Environmental Permitting (Waste Controlling or Transporting) and Relevant Functions of Primary Authorities (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2026

Lord Blencathra Excerpts

Tuesday 14th July 2026 Grand Committee

[Earl Russell (LD)]

I thank the Minister for introducing these regulations, which we on these Benches welcome warmly. As the Minister is all too aware, I have raised the issue of waste crime in the House several times. I am genuinely pleased that these regulations are arriving as a crucial part of the of the long-term solutions we need to get control of our waste system and lock the criminals out.

As the Minister said, this SI does not arrive in isolation; it follows the Waste Crime Action Plan and the instrument beginning the rollout of real-time digital waste tracking. Together with the exemptions reform promised later this year and next April’s instrument completing end-to-end digital tracking ahead of the deposit return scheme, we are finally beginning to see the basic architecture this sector has needed for years, so that we can know who is moving waste and where it is going, and make sure our systems are fit for purpose. This is the first time I have been able to say that I am really hopeful and see a future and a way forward. I really do welcome this.

On the Environment Agency’s own estimates, around 18% of the waste in England passes through criminal hands at some point in its journey. This structural feature of the current system has been allowed to flourish for a number of years. As a result, we have a big historic legacy of waste sites that need to be cleared.

I note that the Environment Agency’s watchlist for high-priority sites has grown to 139 as of 10 July. I welcome this transparency but, again, this legacy still needs further work. I thank the Minister and officials in the Environment Agency for all their work and for the change of culture under this Government over the last 18 months or so. That is genuinely welcomed.

Turning to the instrument itself, as the Minister said, it replaces the older carriers, brokers and dealers’ registration system with a proper environmental permit split sensibly into three categories: waste controlling, waste transporting and combined activities, so that oversight can match risk rather than applying as a single blunt instrument. Gone, hopefully, are the days when it was possible to register your dog as a waste carrier. Permits will run for three years, and the Environment Agency gains real power to check before granting a permit, rather than acting only after the damage is done. It also gains powers to suspend and revoke. This is a genuine structural improvement.

I want to be fair to the Minister on timing—she has already spoken about this—but obviously, this instrument has been a long time coming. Consultations closed in 2022, but the delay is not down entirely to this Government, but to past Governments. It is great that this instrument is here.

I have several questions. On exemptions, how will the department ensure that charities and other low-risk categories are not quietly colonised by operators or organised criminal networks seeking to avoid scrutiny? Will monitoring be ongoing, not one-off assessments at the drafting stage? On interrogation, how will permitted regimes interact with the digital waste tracking that has already been rolled out? Obviously, a permit is only as good as the data behind it. On exports, illegal and misdescribed waste exports remain a major route for criminal activity. What assessment has been made of this instrument’s bearing on waste that should not be leaving our shores or that is doing so mis-permitted?

On funding and delivery, with £45 million in new money for the Environment Agency—we obviously welcome that—and several reform strands running in parallel, how will the Government monitor and review the programme as a whole, not just instrument by instrument, so that we know how the money is working and that it is delivering the results we expected? Does the Minister agree that we need overall benchmarks and reporting across this piece, as we are undertaking these various strands of structural reform?

On industry awareness, reform closes a loophole only if waste producers know that carriers need a permit and that there are checks that one is in place. What steps will ensure that businesses understand this, that they are encouraged to apply for the right permits and that they know what they need to do? I slightly worry that the resources for this information part of working with industry may not be sufficient for that structural change across the whole industry.

This instrument is to be renewed in three years’ time, so can the Minister confirm that at that point, proper checks will be in place to review what happened over the first three years, on an individual carrier and broker basis? A permit granted once and never revisited would simply not resolve the problem and could allow illegal activity to continue.

On transition, criminals and the organised criminal networks adapt quickly—sometimes much more quickly than Governments can. We have this 12-month window during which the old registration remains valid. In this transition period, what work is being done to make sure that that is not an additional opportunity for the organised networks to exploit the change of system?

