that requirement were introduced, it could not be effectively implemented. Profits can be manufactured through intragroup transactions and aggressive accounting. In any case, small companies that frequently front these donations on behalf of the rich do not publish meaningful accounts because of the obsession with deregulation.
Greater transparency is considered to be good, but that alone will not end political corruption because political parties remain for sale to the highest bidder. The biggest casualty of political donations and corruption is confidence in the institutions of government. In the 2024 general election, the voter turnout was 59.9%, and people say to me, “It doesn’t matter who we vote for. Corporations and the super-rich always win because they fund parties and legislators”. Policy-makers eagerly meeting donors rarely show the same enthusiasm for meeting the homeless, the hungry, the less fortunate and the poor, who seem to be written out of the system altogether.
Normal people cannot fund political parties or buy suits and glasses for Ministers and they are on the receiving end of some terrible policies. More than 120,000 people die every year from fuel poverty, but Governments do not curb profiteering or upset the interests of corporations and the rich. By design, the poorest 20% pay a higher proportion of their income in taxes than the richest 20%. Some 300,000 people die every year while awaiting a hospital appointment, sacrificed to the so-called fiscal rules.
Abraham Lincoln associated democracy with government of the people, by the people and for the people. Such an ideal cannot be achieved as long as big money can buy political parties and legislators and subvert public choices. We need to end the direct funding of political parties by corporations, trade unions and the rich. I have already argued that it is impossible to keep foreign money out of politics. Corporations can be used, and have been used, to circumvent constraints. Some want to put an upper limit on corporate and personal donations; of course, only corporations and the rich will still be able to fund parties and the corruption we suffer from will continue. Normal people cannot compete in this kind of arms race. In a country where 24 million people live below the minimum living standards, handing more of their income to political parties is simply not possible at all.
The press release issued last night on the Representation of the People Bill suggests that the Government will tweak the system, but that tweaking will not end the political corruption. It will not stop the rich and corporations buying the political system. We need a fundamental rethink. My proposal is this: no limits on political donations on any legal or natural person, but no political party may directly receive a penny from them. All the money should go into what I call a fund for democracy, then that money should be shared in accordance with political parties’ share of the vote and membership. Parties producing good policies will get a bigger share. On realising that they cannot buy the political system, corporations and the rich will inevitably stop political donations. At that point, we can discuss the alternatives, including possible state funding of parties.
Finally, we cannot not have government of and for the people without ending direct political donations. Will any party rise to the challenge and rid us of inbuilt political corruption?
Baroness in Waiting/Government Whip (Baroness Blake of Leeds) (Lab)
My Lords, Members may have noticed that the clock is not working at the moment. I ask noble Lords to stick to their time limit of three minutes—I will wave when their time is up—because we need to make sure that we have time for the Minister’s response.
Lord Hayward (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on obtaining this debate, although I am going to follow a substantially different tack. I should add that my first declaration in the register of interests in the House of Lords was a ticket to the rugby World Cup final in 2015 given to me by the referee.
I want to make two points. One is on—noble Lords will be aware that I have been pursuing this issue for a number of years—the funding of opinion polls, which are, in effect, campaigning. A few years ago, YouGov took on a poll and the Telegraph displayed it in full, but we were unable to establish who had actually funded it and the circumstances around it.
I have given notice to the Electoral Commission again that I intend to pursue it when we get to debate the legislation, which I understand has been tabled in the Commons in the past few minutes, but I could not get a copy of it before the debate started. That is one matter of concern, because effectively opinion polling is used as a substantial manner of campaigning.
The other item that I wish to raise is relevant in light of the events in politics this week. It is not in a general election but at least one potential candidate for the leadership of the Labour Party is supposed to have already a war chest of £1 million. Any campaign that relates to funding for a post in government or as Leader of the Opposition should be subject to the same requirements as election campaigning in general. At the last leadership election in the Tory Party, Robert Jenrick received £75,000 pounds from a tax haven abroad. I made it absolutely clear that I thought that that should be declared and treated in the same way as overseas funding, because it has a direct bearing on British politics. Those are the two items that I wished to raise.
Lord Pack (LD)
My Lords, likewise, I should acknowledge the exceptionally impressive timing of this debate, coming just after the Government have published the Representation of the People Bill. It is fair to say, from all we know of the Bill so far—I have not had time to read it yet by any means in full—there is a welcome direction of travel on many issues in terms of trying to improve the transparency around donations to political parties. I fear, however, that it does not go far enough. Obviously, some of those issues are to do with foreign money and potential foreign government interference. Hopefully, the Rycroft review will, in due course, set out ways in which we can go further on that.
I therefore want to concentrate on a slightly different issue in my brief comments. They draw on the research that I published with Chris Butler last year on donations that are made directly to candidates and rightly declared on the candidates’ election expense forms when they submit them, which is all above board, legal and how the law is intended to operate. However, those donations then, in effect, disappear from view because donations made directly to candidates at the moment do not then appear on the Electoral Commission’s register of donations. So, if you are, for example, an inquisitive journalist or somebody doing the due diligence process and you look at the obvious public records, the donations do not appear there at all.
This is not a trivial amount of money. Chris Butler and I estimated that, for the 2019 general election, £3.4 million of donations came into our political system, potentially influencing people, but did not then appear in the Electoral Commission’s records. Moreover, although those election expense forms are kept locally by the relevant returning officers, they are not published and are destroyed after a period. Although the Electoral Commission gathers such forms in, it does not publish them. Indeed, as Chris and I discovered, the Electoral Commission is not terribly keen on releasing copies of that information. When it did release some information to us, much of it was redacted.
With that redacted information, we did our best to compare, for those elected as MPs, whether the donations then appeared on the MPs’ register of interests. We found that around one in 10 of the donations made did not appear on the register. One should caveat that—there may be innocent explanations—but it adds to the general picture that there is a problem, which I hope the Government will be keen to address, about the volume of money that flows in as direct donations to candidates that is not properly caught by our current transparency regimes.
Baroness Shah (Lab)
My Lords, I welcome this debate on donations to political parties. It is right that we examine how our political system is funded and that we do so with seriousness and transparency. I welcome the Government’s announcement today on the Representation of the People Bill and, in particular, measures to protect candidates, campaigners and staff from intimidation or abuse. At its heart, this debate is about strengthening our democracy and rebuilding public trust and about ensuring that participation in our democratic life is meaningful and fair. That is not only about money; it is about participation and franchise. It is in that spirit I slightly change tack from some of the focus around funding and speak in support of extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds.
Young people today are growing up in a context markedly different from that which shaped many of us in this House. They face existential challenges that are not abstract or distant but immediate and personal. Climate change, housing insecurity and economic and global uncertainty threaten not only their prosperity but their sense of future. Yet many feel that they have little agency over the decisions taken here in Parliament that will define those futures. Extending the vote to 16 and 17 year-olds offers elected representatives a powerful incentive to engage seriously with this cohort. It encourages political parties, candidates and institutions to speak with young people, not merely about them. It creates space for dialogue, political education and a politics that listens as well as instructs.
The evidence supports this approach. Research by the Electoral Commission shows that nearly three-quarters of young people believe that politics should be taught more in schools and colleges. While many understandably encounter political content through social media, they are far more likely to trust the information that they learn about politics in an educational setting. Yet many young people still do not feel confident about voting; they want to understand how voting works, why it matters and how to make informed choices.
Crucially, the same research tells us that, when young people understand how politics works and why it is important, they are far more likely to get involved and perhaps tackle the issues that the debate has already raised. That is why I particularly welcome the focus on civic education throughout schooling. Extending the franchise alongside strengthened civic education is not a leap of faith; it is a coherent and evidence-based approach to democratic renewal.
Young people today are asking for the same recognition. They are not disengaged because they do not care; many are disengaged because they care deeply and do not see their concerns reflected in decision-making or accessibility to politics. Granting them the vote is not a cure-all, but it is a meaningful and practical step in affirming that their stake in society is real. As legislators, it is incumbent on us to strengthen, not narrow, the foundations of our democracy. Engaging young people fosters habits of participation, accountability and civic responsibility that endure across a lifetime. It reinforces the principle that democracy is not only something that we inherit but something that we must renew.
Extending the franchise is an act of confidence in our young people and in our democratic system to grow stronger through inclusion. In a debate rightly focused on trust and democratic integrity, I urge the House to see this measure as an opportunity that we should embrace.
Lord Hannan of Kingsclere (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for introducing the debate and for being so frank about the proposal. As he said right at the end, the alternative to private donations is state funding, which indeed is the lesson of everywhere where we have seen it happen.
There are two obvious objections to a state-funded system. First, we do not have the money. We already have taxes at a higher level than they have been since the end of the 1940s, when we were still coming back from full mobilisation. We are borrowing £150 billion a year and spending £110 billion of that fending off existing creditors and servicing—not paying off—the interest on existing debt. If only we were paying off some of it. The idea that, at this fiscal moment, we would make a new demand on the wallet of the taxpayers is eccentric—or brave, if I can put it more neutrally.
Secondly, once you put this power into the hands of the state, you necessarily open the door to arbitrary decisions as to which parties qualify or can be disqualified. When I was a Member of the European Parliament, this happened in Belgium. Private donations were more or less banned following the Agusta scandal. This then, in effect, put immense power in the hands of the majority of Belgian parties to defund political parties of which they disapproved—for example, because they were in favour of Flemish separatism. That is an extraordinarily powerful loaded gun to put in the hands of any Government. What is the alternative? If people cannot manage without state funding, maybe the parties should do less. Maybe they should trim their ambitions to their means, rather than having to spend all these gazillions on every election.
I am conscious of the time, so I will finish with two quotations. As the age becomes darker and more illiberal, I will cite two quotations from old Whig heroes, one from the end of the 18th century and another from the end of the 19th. I begin with Thomas Jefferson, who came out with a very powerful objection when he said,
“to compel a man to furnish contributions of money for the propagation of opinions which he disbelieves and abhors, is sinful and tyrannical”.
It is an extraordinary proposal. I am sure there would be people who would deeply resent funding me and I am sure other people would deeply resent funding the noble Lord, Lord Sikka—and others would dislike the idea of funding anyone in between us.
I will close with this, from JS Mill, who wrote that
“if the employees of all these different enterprises were paid by the government, and looked to the government for every rise in life; not all the freedom of the press and popular constitution of the legislature would make this or any other country free otherwise than in name”.
Amen.
Lord Watson of Invergowrie (Lab)
My Lords, I appreciate the panache and brio with which the noble Lord, Lord Hannan, delivers his speeches, but I have to say that I disagree with him on state funding. I will develop that in the time available to me. JS Mill and Thomas Jefferson lived some time ago, long before the days of what we would understand to be democracy.
I commend my noble friend Lord Sikka for getting this debate. He went on at some length about countries higher on the scale than the UK in terms of corruption measures. He mentioned various countries, but not Germany. I think Germany is the best example of support for political parties. In Germany’s system there is state funding, with three legs to its stool. The first is democratic legitimacy, because the money follows the votes that political parties gain. The second is transparency, with donations having to be declared fully—anything above €50,000 immediately and anything above €10,000 in the parties’ annual reports. That is important. There is also a prevention of undue influence, which I think we see in this country in terms of political donations.
The Conservative Party is funded by business. The Labour Party is funded to some extent by business but mainly by trade unions: I declare an interest as a member of Unite. That does not give us a level playing field. I am sure the noble Lord, Lord Pack, will feel that the Liberal Democrats do not get a fair crack of the whip. If votes lead to the financial donations that the state makes to political parties, as in the German system, following an election, the people understand what they are paying and why they are paying it. The direct connection is important. Generally, I think voters would rather see a fair system and a level playing field, where things are open and transparent, and it is clear that any political party that gains sufficient votes gets support to go into future elections. I do not think that is a bad idea.
Incidentally, in Germany the state also matches donations that political parties get from membership fees and individual small donations, up to a capped limit. That is a good example that we could follow and I hope my noble friend will be able to say something about what the Government’s intentions are in the Bill that has just been published. I commend the German model. France, Italy, Spain and Canada also have a form of state funding. It works for them and it could work for us as well.
Lord Rogan (UUP)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on securing this debate. I will highlight what I regard as an unacceptable anomaly in the current laws on donations to political parties seeking election throughout the United Kingdom.
Noble Lords will be aware of the list of permissible funding sources for political parties in Great Britain. However, not all your Lordships may know that there is an additional list of sources for political parties in Northern Ireland, and it is quite extensive. The list includes Irish citizens, most Irish-registered companies, trade unions, building societies, friendly societies and, most importantly, Irish-registered political parties.
The consequence of this means that, while foreign political donations are barred in Great Britain, foreign money can and does enter United Kingdom politics through Northern Ireland. This list of additional sources specifically for parties in Northern Ireland was, of course, compiled to satisfy the insatiable demands of Sinn Féin/IRA.
The republican movement has never been short of cash, regularly funded throughout the Troubles and since by protection rackets and bank robberies, including the Northern Bank raid in central Belfast, which added some £26.5 million to Sinn Féin/IRA coffers more than six and a half years after the signing of the Good Friday agreement. However, much of this funding has come from the United States of America, most notably from an organisation known as Friends of Sinn Féin.
According to a recent article in the Irish Times, in the six months to October last year, Friends of Sinn Féin recorded more than $57,000 in donations, including almost $19,000 from a trust set up by an Arizona woman who died in 2020. Since 2022, Friends of Sinn Féin has received more than $440,000 from this trust. Last year, the Belfast Telegraph reported that another front group, Friends of Sinn Féin (Canada), donated some $14,000. That matters, because I am sure no noble Lord believes that Sinn Féin/IRA records the cash it receives.
The current anomaly in party funding affects politics not only in Northern Ireland but in Westminster. There are currently seven Sinn Féin/IRA MPs entitled to take their seats in the other place, but they refuse to do so. However, their election prospects were undoubtedly boosted by foreign money supporting their campaign. I simply ask the Minister how and why it is acceptable that current UK law relating to funding includes a carve-up designated to assist one political party. There can be no justification for it and that anomaly should be removed.
Lord Leigh of Hurley (Con)
My Lords, I declare my interest as a senior treasurer of the Conservative Party. I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, on his very prescient timing, securing this debate just as the Representation of the People Bill is introduced today.
The Government are proposing to introduce “enhanced due diligence” measures in the forthcoming elections Bill. One has to ask why. If the intent of the legislation is to protect against foreign interference, the new regulatory regime should be targeted in that respect, rather than seeking to envelope genuinely domestic and permissible transactions in extra and excessive red tape. Political parties and regulated donees have a legal obligation to ensure that they receive donations only from permissible sources, which in the case of companies must be companies carrying out business in the UK. Foreign donations are already banned. There are criminal offences in relation to fraud declarations and funnelling unlawful donations via the back door.
However, parties could do with more information from government agencies. In the case of Christine Lee, who gave some £700,000 to Labour Party recipients, it would have been helpful if the security services had alerted Labour to the Chinese Communist Party involvement, for its benefit. Likewise, HMRC has recently declined to share information with national political parties because of so-called tax confidentiality. This fails to recognise an important fact: political parties are not banks or tax authorities. Their assessment of risks is otherwise limited to what is in the public domain. If there are particular risks from specific foreign threats, there should be mechanisms to inform parties of those risks.
The greatest risk of foreign influence lies in third parties, rather than highly regulated and very transparent political parties. That is why we see money flowing into Islamist causes and Gaza independence-style campaigns, which is very worrying. Certainly, the Conservative Party undertakes due diligence checks on its donors, in terms of, first, regulatory compliance and, secondly, political screening and reputational impact. Donations from shell companies are not allowed and not taken. In government, the Conservatives tightened the law against foreign interference and foreign spending; it is the Labour Government who are now dragging their feet by failing to implement properly the foreign influence registration scheme and by not adding China to the enhanced tier. Also, I add my name to those advocating banning cryptocurrency donations. I can see no reason to use them other than for nefarious purposes.
The Government need to recognise that donors are generally good citizens who want to help a political party and want it to succeed. Some do so by giving their time, some by giving financial resources. Over the years, Labour, Lib Dems and all parties have had many such folk, albeit that some may have now withdrawn, given the performance of their party. Of course, that has left Labour completely beholden to the unions. Is this healthy? The result has been the morally offensive Employment Rights Act, where Labour has been forced to allow unions to clip members’ fees into their political funds unless members object. This is the wrong direction of travel. Genuine donors need to be thanked and applauded, not demonised.
