Crime and Policing Bill

Earl Russell Excerpts

Committee stage
Monday 17th November 2025 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I wholeheartedly support my noble friend. He has done the Committee a great service by bringing forward these amendments. The Bill is indeed very broad, and the question of fly-tipping falls very squarely within its auspices.

This is a very serious issue indeed, and it is undertaken by a range of criminals, from small one-man bands to large, organised gangs, and everything in between. The fact is that we still have a really serious problem, which is not taken sufficiently seriously by law enforcement. Therefore, we have to bring forward measures that the criminals will be frightened of and will not just consider as a cost of business of being in that field. They must be concerned about the potential loss of their vehicles and the potential removal of—or, at least, adding of points to—their driving licenses. I could not agree with my noble friend any more; he has absolutely hit the nail on the head.

There is another very important measure, on which we will hear from my noble friends on the Official Opposition Front Bench in a few moments, around equity. It is inequitable that the person who is the victim of this crime must be responsible for clearing it up—that is just completely wrong. I have never understood why that should be the case.

I declare an interest of some description in that I have a small farm in Devon. I really feel for landowners and those who have responsibility for land. They go into their fields to tend their stock and then see massive piles of waste that could contain everything from biowaste to asbestos, to building products, and so forth, and then somehow it becomes their problem to find the means to clear it up. This is wrong, so we ought to use the Bill, in a very positive way, to remove that burden on the victims of crime and put it on the perpetrators, with support from local authorities.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, I will respond briefly to this group of amendments. Fly-tipping is out of control and a very serious problem. As we have heard, farmers and innocent landowners often end up paying the cost for other people’s criminality. The Government’s own statistics show that around 20% of all waste generated ends up being illegally managed. These figures highlight the absolute scale of the problem. With profits being up to £2,500 per lorry, if you start driving 30 lorries a day, the profits soon add up. So this is no longer a small matter of rural dumping but a major criminal enterprise—it certainly spreads into major criminal enterprises—which damages our ecosystems, undermines legitimate businesses and leaves legitimate legal landowners with responsibilities.

We on these Benches start from the position that prevention is better than cure and call on the Government to make rapid reforms and approaches to these issues through a lens of fairness, proportionality and effective enforcement. We stand firmly behind innocent landowners and want to see progress made on these matters. The law needs fundamental and major reform. We would like to see that happen.

Amendment 40 concerns the forfeiture of vehicles under the Environmental Protection Act. We can see the logic in removing Section 33C(7), strengthening the ability to confiscate vehicles used for fly-tipping offences. Its removal concerns the offenders’ need to use the vehicle for lawful purposes—well, they should have thought about that before they started using it for illegal ones. However, enforcement agencies must ensure that these powers are used proportionately if the Government agree to them.

Amendments 41 and 42 relate to landowners and the bills that they are facing from others’ criminality. We support the principle that the polluter should pay and that those who dump waste should be caught and prosecuted. However, we have some concerns about these amendments. This is a complicated matter and the truth is that most of these criminals are not caught. Convictions are often far too lenient. Often, when people are caught, the authorities lack the financial capability to track down sufficient funds to meet clean-up costs. This can all take considerable time, during which there is ongoing environmental damage.

Amendment 42 comes as a package deal with Amendment 41. It states categorically:

“Any guidance issued under this section must state that the costs of removal of illegally tipped refuse will not fall on the landowner on whose property the refuse was dumped”.


The trouble is that it does not say who does pick up the cost. It raises a lot of questions without providing enough answers. In some cases, we are seeing criminals even buying land specifically for the purposes of dumping waste—it is so profitable to do so. I am worried about the nuance of the law in this. I fully recognise that the law needs full reform. I have every sympathy with what the noble Lords are trying to do. I am just not certain that, as drafted, these amendments would do what the noble Lords intend.

Amendment 46 seeks to add a penalty point to driving licences of those convicted of fly-tipping. This is about creating a potentially powerful deterrent. This policy was a hangover from the last Conservative Government which was not legislated for. Fly-tippers depend on their vehicles to carry out their criminal activities. This is an amendment that we generally welcome and support. I would be interested in the Government’s response to it.