None of this works without an Environment Agency properly funded and staffed to issue permits, monitor compliance and take enforcement action against those who ignore them. So what continuous review are the Government undertaking to make sure that the Environment Agency has the staffing, the computer systems and the ability to conduct all the tasks that it needs to do?

We absolutely welcome this instrument and are really pleased to see it. It is about time that we turned the tables on these organised criminals. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, has a Private Member’s Bill coming up, and I encourage the Minister to work with her on trying to offer whatever support the Government can for it.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

My Lords, I thank the Minister for bringing these regulations before the Committee. I can be commendably brief—or briefer than I normally am—because we give a very warm welcome to these excellent regulations. We on these Benches have repeatedly raised waste crime and called for tougher measures against the perpetrators. During consideration of the Crime and Policing Bill, the Government did not support our amendments to give police the powers to seize the vehicles of perpetrators of these crimes. I am sure that, if the Minister were to draw this to the attention of the excellent, caring and meticulous Lords Minister for Crime and Policing, he might wish to reflect on this again.

Nevertheless, we welcome this step to better monitor the transportation of waste, taking into account which activities are low risk and which are high. These regulations are at least intended to ensure compliance and better identify criminal activity. I understand that the consultation demonstrated that a majority of respondents supported replacing the carriers, brokers and dealers’ registration system with this permitting regime under the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016. That said, can the Minister outline how the Government will ensure that businesses are made aware of the changes, as well as their ability to afford the costs involved, because there will be permit fees, registration fees, time costs, technical competence costs, tax, et cetera?

These regulations give more power to the Environment Agency, as well as responsibilities to issue permits. The increased enforcement costs are estimated to be £22.1 million, but the Explanatory Memorandum also states:

“The Environment Agency may benefit from efficiency savings”.


So can the Minister provide an exact figure for how these savings will be made?

More broadly, I come back to the one major quibble we on the Opposition Benches have had—making the National Crime Agency the lead in the joint unit on tackling waste crime. We are dealing with massive, organised crime here. I perfectly well accept and believe that if a farmer’s slurry tank leaks, the Environment Agency is the perfect body to investigate it, as with a leak from a factory.

--- Later in debate ---

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My Lords, I thank noble Lords who have taken part in the discussion and all noble Lords for their strong support for the measures being brought forward. As noble Lords have said, this has been a long time coming, so it is really good to see that we have finally got this in front of us today. One thing that has come across really clearly, not just today but in a number of questions and parliamentary debates, is the huge problem of criminal waste activity that now blights so much of our countryside. There were a number of questions asked. I will do my best to cover them off, and if there is anything else I have missed, I will make sure I get back to noble Lords in writing.

First, on evaluation and monitoring, we recognise that tackling waste crime requires sustained effort and a willingness to adapt as circumstances evolve. Delivery of the waste crime action plan will be accompanied by a process of continuous review and improvement. We will also regularly assess the effectiveness of the measures that are introduced. We will consider any new evidence as it emerges and, importantly, identify opportunities to go further where existing interventions are not achieving the desired outcomes. This is designed to ensure that our approach to tackling waste crime remains agile, responsive and focused on achieving lasting change.

The Environment Agency is also developing improved indicators for 2026-27, including measures on larger-scale offending, response times and deterrence. The current Environment Agency scorecard metric covers only a narrow proportion of illegal waste activity. Waste crime is hard to measure as it is deliberately hidden: only around 27% of incidents are actually reported. Defra is working closely with EA to deliver new indicators, improving visibility of the problem and getting a better grip on it.

Defra is leading the delivery of the waste crime action plan, working closely with the Environment Agency as the national lead for waste crime. That is being done alongside HMRC, the Home Office, police forces and local authorities, because if we are going to successfully tackle this, we need co-ordinated cross-government action. As I mentioned in my speech, we have committed an extra £45 million over three years, and an extra £5.6 million uplift in 2025-26, designed to increase front-line enforcement, intelligence and operational capacity, so we have more officers, specialised units and multi-agency activity.