Lord Sahota (Lab)
My Lords, I rise with a profound sense of responsibility because the issue before us goes to the very heart of our constitutional settlement: the integrity of our democracy. At the moment there is a growing and deeply troubling perception that British democracy is simply on sale to the highest bidder. That perception alone should alarm us all. We are witnessing donations whose true origins are unclear and that are rooted through opaque structures, sometimes linked to foreign interests and are too often beyond the effective scrutiny of the regulator. This is not a theoretical concern; it is a present and pressing danger. The principle is simple: decisions about the future of the United Kingdom should be made by the British people, not shaped by unknown donors, overseas interests or hidden financial powers.
Democracy is about equality of voice, not inequality of wealth. The Committee on Standards in Public Life has recommended a cap of £10,000 on donations to political parties. Such a cap would not stifle political participation; it would protect it. It would ensure that political parties are funded by broad public support rather than a narrow group of wealthy benefactors.
The integrity of our democracy is at stake. The United Kingdom is respected around the world as a beacon of democratic governance, often described, rightly or wrongly, as the mother of all democracies. That reputation has been earned over the centuries through reform, restraint and a shared commitment to fairness and accountability. It must not be squandered now. Democracy cannot be treated as a commodity traded to the highest bidder. It is a trust handed down to us and held on behalf of future generations. Safeguarding requires courage, transparency and a willingness to confront uncomfortable truths. This House has a duty to act. If we fail to strengthen our law on political donations, we risk allowing money to speak louder than the citizen. We cannot and must not take that risk.
Lord Mott (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for securing this important debate. I will be positive. Legitimacy and transparency must be at the heart of political-party finance. I share the concerns about hostile foreign states trying to exert influence in this way, but these concerns must not lead us down the road of substantially increased public funding of political parties. Having to attract donations, big and small, is part of a competitive electoral landscape and one of the ways in which parties are challenged to remain relevant.
As updates to the law are made, we need to ensure that they are compatible with new technology. I disagree slightly with my noble friend Lord Leigh. We need safeguards around things such as crypto donations, but the system should work to facilitate them in a legitimate manner, not try to prevent them.
We are missing an important question in this debate. We should be asking: how do we make it more attractive for people to become donors to political parties? Legitimate UK voters and businesses donating to a political party is not a shameful act—far from it. In fact, it should be celebrated as a positive way for people to participate in political life, a fundamental enabler of our democratic system and an important way in which we can exercise our democratic rights.
To support this view, we should look to provide tax relief on political donations in a similar way to what we already do for charitable donations. This would not only make it more attractive for people to donate but send a clear signal that legitimately made and transparently declared donations are of benefit to our democracy and that political parties are essential institutions worthy of support, which must be led by people, not the state.
In designing such a system, I recognise that there may be a need for a limit to the amount of tax relief on offer, but I do not think such relief needs to go hand in hand with a cap on donations. For example, as the noble Lord, Lord Watson, mentioned, we should look to Germany, where there is no limit on how much someone can donate, but the first €3,300 attracts tax relief. Will the Minister commit to looking seriously at such a proposal as part of any update to the law on political donations?
Lord Wallace of Saltaire (LD)
My Lords, I particularly welcome the suggestion that the noble Lord, Lord Mott, made. The ideal way to fund political parties is a large number of donations from your voters and your members. That is what my party has largely relied on. We lack large donors, except under exceptional circumstances, and we have to work very hard to get those £20, £200 and £2,000 donations.
We are all watching what happens in the United States at the moment, where money dominates politics and where a small number of ultra-wealthy people—some of whom are explicitly anti-democratic, such as Peter Thiel —are influencing the way things are going. UK sovereignty means that we need to restrict the flow of funds from abroad so far as we can. This means funds not only from foreign states but foreign citizens, foreign companies and UK expatriates who moved abroad to avoid paying UK taxes but nevertheless want to interfere in the political life of the country they have left behind.
We now know a lot about Russian penetration of the Conservative Party and about Russian interference in the Brexit campaign. We do not know whether various Middle Eastern states put money into favoured parties, lobbies and think tanks to promote their own interests. We now have the extraordinary announcement from a US State Department Under Secretary that US federal funds will be channelled into right-wing groups across Europe, including in the UK, including the bodies which in many ways are threats to constitutional democracy and open society.
Restrictions on expatriate donations are a more difficult and delicate issue. One of the largest donations in recent British politics came from a long-term UK expatriate in Thailand. There are 100,000 UK citizens in Dubai, some extremely rich and some possibly willing to act as intermediaries for foreign state actors in putting money into British politics. We agree that corporate donations should be allowed only from companies that have declared substantial profits from operations within the UK. I suggest that it should also be a condition that donations above a modest limit can come only from people who have submitted a UK tax return for the previous year or more.
Current restrictions focus mainly on donations to political parties. However, political movements, such as Tommy Robinson’s, also play a large and active political role, as do think tanks, such as the Henry Jackson Society, the Global Warming Policy Foundation and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, and lobbies, such as the Free Speech Union and Labour Together, which has not declared its funding.
There is some evidence, and many more unconfirmed reports, that foreign money flows into some of these, both from foreign Governments and from wealthy individuals, foundations and corporations. That is also foreign interference. In some cases, it is clearly hostile foreign interference and should be made more transparent and limited. The elections Bill offers us the chance to tighten controls on all these, and I look forward to making it work.
Baroness Scott of Bybrook (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Sikka, for bringing forward this debate but I cannot, in any way, agree with his solutions, either the ideas for all-party use of a donations pot—I am not sure how big that pot would be—or the endgame of state funding.
The statutory framework governing donations, principally the Political Parties, Elections and Referendums Act 2000 and the Representation of the People Act 1983, were designed to prevent foreign money distorting British politics. Those principles remain sound. But the landscape has evolved: new financial vehicles, shell companies, unincorporated associations and cryptocurrencies present risks that were understandably not explicitly legislated for a generation ago. This is a fact that hostile actors increasingly seek to exploit.
We recognise that the Government’s July 2025 elections strategy acknowledged that the current framework is no longer sufficient. It proposed stronger checks on donations, greater transparency for gifts and limits on company donations etc. We also note the announcement the independent review into electoral resilience following troubling allegations of foreign interference, and the Secretary of State’s commitment to examine illicit funding streams, including cryptocurrencies. We support the objective of protecting our democracy from hostile actors.
The previous Conservative Government took steps in this direction, strengthening national security legislation and committing to improved information-sharing between agencies and political parties. This was precisely because of the real and evolving threat of foreign interference at the time.
However, strategies and reviews are not substitutes for legislation. The electoral strategy was published seven months ago, and the Representation of the People Bill is only just being laid before Parliament today. There has been little consultation with political parties as these things are starting to be put forward; I do not believe that that has ever happened before. At a time when state-backed interference, opaque funding routes and emerging financial technologies present genuine risks, delays here will have consequences. How will the Government ensure, in particular through the Bill, that parties are properly supported, including through proportionate and lawful information sharing if they are to undertake enhanced checks on donors? What specific safeguards will be introduced to ensure that foreign money, whether channelled through companies or digital assets, cannot penetrate our political system?
The safety and integrity of our democracy should never be partisan; nor can reform be endlessly deferred. If the Government believe that the existing framework is no longer robust, as they say they have done for nearly two years, it is now time to move from review to action.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (Baroness Taylor of Stevenage) (Lab)
My Lords, I am very pleased to respond to this QSD. As many Lords have said, it is timely indeed, as we are pleased to introduce the Representation of the People Bill today; I look forward to many further discussions as that Bill works its way through our House.
I thank my noble friend Lord Sikka for opening the debate, and other noble Lords for their contributions. My noble friend always brings an interesting approach to this subject. Although I do not quite share his conspiracy theory approach to matters, I would say, as a veteran of many elections, that the power of the vote is still as strong as ever. We all need to inspire confidence that the vote is mightier than the pound; I hope that we will all strive for that.
The speeches we have heard today illustrate a shared desire to protect our democracy from those who seek to disrupt it. We all know that this is a clear and present danger, which our Government are resolutely determined to tackle. The Government committed in their manifesto to strengthening the rules around donations to political parties, including enhanced safeguards against foreign donations. The threat of foreign interference is evolving and is becoming increasingly hostile and sophisticated, while the current rules are no longer sufficient to address these risks.
The Government take a zero-tolerance approach to foreign interference, and we cannot afford to wait. That is why the reforms set out today in the Representation of the People Bill put prevention first, reducing pressure on law enforcement, protecting parties from exploitation and delivering greater transparency and stronger safeguards against malign foreign actors. These reforms implement a number of recommendations made by stakeholders, including the Ethics and Integrity Commission, formerly the Committee on Standards in Public Life; the Electoral Commission; and the National Crime Agency.
I turn to the specific measures set out in the Bill. Current electoral law sets out who may donate and the basic checks that campaigners must make, but these rules no longer reflect modern anti-money laundering standards. So, we are strengthening the system by introducing new “know your donor” checks for donations over £11,180. I know that is a random amount: I did raise that. Recipients will now have to carry out a risk assessment, checking for signs of foreign or unlawful funding, before deciding whether to accept or return a donation.
Key stakeholders have warned that the current eligibility criteria for companies to donate are far too weak and expose political parties and other recipients to the risk of accepting foreign donations and proceeds of crime. This means that shell companies—companies that are registered today, owned by anyone and funded from anywhere, without a single day of trade—could donate to our political parties. That is why we are introducing new stringent eligibility criteria for companies wishing to make political donations. Companies will have to show sufficient revenue to cover their donation, be headquartered in the UK and be majority-owned or controlled by UK electors or citizens in order to be eligible to make a donation.
Stakeholders are also concerned that unincorporated associations could be used to funnel illegitimate foreign funding into our political system. Unincorporated associations can currently give large sums with limited transparency. This leaves clear vulnerability to foreign or illegitimate money, so we are tightening the rules. We are reducing the thresholds for when unincorporated associations must register with the Electoral Commission and for when unincorporated associations must report gifts to the Electoral Commission. We are also requiring unincorporated associations intending to make significant donations to check the permissibility of the political gifts they receive to ensure that they come from permitted UK sources. We are also reinforcing the principle that only permissible donors may fund UK politics.
Where illicit funds enter the system via impermissible donors, such as individuals not on the electoral register, they will be subject to full forfeiture, providing a clear deterrent and supporting compliance by political parties and campaigners. Beyond these measures, we will commence existing provisions in law, which will require anyone making contributions of more than £11,180 to declare any benefits linked to their donation. This will ensure that we can identify the true donor and prevent people acting as fronts for others. Forced declarations will be a criminal offence, supporting enforcement authorities to take action against illegal donations.
Robust regulation and enforcement of political finance rules are crucial for combating the threat of foreign interference. That is why we are addressing enforcement gaps by extending the Electoral Commission’s enforcement role and civil sanctioning powers. This will enable police resources to be directed towards the most serious criminal offences. We will also increase, via secondary legislation, the Electoral Commission’s maximum fine from £20,000 to £500,000 per offence, with safeguards to protect against disproportionate burdens on campaigners with fewer resources. This will create a more meaningful deterrent against serious breaches of the rules.
Finally, to ensure that we are leaving no stone unturned, we have launched an independent review into foreign financial interference in UK politics, which will make recommendations to government by the end of March. The Rycroft review will focus on the effectiveness of the UK’s political finance laws, as well as the safeguards in place to protect our democracy from illicit money from abroad, including crypto assets. The Government will carefully consider all recommendations made in that report.
I want to respond to a few of the points made. If I do not get to them all, I will reply in writing. The noble Lord, Lord Hayward, asked about polls. Transparency requirements under electoral law exist for third-party campaign spending, including market research and canvassing. They are all in scope of the spending rules. The imprint rules also apply to those market research issues. On leadership elections, I am afraid they are a matter for political parties.
The noble Lord, Lord Pack, asked about donations and registers of interest. Parliament sets the rules around registers of interest, so that is a matter of parliamentary rule-making. I thank my noble friend Lady Shah for her points about voting for 16 year-olds. She hit on a crucial point. Extending the franchise to 16 and 17 year-olds means that we must make sure that they have trust in the system, and we are increasing civic education to provide that background to their voting.
On the question from my noble friend Lord Watson, I am sure the Rycroft review will be looking at international models to make sure we learn from them.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Rogan, Irish citizens remain permissible donors in Northern Ireland, and political parties there can also accept donations from Irish sources, such as Irish companies, that meet the prescribed conditions. That is consistent with the Good Friday agreement.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Leigh, the issue about China is a Home Office question. I will revert to colleagues in the Home Office and get back to him on that one.
In reply to my noble friend Lord Sahota, there is no intention from the Government to cap donations at the moment. The new Bill is all about transparency, so I hope I have covered some of those issues.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Mott, political parties and other campaigners will remain able to raise sufficient funds to communicate their views to the electorate, while protecting our democracy against those who seek to covertly undermine it. We do not consider tax relief on political donations to be part of the solution, I am afraid.
In reply to the noble Lord, Lord Wallace, I think I covered overseas interference in my speech. Overseas electors are subject to the same counter-fraud measures as domestic electors, including having their identity confirmed as part of the registration process.
I hope that I covered most of the comments of the noble Baroness, Lady Scott, in my speech. I will check Hansard, though, and respond further if I missed anything.
In closing, I thank my noble friend Lord Sikka for raising such an important debate and Members across the Committee for some very key contributions. I am sure we will have more of those as the Bill makes its way through the House.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Healy of Primrose Hill) (Lab)
My Lords, the Grand Committee stands adjourned until at least 2 pm, in the hope that we can get the clocks fixed.
Counter-Extremism Strategy
(2 days, 7 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts
Lord Goodman of Wycombe
To ask His Majesty’s Government what consideration they have given to the introduction of a counter-extremism strategy.
Lord Goodman of Wycombe (Con)
My Lords, I am pleased to have the opportunity to open this short debate on the consideration given to the introduction of a counterextremism strategy. The usual form on these occasions is to describe the issues and ask some questions. However, the issues I want to describe and the questions I want to ask were described and asked recently in the House, as the Minister knows. I will therefore be as brief as I can in order to allow other noble Lords to have their say; I am delighted to see so many colleagues present.
I turn first to the issues. In sum, my view is that non-violent extremism aims to, in the words of the previous Government’s definition,
“negate or destroy the fundamental rights and freedoms of others … undermine, overturn or replace”
our
“system of liberal … democracy and democratic rights; or … intentionally create a permissive environment for others”.
At best, this non-violent extremism makes cohesion and integration impossible; at worst, it gives rise to harassment, public order offences, acts of terrorism and other breaches of the rule of law. Its three most prominent forms are far-right, far-left and Islamist extremism. The last of those is responsible for some 71% of terrorist incidents in Britain since the London Tube atrocities of 7 July 2005, as well as some 75% of the case load of Contest, the Government’s counterterror strategy. This is not—I repeat, not—to conflate Islam, the ancient religion, with Islamism, the political ideology, any more than it is to conflate the far left and socialism or the far right and patriotism.
Having set out the issues, I turn next to the Government’s response. When asked recently in the House whether the Government uphold the definition of non-violent extremism that I quoted earlier or have one of their own, the Minister said that it,
“is a deeply challenging and complex area”,
and that,
“there is no statutory definition of or consensus on what would include extremism”.
When he was asked whether a counterextremism commissioner will be appointed to replace Robin Simcox, the Minister repeated:
“We are reviewing the roles and remits of various bodies to ensure our resources are best placed to meet current challenges”.
When he was asked whether the Government will publish the rapid analytical sprint review of non-violent extremism, commissioned after the general election, he said that publication,
“could, for example, undermine policy development”.—[Official Report, 27/1/26; cols. 804-06.]
and sent a file of support for terror, antisemitism, denial and conspiracy theory gleaned from mosques. I then asked how many prosecutions have arisen, and the Minister replied that no figures are available.
