Environment Bill

Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb Excerpts

Wednesday 8th September 2021 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville (LD)]

My Lords, in speaking to this group of amendments in my name, I thank the noble Baroness, Lady Jones of Moulsecoomb, for adding her name to Amendments 33, 37 and 41. I will deal with the fly-tipping amendments first.

Fly tipping, and its effect on our environment, especially in rural areas, is a scourge, unsightly and extremely costly for landowners and farmers to remove. I am grateful to the Minister for his amendment to Schedule 10, but fear that it does not go far enough. Amendment 33 adds the words, “including fly-tipped items”; Amendment 37 adds the words:

“to remove all fly-tipping at the expense of the manufacturer or producer”.

Both amendments seek to ensure that the “polluter pays” principle applies to fly-tipped items. Amendment 39 allows farmers and landowners to install CCTV cameras where fly-tipping has occurred in the past. This very small suite of amendments allows the principle of the “polluter pays” to become a reality.

Currently, it is far too easy for those who have large, redundant items in their home or large amounts of green waste to fill up their trailers, cars or vans and travel around the country looking for some likely green lane, gateway or field in which to dump their waste. They do not wish to pay for legal disposal. The cost to the farmers and landowners is enormous, running into several thousands of pounds each year.

There are those who ditch ordinary household waste in the same way and pollute the countryside with what could be toxic chemicals. There are the professional criminals who cruise around villages and housing estates, spotting who is having a clear-out, and offer to take the waste away for a small fee. The householder jumps at the chance of not having to deal with the problem themselves and pays up, thinking that it is all sorted. These criminals then go on to a site which they have used before, often on many occasions, and dump the waste on the landowner and farmer’s land. The installation of CCTV at sites which are used more than once is essential to help farmers and landowners deal with this problem by identifying those responsible and bringing them to account.

The NFU is supportive of this group of amendments and hopes that offenders caught dumping waste illegally should see fines as a proper punishment, which will therefore act as a deterrent. Fly-tipping figures have increased to 1 million during lockdown and are likely to have risen as the country came out of lockdown. The eagle-eyed among you will note that I withdrew my amendment that asked the Government to recompense farmers and landowners for the costs of clearing up fly-tipping; this was a blatant attempt to make the amendment acceptable, at no cost to the Government. I hope that the Minister can accept these three amendments, which would benefit those who clear up the waste that others leave behind and allow for measures to ensure that the perpetrators are brought to justice.

Before I move on from this group, I refer to a small article in the Metro newspaper from 8 July, which I read on the tube. A farmer caught several fly-tippers in the act and

“blocked them in with a car, tractor and forklift truck”.

He was

“fed up with rubbish being left on his land, so set a trap”.

He said:

“‘Fly-tipping is regular here, so I parked the car across the gateway’ … One of the tippers threatened him, saying: ‘I’ll just smash my way out.’”


The farmer replied:

“‘That’s why I bought a £200 car.’ The dumpers left their truck at the scene and it was seized by the police who are investigating”.


I hope that a prosecution resulted from that incident.

Amendment 41 does not really fit with the other amendments, but in the interests of moving things along I agreed to group it with the others. This articulates an extremely important point of principle about compostable packaging. Big brands are expanding their use of these materials in the search for alternatives to plastics. Meanwhile, consumers seek out compostable packaging, with 83% of them saying in polling that they prefer it to traditional plastic. The question is how the materials are then composted. Food waste schemes provide the means for compostable materials to be disposed of safely and efficiently, but only if there is consistency across England, so that consumers know that these materials should go in their food waste bin.

The amendment refers to flexible materials, properly certified to internationally recognised standards. The items that we are really concerned with are films, which are very difficult to recycle. Indeed, the amount that is recycled remains stubbornly low, at only 6%, according to WRAP figures. In Committee, the Minister said to me:

“If a plastic is genuinely compostable and not going to break down into small particles of plastic that will do even more harm, including it in food waste to compost would make perfect sense. However, we are not there yet from a technological point of view. We certainly do not have the confidence to do that.”—[Official Report, 30/6/21; cols. 916-7.]


At that time, I asked the Minister for a meeting, to which he agreed. Despite pressing his private office to arrange this, there has been no offer of the promised meeting to discuss the straightforward difference of understanding between us on this issue. Evidence from the Association for Renewable Energy and Clean Technology, whose members include composting and AD plants, shows that 42 composting plants and some of the 90 AD plants treating food waste are currently able to accept and process compostable packaging. These plants would welcome a visit from the Minister.

The UK Plastics Pact sets a target to ensure that 70% of plastics are effectively recycled or composted by 2025. That cannot happen while a quarter of plastic packaging is flexible material but only a tiny fraction can be recycled, particularly where the film is very thin and where it is food-contaminated. Compostables must be part of the picture. In answering Amendment 41, would the Minister please agree to meet compostable film producers, as well as those composting them successfully, and to visit one of the sites where this is happening? If he is not satisfied with the current evidence, would he commission research, through Defra, to look at how bioplastics are processed in composting plants here in the UK? It cannot be right for these materials to be stripped out by processing plants and incinerated or sent to landfill. This is betraying the customer and the consumer. I beg to move.

[Baroness Jones of Moulsecoomb (GP)]

My Lords, it is a pleasure to support the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell of Hardington Mandeville. I apologise for not having signed the CCTV amendment; I did not spot it. Fly-tipping is something that I do not think any of us would support. Of course, it has inherent dangers, not only to the public but to wildlife in affected areas, especially if it contains toxic materials such as asbestos. There can be damage to watercourses and soil quality from the dumped waste.

Greenpeace has some quite interesting stuff on this. It has been checking areas and samples of materials resembling topsoil, covering large areas of the ground at sites where plastic waste has been burned because people do not know what to do with it, were found to be composed of shredded plastic and not earth at all. That then just gets washed out everywhere. We all know what microplastics are doing to our ecosystem.

I shall keep my remarks brief because we are all tired, but I point out that the Local Government Association is also urging people to dispose of their waste properly, which is fair enough, using the nearest household waste and recycling centre. It has worked tirelessly to keep these open during the pandemic. It also talks about wanting furniture and mattress companies, for example, to do more to offer take-back services to reduce the amount of waste produced. That is something we have not explored enough. In places such as Germany, they take back lots of packaging and so on, and they will take back items. We are very behind on that in this country.

Amendment 41, about plastic, deals with a very complex area. A lot of the plastics that are called biodegradable, disposable and so on are actually not. We have to be very sure: what we need are definitions of what “biodegradable” and “compostable” mean. We need plastic—so-called plastic or whatever it is—to be compostable in average situations; that is, in my compost heap and not necessarily under ideal temperature- controlled conditions. I would argue that these amendments are very valuable and give all sorts of good ideas to the Government. I hope they take them up.

[The Duke of Montrose (Con)]

My Lords, I am very glad to join in this debate on fly-tipping, spilling over into the world of plastic disposal. I am a farmer, and the NFU has voiced its support, as the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, mentioned, because it is a huge problem in some areas, along with all anti-social behaviour. Around where I am, the anti-social thing tends to be people taking things away rather than bringing things along, but that is another topic. They come and chop down trees to have bonfires and so on.

Perhaps the noble Baroness, Lady Bakewell, can tell us what she has discovered about restrictions on having CCTV. It is very easy nowadays. We have done it already. We have a movement-sensitive camera that can be set up anywhere. It will record whatever can be seen in infra-red so that you can do it at night. I do not know if there is a restriction in law that prohibits this being used as evidence, but it would be an important thing to do.