We are also bringing in structural reforms, including CBD reform, digital waste tracking and exemption reforms. They are being implemented to design crime out of the system so that prevention and compliance are integral, rather than relying on reactive enforcement alone. We are also driving through other concrete operations measures: earlier interventions, permit action, restriction notices, prosecutions, use of advanced technology including drones and satellite imagery, and strengthened intelligence via the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, which I will come on to shortly. On monitoring effectiveness, we will deliver improved metrics but also review the multi-agency waste crime response and adapt its delivery so that the action plan remains live and responsive.

The noble Earl asked about digital waste tracking. It will work by requiring information to be submitted to a central system of all movements of hazardous and non-hazardous waste, with a few pragmatic exemptions, from the point the waste is produced to the point it arrives at the waste receiving facility. It will replace paper processes with consistent, near real-time data, improving traceability and highlighting any unusual movements linked to misdescription, diversion or illegal export. That is one of the ways in which we will tackle the illegal export issue that the noble Earl asked about. The first phase started in April, and it will be mandatory from October. The second phase will cover the whole waste movement chain. It is planned that that will be available for all relevant operators to use voluntarily from spring next year, with a mandatory rollout from the following October.

The noble Earl raised the exemptions. We need to reform the waste exemption regime because we need to stop criminals having the opportunities they currently have to hide illegal activity behind permit exemptions. That is why we are removing the three most abused exemptions and tightening up conditions on the others. Exemptions allow low-risk waste activities to operate without a permit, but we know that some have been widely abused by criminals. We will also bring in limits on quantities, tougher operating conditions and stronger record-keeping. We need to remove the weak points and protect the permitting regime. We are currently working on what the necessary legislative amendments would look like for that. Again, when doing that, we will take into account some of the issues that the noble Earl raised, as we do not want to cause problems for people who are legitimately doing their work.

The noble Earl also asked about businesses and people working in the system. Clearly, when designing regulations such as this, we have to work with those who will use them, to ensure that they work in the most effective way and we do not end up realising that they are not practical when we start monitoring. It is all about how things will practically make a difference.

On the Explanatory Memorandum, the noble Lord, Lord Blencathra, asked about the Environment Agency and efficiency savings. The new controllers and transporters system will mean that operators are required to submit more detailed information as part of their permit applications. This information will be used by the Environment Agency to more efficiently identify high-risk operators and conduct monitoring and compliance work.

The noble Lord referred to the £1 billion cost of cross-county organised crime. The way that we will try to work with the National Crime Agency, which is the point the noble Lord was speaking to, is that the Joint Unit for Waste Crime will provide the crucial collective operational capability. To ensure that the wider system for tackling waste crime remains effective in the face of an evolving threat, Defra is working closely with the National Police Chiefs’ Council and the Home Office to undertake a review of the end-to-end multi-agency response to waste crime. That will cover areas such as information sharing, local-to-national co-ordination and prosecution capabilities. The review will also identify opportunities to strengthen how agencies work together and ensure that the overall system remains effective, resilient and equipped to meet future challenges. The existing capabilities, including the JUWC, will continue to play a key role within this strengthened framework.

[Lord Blencathra (Con)]

I take that to mean that, although the National Crime Agency will not be put into the lead, it will have an enhanced role. Is that what the Minister said?

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

Defra and the Environment Agency will be the lead, but we will work absolutely hand in glove with those other agencies to make sure that they effectively tackle the problem we have. As I say, we will monitor anyway so, if we find that it needs changing in any way to strengthen that, we will be able to do that once we have continued to review and monitor. We are bringing all these changes in because we want to make a difference and we want to stop what has been happening.

I have mentioned to the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, that I would be very happy to meet her to discuss her Private Member’s Bill, and I hope we can do that in the not-too-distant future.

I appreciate the noble Baroness, Lady Coffey, coming in to offer her support for this SI. As she said, this has taken a long time, and I am sure she did quite a bit of work on it, so it is important to see that work started by one Government has been completed by another. With that, I commend the regulations to the Committee.