It is not hard to see what is happening here. There is a repeated cycle. First, there is an incident. It could be the conviction of a left-wing anarchist in 2024 on multiple terror charges. It could be the attack on the Heaton Park synagogue last year, which saw the first murder of Jews simply for being Jews in Britain in modern times. It could be the conviction of a far-right racist for the 2017 attack on Finsbury Park mosque. Then there is a wave of public alarm. Ministers promise action, time passes, media attention moves on and inertia sets in as the Government, the Opposition, the security services, the police, advisers and academics retreat into their siloes and disagree about solutions. Ministers are then reshuffled or a general election takes place, and we go back to square one until the next time.
Only two recent Prime Ministers seriously attempted to break the cycle: Tony Blair and my noble friend Lord Cameron of Chipping Norton. Both understood that in our centralised system, only a cross-government counterextremism strategy driven from Downing Street will produce results. Such a strategy would ensure that the Government themselves do not patronise, give platforms to, fund or engage with extremists; that prisons are run by governors and staff, not by gangs; that extremist mobs do not dictate terms to the police, as happened recently in Birmingham; that hospitals and surgeries are neutral spaces; that posters on walls and lanyards worn by staff do not advertise political causes; that demonstrators and marchers do not incite violence by calling, for example, for the intifada to be globalised; and that funds raised for charities do not end up funding terror.
I pay tribute to two all-party initiatives that have the potential to develop such a policy. The first is the All-Party Parliamentary Group on defending democracy, led by the noble Lord, Lord Walney, who I am pleased to see will speak today. The second is the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Counter Extremism, chaired by Damien Egan, which has already produced a useful report, Time to Act.
I described the pattern of events in counterextremism policy as a cycle, but perhaps it would be more accurate to describe it as a spiral, one which is descending steadily downwards. I have assumed for the whole of my adult life that our multifaith and multiracial democracy will continue to progress for the better, and, on balance, I still believe that it will, but I also believe that we can no longer be sure. The 2022 disturbances in Leicester, the Aston Villa game scandal in Birmingham, the Manchester synagogue attack, the firebomb attack on the Peacehaven mosque, the outbreak of Palestinian and St George’s Cross flag flying, the rise of the Gaza independents and the push for an “Islamophobia” definition, plus the Sikh and Hindu reaction to it, are signs that our towns and cities are in danger of dividing, at least in part, into ethnic and religious enclaves. It is hard to see how such a future could square with the Disraelian “one nation” ideal or, indeed, with a coherent nation at all.
The Government currently seem too battered, disorientated and bewildered by events to rise to the challenge. The opposition parties are only beginning, at this stage of the electoral cycle, to grapple with it, and Parliament as an institution is running to catch up with the pace of events. I would not claim that this debate is the start of further discussion to come, but I hope it can be an important step along the road, and I look forward to the Minister’s response.
Lord Mendelsohn (Lab)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, on introducing this debate. A serious discussion on this is long overdue, and I thank him for all his work and leadership on this and the many colleagues who I am looking forward to hearing who have been very involved in it as well. I declare my interest as a trustee of the Hofenung Foundation and as someone who has been deeply concerned about the growing extremism crisis in our country. We face a rapidly accelerating threat. We see this in the historic levels of antisemitism and anti-Muslim hate, the surge of Prevent referrals, the unprecedented normalisation of conspiracy theories and the rising tolerance, particularly among younger groups, of political violence. These are not isolated indicators; they are symptoms of a weakening social fabric and declining democratic resilience.
The most disturbing thing is that we are flying blind. We are confronting a fast-evolving, increasingly organised and sometimes foreign-backed extremism ecosystem without a national counterextremism strategy of any kind. We make a profound mistake when we conflate extremism with terrorism. Terrorism is the violent end point, but extremism is the infrastructure, the ideology, the recruitment ecosystem, the conspiracy culture, the dehumanisation and the democratic erosion that makes violence possible. Contest is an excellent counterterrorism strategy, but it was never designed to address the harms that sit below the terrorism threshold, where extremist groups currently operate with impunity. We have reached a point where extremist organisations—far left, far right, Islamicist—can radicalise children, spread dangerous ideological propaganda and mainstream hate on the streets and online without breaking any law because the law does not yet capture hateful extremism as a category. This is untenable.
What do we need to do? First, we need a clear operational definition of extremism, and I hope the Minister can confirm that the existing one announced by the previous Government still stands. It will be important to have his reflections on whether the Government will accept that it should include reference to hateful extremism. Secondly, the Government must close the legislative gaps. As set out in the report Operating With Impunity, we need hateful extremism proscription orders for extremist groups that sit below the terrorism threshold but whose actions are demonstrably harmful. Other democracies such as Canada and Germany already do this. Following the horrendous Islamicist terrorist attack in Australia, its Government are taking steps to list proscribed groups in regulations, where this can be applied. We cannot allow extremists to operate freely simply because the law has failed to keep pace.
Thirdly, the Government must fund ideological challenge programmes. When asked about what kinds of counterextremism programmes the Home Office funds outside Prevent, Jonathan Emmett mentioned at the Home Affairs Select Committee that the Government had made a significant sum available for protective security at places of worship. I welcome such funding—although not that much, as it is a sign of real failure that we must produce money for security in those places; it would be nice if it went down, rather than kept going up—but it is a mistake to equate protective security with counterextremism programmes. We must challenge extremist narratives, online and offline, support vulnerable individuals and build resilience against conspiracy theories, dehumanisation and hate.
The data shows a country fragmenting with extremism metastasising into the cracks, online in civic spaces, on our streets and in community relations. If we fail to act now, the social, political and security-related costs will only deepen. This debate is about safeguarding the integrity of our democracy and the safety of our communities in the kind of country we aspire to be. I hope that the Minister will agree that we need a muscular and values-driven counterextremism strategy. It is not optional; we must do it, and now.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
My Lords, extremism is not what it used to be. In October 2024, MI5’s director Ken McCallum said:
“Straightforward labels like ‘Islamist terrorism’ or ‘extreme right wing’ don’t fully reflect the dizzying range of beliefs and ideologies we see”.
My current experience as Independent Prevent Commissioner confirms his analysis. Young people, often disturbed by family trauma or personal grievances, seek comfort in the rigid hatreds of their offline or online tribe, often with added misogyny or antisemitism. Their minds are inflamed by geopolitical events, dehumanising computer games and the malign algorithms of social media into an unpredictable mash-up of resentment, rage and normalised violence.
Conspiracy theories are promoted by hostile states. Fragments of ideology are packaged as video clips. The boy drawing Nazi symbols on his arm may, the next week, be seen shouting sectarian slogans, refusing to interact with female teachers or posing as a suicide bomber. The terrorism statistics record violent offences that were motivated by a single, consistent ideology, most commonly—as the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, has rightly said—a perverted version of Islam.
Extremism in its broader sense, however, motivates many attacks of equivalent seriousness, including those perpetrated by the multiple killers Danyal Hussein, Jake Davison and, in Southport, Axel Rudakubana. These violent expressions of extremism represent, of course, only a small part of the social problems caused by its non-violent outworkings.
The single point I want to make today is that while the word extremism is a convenient label for drawing attention to a vast bundle of problems, it is not a satisfactory key to solving them. The normal meaning of the word is dauntingly broad. In the libel case Shakeel Begg v BBC, Lord Justice Haddon-Cave said:
“What is ‘extreme’ is, by definition, something which is not ‘moderate’”.
Attempts by successive Governments to narrow it down have been inconsistent and hard to translate into consistent policy. Phrases such as “opposition to British values” and “creating a permissive environment” are too wide to form a reliable basis for rules or coercive action.
Confronted with so large a target, counterextremism strategies have been diffuse and ineffective. The 2015 Counter-Extremism Strategy was diagnosed by Professor Clive Walker, our greatest academic authority on terrorism, as suffering from
“inexact and contested meanings, objectives, and mechanisms which generate dynamics of suspicion as much as persuasion”.
The rapid analytical sprint leaked last January was said by Policy Exchange to have confused extremism with
“any shocking crime, bad belief or nasty social phenomenon about which we are worried”.
Overbreadth is particularly dangerous when accompanied by harsh sanctions. The counterextremism Bill of 2016, which I was privileged to see, would have allowed the penalisation of “extremist activity”, defined to include huge swathes of otherwise perfectly legitimate political and religious speech. It was, at least to me, a relief when, after being announced in two successive Queen’s Speeches, it blew up on the launch pad.
Parliament and the courts have calibrated our laws over the centuries with extraordinary and rather impressive care. It would be a lazy and illiberal error to overlay those laws with vague and contested notions such as extremism or—I agree—Islamophobia. Let us promote integration, critical thinking, social media literacy and awareness of our civic rights and duties. Let us research harmful belief systems and challenge divisive or intolerant narratives wherever we find them. If our laws on online safety, public order, hate crime, counterterrorism, hostile state activity—
Captain of the King’s Bodyguard of the Yeomen of the Guard and Deputy Chief Whip (Baroness Wheeler) (Lab)
My Lords, it has been four minutes.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I have one and a half sentences left. If our laws on online safety, public order, hate crime, counterterrorism, hostile state activity or proscription are insufficient, let us revisit, amend and supplement them. But the trick is to excise the tumours without undue harm to the healthy tissue of free speech, which requires a scalpel, not the suffocating blanket labelled “extremism”.
Baroness Fox of Buckley (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, for this crucial debate. I want to focus on the normalisation of Islamism and virulent antisemitism but first I need to negotiate the obstacle course of counterextremism. I am not the first to note that official definitions of extremism can be unhelpful: too vague, ambiguous and broad, and a distraction from real threats. I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, about the problem of extremism as a legal concept. Also, in a democratic, pluralist society of citizens with diverse views, how can you establish a robust legal definition without being partisan or censorious?
I am worried about a blank cheque. Official signs of extremism include everything from spreading misinformation to involvement in the manosphere—think “Adolescence”, a drama, not a documentary, yet the Government vowed to show it in every school to counter online extremism. Such a shallow lack of specificity means that state agencies acquire huge power to police legitimate, if unpleasant or dissenting, views. Recently, a Home Office-funded interactive computer game hit the headlines. “Pathways: Navigating the Internet and Extremism” takes 13 to 18 year-olds on a journey. As game characters, they must make decisions to avoid being reported for extreme right-wing ideology. If they wrongly answer multiple-choice questions on, for example, migration, or if their avatar chooses to attend a protest against the “erosion in British values”, they are branded.
This superficial approach begs questions. In January, the director of counterterrorism at the Homeland Security Group claimed that 68 civil society groups are being funded by Prevent. Can the Minister outline who these groups are, what kind of programmes they are delivering and, crucially, how the Home Office is assessing their effectiveness? I ask because the “Pathways” computer game backfired spectacularly. The developers created a purple-haired goth girl, Amelia, as the far-right baddie, but rather than being viewed as a dangerous extremist, Amelia has been embraced as an ironic heroine and has become a union jack-waving viral meme.
This backlash reveals how tone deaf anti-extremist initiatives can be. For example, framing patriotic sentiment as extremism risks radicalising those moderate youth who resent their scepticism of progressive orthodoxies being criminalised, especially while the elephant in the room, radical Islamism, is allowed free rein. They have a point. Official interventions using vague and non-exhaustive definitions of extremism, applied with little discrimination to an expanding number of targets, often avoid tackling Islamist extremism. One reason is that people are afraid of upsetting radical Islamists but are not afraid of upsetting critics of multiculturalism, real-life Amelias, the Pink Ladies, Reform UK supporters or whoever.
A year ago, the Speaker in the other place overrode centuries of parliamentary procedure to protect Labour MPs scared by threats from extremists over a Gaza vote. This morning, at Questions, we were reminded of the unprecedented harassment and intimidation of candidates, MPs and even voters at and since the general election. The Maccabi Tel Aviv scandal exposed police capitulation to fundamentalist threats to Israeli fans. All that is just a taste of a growing Islamist veto over public life. Then there is the fear of being labelled an Islamophobic extremist if you raise such concern. The Government’s push to define anti-Muslim hatred threatens to institutionalise that chilling effect. They say, “See it. Say it. Sorted”, but if we see it and cannot say it, it will not get sorted. We must stop wasting time on fictitious Amelias and target the real-life problem hiding in plain sight.
Baroness Jenkin of Kennington (Con)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend for initiating this debate. He has been consistent and persistent in his arguments, which he was also able to spell out in his Times article on Tuesday. The thousand comments, almost all in support, were striking, expressing anxiety and concern about the rise of terrorism and antisemitism, as well as fear, however unjustified, that they—we—no longer feel safe in our streets. This is particularly true for women who worry about their safety walking home at night or even, now, in broad daylight. They fear for their daughters and even their sons, as exemplified by this week’s school knife attack. People are afraid of masked men, crowded tubes, buses. I feel it myself. It is in large part because they—we—do not feel that the Government have a grip and that they have no sense of urgency. Of course, none of us underestimates the challenges faced by government and the security services, but there is a strong sense that as a country we are behind the curve rather than fully aware of and dealing with not only the current challenges but those coming down the track.
More and more people, especially younger friends and acquaintances, spontaneously raise these issues with me. They are concerned about radicalisation, cohesion and integration. They have a strong feeling that they cannot, or generally should not, talk publicly about their worries and fear that they will be judged for doing so, which is why I am speaking today.
My noble friend Lord Goodman and the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, mentioned the director of MI5, who confirmed in his threat updates both last October and in 2024 that Islamist extremism remains the most significant terrorism threat to the UK and accounts for 75% of MI5’s case load. I, for one, am very grateful to the security services for holding the line in the most complex and interconnected threat environment ever seen, but there are concerns about whether they have the resources that they need and are collecting the relevant data. This debate is an opportunity for the Government to clarify what they know, what they monitor and where the gaps remain. I look forward to the Minister’s response to the many questions raised today.
Will the Minister confirm that the Government still assess Islamist extremism as the predominant terrorism threat to the UK? The Government’s 2015 review of the Muslim Brotherhood concluded that aspects of its ideology and activities were
“contrary to our values and … national interests”,
and noted expressions of support for terrorist violence by individuals linked to Muslim Brotherhood-influenced organisations. More than a decade later, the Muslim Brotherhood remains legal in the United Kingdom but, since that review, numerous allied states have banned or designated the Muslim Brotherhood or its branches. Hamas, which identifies itself as the Muslim Brotherhood’s Palestinian wing, has shown intent to operate internationally, including in Europe. Will the Minister update us on the Government’s current thinking about the Muslim Brotherhood and on whether the Home Office or MI5 currently monitors Muslim Brotherhood-linked organisations operating in the UK and, if so, on what basis? There is also a big issue around data. Do the Government feel that they have sufficient data on extremism in the UK? Specifically, do they monitor non-terrorist Islamist activities that may nevertheless contribute to radicalisation and intimidation?
Other noble Lords today speak from personal and community experience about antisemitism, but I watch its growth on social media and elsewhere with dismay. My noble friend Lord Finkelstein’s Times article earlier this week spelled out in detail the horrific abuse he has experienced when taking on Nick Fuentes. The viral hate that poured in and continues today—I looked again online this morning—is beyond horrible. Something in this country has changed, is changing, and not for the better.
Lord Cryer (Lab)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for securing this debate. Like him, I want to refer to the APPG’s report, Time to Act: Addressing the UK’s Accelerating Extremism Threat, a copy of which I have handily placed in front of me on the desk. I will come to that in a minute.
I start by pointing out that only two days ago the Community Security Trust, another great organisation that we should probably refer to more often in these debates, recorded that 3,700 antisemitic incidents were recorded in 2025. That is the second-highest on record, the highest being in 2023, which was, of course, the year of the appalling attacks in southern Israel. In that year, there were 4,298 incidents.
It is also worth pointing out that, as noted in the APPG report, anti-Muslim hate has doubled over the past decade. Tell Mama recorded that anti-Muslim hate incidents rose from 500 per annum in 2012 to 2,500 per annum in 2021, which is going some. As the APPG has also pointed out, the explosion in the online world—this is stating the obvious—has gone hand in hand with an equally virulent explosion in conspiracy theories and the two have created a toxic mix.
I am pleased that the Government are taking certain steps against the hate marches in the form of the Crime and Policing Bill. It remains to be seen when that Bill reaches the statute book how effective the new measures will be, but I hope that we will leave the door open to going further with those measures, if necessary. I am also pleased that HMG has created criminal sanctions for those who have undeclared links to Tehran, whose proxies operate in the UK and elsewhere.