Amendment 47 goes further by seeking to amend the Police Reform Act to allow vehicles used in fly-tipping to be seized. Local authorities already have a lot of these powers to seize vehicles. This amendment would take it further. I am interested in the Minister’s response to this amendment. Separate to these amendments, I ask the Government to go further and consider giving local authorities greater powers to stop vehicles that are suspected of taking part in fly-tipping and to create greater co-operation and intelligence sharing between local authorities and the police.

Some of the answers to these questions revolve around our policy of a national fund to support innocent landowners who fall victim to this, rather than this approach and these amendments. We call for that fund to be enacted from levies on waste carriers and for that money to help innocent landowners who find themselves the victims of others’ crime.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Earl Russell]

43: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Serious and organised waste crime: national action plan(1) The Secretary of State must regard serious and organised waste crime as a strategic priority threat.(2) In furtherance of the strategic priority in subsection (1), the Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC) must follow an approach based on reducing serious and organised waste crime.(3) The JUWC must establish a national action plan to further the priorities of—(a) reducing the impact of waste criminality where it takes place,(b) preventing people from engaging in serious and organised waste crime,(c) protecting the UK’s critical infrastructure, environment, and communities, and(d) prosecuting and disrupting people engaged in serious and organised waste criminality.(4) JUWC partners must use all their relevant specialist skills, experience and investigative and intelligence in furtherance of the priorities in subsection (3).(5) A relevant person must, so far as appropriate and reasonably practical, cooperate with the JUWC to further the priorities in subsection (3), including by— (a) sharing intelligence on waste crime, (b) reporting incidents of waste crime, and(c) sharing connections between waste crime and other forms of serious and organised crime.(6) The national action plan may include a single point for receiving and disseminating reports of waste crime.(7) In this section—(a) “JUWC partners” means—(i) Environment Agency;(ii) National Resources Wales;(iii) Scottish Environmental Protection Agency;(iv) Northern Ireland Environment Agency;(v) His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs;(vi) Police;(vii) National Fire Chiefs Council;(viii) British Transport Police;(ix) National Crime Agency;(x) Revenue Scotland;(xi) Welsh Revenue Authority;(xii) Environmental Services Association;(xiii) Chartered Institute for Waste management.(b) a “relevant person” means—(i) regional organised crime units,(ii) local police forces in England and Wales, and(iii) local authorities.”Member's explanatory statement
This amendment takes forward recommendations of House of Lords Environment and Climate Change Committee. It requires the Secretary of State to designate serious and organised waste crime as a strategic priority threat. It also requires the Joint Unit on Waste Crime to establish a national action plan and places a duty on relevant persons to cooperate with the JUWC in furtherance of the plan’s priorities.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

My Lords, in moving Amendment 43, I shall speak also to Amendments 44 and 45, all on serious and organised waste crime. By chance, I found myself involved in this since those from the save Hoads Woods campaign came to me. That resulted in a ministerial direction and resulted in the clean-up of Hoads Wood at a cost of £15 million to the taxpayer, equivalent to the Environment Agency’s annual budget for fighting waste crime. It also led to the Environment and Climate Change Committee conducting a short inquiry into these matters, which has reported in the last couple of weeks. My amendments deal with some of the key findings from that report.

I do not wish to jump the gun, but some of these matters are clear cut; they are urgent, and I want to keep up the pressure. The Bill represents a vital opportunity to make progress, and it is progress that I do not want to be missed. I know that the Government have inherited broken systems and are committed to making reforms, particularly on the broker and dealer regulations, which I welcome and thank them for doing. The work done by the committee clearly shows that all parties recognise that this is a problem and is out of control. The findings paint a picture of fundamentally broken systems, where criminality is endemic in our waste sector. The key is to treat it as an organised crime problem and provide the right tools with which to fight it. We need to fight fire with fire.