On that subject, I have two questions for the Minister. The first—he is probably getting tired of listening to me raise this, because I do so probably every couple of weeks—is that we need to look at the question of proscribing the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. This is an issue that came up under the previous Government. It has come up persistently under this Government. I have never heard a convincing explanation as to why we do not proscribe the IRGC. Let us for a minute reflect on what the IRGC is. It is a group of homicidal maniacs who answer to a bunch of clerical fascists in Tehran. The important thing as far as proscription in the UK is concerned is that the IRGC persistently uses proxies. They use front organisations in the UK and elsewhere across the globe in order to carry out their vile activities.
Many of us are worried that we are not perhaps tracking the extremist landscape as effectively as we should be, so my second question for my noble friend is: what assessment have the Government made of who the most prominent domestic extremists are, what is their scale and influence and what is the level of harm that they are causing to British society? I will leave it at that for the time being.
Lord Massey of Hampstead (Con)
This is an excellent time to be debating this vital issue and I congratulate my noble friend Lord Goodman of Wycombe on initiating this debate and on his recent comments on this important and complex subject. The Government have commissioned a rapid analytical sprint review but have not yet accepted its findings. But the review, as we know, has been the subject of a Policy Exchange document and identifies a broad range of extremist threats from the far right, the manosphere, left-wing and climate-change protests and many other areas. However, it does not seem to prioritise what is evidently the single biggest threat to the UK, which is, of course, Islamism, as my noble friend and many others have mentioned.
The leaked report is interesting because it reveals the Civil Service’s approach to this issue. It seeks to focus on behaviour and conducts, not ideologies that pose enormous threats to this country. These threats include not just terrorist activities and persistent violent protests but dangerous, non-violent activities below the radar by organisations such as the Muslim Brotherhood, as my noble friend Lady Jenkin mentioned, and Iranian cells. It should be a matter of great concern that certain moderate Muslim countries recognise these risks more than we do.
The clue to the approach in the leaked document can be found in the title: “Understand”. This is in contrast to the title of the APPG’s counterterrorism document, Time to Act. I know which approach I prefer. The core of our problem today is that there has been too much understanding and not enough action. A tolerance has built up of despicable actions by certain segments of our society. Jonathan Hall KC recently referred to this as the normalisation of extremism, where hateful and divisive views, once occupying the fringe, are now widely expressed with impunity.
This is happening because a great deal of hateful extremism operates just below the legal threshold. I would be interested in the Government’s assessment of the report by the commission led by Sir Mark Rowley and Dame Sara Khan in 2021, Operating with Impunity, as it seems very relevant to any strategy formulation today. Sir Mark reiterated his findings as recently as December 2025.
Just 7% of those arrested in pro-Palestinian marches have been charged. When so-called protestors break a police officer’s back with a sledgehammer, a jury is unable to convict them. Is it any wonder that they operate with complete impunity? Terrorist incidents do not occur in a vacuum. The fact that incidents of antisemitism actually increased in the aftermath of the Manchester attack, just as they did in the aftermath of the massacre of 7 October, shows that extremism needs to be addressed early and decisively.
Part of the problem, as has been mentioned, is the fear of appearing discriminatory. Dame Sara Khan put the problem well in her recent review on social cohesion and democratic resilience. She says:
“It is vital that police forces do not inadvertently support hate preachers and extremist actors in the misguided belief that such activity supports social cohesion or diversity and inclusion principles”.
These comments could apply to important cases in Rotherham and Batley, and most recently with the West Midlands Police Force. As the Government finalise their review, I ask the Minister to ensure that there will be a well-resourced unit to centre on the Islamist threat to this country, especially on the organised—and organised is a key word—funded and planned aspect of this threat. Yes, we need understanding, but it really is time to act.
Baroness Altmann (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I too thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for arranging this debate and congratulate him on his excellent speech. I also thank my friends the noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Walney, for all the work that they are doing to counter extremism. Indeed, I thank all noble friends—I consider everybody in this Room a noble friend—for all the work that they have been doing. I declare my interest as a member of the APPG on Counter Extremism.
I recognise, as others have done, that this is a very challenging and complex issue. We need to consider the issue of extremism as a system-wide problem. It is pervading, in more or less dangerous forms, early education, local and national politics, universities, prisons and even police services, as has been pointed out in terms of bowing to demands and threats from partisan groups in the case of the Maccabi Tel Aviv football match. What will and can the Government do to protect ordinary members of the public from the rising intolerance of absolutist, extremist and uncompromising positions, masquerading as free speech, that have so crept into the national discourse?
I would also ask the Minister about this. From record high antisemitic and anti-Muslim hate incidents to historically high Prevent referrals, all the metrics of assessing this extremist ideology suggest that we are in the grip of an extremism crisis. Can we hear from my noble friend the Government’s explanation of steps they will take to develop their counterextremism strategy and the timetable for that?
One can cite so many examples—we have heard many this afternoon—of ways in which it seems that extremism pervades our society more and more with impunity. One has to ask: when will the CPS act in cases such as that of Dr Aladwan, who has been arrested several times for inciting racial hatred? She has supported Hamas and broken the terms of her bail. Even more alarmingly, I would argue, she has openly involved herself with the Anti-Zionist Movement, a new group which declares that it is intent on
“Pro Armed Resistance … against Jewish supremacy”.
What can and will the Government and the police do to monitor this type of group?
I understand that it is not easy to draw the line or understand where to draw the line, even in cases such as the polarisation of politics, but I would argue that, if we start from a position of zero tolerance as soon as we see constant protests, we may be able to start getting a grip. I quote Rabbi Sacks:
“There is nothing inevitable about the division, fragmentation, extremism, isolation … or the politics of anger that have been the mood of Britain … in recent years”.
We must have the courage to speak out and act against this.
Lord Walney (CB)
My Lords, I add my gratitude and congratulations to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, on not only securing this debate but on his continued leadership on this issue. I shall conclude the Back-Bench contributions to this debate with two key questions for the Minister.
The first stems from the confusion, which the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, set out so eloquently, over the Government’s position on a definition of counterextremism. Can the Minister confirm that the focus on attacking democratic institutions and democratic values, which was written into the last definition produced by the previous Government, is still in this Government’s remit on tackling counterextremism? Following on from that, do the Government believe that we should be seeking a legal way to bar public funding to any organisation that demonstrates or promotes extremism or seeks to systematically undermine our democratic values and institutions?
Secondly, related to that, will the Government—the Minister can speak for the Labour Party—set a political lead by pledging not to engage with institutions that seek to systematically undermine our representative democracy rather than to engage with it? This second question echoes much of the concern expressed today around whether the Government will adequately acknowledge and lead in countering Islamist extremism as part of a wider extremist strategy.
I draw the attention of the Minister and noble Lords to the document released by the Government in December last year, entitled Antisemitism: Recent Government Actions and Next Steps. In that document, the Government say that we must be bolder in “calling out … hateful ideologies”. That is absolutely the case, but I think noble Lords might be able to guess the number of times Islamist extremism is mentioned in that entire document. It is zero. So many parts of our society, not only the Jewish community but across society, are looking at the Government to make tackling Islamist extremism, the biggest driver of extremism in our country, in my view, publicly central to a cross-government, cross-departmental effort to keep our citizens safe.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for tabling this Question for Short Debate, which, given the current political environment, is incredibly timely. Ever since the horrific attack on Israel by Hamas on 7 October, which was referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Cryer, we have witnessed weekly marches and protests where those involved have chanted antisemitic slogans. The Jewish community has been not only intimidated but attacked. Even before the horrors of 2023, we saw a worrying rise in extremism across the United Kingdom, Palestine Action and Bash Back being prime examples.
The noble Lord, Lord Massey, was entirely correct when he said that Palestine Action attacked a police officer with a sledgehammer, fracturing her spine. I ask noble Lords to briefly ponder this: a female police officer, a symbol of law and order, who puts herself on the front line to protect innocent members of the community, was attacked with a sledgehammer. The chair of Avon and Somerset Police Federation was entirely right when he said:
“When an officer is assaulted while simply doing their job, the impact is felt across the policing family”.
While His Majesty’s loyal Opposition know that all noble Lords support constructive challenge—it is incredibly important to have an effective balancing view—in the same vein, the Government surely cannot allow a situation, which was referenced by the noble Lord, Lord Anderson, where violence is normalised to further a cause that a group of individuals believes in.
Bash Back has engaged in a campaign of systematic intimidation. It hacked the Free Speech Union and vandalised the Equality and Human Rights Commission. The noble Baroness, Lady Cash, told us during Oral Questions about the impact its illegal actions had not just on employees at the Equality and Human Rights Commission but on other completely innocent bystanders in the building. The effects are far-reaching, mentally and psychologically. The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, mentioned social media and online activity. Bash Back published a manual on its website which advised people how to commit serious criminal offences and avoid prosecution. I simply ask the Minister: how can that be possible?
The noble Lords, Lord Mendelsohn and Lord Walney, flagged that a comprehensive definition of extremism does exist. It was drafted by the previous Conservative Government and, in answer to a Written Question on 18 June last year, the Minister confirmed that the Government were also using that definition. While this is, of course, positive movement, law-abiding citizens are clamouring to ask how the Government intend to operationalise that definition across the country. How exactly will local authorities, regulators, schools, prisons, online platforms and others be trained to utilise the definition?
So we welcome the suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, to drive forward a counterextremism strategy. There is a developing tranche of organisations which, while not meeting the threshold for terrorism, pose serious threats to public safety, law-abiding citizens and democracy. It has to be the case that an appropriate and relevant legislative response is put in place at pace by this Government to deal with the ever-increasing threat to society of extremist groups. Delay is simply not an option.
The Minister of State, Home Office (Lord Hanson of Flint) (Lab)
I am grateful for the contributions from noble Lords today. I particularly thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who is persistent in raising this issue—rightly so, dare I say? He framed the debate, if I may say so, in terms of government action on examining non-violent extremism, but in the context of far-right, far-left and Islamist extremism. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, who obviously has a great and deep interest in this, added the question of lone wolf independent radicalisation, which again is a common thread. I shall respond to the debate not only by addressing the points that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, raised, but also in relation to high-harm extremism, where we have a very high threshold and take action upon it.
I will start with the point the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, mentioned: the statutory definition of extremism. My noble friend Lord Mendelsohn also touched on this point. I confirm to the Committee that there are no plans to change the definition of extremism that was set out by the previous Government in March 2024. This existing definition is based on behaviours and does not look at specific ideologies, although the points that have been raised today are obviously important. The definition is a useful tool for government departments and others to look at when considering public engagement and when reaching out to stakeholders.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I am grateful to the Minister. He described it as a “statutory definition of extremism”. I am not encouraging him, but is there an intention to put it into statute?
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
It was a slip of the tongue if I used the word “statutory” in reference to the definition of extremism. If that was the case, I apologise to the Committee. In essence, the 2024 definition of extremism that the noble Earl mentioned is correct.
In the gentlest of ways, I will respond to the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, who said that there is government inertia on this matter. There is no government inertia on this matter. We have to protect our citizens against high-harm extremism. We have to ensure that the extremism that fuels polarisation, erodes social cohesion and undermines trust between communities is challenged. Those individuals in our communities who raise antisemitism, Islamophobia and far-right or far-left terrorism and extremism have to be challenged.
The Government must be able to protect our citizens from the harm of extremism, violence and hatred. In doing so, we must have a balance between allowing freedom of speech and tackling those who promote violence and hatred in our communities. There are fundamental values in our community, such as freedom of speech, freedom of worship and the freedom of democracy, which define us as a society and which the Government will continue to uphold and promote as values. Where they are challenged by individuals, groups or environments that foster or enable hatred, we will take action against them.
I say to noble Lords and Baronesses that there is a really serious issue here that the Government will try to deal with. We have a government response, which includes, for example, the Online Safety Act, which sets out that platforms, including those that are now likely to be accessed by children, must employ highly effective methods to protect children from content that is harmful or age inappropriate. We can now, through the Ofcom independent regulator, take enforcement action on those duties. Where extremists often deliberately operate below legal thresholds, we want to ensure, rightly, that they can be prosecuted and investigated and that we can take action.
Home Office efforts to counter extremism have certainly focused on high-harm threats. I understand that the noble Lord did not frame his argument around that, but we do have to focus on high-harm threats. We stop foreign individuals of extremist concern, including hate preachers and influencers, travelling to the UK through our visa watchlist programme. We advise and support public authorities and local partners to reduce permissive environments by disrupting extremist hate events, such as speaking tours featuring hate preachers. We have invested in capabilities to stop charities being exploited by extremists. We support communities targeted by extremists to ensure that there is protective security at places of worship—a point that my noble friend Lord Mendelsohn mentioned.
We have also put in place very strong mechanisms through the Prevent programme. At the very start of our term of office, we had the sprint to look at what we needed to do, and there are lessons to be learned from that. We commissioned the noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, to look at an independent review of Prevent. He brought forward 34 recommendations, which I note answers the point made by the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley. Lessons were learned from the Prevent programme—not just from the appalling cases of Southport and the murder of my former colleague Sir David Amess but also positive impacts—to ensure that we deal with some of the issues that the noble Lord, Lord Goodman of Wycombe, mentioned on how we stop radicalisation in the first place.
On the point the noble Baroness, Lady Fox of Buckley, mentioned, I can say that the funding of Prevent is stable. We had £34.5 million of funding in 2023-24, and in the current financial year, the Government have committed £38.7 million to the programme. The noble Baroness asked what that does and what that achieves—I paraphrase, but that was broadly the tenor of her input. It is important, because we believe it makes a difference to people who are being radicalised by turning their lives around, pointing them in the right direction and stopping them from being influenced by far-left, far-right or, in particular, Islamist radicalisation. The noble Lord, Lord Anderson of Ipswich, whom I thank for his work, brought forward recommendations, and we have implemented 33 of the 34 of them.
Lord Anderson of Ipswich (CB)
I hate to stand up again, but I want to put on the record that I made 10 recommendations. Sir William Shawcross had already made 34, and I felt that that was about as much as the system could stand.
Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)
The noble Lord’s recommendations and the independent review of Prevent have been accepted by the Government. We have implemented the vast majority of the recommendations, and we will continue to learn. If there are lessons from today’s debate, we will continue to look at them.
I listened to, understood and accepted the points from the noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin of Kennington. She will understand that I cannot comment on individual organisations, such as the Muslim Brotherhood that she mentioned. We keep all organisations under review. That same principle applies to my noble friend Lord Cryer—I know he has heard this before—in relation to Iran’s revolutionary guards. We keep proscription under review because we do not announce what we will do ahead of doing it.
We consider whether there is sufficient evidence to proscribe an organisation, such as Palestine Action, which was mentioned by a number of noble Lords in the debate. I cannot comment on the court case in which the sledgehammer was involved, because potential further action will be taken on that. People have been remanded in custody, but I cannot comment on that. However, I assure both the noble Baroness and my noble friend that, if proscription is required against any organisation at any time, we will make that proscription.
The noble Baroness, Lady Jenkin, said that many of the people she speaks to feel unsafe, particularly women—I understand that. We now have a violence against women and girls strategy in place. Knife crime, which she discussed in particular, has fallen by 8% in the past 18 months. Knife homicides are down by 27% in the past 18 months. We have banned dangerous weapons, such as ninja swords and zombie-style knives, and have taken 60,000 knives off the street. I understand her concerns. We will look at organisations as and when, but, through neighbourhood policing and other things, we are trying—I hope—to make our communities much safer.
On the point made by the noble Lord, Lord Massey of Hampstead, I do not want to see the normalisation of extremism; it should not be tolerated. We have a basic set of values in this society, and we need to uphold those societal values. There is freedom of speech, but we cannot normalise extremism as a whole.
The noble Lord, Lord Walney, made a number of key points. On the extremism definition that he mentioned—which I have spoken to—we keep all matters under review. On the counterterrorism review—which I know is of interest to him; he has done tremendous work in that field—we are looking at that as part of the arm’s-length body review. It does not take away from the principle that we want to ensure that we handle high levels of extremism and also deal with the issues that noble Lords have mentioned today.