While we sit with bits of paper that are easily forged, criminal networks buy land under false ID, using the dark web and secret apps to communicate with each other. I have no wish to blame individuals, but broken systems are creating broken results. This is a £1 billion a year problem. These criminal organised gangs are also involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery. There is the sheer scale: 38 million tonnes—enough to fill Wembley stadium 30 times over—is believed to be illegally managed every year.

We need look no further than the devastating environmental catastrophe that is unfolding in real time in Kidlington, Oxfordshire, as has already been mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, which came to light just this weekend. My heart sank when I saw this, because this dump—150 metres long and 6 metres high—threatens to become an environmental disaster, with toxic leachate running into the River Cherwell, which is only metres away. It feels like Hoads Wood has been allowed to happen all over again. I do not understand how, for months and months, lorries were allowed to dump this stuff and nothing has been done. I ask the Minister seriously to consider meeting the costs and to work with local residents and the council to ensure that that clear-up takes place. That is extremely important.

Without swift and decisive action, we will continue to draw ever more sophisticated criminal networks into the UK waste sector. The National Crime Agency warns that this is now a strategic threat. Beyond financial losses, this is not a victimless crime; there are damaging consequences for public health and the natural environment, and we, the taxpayer, are left to pick up the bill.

We welcome the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, but it has only 12 individuals and has no statutory footing or clear strategic direction. There needs to be better co-operation between partners. The committee heard witnesses say that this is the Bermuda triangle of intelligence—information is simply lost between partners and falls between the cracks. Amendment 43 would require the Secretary of State to take serious and organised waste crime as a strategic priority threat and to mandate the Joint Unit for Waste Crime to establish a comprehensive national action plan. That would focus on prevention, protection and prosecution, underpinned by effective intelligence sharing. It would place a duty of co-operation on all relative public bodies and enforcement agencies, ensuring that intelligence and expertise flow across the system. The national action plan would create a single point for receiving and disseminating waste crime reports.

Members of the public report this and get rightly frustrated when nothing happens. The need is clear: these issues are falling between organisations and jurisdictions, and all the while it is the criminals who are benefiting. Amendment 44 calls for greater transparency and accountability. Openness and accountability are key to understanding the causes and the scale of organised waste crime. A lack of transparency benefits only the criminal networks.

When the Environment Agency was asked by the Environment and Climate Change Committee how many sites of a similar size to Hoads Wood existed, the answer given was six. However, since then Sky News has reported a site in Wigan and, as we have heard, there is the site in Kidlington which was publicised in the press at the weekend. It is not clear whether those two sites are additional, but time will tell, and we need to know the true scale. We cannot effectively fight that which we do not know. More than numbers, it would require location, sizes, types of waste and what action is being taken to clear up these tremendous, huge waste piles. This amendment is also essential; these matters need to be legislated for as otherwise they will not be properly reported.

Amendment 45 is the linchpin of the committee’s recommendations. It would establish a root-and-branch review of serious and organised waste crime which would be independent of Defra, the Environment Agency and HMRC. The committee found multiple failures by the Environment Agency and criticised the regulators for being slow to respond. Despite receiving over 24,000 reports of waste crime in three years to March 2025, the EA opened only 320 criminal investigations. HMRC has achieved zero criminal convictions for landfill tax fraud, despite the tax gap being estimated at £150 million annually. The independent review scrutinised the egregious events at Hoads Wood, the fact that they were reported for years and that it took until January 2024 for the EA to obtain a restriction order. Clearing up the six sites that are already known about could cost close to £1 billion if the cost is similar to that of clearing Hoads Wood.

These are very important issues. Critically, we want to see a change in the financial rules set by the Treasury that prevent the Environment Agency diverting income derived from environmental permits on legitimate businesses towards dealing with criminal activity. Additional funding provided to the Environment Agency for 2025-26 should be maintained.

To conclude, I recognise that the Minister has not had long to consider the committee’s report, and that a formal response is not due until the start of December. My hope is that there is time for a formal response to the committee’s report prior to the Bill’s Report stage. I hope that the Government are minded at least to take an initial look at the amendments. If it is helpful, I am fully prepared to work and co-operate with the Government in any way I can. I beg to move.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

May God and my noble friends forgive me, but I think our Lib Dem Peers have a good point, particularly with regard to the new clause proposed in Amendment 43. I will not repeat what the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said, but the letter from our chair of the Environment and Climate Change Committee is absolutely spot on. The crime is massive—costing the country £1 billion per annum—and the environmental damage is enormous. I was not aware that our committee had carried out a short investigation, and I had not focused on Amendments 43, 44 and 45 until I saw the horrendous photos and videos last Friday and Saturday of the hundreds, possibly thousands, of tonnes dumped on that back lane in Kidlington, just six yards from the River Cherwell. The local MP and others have called it an environmental catastrophe, and that is no exaggeration.

This criminality is happening all across the country. I was on the board of Natural England when our SSSI at Hoads Wood was destroyed by 30,000 tonnes of illegal waste, dumped over a period of many months before the Environment Agency was aware of it. The agency then issued a notice barring further access to the site and is now spending £15 million to clean it up. The cost of cleaning up the Kidlington dump is estimated to be greater than the local authority budget.

Many have criticised the Environment Agency but I will not slag it off—at least, not too hard. Its main response is to issue a notice stopping further dumping, but inevitably that is weeks or months too late and the criminal gangs will have found new sites by then. This level of mega organised crime is way beyond its capability. It is a licensing organisation. It can do criminal investigations, but not of this complexity. It is easy for it to investigate a leak into a river from a factory, or prosecute a farmer who illegally dredged the River Lugg, but this level of organised crime is way beyond its capacity to investigate.

Conclusion 2 in the letter to the Defra Secretary of State from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, is so right. She says:

“What we do know, however, is that criminality is endemic in the waste sector. It is widely acknowledged that there is little chance of criminals being brought to justice for committing waste offences—the record of successful prosecutions and other penalties is woeful. Organised crime groups, including those involved in drugs, firearms, money laundering and modern slavery, are well-established in the sector. They are attracted to the low-risk opportunity to make large sums of money and commit crimes from coordinated fly-tipping to illegal exports and landfill tax fraud”.


When I was on the board of the Food Standards Agency until 12 months ago, I had responsibility for the National Food Crime Unit. We found that the gangs involved in recirculating condemned food back into the food chain, usually to the catering sector, were also involved in moving stolen high-value cars, JCBs, drugs, mobile phones, et cetera. They were simply movers and distributors of all high-value stolen property or illegal items. If you have the network to move stolen vehicles then you have the network to dump thousands of tonnes of rubbish also.

How much money do these organised crime teams make from illegal dumping? The cost of legally disposing of mixed waste is up to £150 per tonne, and up to £200 per tonne for hazardous waste. A legal company would have to charge that fee, which includes the landfill tax of £94 per tonne. All these crooks have to do is put in a bid slightly below £150 and they would probably get the contract, including from possibly legitimate companies that did not know that they were dealing with crooks—it is possibly more likely that they would know, but they take the cheaper option and deny responsibility. The crooks who dumped at Hoads Wood probably made away with about £4 million: 30,000 tonnes at a profit of £130 per tonne. At Kidlington, let us say that they dumped 10 loads of 30 tonnes each day for 30 days. That is 900 tonnes, or £120,000 pure profit—dirty profit, to be more exact.

Although Amendments 44 and 45 are okay, they are not the important ones in this group. Of course there is no harm in more data, but we already know how serious the problem is, as our Lords inquiry has shown. Conducting a review to report by 2027 sounds a bit like that wonderful line from Sir Humphrey Appleby in the “Yes Minister” episode “Doing the Honours”, when he said,

“I recommend that we set up an interdepartmental committee with fairly broad terms of reference, so that at the end of the day, we’ll be in the position to think through the various implications and arrive at a decision based on long-term considerations rather than rush prematurely into precipitate and possibly ill-conceived action which might well have unforeseen repercussions”—

to which Hacker says: “You mean ‘no’?”