I put on record—because this goes to the heart of the question of whether the Government are doing things in this area—that we are upholding the Public Order Act 1986, which imposes conditions on public processions. In the Crime and Policing Bill, currently going through the House, we have put forward a range of measures to ensure that persistent harassment on parades and demonstrations does not happen—that will be law very shortly. We put in place a range of measures through the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which we still support; it allows civil injunctions to be put in place.
We have legislation, such as the Immigration Act, the Sanctions and Anti-Money Laundering Act 2018, the Communications Act 2003 and the Education Act 2002, which was passed by Governments of both my political party and the Conservative Party to ensure that we put in place basic standards so that Governments can take action. We want to ensure that we look at all these matters.
On extremism, we have a number of other potential issues. We set out a clear response to terrorism in the UK’s counterterrorism strategy, Contest—an overarching strategy, of which Prevent is a key part, that directs our work in this area and provides a framework for us to operate in. As part of the Contest strategy, the Prevent programme has helped nearly 6,000 people at risk of being drawn into terrorism to turn their lives around. There are always lessons that we can learn, but it is important that we have that information before us today.
I again thank the noble Lord, Lord Goodman, for bringing this important subject to the Grand Committee. I am grateful to him and to everybody who has spoken for their contributions; I hope I have referred to them all. Whatever form it takes and whatever form of bad ideology it espouses, extremism is a toxic force that has no place in our society. We have a high-level strategy to deal with high-harm extremism, but I will always look at, and work with colleagues to look at, what we do about the types of extremism that the noble Lord introduced in his opening contribution. That level of extremism remains unacceptable; the Government will not tolerate it. As I have set out, we are taking a range of actions to quell this threat and to prevent young and vulnerable minds being polluted. Counterterrorism remains a complex and multifaceted issue, but I assure noble Lords that we are unwavering in our commitment to tackle this crucial task.
My door will remain open, as will that of my honourable friend Minister Jarvis in the House of Commons. If noble Lords wish to raise issues, I am open to listening, debating and learning. The threat continues to change, as does the online approach, and so we as a society in this country need to make sure that we allow our fundamental values to remain operational, so that people do not feel harassment for their religion or beliefs or for things they cannot change. We support freedom of speech, but we also support the freedom to live life free from extremism.
Flour Milling Sector
(2 days, 7 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Lord Rooker
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the economic impact of the UK flour milling sector.
Lord Rooker (Lab)
My Lords, it is usual for our one-off debates to highlight a problem or defect that requires attention. That is not the case with this issue. I simply want to celebrate a small, specialist, highly productive sector of the economy, namely the flour milling sector. I have a minor technical interest, which I will come to in a moment.
The UK is self-sufficient in flour. More than 99% of households use food products that contain wheat flour, which is more than use toothpaste, by the way. Flour provides the biggest intake of iron in the diet, more than red meat. Since World War II, flour in this country has been fortified by law on health grounds with iron, calcium, niacin and thiamine. This is checked about once every 10 years to make sure it is still needed on health grounds. I should declare that the current regulations, the Bread and Flour Regulations 1998, have my signature on them as the English Minister at the time—there were four Ministers, as it is a devolved area. Food is devolved, but the industry is UK-wide due to the location of the mills—for example, there are none in Wales—so you cannot ask questions about the UK. I have therefore gone to the UK Flour Millers.
From 2013, when I left the Food Standards Agency, until last year, I campaigned for the addition of folic acid to flour on health grounds. It had been recommended by scientists for many years. The Medical Research Council report of 1991 found that a lack of folic acid was the prime cause of neural tube defects leading to brain and spine defects in newborn babies. The new Government in 2024 adopted the plan announced by the previous Government to change the regulations and in November 2024, they did so to add folic acid to the other four fortifications. So effective from 9 January 2025, the industry has two years to fortify wheat flour with folic acid to the level set in the regulations. The UK will then join more than 80 countries in fortifying flour with folic acid on health grounds, following UK research. As usual, the UK is late to the table. We did the research, published it in 1991 and the world followed it, but we did not.
A report on the flour milling industry by Policy Points in 2024 stated that 9,000 people are directly and indirectly employed in it, the annual turnover is £2 billion and the added value to the economy £700 million. The gross added value per employee is £141,000, which is greater than all other sectors, except finance and insurance. It is greater than real estate, manufacturing or construction, for example. Millers buy more than £800 million-worth of milling wheat from UK farmers. There has been capital investment of more than £250 million in the past decade. Bakers use flour for the obvious things, such as bread, cakes and biscuits. Some 12 million loaves, 10 million cakes and 2 million pizzas are made every day.
Flour milling supports food security. In a normal year for weather—a bit tricky these days, of course—that gives an average harvest, more than 80% of the wheat that millers use, or 3.8 million tonnes, was bought from UK farmers. It is not simple: there are over 40 variations of milling specification wheats to grow. Continuous testing and traceability are the norm in this industry. The sector also has zero waste. For every 100 tonnes of wheat, we get 75 to 78 tonnes of flour and 22 tonnes of by-products for animal feed. Flour millers are a cornerstone of national food security, providing an essential ingredient to UK food manufacturers; the wheat goes into a lot more than just making bread. In short, flour milling is one of the most productive sectors of the economy. It is a fairly small sector, but I am not arguing about its size. That is not the point; I just want to celebrate a small sector of the economy.
Last June, I had an update from UK Flour Millers, the trade body that knows what happens UK-wide. It confirmed to me this week that 85% to 90% of UK flour is now fortified with folic acid. This is a year in advance of the requirement by law; an excellent amount of work has been done. However—this is my bit of a moan, in a way, but I want to put it on the record—the Department of Health needs to accept that key scientists do not believe that the level of fortification is as high as it should be. The neural tube, which forms the spine and the brain, closes at 27 days after conception, before many women know that they are pregnant. For this reason, the advice to women planning a pregnancy is to take folic supplements; in fact that advice continues, even with the new regs.
The fact of the matter, though, is that the advice to take supplements has been a spectacular policy failure—otherwise, we would not have gone for fortification of our flour. Half of our pregnancies are unplanned, so it is no good talking to the half of the population who are not affected. We have a new fortification policy because the previous policy failed. That is a good thing. We have gone modern, which will save some distress.
Over the years—I was a scientist as well as a parliamentarian—my role has been exclusively to try to get the regs changed, after I became convinced that was required when I was at the Food Standards Agency, and previously at MAFF, but I have never got involved in the level of fortification. I do not intend to do so now, but scientists such as Sir Nicholas Wald, who is currently an honorary professor of preventive medicine at UCL and was the leader of the Medical Research Council’s 1991 study, wish that the level were higher. Others, such as Dr Jonathan Sher, who is a former deputy director of the Queen’s Nursing Institute Scotland, have called for “full fortification”.
We commend UK Flour Millers on its speedy action on fortification. It has done a fantastic job, showing what a well-run and well-managed industry this is. However, it would be useful if the Minister could confirm the monitoring process for the new fortification regs. I have never heard a Minister make a speech on health prevention that includes this area of policy; that applies to both parties, by the way. Nobody speaks about preventive health as a major policy issue and, if it has been touched, this issue has never been raised.
Currently, on average, 200 babies are born per annum with long-term disability due to neural tube defects and 800 pregnancies are terminated at the 20-week scan, so about 1,000 pregnancies are involved. Over the years, Ministers have told me, “Jeff, the numbers are so low that we’re not going to bother to do any work on it”, but think of those 200 babies. Over 10 years, that is 2,000 babies with lifelong disabilities—and because of the American medical system, we know what the cost is. We do not do costing like the Americans, but we know that they have saved $600 million a year since they fortified in 1998. So there are some big figures to save, besides lessening the distress of those families who have gone through terminations and those who have allowed births to continue.
Full fortification could cut these figures by 80%. The current level will not cut it that much, but it has to be monitored. Once we know the fortification is in, I expect the monitoring system to check the policy effects. The regulations talk about the monitoring system, and that is important.
Finally, I have one question I should like to put on the record because it is nothing to do with this. I was contacted by the Nature Friendly Farming Network as a result of the debate. It asked whether anybody is looking at the possibility of a technical change to growing wheat to make it even more productive. I understand that if the protein requirement was reduced even from 13% to 12.5% without affecting the benefits, it would make a tremendous difference to the amount of nitrogen that enters the soil.
I congratulate the industry, which has done a fantastic job and will have saved distress in the health field for many years to come. I wanted to celebrate its success, and that is why I have this debate today.
Lord Vaizey of Didcot (Con)
My Lords, I am grateful to have the opportunity to take part in today’s debate. As the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, to whom I offer my profound thanks for putting the UK flour-milling sector on the agenda of the House of Lords. As he well knows, I always try to take part in his debates because we share a birthday, 5 June, and I know this because for years his birthday appeared in the Times and mine did not. The other person with whom I share a birthday is my noble friend Lord Dundee, who I regret cannot be with us today. This is a debate where 50% of the Peers taking part share the same birthday, which is fairly unique. I turn to the subject at hand.
I know a bit about flour mills and what they mean to the communities they serve because for 14 years I was lucky enough to be the Member of Parliament for Wantage, which has a flour mill. It was called Wessex Mill and sat on, amazingly enough, Mill Street, barely 200 metres from the market square. It was owned by the Munsey family who had been milling grain there for more than a century, five generations in all, using local wheat from neighbouring farms. It printed the names of its supplying farmers on the back of every bag of flour, which I always thought was a lovely touch. In 2022, Wessex Mill sadly closed. The flour had not got worse, and demand had not fallen. In fact, it had won Great Taste awards. What happened, of course, was that energy prices increased five-fold almost overnight, wheat costs were soaring, and the capital required to upgrade ageing machinery was simply beyond reach.
Happily, the story has more than one chapter. The Wessex Mill brand was taken on by Michael and Clare Marriage, and relocated to Hungerford in Berkshire, where it now employs around 130 people drawn from local communities of the North Wessex Downs. It still sources its grain from local farmers, many of them long-standing suppliers, and still prints the farmers’ names and the grain variety on every bag. The flour reaches customers across the country, including through local food networks such as Shropshire’s Own, a delivery service connecting rural communities in the Marches with quality British produce.
I am pleased to tell noble Lords that at the old Mill Street site a new enterprise has sprung up, the Oxford Flour Mill. It was incorporated in January 2023, just weeks after the Wessex operation ceased, and is once again milling locally sourced wheat from the same premises. So, the site in the town where King Alfred was born is where grain has been ground for more than 900 years, and it is milling again. The building has outlasted its trouble, even if the original business could not. I mention all this because the Wantage story illustrates something important about the flour milling sector as a whole, that it is resilient, resourceful and woven into the life of the communities it serves, but it illustrates that there is some fragility. One sharp rise in energy costs was enough to close a mill that had survived two world wars.
The figures for the national industry are genuinely impressive. According to UK Flour Millers’ economic impact report published last January, this is a sector that generates £2.2 billion in annual turnover, contributes some £770 million in total value added to the economy, supports more than 9,000 jobs and pays taxes, directly and indirectly, of roughly £270 million a year—all of that from just 51 mills. The productivity numbers are worth dwelling on. At £141,000 of gross value added per employee, flour milling outperforms manufacturing, construction and the economy as a whole.
The milling industry has invested £250 million in the past decade, including in eight brand new mills. These are serious, modern and capital-intensive operations. An important point is that 80% to 85% of the wheat that British millers use is grown domestically, as the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, pointed out. In a good harvest year, that amounts to some 4 million tonnes, roughly one-third of the entire arable crop. The result, as the noble Lord pointed out, is that we are essentially self-sufficient in flour. Some 12 million loaves of bread reach British consumers every day, and flour goes into roughly one-third of all supermarket products beyond that. More British households buy bread than use the internet, which, rather like the noble Lord, Lord Katz, is a statistic I confess I was not expecting to find.
Flour is the single largest contributor, as again the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, pointed out, to the nation’s iron intake. It beats red meat and provides about one-third of our daily fibre and calcium. It is also highly sustainable. For every tonne of wheat, 78% becomes flour and 22% becomes animal feed. In a world where supply chains from the Black Sea to the Suez Canal can be disrupted overnight, a domestic industry that feeds virtually every household in the country is worth paying attention to.
The Question by the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, asks what assessment the Government have made of the economic impact of this sector. Let me suggest to the Minister six areas where the Government could make a difference. The good news for the Minister is that they will not cost him a penny.
First, there is the issue of land use. The single greatest long-term threat to domestic flour production is the loss of productive agricultural land. Millers depend on British wheat farmers. These farmers face competition from alternative uses of their land: solar farms, housing and biodiversity schemes. All are of course perfectly worthy in their own right, but if too much of our best arable land goes under solar panels, we shall find ourselves importing the wheat that we currently grow. This is particularly acute for organic millers. Wessex Mill, which I mentioned a moment ago, is a certified organic processor. It tells me that Britain currently imports a significant proportion of its organic grain, which seems absurd when we have the land and expertise to grow it here. Greater government encouragement for organic arable production would reduce those imports and strengthen the domestic supply chain.
There is a point here, by the way, on transparency. Organic grain must, by law, be free of genetically modified organisms. As precision-bred organisms enter the wheat supply, organic millers will need to be able to identify which grain is which. If the Government do not require clear labelling of all PBO wheat, millers face a considerable burden of additional testing, the cost of which will inevitably be passed on to consumers. Clarity on labelling would be a simple and inexpensive step. More broadly, the Government’s food strategy for England, published last July, sets out high-level outcomes, but does not, as far as I can tell, contain a clear commitment to protecting the most productive arable land for food production. I would be grateful if the Minister could say whether the forthcoming implementation plan will address this issue.
Secondly, on trade, Turkey is the world’s largest flour exporter, accounting for roughly one-fifth of global trade. Its milling industry is heavily subsidised, and 76% of the wheat it mills for export is sourced from Russia. I will let noble Lords reflect on the implications of that. Any change to tariff arrangements in a new free-trade agreement with Turkey could potentially have serious consequences for British millers. All the industry asks is that its interests are properly considered at the negotiating table, and that flour is not quietly sacrificed as a concession in pursuit of other objectives.
Thirdly, there is the issue of energy. This is what forced the closure of the Wantage mill, and it worries every miller in the country. Mills operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week. The industry has reduced its energy consumption by nearly 10% over the past 15 years, and that is commendable, but it is exposed to energy price volatility. The existing support through the energy intensive industries scheme and the climate change levy discount is welcome and must continue. Withdrawing it as the energy transition proceeds would simply make Britain more dependent on imported flour milled in countries with considerably less impressive environmental standards.
Fourthly, on research, the flour milling industry has invested collectively in R&D since the 1920s. I suspect that is longer than most government departments can claim. It works with plant breeders, farmers, and research institutions on everything from new wheat varieties to food safety, but the tax environment for R&D has become, to put it charitably, complex. If the Government are serious about growth, the R&D tax regime needs to be stable, accessible and designed for industries that actually do applied research. I appreciate that many of the points I am making apply to many different industries, but I want to highlight the impact of policy on the flour milling industry.
Fifthly, there is the apprenticeship levy. Flour millers pay into it, but they cannot use those funds to support the specialist training their workforce requires. UK Flour Millers runs an advanced milling diploma and examination system, exactly the sort of high-quality, industry-specific training we should be encouraging, yet the levy system does not recognise it. There are 30 apprentices currently in training across milling businesses. That number should be higher, and it would be higher if the rules could accommodate it. I look forward to the Minister commenting on that.
Sixthly and—I know the Minister will appreciate the following word—finally, I will just raise the issue of inheritance tax. I know it is a vexed issue, but a large proportion of flour mills in this country are family-owned businesses. The recent changes to agricultural property relief will directly affect their capacity to invest for the long term. A family miller contemplating a multi-million pound investment in new plant needs to plan across generations. If the tax treatment of the business makes that planning uncertain, the investment will go elsewhere, or it will simply not happen. I appreciate that this is a broader issue than flour milling alone, but it is keenly felt in a sector where family ownership is often the norm.
I am conscious that a debate about flour milling may not set the pulses racing like one on artificial intelligence or social media, but I gently point out that artificial intelligence cannot as yet make a loaf of bread and social media has never provided 20% of the nation’s daily energy and protein intake. Flour milling does both, every single day. The Government do not need to do anything dramatic: they just need to protect productive farmland, take care of the trade deals, keep maintaining energy support, make the R&D tax credits stable, tweak the apprenticeship levy and think carefully about the impact of inheritance tax changes on family businesses. I hope the Minister takes these recommendations in the spirit in which they are made. They are six practical steps for an industry that has nourished this country for centuries and deserves government support to continue to do so.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for tabling this Question for Short Debate. It is of particular interest to me as one of my acquaintances in Oxfordshire mills heritage and ancient grains, and I understand the huge benefits of a strong and stable UK flour milling sector. As my noble friend Lord Vaizey rightly flagged, almost one-third of the food products on our supermarket shelves contain flour as a primary or secondary ingredient. To help put that into perspective, more families eat flour-based products than have access to the internet. I must thank the noble Lord, Lord Rooker, for flagging toothpaste as well, which I did not realise. Flour’s ability to go everywhere is truly amazing.
It is clear that the 51 flour mills across the country contribute strongly towards our food security in an increasingly unstable geopolitical environment that contributes to fragile global supply chains. The noble Lord, Lord Rooker, and my noble friend Lord Vaizey flagged that with more than £2 billion in annual turnover, flour mills generate £770 million in value added to the economy and are one of the UK’s most productive sectors. We also touched on the fact that flour milling is a near zero-waste process, since the by-product can be used by the animal feed industry. Millers rely heavily on UK farmers of wheat, who keep traceability records and are independently audited. It is clear that the industry is well integrated with our agricultural sectors and critical to our food security.
I hope that the noble Lord, Lord Leong, with his extensive business experience, will agree that we owe it to the 9,000 employees that the sector employs, directly and indirectly, to back them with a supportive policy environment. The industry faces challenges and it is the responsibility of His Majesty’s loyal Opposition and other noble Lords to highlight the obstacles to growth that the Government have inflicted, unintentionally, on farmers and the flour milling sector. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, correctly highlighted that many flour milling businesses are family owned and are therefore especially vulnerable to reductions in business property relief for inheritance tax.
Furthermore, the Government’s trade deal with the US caused significant harm to our bioethanol industry. This, in turn, removed a crucial market for British wheat farmers. Flour millers and farmers have to compete with international producers, suppliers and importers. Of course, we encourage competition, but we must not continually disadvantage British producers by imposing ever more regulation while importing products from abroad that might be produced to lower food safety and quality standards.
During Oral Questions today, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, rightly highlighted that pigs and chickens abroad must experience the same standards as our pigs and chickens in the UK. We must have a fair and level playing field, so will the Minister please clarify whether any further regulatory changes to food standards are planned? We should be proud that in Britain we hold ourselves to such high account, but it is clearly not reasonable or fair on our own UK businesses for the Government to allow double standards to be implemented. Therefore, although many of the Government’s strategies and environmental targets are no doubt well intentioned, new challenges are arising which mean that the Government must prioritise increasing our own domestic production capacity.
I turn to the consequences of the ongoing energy transition. I must be clear that we on these Benches do not wish to carpet the countryside with large-scale solar farms, nor do we want to sacrifice high-quality agricultural land for the benefit of a flawed net-zero policy. However, in some cases, solar energy generation is now seen as more profitable for landowners than wheat production. The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, highlighted that challenges for wheat producers then become challenges for flour millers, forcing them to rely on imports and putting further pressure on supply chains. We urge the Government to undertake a risk assessment of this impact. If more people eat flour-based products than have the internet, the Government should surely desire to protect this industry and not harm it.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, mentioned energy costs. As we know, flour milling is energy intensive and businesses are especially sensitive to higher energy costs. We have been clear on this issue: we need to bring energy costs down and we must therefore ensure that the Government’s pursuit of an energy transition does not price out flour millers or displace domestic wheat production. In fact, a more supportive policy environment would encourage lowering the industry’s carbon intensity. As the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, highlighted, the flour milling industry has a long history of research and development investment. In the past decade, over £250 million has been invested by millers. Further enabling research and development will help businesses to innovate and modernise their practices, while at the same time lowering their carbon intensity.
It would be economically disastrous and environmentally irresponsible for the Government to simply outsource this industry to other countries. At a time when young people are struggling to find jobs, the Government could make more of this economic asset by, for example, allowing apprenticeship levy contributions to fund training and develop opportunities in the milling industry. Will the Government consider that as an option, as was so eloquently asked by my noble friend Lord Vaizey? We really must try to do everything in our power to protect this sector, for a multitude of different reasons, and rural communities are looking to the Government to act at pace with a clear vision for the future.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Leong) (Lab)
My Lords, I am very grateful for the opportunity to respond to this debate. I thank my noble friend Lord Rooker for securing it, as well as the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, for their contributions. I pay tribute to my noble friend Lord Rooker for all his invaluable work and interest in food safety; he has long been a champion in this area and I would like to take this opportunity to acknowledge that.
I declare an interest in that my family have constantly used Wessex Mill flour for our baking; we love baking bread using that flour. I am well aware of Wantage town square and the King Alfred’s Head pub which is there. Wessex Mill flour is sold in most of the farm shops in Wantage and Woodstock, so I am very familiar with it. I thank my noble friend for bringing this up today.
I pay tribute to UK flour millers nationwide who work every day to produce high-quality flour and help feed the nation. Flour may not always attract attention, but it is fundamental to our daily lives. Flour is a key component of the UK diet, essential not only for industrial bread production and home baking but for a wide range of supermarket foods, as several noble Lords mentioned.
Together, the farming, milling and baking supply chains are critical to national food security. The scale of that contribution is striking. The Federation of Bakers reports that around 12 million loaves of bread—I think it is 12 million, rather than 10 million—are supplied to consumers every day in the UK. That does not happen by accident; it relies on a dependable, resilient milling sector that can operate day in, day out.
The UK flour milling sector processes around 6 million tonnes of wheat each year, and about 85% of that wheat is grown here at home. This means that the sector is near self-sufficiency and provides a stable, reliable market for British farmers. That matters economically and strategically: it supports farm incomes, strengthens rural economies and reduces our exposure to global market volatility. In economic terms, the flour milling sector contributes several hundred million pounds in gross value added each year and supports thousands of skilled jobs. These jobs in not only in the mills: they span farming, transport, storage, engineering, packaging and food manufacturing. Many are located outside major cities, sustaining local economies where alternative employment opportunities can be limited. The sector is also capital intensive and long term in outlook.
Mills require substantial investment, high technical expertise and decades of operation. In recent years, millers have invested heavily in modernisation, improving energy efficiency, reducing waste and upholding high standards of food safety and quality. That investment boosts productivity and supports the wider food and drink manufacturing sector, the UK’s largest manufacturing industry, which generates £129 billion in turnover and over £22 billion in exports, and supports more than 4 million jobs.
The Government’s assessment of economic impact also accounts for resilience. Recent years have tested global supply chains through conflict, extreme weather and sharp movements in energy costs. Through it all, the UK flour milling sector continued to operate. That resilience has real economic value, even if it does not always show up neatly in headline figures.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, a highly resilient energy network is fundamental to support this. We acknowledge this and are confident that the system operators have the tools they need to effectively balance supply and demand in a wide range of scenarios. Our millers rely on high-quality British wheat, so the future strength of milling is closely tied to the future of farming. That is why this Government have made a cast-iron commitment to the security of our farming and food sectors.
Food security is national security, and it depends on a balance of strong domestic production and reliable global supply chains. It also requires a clear vision for the future of farming. To that end, Defra is developing a land use framework, which I hope the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, will welcome and which will be published early this year. It will set out a long-term vision for land use policy and guide how decision-makers make better land use decisions on the ground.
In response to the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, I say that the 25-year farming road map will bring together regulation, innovation, skills and investment to show how we will sustain food production, meet environmental goals and deliver a profitable, resilient farming sector. This matters directly to millers, as productivity, quality and sustainability in wheat production underpin the success of the entire supply chain.
Alongside this, Defra continues to invest in farming and innovation. The farmer collaboration fund will provide up to £30 million over the next three years to support farmer groups with expert advice and partnerships that drive growth and deliver environmental outcomes. A new farming and food partnership board, chaired by the Secretary of State, will work across the supply chain to remove investment barriers and improve operations. Through the farming innovation programme, we are supporting projects in key areas, including pest and disease control and alternative fertiliser use, and are committed to investing at least £200 million by 2030.
Defra also supports the crop genetic improvement network, which is a £15 million research platform focused on improving key arable crops. This work is already delivering results, including wheat varieties with improved resistance to diseases such as take-all and orange blossom midge, and progress towards more drought-tolerant, climate-resilient wheat.
In addition, Defra continues to fund the long-standing survey of crop pests and diseases, which provides vital data to support alternative control strategies and to reduce reliance on chemical inputs. These investments support farmers and strengthen the raw material base on which flour millers depend. The milling supply chain has robust traceability standards. Millers buy wheat only from assured suppliers, with farms adhering to best practices and maintaining audited records. This traceability supports consumer confidence and underpins the UK’s reputation for high food standards.
In response to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, I say that organic farming offers many benefits to the wider environment, and Defra is committed to supporting producers to grow organic crops. We recognise that transparency is essential to maintaining trust in the organic label. Organic grain must, by law, be free from genetically modified material, and Defra recognises that the development of precision-bred products raises concerns for the sector. Defra will work with the sector on retaining confidence in the organic label.
We are also taking action to ensure that supply chains operate fairly. Last year, Defra launched a public consultation on contractual practices in the combinable crops sector, giving farmers and stakeholders the opportunity to share their experiences and to help the Government build a clear picture of how the system operates.
I also welcome the strong commitment from the milling sector to include folic acid in non-wholemeal flour by the end of 2026. The cost of this fortification is low—adding folic acid to flour costs under 1p per loaf of bread—so it is easily affordable for manufacturers. This is a clear example of industry and government working together to deliver public health benefits.
International trade remains important; the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, touched on this point. Arable commodities are traded globally, and food security depends on domestic production and imports, supported by robust global supply chains. Trade can help businesses grow and open new markets, but we are clear that trade deals must not—I stress “must not”—undermine UK producers. As noble Lords know, negotiations with Turkey are ongoing, but we have always been clear that this Government will protect British farmers, secure our food security, and uphold our high food, animal welfare and environmental standards in trade deals; that is exactly what we have done and will continue to do.
On my noble friend Lord Rooker’s point about monitoring, the UK Government and the devolved Governments are putting plans in place to monitor the impact of such changes. The level of folic acid fortification will be kept under constant review. I hope that my noble friend will continue to engage with the department to ensure that this monitoring happens.
The noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, asked about the skills levy. This Government are transforming the apprenticeship offer into a new growth and skills offer, which will offer greater flexibility to employers and learners and support the industrial strategy. The growth and skills levy provides a more flexible offer; I think the noble Lord mentioned various other short-term courses, so I hope that this will give him some comfort.
As I am sure noble Lords are aware, we recently announced changes to inheritance tax. More family farms are now protected from inheritance tax. The Government have increased the agricultural and business property relief threshold from £1 million to £2.5 million, and couples are now able to pass on up to £5 million tax free, meaning that 85% of farming estates will pay absolutely no inheritance tax. This is where the Government are supporting small family farms.
I will have to write to the noble Lord, Lord Vaizey, on R&D tax credits, because that are is more for the Treasury. I will speak to my colleagues and ensure that I write to him, with a copy of that letter being placed in the Library.
In closing, I again thank my noble friend Lord Rooker for enabling this debate. The Government recognise the essential role that the UK flour milling sector plays in supporting British agriculture, underpinning food manufacturing, sustaining skilled employment and strengthening national resilience. Although it is largely out of sight, this economic value is felt across the food system. We will continue to work closely with the sector to ensure that it remains competitive, resilient and able to play its full part in a secure and prosperous food economy.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Viscount Stansgate) (Lab)
My Lords, this has been an interesting, if short, debate. I hope that the Committee will join me in wishing the noble Lords, Lord Rooker and Lord Vaizey of Didcot, a happy joint birthday on 5 June; I wish everyone else a good February Recess. In the meantime, the Grand Committee stands adjourned until 4 pm.
The Deputy Chairman of Committees (Baroness Morgan of Drefelin) (Lab)
Noble Lords will be aware that the clock is not working. We are reliant on Back-Bench speakers sticking to their six minutes, and we also expect the Front Benchers to keep to their allotted time. The Whip will, if she needs to, do her best to indicate if people go further than their allotted time.
Environment Agency: Waste Crime
(2 days, 7 hours ago)
Grand CommitteeRead Full debate Read Hansard Text
Baroness Sheehan
To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the performance of the Environment Agency in addressing waste crime.
Baroness Sheehan (LD)
My Lords, as chair of the Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee I am delighted to have an opportunity to debate our inquiry into waste crime. I begin by thanking all noble Lords who will be contributing to this debate, particularly as it is the last business before our February Recess.
The committee’s inquiry painted a profoundly disturbing picture. The scale of waste crime is staggering: some 38 million tonnes every year is dumped illegally, enough to fill Wembley Stadium 35 times over and estimated to cost the taxpayer £1 billion annually. Worse still, more than one-third of that illegal activity passes through the hands of serious organised crime groups. These are not opportunistic fly-tippers, but organised criminal networks—people who engage in drug trafficking, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery.
Local residents report waste dumping to all the right authorities, such as the local council, the Environment Agency and the police. In every single case we encountered, residents’ repeated reports were ignored. They were passed from pillar to post and left to confront these criminals themselves, frequently with the result that they live in fear of reprisals. Residents chose to write to the committee anonymously rather than appear in front of cameras, either to give oral evidence to the committee or to speak to TV crews. The committee recommended a dedicated waste hotline for the public, so that local teams on the ground can respond immediately. Will the Minister take this suggestion to the Government?
Members of the committee were shocked to learn of the brazenness with which these criminals operate. They know that the chances of being caught are slim and that, even if they are caught, they will get away with it, receiving at the most a paltry penalty charge notice of a few hundred pounds. Given that we heard that the payload on a single lorry is £2,500, that is a good deal. It is profitable for criminals, and it is a scandal that they are getting away with it.
The committee wrote to the Secretary of State for Defra last October, outlining our deep concerns about the demonstrable inadequacy of the current approach to tackling waste crime and identifying multiple failures by the Environment Agency. For example, it has ignored repeated calls by local residents, it has the power to issue stop notices but has too often not done so in time, and it has sanctions of unlimited fines and prison sentences of up to five years available to it, yet its record of using these powers effectively is woeful. Our letter also highlighted the lack of interest shown by the police. Neither the National Crime Agency nor the National Police Chiefs’ Council would give oral evidence to the committee. The NCA in written evidence stated that it did not have anyone with sufficient knowledge of the issues to appear before the committee, and we are talking about serious organised criminal gangs here.
I shall say a few words about the illegal waste super-sites that are being discovered on a regular basis around the country since our inquiry report was published. Recent examples are the 25,000 tonnes dumped along the A34 in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, and the Bickershaw site in Wigan. These mixed-waste sites are similar in nature to the egregious Hoads Wood site, which featured in our inquiry. Mixed-waste sites are dangerous because they combine many different hazards in one place, often at a huge scale, making pollution, fires and health risks much harder to control.
I visited both the Kidlington and Bickershaw sites. The Environment Agency is cleaning up the Kidlington site, and rightly so, as it is obviously polluting the River Cherwell and poses a serious fire risk. However, I put it to the Minister that it is unjust to treat the Bickershaw site differently from the Kidlington site. The Bickershaw site is close to houses and the local primary school. My real fear is that if it is still there when the weather warms up, there will be a repeat of last year’s fires, one of which burned for 10 days, forcing the primary school to close because of the noxious fumes. Will the Minister undertake to do all he can to help the people and the schoolchildren who are suffering due to the risks of the Bickershaw site? They should not have to live with this toxic nightmare on their doorstep while waiting for lengthy proceedings about ownership and culpability to be resolved, which could take years. I repeat my request for the Government to share the risk assessment of both sites with my committee. I also understand that the BBC has submitted a freedom of information request about the risks posed by the Kidlington site, which I hope will produce a response from the Government.