However, the new clause in Amendment 45 has one good gem in it—namely, proposed new subsection (2), which says that the review must consider

“the extent and effectiveness of integrated working between the Environment Agency, HMRC, the National Crime Agency, local police forces in England and Wales, and local authorities”.

That leads me on to the noble Earl’s Amendment 43, which has a very sensible key suggestion: beefing up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. I know that the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, whom we all respect, said in answer to an Oral Question in this Chamber on 15 October that Defra had increased the budget for the EA to use on the joint unit by 50% and that the number of staff had doubled. I have no real criticism of Defra, but that will still not work because the Environment Agency is the wrong organisation to lead it.

We are talking about massive, organised crime of £1 billion. There is only one organisation capable of leading a multiagency task force on that, and that is the National Crime Agency. I urge the Minister to take this back to the Home Office, discuss it with Defra, the EA and the NCA, and, without changing everything, give the National Crime Agency the lead in tackling this. As I and the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, have pointed out, these same criminals are involved in high-value stolen goods such as mobiles, construction equipment, drugs—all stuff way out of the league of the EA but bang in the bailiwick of the NCA. If the noble Earl, Lord Russell, can come back with a simpler amendment on Report on something like that, then I would be minded to support him.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Katz (Lab)]

I thank the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, for that point. I appreciate what he is saying. I am not aware of the events that led up to the time it took to issue this enforcement action, and it would be wrong for me to speculate. I am afraid I have not yet had the time to review the Hansard report of the Urgent Question, but I suspect we may have some of the answers to that question if we review the Commons Hansard report of the Urgent Question that Calum Miller asked of the Government today.

I understand the point the noble Viscount is making, and in the future should I be in the position to report back, I will offer more information. All I will say is that one would hope—I am not speaking out of turn, I simply do not know the facts—that there would be community action and community reporting of this in strength. The Environment Agency only has so much resource; it cannot be all-seeing and so it cannot take enforcement when it does not know the action there. I am not suggesting that that was the case in this situation in Kidlington, but it is important for us to take wider societal responsibility to address these issues.

I am fortunate that the London Borough of Camden, my home borough, has an app through which I can always report fly-tipping, which is nowhere near on the scale of Kidlington. I am an avid user, and therefore I take responsibility. My kids hate me stopping to take pictures of rubbish when I am walking along with them, but I use it because that means that the offence is noted and recorded, and then action is taken. In tribute to Camden, it is usually taken quickly.

[Earl Russell (LD)]

I thank all those who have spoken in this group and the Minister for his response to my amendments. I recognise that the Government have inherited this problem, and I recognise that they are putting more resources into it through the plans for brokers and dealers and through digital waste tracking, which I hope are brought forward as soon as possible. That will start to make some concrete changes to these issues.

That said, however, this problem is out of the Government’s control and more needs to be done. It is not acceptable that these serious organised criminal gangs are exploiting loopholes in the system, destroying our countryside and leaving a mess behind them. Therefore, I want to see action on that.

I fully recognise that the Select Committee report came out only two weeks ago and that the Government are not due to respond until 9 December, as the Minister said. I am sure that the Minister also recognises that, if I did not raise these points in Committee, I cannot bring them back at Report. I think there is a commonality here on the need to address these issues, and I hope that between now and Report we can have further conversations and co-operate on these issues.

Returning to Kidlington, I know there was an Urgent Question. I had an opportunity to have a word with my honourable friend on that prior to the Statement. It is important that this site is cleared up and that the Government help meet the costs for that. I encourage the Minister to consider using a ministerial direction, if needed, to make sure that that happens. That said, I hope that, when the response to the committee’s report comes, the Government recognise that it is a serious job of work and that it takes a unique and forward-thinking perspective on genuinely trying to find ways to address and resolve these problems. With that, I beg leave to withdraw my amendment.

Amendment 43 withdrawn.