The committee was deeply disappointed by the Government’s response to our findings. They cited instead reassurances by Philip Duffy, chief executive of the Environment Agency, who in essence asserted that the problem was under control and rejected our recommendations. However, the committee’s call for an urgent independent root-and-branch review of the Government’s response to waste crime stemmed from compelling evidence of a systemically broken process rather than mere isolated issues.
The Environment Agency said in its response that it was,
“doing everything within our power to ensure that the perpetrators pay the price to clean up the site, rather than taxpayers”.
It would be more reassuring if the Environment Agency had said that it was reviewing its processes and why these sites grow so large from small beginnings, why its considerable powers are not exercised at an early enough stage to nip the problem in the bud, why it is unable to prosecute the criminals and impose penalties that would be seen as a deterrence and why the JUWC, the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, which was set up after the recommendations in the 2018 waste strategy review, has been ineffective.
We heard that Treasury rules force the Environment Agency’s efforts to be focused on the regulated waste sector, whose transgressions, sometimes minor, are pursued with zeal. In addition, we heard that the law forces the Environment Agency to pursue private landowners to clean up waste dumped on their land, even those who are the victims of such crimes. Does the Minister agree that a root-and-branch review of the waste system would allow the Government to assess whether such rules are helpful? Can the Minister update the Grand Committee on when we may expect to see long overdue reforms, such as the waste crime levy, a digital waste tracking system, and carrier, broker and dealer reforms? If urgently and properly enacted, they will help to grip this scourge of waste crime that is blighting local communities and damaging precious environments.
Lord Beamish (Lab)
I have been talking rubbish for many years; more accurately, I have been talking about waste crime and disposal for many years. I first got interested when I was the chair of public health in Newcastle in the 1990s. As the Member of Parliament for North Durham, I took a particular interest in this because of the actions of a company called Niramax in the north-east of England. The people running it would not have passed a “fit and proper person” test. After a lot of lobbying with fellow MPs, such as David Davis MP, there was an investigation into Niramax; it was called Operation Nosedive. Somebody had a bit of a sense of humour when they named it Nosedive because it went nowhere and spent £3.5 million of public money with no prosecutions, even though there was clear evidence of widespread landfill tax fraud and environmental crime.
David Davis and I persuaded the NAO to look into the issue. It produced an excellent report in 2022, which people may not have read; it mirrors many of the issues covered in the report that has just been referred to. It shocked me a bit that the National Crime Agency would not appear before the committee because David Davis MP and I went to see it throughout this process to raise this directly with it. The 2022 report said that there was no data—there is still no data—a problem with exporting waste abroad, permit abuse, which is still going on, and an increase in fly-tipping, which, again, is still going on. Increases in landfill tax had made the issue more lucrative for criminals. It estimated that something like £200 million a year was lost through landfill tax fraud; it plucked that figure out of thin air because it does not actually know what the issue is. More disturbingly, it said in black and white that 41 of the 60 major organised crime groups in this country are involved in waste crime. The most common sanction from the Environment Agency, to which the noble Baroness just referred, is either a warning letter or advice.
The report also said—it was quite clear—that the number of prosecutions had dropped from some 800 a year in 2007 to 60 in 2017-18. The response of the previous Government was to set up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. I asked a Question a few months ago on how many prosecutions it had pursued, and the answer was none at all, which begs the question of what that unit is doing. I also asked whether there had been any prosecutions for landfill tax fraud. Remember that landfill tax goes back to 1996. The answer was that there has not been a single one, so I do not know how we can come up with this figure of £1 billion a year—I think it is a lot worse than that. The industry reckons that 18% of the waste stream is going into illegal waste across the country. The noble Baroness mentioned the issue raised by farmers and others of dumping on their land; if you look at the Times this morning, there is an example from Hertfordshire.
It seems to me that the problem is that there is the number of different agencies: the Environment Agency, the police, HMRC, local councils, and, I would strongly argue, the National Crime Agency. The responsibility is falling between the cracks, even though the evidence is there. The 2022 report states what the problem is. On one occasion, I referred to the Environment Agency as newt lovers and tree huggers. I am sorry, but that is their approach here. It is not about enforcement. What is needed in this area more than anything is not jointed-up working between these agencies but an enforcement culture—a culture that means they are going to go after these people.
I share the noble Baroness’s frustration on behalf of individual constituents. If there is an example of where the state is failing, this is it, and we need to address it. On the point about talking to industry, the industry is aware and is prepared to work with the Government to try to sort this out, but the problem is that the Environment Agency is spending most of its time regulating the industry. The industry is not the problem; these illegal issues are.
I say in closing that we need an enforcement culture. With the greatest respect to the noble Baroness, we do not need any more reviews. The evidence is there; we know what the problem is. We need the political will to do something about it. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime might have been a movement forward, but it does not have teeth. It needs to be politically driven to say, “Right, we’re going to take on these individuals and make sure that the law is enforced and that the penalties are there”. The noble Baroness is right: frankly, the penalties against these individuals are just operating costs for them. This is a multi-million-pound business for these individuals, and that money is going directly into other areas of crime. I urge the Minister to take this away and say that we need action, not more reviews or words.
Lord Krebs (CB)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, on securing this debate and thank her both for her excellent leadership as the chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee, of which I have the privilege to be a member, and for her comprehensive introduction to this topic. I also acknowledge the noble Earl, Lord Russell, for urging the committee to investigate waste crime.
The headline item on “Channel 4 News” on 26 January was the illegal dumping of an estimated 25,000 tonnes of waste on Bolton House Road, Bickershaw—it is near Wigan in Lancashire—to which the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has already referred. A local resident described living near the dump as a “living hell”. Residents had asked for it to be cleared up for over a year, but no one had accepted responsibility—not the local authority, the Environment Agency or the landowner, the Duchy of Lancaster.
As the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said, residents on the whole fear to speak out because they are afraid of reprisals. However, one brave resident, Nicha Rowson, talked to “Channel 4 News” about the rats and flies in her house, as well as the foul stench emanating from the dump nearby. One of her children, who has special needs, has had to move out of the house because of the impact of the dump. As we have already heard, last year, the dump caught fire, causing a local primary school to close for over a week. Yet the Environment Agency has said that the site does not pose a sufficient level of risk to require urgent clean-up. Does the Minister agree with the Environment Agency?
On top of the human misery caused by waste crime, there are important impacts on the environment, including water pollution, air pollution and the destruction of habitats. We have already heard that waste crime costs the economy £1 billion per year, but that is an estimate—just an estimate—of the cost of clean-up, enforcement and lost revenue to legitimate businesses and the Exchequer; it does not include the cost to people or to nature. I therefore ask the Minister: does Defra have an estimate of the total cost of waste crime, including the impacts on human well-being and the environment?
I turn to the question of how much waste crime there is. We have heard that there are an estimated 38 million tonnes a year of waste crime, but we were also told that only 27% of waste crime is reported. I suspect that this may be one of Donald Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns: if it is not reported, how do we know how much there is? Nevertheless, the Environment Agency told the BBC that 517 known dumps were still active at the end of last year, including 11 of the so-called super sites, such as the Kidlington site that we have heard about. However, if only around a quarter of sites are reported and known, there could be as many as 2,000 dumps in England, or one for every 25 square miles. Given these uncertainties, can the Minister tell us the Government’s estimate of the total number of sites and the level of uncertainty in that estimate?
If I were a careers adviser for an aspiring and ambitious young criminal, I would recommend waste crime as a career option worth serious consideration. I would point to the attractive features of waste crime. There is plenty of money to be made and there is a very low chance of getting caught. The Environment Agency received 24,000 reports of waste crime in the three years up to March 2025. Criminal investigations were opened for 1.3% of them, and there was a prosecution in 0.65% of cases. Even if you are caught, the penalties are generally light and can simply be priced into your business model. What is more, if you make a success of it, you might be able to graduate to become involved in international criminal gangs, with career openings in areas such as people trafficking, drugs and money laundering.
Sir James Bevan, the then CEO of the Environment Agency, said that one of the best ways to prevent waste crime was
“to change how criminals calculate the odds, by imposing much tougher penalties on them if caught. We would like to see much bigger fines (at present many serious criminals treat these as business expenses) and more use of confiscation of criminals’ assets. But in particular we would like to see more and longer prison sentences, which really concentrate the criminal mind”.
Does the Minister agree with Sir James Bevan’s assertion that this is simply too easy and profitable for criminals? As things stand, the deterrents for waste crime are inadequate and are not being properly enforced.
Lord Redesdale (Non-Afl)
My Lords, I thank my noble friend Lady Sheehan for initiating this debate and for the work she did on the committee.
I will speak first as an amateur archaeologist. That seems a bit random, but I say that because our job as archaeologists is to find things such as middens: waste sites from the past. I can see archaeologists of the future specialising in these sorts of things, although I would hate to be the archaeologist who digs up the sort of stuff that we are seeing in these waste tips. That is a joke in one respect, but it is not in another, because most of these sites will never be cleared up and therefore will be part of the archaeological record of the future.
We have just had a briefing from the City of London Corporation about Epping Forest. It has two fly-tipping incidents a day, which is eating up a percentage of its budget as a charity. When I was on the train to Newcastle the other day, I counted 16 dumping sites just by looking out of the window.
I also speak as a landowner, and obviously many people would say to me, “Well, you’re a landowner, you can afford to deal with this”—but it is a real issue. Luckily, my estate is in the middle of nowhere, but even we had a lorry turn up and dump a load of rubble just in a farm entrance. Luckily, we could deal with it by laying a new roadbed, but the cost of that is frightening. It goes to a very basic rule: if it comes from the highways and over your wall, you have to pay for it; if it stays on the highway, they seem just to leave it there. That is just a personal point.
Something I find really surprising is that, if you want to get involved in this, it is an easy area to get into, as the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, said in his erudite speech. In the time it took him to make his speech—I timed this yesterday—I could apply for a waste licence. It is a hundred quid a year if you do a three-year licence, and I could then have a waste licence to drive an articulated lorry full of waste. I do not see how it is even possible that someone can just go on a website, get that licence and suddenly legally drive around waste, without any real question about what they are doing. I understand how difficult this is, because of the amount of waste that has to be moved around the country, but, if it is that easy to get a licence, it is hardly surprising that so much of it ends up in gateways, down the back of embankments or wherever it is found.
The origins of this go back to recycling centres. You see somebody turn up with a van. Lots of jobbing builders turn up. People have to book in a van, and they can only do two trips a week, but, looking at what comes out of the van, I wonder: how much easier is it just to turn up somewhere and dump it on the side of the road? That is of course the origin of this, and the issue has grown larger and larger as we have moved forward.
I was looking it up and I was at the debate in 1996 on the Finance Bill where this was introduced. The fabulous Earl Ferrers, for those who remember him, was very positive about how it was going to work and how it would raise a great deal of money. Another issue at the time was that we had to meet the European directive and we still had the problem of closing down landfill sites, because most of them were full. We were diverting waste, and this was a way of acting as “polluter pays” and it was going to move things forward.
When I set up and ran the Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association, we worked incredibly hard to build up anaerobic digestion to take food waste out of the waste stream. We have been incredibly successful in certain areas. I think councils around the country should take the positive nature of that, but the fault lies with the Government. We have actually changed landfill tax into being just a tax. It has no bearing in the Treasury’s eyes on what happens going forward.
If we take landfill tax, which the TaxPayers’ Alliance says is now raising £600 million a year—I do not usually use the TaxPayers’ Alliance as a source of reference—we could then direct that into enforcement, which would solve the problem. The Government are not taking this seriously enough, but I think they will. The reason is that we just have to go back a few months to when the water companies were constantly lambasted over combined sewer overflows—CSOs. In fact, Liberal Democrats would stand next to any pipe for a photo opportunity, because it is such a good issue. I have a feeling that my friend the noble Earl, Lord Russell, will be doing exactly the same when he starts to track down the vast numbers of large sites which have not been reported on, but which are going to cause a national outrage in the not-too-distant future.
Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, the chair of the environment committee, on securing this timely debate and raising the issue in Committee this afternoon. I have only recently joined her committee, but I am delighted to join such an excellent scheme under her skilful leadership. On this occasion I will limit my remarks, as I was not privy to the evidence, though I entirely support the conclusions reached: in particular, the need for greater resources and for a review, which I will come to in a while.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, I have followed this issue closely both as a constituency MP for the Vale of York, and subsequently for Thirsk and Malton, but also in my privileged position of chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place, where we also learned of the issues from landfill sites being full to busting.
For the Environment Agency to tackle waste crimes in rural areas successfully will require resources on a huge scale. The agency already uses the tools at its disposal—cameras, drones, radar and light detection—but its resources are limited and severely stretched. I would like to raise two issues this afternoon: first, how the Environment Agency can hope to address widespread rural crime and the particular offence of waste crime, given its limited resources, without support from police forces, HMRC and local authorities; and, secondly, how and why waste crime is treated differently, depending on whether it is perpetrated on public or private land.
In terms of the scale of the crime, the evidence submitted by the Environment Agency to the short inquiry demonstrated that 24,625 crimes were committed between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2025, ranging from the burning of waste, illegal waste sites and fly-tipping through to waste carriers and unauthorised waste management activity. The enforcement actions taken were varied, ranging from 1,037 advice and guidance letters through to 685 warning letters and 156 prosecutions.
Early intervention is probably the most effective response to waste crime, and acting promptly to warnings from residents, councils and others. However, the sheer size of the crime and the area to be policed, especially across open countryside, makes it a nigh-on impossible task. Differentiating between where the crime is perpetrated, especially in relation to fly-tipping and the dumping of highly toxic waste, often building materials left by serial criminal offenders, I can see no logical argument for treating the crime differently depending on whether it is conducted on public or private land. Are the Government prepared to review this and equate the offences of and sanctions for waste crime, regardless of where it takes place, on either public or private land?
I am grateful to the City of London Corporation, which states in its briefing for today’s debate that the strategic implication is clear: without stronger alignment between police activity, local authority enforcement and the Environment Agency, organised waste crime will continue to flourish. In a Times article yesterday, it was reported that an elderly farmer in his 80s “simply cannot afford” the £40,000 bill to remove 200 tonnes of rubbish fly-tipped on his land, close to a busy main road. It is not as though farmers do not have enough to worry about at the moment without this additional expense.
There are many other examples of this; I put it to the Minister that, behind each one, there is very human distress and suffering. I hope that, in summing up the debate, the Minister will address these anomalies. I hope in particular that he will implement the very first recommendation of the report, for a root-and-branch review and more integrated working between the Environment Agency, HMRC, the National Crime Agency, policing and local authorities in order to address this scourge of the offence of waste crime, particularly in rural areas.
Lord Jay of Ewelme (CB)
My Lords, I speak as a member of the Environment and Climate Change Committee of your Lordships’ House. I have to say that, until we started our inquiry, I had been unaware of the scale or the seriousness of waste crime. Now, thanks largely to the tenacity of the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, as well as the growing interest of the press, both national and local, we are all too aware of Hoad’s Wood; Kidlington; Bickershaw, near Wigan; and, this week, Stockton in Norfolk and Knowsley on Merseyside.
But this is only the tip of the iceberg—I suppose I should say “the tip of the tip”. In their letter of 16 December to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, Alan Lovell and Philip Duffy of the Environment Agency said that, in 2024-25, 749 new illegal waste sites had been found, up from 427 the previous year. This is a huge nationwide problem. Not only are these sites illegal, they cost farmers huge sums to clean up, they present a serious fire risk, they pollute streams and rivers and blight the environment and they can, as in Wigan, cause serious health problems to those living nearby and blight their everyday life.
The Environment Agency is front and centre in responding to all this, and there are questions for it to answer. For example, why did it not act sooner at Hoads Wood? Where is the sense of urgency, given the scale of the problem and its environmental and human damage? Why can concrete bollards not be put in place much more quickly than they have been up to now? But this is not the responsibility of one agency; it is a bigger problem than that. Responsibility also lies with the Government, the police, HMRC and local authorities. Some of the action already taken is sensible, such as the establishment of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. It is absolutely right to bring the various actors together and to inject coherence into an otherwise anarchic scene. However—I agree with the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, on this—the joint unit should surely get more of a grip than we have seen so far.
What else can be done? Our report lists a number of recommendations. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has mentioned some of them. I want to mention just three. First, the Government and local authorities should be doing all they can to encourage the use of legal landfill sites but, if anything, the trend is in the other direction. Fees are going up and appointments often have to be made. This is all an encouragement to criminal gangs. I hope that the Minister can say what more the Government are doing to favour legal tips.
Secondly, there needs to be stronger enforcement, more arrests and tougher penalties. Penalties need to fit the crime and be strong enough to deter the crime. That means larger fines and longer jail sentences. What more can the Government do to tip the balance in favour of the law and not the criminals? I hope that the Minister can tell us that.
Thirdly, we need to move into the 21st century. Mandatory digital waste tracking to replace the present cumbersome paper system must be right and would put more pressure on criminal groups. Why cannot drones be used more regularly to spot criminal waste sites when they are formed, rather than leaving it until much later? I look forward also to hearing the Minister’s views on that.
Much is being done. Much more can and must be done. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, said in a letter to the Secretary of State that
“waste crime is a profitable and low risk business for”
an organised crime group. We have to change that, and we have to change it fast.
Earl Russell (LD)
My Lords, it is a pleasure to speak in this debate. I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for bringing it, and all noble Lords who have spoken. We have had some interesting contributions that have ranged from careers advice to archaeology. I think everybody agrees that waste crime is out of control and that it is low risk and high reward. The Government’s own national waste crime survey suggests that one-fifth of all our waste ends up in the hands of criminals at one point or another. The costs are hard to quantify, as the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, has pointed out, but every year it costs the UK economy somewhere between £1 and £4 billion. The returns are great: up to £2,500 per lorry.
To answer the question of this debate, my personal view is that the systems for preventing and dealing with waste crime are fundamentally broken. It is the broken systems that are creating broken outcomes. I have no wish to criticise individuals, many of whom work extremely hard, but it is impossible to escape the conclusion that the way we currently organise the resources for the Environment Agency is not working and not properly fit for purpose.
The Minister responded to a question on this that I asked the other day by saying that it was a new problem. I beg to disagree. My view is that it is a long-standing problem that has been largely hidden away from the public’s view and public consciousness. The systems themselves have, in effect, operated to avoid the true scale of the problem. It has been a fear of finding out that has predominated; a fear of the cost involved in recognising the true scale of the problem.
I first became involved in this with the Hoad’s Wood campaign. I asked an Oral Question on it—I spoke to the then Minister in private first—which led to a ministerial direction. After that, I foolishly promised that I would try to change the systems. I am very pleased that the Environment and Climate Change Committee, of which I am a member, did its report. That report genuinely sought co-operation and solutions to these problems. We asked the Environment Agency how many illegal waste sites the size of Hoad’s Wood were known to it; the answer that came back was six. That report has been a turning point. We had over a thousand pieces of press generated before Christmas as a result and the more we look, the more we find. The more we understand, the greater the problem appears to be.
More sites have come to light since the publication of the House of Lords report than were known in their totality to the Environment Agency beforehand. That is both alarming and extraordinary in equal measure. The Government have chosen largely to ignore the report that we published, and while we welcome brokers, dealers, carriers and digital waste-tracking reforms, they were in the pipeline before our report. Beyond that, there have been no new measures in the response from the Government. I guess there are two options for us: either we can take a less optimistic view that the Government are on the track that they are on and things will not change; or we can take a more optimistic view. My hope is that the Government are listening. I know that Ministers are concerned about this and that they are formulating policies to take this forward.
For me, the starting point is that the body set up as a regulator is fundamentally not the right body for dealing with organised crime—this is an organised crime problem, and it needs to be dealt with as organised crime. The recent police White Paper offers the ideal vehicle and place for dealing with organised waste crime, should this Government choose to take that course of action. I hope they will do so, because that is where the answer lies.
The Government need to acknowledge the true scale and vast number of illegal sites, most of which are simply not cleared; they are devastating to our communities and the environment. I will refer the Minister to some specific points. First, I am pleased that Hoad’s Wood is being cleared up, but the Hoad’s Wood campaign is concerned that there is no plan—that it can see—to secure that site, once it has been cleared. We do not want to go back to where we started.
Secondly, I want the Treasury to stop charging the Environment Agency landfill tax on the sites it clears. That is just silliness.
Thirdly, the Government should allow the Environment Agency to use more of its income from permitted sites to deal with illegal waste problems. I am pleased that Kidlington is being cleared up too, but I do not want the Environment Agency to bankrupt itself and become unable to do all the other important stuff it needs to do because of the cost of clearing up these sites.
Fifthly, I want Ministers to acknowledge the true scale of the problem. I would like them to use remote monitoring to come up with a plan for clearing these historic sites and hypothecate landfill tax for a period for clearing up these sites that have been mentioned, such as Wigan.
Finally, I would like the Minister to give a clear commitment to us that the Government do indeed take this issue seriously and that they are planning to bring forward, as a matter of urgency, a concrete plan to deal with this as a national priority and to bring forward some real solutions so that we can all move forward.
The Earl of Effingham (Con)
My Lords, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for tabling this important Question for Short Debate and for her work as chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee.
Waste crime costs our economy approximately £1 billion every year, but, as the noble Lords, Lord Beamish and Lord Krebs, rightly highlighted, the figure is probably a lot more. But the costs are not only financial: it is a scourge of the countryside and is particularly painful for those communities who live in the area. My noble friend Lady McIntosh referred to the Times, which states today that fly-tippers have dumped a £40,000 bill on a farmer. The clean-up is often left unfairly to landowners and local authorities. Saturday morning community pickup sessions are now regrettably a regular feature of country life. Some 57% of landowners and farmers have been impacted, many of whom do not necessarily have the resources or training to address the consequences.
It is totally fair to ask the Minister: what support is available to victims of this relentless crime and what exactly are the Government planning to do to increase awareness? The Government have highlighted that understanding the true extent of criminal activity is inherently difficult. That said, it is estimated that only one in four waste crimes are being reported. Moreover, the reports available indicate that waste crime is on the rise. The Environment Agency found 749 new illegal waste sites in 2024-25, compared with 427 in the previous year—that is a substantial increase. As the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, rightly asked, how many actually are there? The real number is probably significantly more.
The Environment and Climate Change Committee’s inquiry found serious failings in the agency’s performance. Repeated reports of serious waste crime were not investigated. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, observed in her letter that it was,
“difficult to conclude that incompetence at the Environment Agency has not been a factor”.
The Government have pledged reforms, but we note that the committee felt deeply disappointed by their response. While reforms are evidently needed and welcome, can the Minister specify what reforms they are pursuing and give timelines for the delivery of those reforms? If this is a priority, this must be reflected in the legislative programme.
Enforcement needs reform. As was emphasised by the committee, the lack of effective deterrence means that waste crime remains profitable and low-risk for organised crime gangs. The noble Lord, Lord Beamish, summarised it perfectly: this is a business. The fines are just operating costs, and these are criminal enterprises. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, was right when he said that it is easy money. Criminal gangs talk about it like this: “Come along, it’s free money”. As the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, mentioned, 41 out of the 60 major organised crime groups are involved. This is simply a no-brainer for criminal gangs, so when will the Government take steps to ensure that the fines match the profits obtained and contribute to the clean-up costs, as per the entirely sensible suggestion from the noble Lord, Lord Jay? His Majesty’s loyal Opposition have tabled amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill that would put the onus of the clean-up back on the offenders of fly-tipping, which seems entirely proportionate.
The committee also recommended establishing a single point of contact for reporting waste crime. Victims should surely be able to report an incident once without navigating a maze of bodies with unclear responsibilities. Improving the Environment Agency is clearly vital, but we must remember that it is only one of 13 organisations in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime launched under the previous Government. My noble friend Lord Blencathra has previously proposed giving lead responsibility to the National Crime Agency. At the time, the relevant Minister said that all options will be considered, so I hope that today’s Minister, the noble Lord, Lord Katz, will understand that it is totally fair and reasonable to ask what assessment has been made since then. When can we have an answer to the entirely sensible proposal from my noble friend?
Finally, can the Minister clarify what responsibilities the new integrated water regulator will take on from the Environment Agency regarding waste crime? I have had time to touch on only a handful of the committee’s recommendations, but we thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, for her dedication to this issue and wish her well for the future relentless focus that will clearly be required to fix this issue once and for all.
Lord in Waiting/Government Whip (Lord Katz) (Lab)
My Lords, I am grateful for the opportunity to address this important question on what assessment His Majesty’s Government have made of the performance of the Environment Agency in addressing waste crime. In doing so, I am pleased to thank the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, and all members of her committee for the hard, diligent and challenging—but rightly so—work that they have done on this important issue.
Let us be without doubt, as we have all spoken with one voice this afternoon: waste crime blights our local communities. It damages the environment and, in the worst cases, it directly threatens our health. It also undermines legitimate businesses and deprives the public purse of tax income. Serious and organised crime in the waste sector is on the rise, and the Environment Agency is regularly alerted to new illegal waste sites.
The EA is a place-based organisation, tackling local problems through local area teams that operate in both urban and rural locations. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, expressed concern that rural areas were losing out. The way in which the Environment Agency operates ensures that it is a local and needs-based agency, rather than resource being hoarded in a particular geography at the top of the organisation. I hope that that is helpful regarding the question she asked.
This Government are committed to tackling waste crime and are helping the Environment Agency to build future capability. It has a wide range of powers, which it uses in its enforcement work against organised crime in waste and other environmental areas. Indeed, in the past couple of weeks, several arrests have been made in relation to the waste site near Kidlington, and waste sites have been shut down in Yorkshire and Minster in Kent. In Liverpool, an arrest was made and the Environment Agency seized a vehicle as part of a multi-agency operation.
In her opening contribution, the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked a question comparing Kidlington and Bickershaw. First, the scale of the fire risk at the Kidlington site sets the case apart from other illegal waste dumps in England and provides an overriding public imperative. We are clear that it is not the Environment Agency’s normal responsibility to clear illegal waste sites, and it is not funded to do so. It has the power to clear waste only in exceptional circumstances such as these, if there is a significant risk to the environment.
On Bickershaw in Wigan, the illegal dumping there is absolutely disgraceful. I know how strongly the local community rightly feels about it. My colleague in the other place, Josh Simons MP, has been complaining and campaigning long and hard on this, and I pay tribute to his work with the local community on it. The Environment Agency is working with Wigan Council and the UK Health Security Agency to help the local partnership consider the implications of the council’s waste initial sampling results and to advise on potential permitted disposal sites.
The current risk of fire is assessed as low, but the Environment Agency is reassessing any pollution risk posed by the illegal waste in the light of an updated fire risk assessment to determine whether, in principle, the level of risk meets the threshold for the use of its discretionary powers, such as those it has already used in Kidlington. In short, without going into too much detail on this site, important though it is, I want to reassure your Lordships’ Committee that if the Environment Agency considers that a risk of pollution exists, it may use its powers to arrange actions to remove or reduce that risk. Additionally, partner agencies through the local resilience forum will need to consider the risk to surrounding infrastructure.
We want to ensure that the Environment Agency is making the best use of its extensive powers to prevent waste crime. As I said, the Environment Agency has no duty to clear illegally dumped waste, and it is not funded to do so. In response to the other question that was asked by the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, this is the case for both public and private land. The landlord is responsible for keeping their land secure and free of waste that should not be there, rather than letting dumped waste persist and grow into larger sites, which could in turn attract further dumping. It might be considered as equivalent to the broken windows paradigm that one sees in community policing.
However, while we must uphold the polluter pays principle and avoid creating perverse incentives for waste criminals, the Environment Agency will decide to clear illegally dumped waste where that waste presents an untenable risk to the public and the environment, as it has done in the case of Kidlington. We also encourage local authorities to investigate all incidents of fly-tipping, including those on private land, and make good use of those enforcement powers.
Furthermore, Defra regularly assesses the Environment Agency’s performance in discussion with the Environment Agency’s chair and chief executive. The aim is to establish a clear line of sight for Ministers through to front-line delivery, transparent performance data and honest conversations about progress and barriers to delivery.
The Environment Agency reports its performance every quarter through its published corporate scorecard. The noble Lord, Lord Krebs, asked some questions on statistics. I contend that waste crime is estimated to cost the UK £1 billion a year, with an estimated 20% of waste, 34 million tonnes per year, handled illegally at some point through the supply chain. There are more than 500 active illegal waste sites known to the Environment Agency, and it is monitoring the 33 highest risk illegal waste sites according to specific risk criteria.
However, waste crime, as alluded to by the noble Lord, Lord Krebs, is deliberately hidden and therefore inherently difficult to measure, including the total costs to the environment, local communities and individuals. We know that the Environment Agency’s current corporate scorecard measure on illegal waste sites does not reflect the true nature or scale of waste crime and likely provides only a narrow view. So, we are working with the Environment Agency to develop better indicators and metrics.
In addition to helping the Environment Agency to improve assessment capabilities, Defra has already taken steps to ensure that it is equipped to carry out its functions effectively. Its total budget for 2025-26 has increased and includes £15.6 million for waste crime enforcement, a more than 50% rise from 2024-25, representing a £5.6 million increase. That demonstrates the Government’s commitment to tackling environmental waste crime.
This has enabled the agency to increase its front-line criminal enforcement resource in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and other environmental crime teams by 43 full-time staff, helping to deliver successful major criminal investigations and to enforce new duties introduced this year, including the new packaging extended producer responsibility requirements. Since 2020, the JUWC has worked with over 130 partner organisations and led or attended over 300 multi-agency days of action, resulting in over 170 associated arrests. So, it is fair to argue that a multi-agency approach is being taken and led by the JUWC and the EA. Indeed, in the last year, 2024-25, the Joint Unit for Waste Crime organised 70 days of action, 13 arrests were made by partners as a result of those days of action and 47 disruptions were delivered. That is some more detail about the activity that the JUWC has been undertaking.
Alongside that work, the agency is looking at technology-based opportunities to track and measure waste crime, such as combining satellite imaging and machine learning to provide early-warning mechanisms. Indeed, to answer the question asked by the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, drones are used by the agency when investigating and gathering evidence. This capability will improve the agency’s insights and business intelligence, which will inform its overall strategic approach and how it prioritises its resources. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked why there were so few prosecutions from the JUWC’s work. I should say that prosecutions take time to work through the legal and court system but numbers are in line with other law enforcement agencies when compared to the number of interventions. Prosecutions are, of course, only one part of the picture: prevention and disruption work are at least as important.
We are building on these developments to make further policy and regulatory reforms to close loopholes exploited by criminals: fundamentally reforming the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime; tightening waste permit exemptions; and introducing digital waste tracking, to answer the specific question asked by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan. She also asked about a single contact point for reporting waste crime. The GOV.UK site has a page entitled “Reporting fly tipping or illegal waste dumping”, which directs people either to the relevant local authority, via a postcode search, or indeed to Crimestoppers, which has a hotline, depending on the scale of what is being reported.
Waste criminals often work within the legitimate system, and most waste at the largest illegal sites today was originally consigned legally. The new digital waste-tracking system and reforms to waste-permitting exemptions and the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime will mean that criminals will have to work a lot harder to source the waste to dump in the first place. It will make it much harder for criminal businesses to undercut legitimate ones. I note that the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale, talked about applying online. It is a good way to use some spare time during a debate on a Thursday afternoon, but it will be much harder to undertake a similar activity under this new system.
The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, and the noble Earl, Lord Effingham, referred to the case that was reported of the 80 year-old farmer. That is a very distressing case, where the cost of clearance was beyond the farmer. To help individual landowners blighted by waste crime, the Government will speak with insurers to determine the necessary market conditions for a viable waste crime insurance market to form as quickly as possible, which seems a fair approach to helping landowners.
I am tight on time but I will try to address a couple more questions from noble Lords. We talked already about reform of the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime, but I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Redesdale. On Hoad’s Wood in Kent, I will write to the noble Lord, Lord Jay of Ewelme, but there is certainly work happening there.
To finish, the Government have committed to tackling waste crime, not only to prevent environmental harm but to ensure resources are being properly recycled or recovered and fed back into the economy. We are not resting on our laurels. We are working at pace to develop further reforms and make sure that we tackle this problem. With that, I thank all noble Lords who took part in the debate and the noble Baroness and her committee for its work, and I take the opportunity to wish everyone a very happy February Recess.