Crime and Policing Bill

Viscount Hailsham Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

I do not wish to move the amendment.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think it inappropriate that, although Amendment 14 was not moved, it should be spoken to.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

For the administrative ease of the House, I have not moved Amendment 14, but I do have another amendment in this group, Amendment 21, which I do intend to talk to, if that is in order.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I do not want to intrude unnecessarily, but I did have a brief word to say about Amendments 14 and 21, both of which I welcome very much. This arises from a particular problem I had in my own area. We had a very efficiently run waste disposal area, which was closed—and the consequence was that we had a lot of fly-tipping. The advantage of Amendments 14 and 21 is that they would impose on the waste disposal authority certain obligations: obligations to pay and obligations to clear away the mess. The advantage of that is that it may make the waste disposal authorities much less willing to close sites. If the sites remain open, the prospect is that fly-tipping will not be as great. I was going to support Amendments 14 and 21, because what they would do is valuable, in the sense that it would encourage waste disposal authorities to keep sites open, and not to close them.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the support of my noble friend.

This is an important issue. I have campaigned for many years around fly-tipping and the importance of having a stronger regulatory settlement, so I very much support my noble friend’s amendments in this group. It is a very large-scale problem: the noble Lord, Lord Katz, I believe, referred at an earlier stage to an estimate of some 1.15 million fly-tipping events reported to local authorities. That is a huge number, and I expect that that thoroughly underreports the true scale of the problem.

The noble Lord, Lord Katz, was kind enough to write to me in response to a question I raised on 17 November in Committee, when I inquired as to the number of cost recovery orders that had been successfully made by the courts. It appears that the Government do not hold that information. I looked at the manifesto, about which we have heard an awful lot in this Parliament, and indeed today, and there was a commitment to make the fly-tippers pay for the clear-up, yet the Government do not hold the statistics. I am slightly puzzled as to how the Government are going to make progress on that without holding the relevant information. The noble Lord, in his letter to me, did say that 1,378 fines had been made in respect of fly-tipping. That is a tiny number: it is 1 in 1,000, or 0.1%. It is quite clear —the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, in response to a question about the Kidlington outrage, agreed—that the current regulatory position is not working. This is a particular issue in the countryside, where there is a heavy burden on farmers, as we have heard. Here, I declare an interest of sorts, as the owner of a farm.

I have Amendment 21 in this group. Its effect is simple: it would place a duty on local waste authorities to remove waste and then to attempt to pursue cost recovery from the culprits. It builds, really, on Amendment 13, in my noble friend’s name, which seeks to amend the guidance. Both have a similar intent. In my view, it is simply unfair that the victim of the crime should be responsible for clearing it up. There are many factors that drive this crime, but at least two are within the direct control of public authorities as a whole—namely, the pricing of the landfill tax and, as my noble friend referred to, the accessibility of waste disposal facilities, and the Environment Agency and police enforcement effort.

My noble friend referred to the incident reported of a farmer who recently had 200 tonnes of rubbish dumped on his land. This is a perfect illustration of the problem that landowners, and indeed community trusts and others—for example, sports grounds and football clubs and so forth—can face. This individual faced a bill for some £40,000. Now, I understand that the council and the police had failed to identify the culprits and had failed to protect him after repeated previous incidents. Indeed, he alleges that he had also been the victim of intimidation. Why should he face financial ruin for the failures of public authorities to protect him from the actions of a criminal gang?

I would argue that it is simply not realistic, nor is it fair, to expect landowners to take on the role of detective to identify offenders and then to pursue them for the recovery of costs. They do not know how to make the various agencies involved work more effectively, they are vulnerable to intimidation and they do not have the resources.

The time has now come for the responsibility for protection, clear-up, investigation and prosecution to sit with the appropriate and relevant public agencies. To my mind, the arguments for doing this are clear, as it would create a complete system where public sector agencies control landfill pricing, access to legitimate waste disposal sites, identification and prosecution of culprits, and recovery of costs. This would incentivise the Environment Agency, the police and local waste authorities to be much more proactive in pursuing the culprits, facilitating their prosecution and recovering their costs. It would allow for faster removal, which is a very important factor. With waste lying around on farmland, private land or any open ground, one thing follows another, and more suddenly turns up. It would also give much fairer treatment to landowners.

It is clear that the current system is not working. On the one hand, we have had a member of the public being fined for pouring the dregs of her cup of coffee down the drain, but, on the other hand, no one seems to have noticed or done anything to stop at least 300 heavy goods vehicles dumping upwards of 10,000 tonnes of rubbish illegally in Kidlington. How can that possibly have happened? How can we have confidence in the system? If it cannot catch 300 trucks, what chance does the poor landowner have in this type of situation? This is a failure of the whole government system in the broadest sense of the term—central agencies and local—to protect victims. They now need to take responsibility.

I support my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower’s other amendments, all of which are designed to strengthen the regulatory settlement to tackle fly-tipping. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

--- Later in debate ---

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

I am grateful to the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower, and the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, for setting out the case for these amendments. I am also grateful for the comments made in support from the noble Lords, Lord Hogan-Howe and Lord Elliott, among others. I will refer to other colleagues in a moment.

I think that we can all agree that fly-tipping blights communities, adds to the burdens on local authorities and there is a need to take action on this. I welcome the fact that my colleague, Mary Creagh MP, in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as referenced by a number of noble Lords, has this very day issued a press release urging councils to crush more fly-tipping vehicles. She also issued new guidance for local authorities to crackdown on waste crime and ensured that we have our first overview for councils, offering clear instructions on the identifying, seizing and disposing of vehicles and strengthening deterrents. She also gave guidance for maximising public awareness and ensuring that the Environment Agency has new technology and boosted funding to put more waste crime officers on the ground. By happy coincidence, that happened this very morning, ahead of our debate here today. The statutory guidance in Clause 9 will help in that regard.

I will now comment on the amendments before the House, starting with Amendment 13. I note the technical issue mentioned by the noble Lord, Lord Carter of Haslemere. I would have referred to it had he not done so. I endorse that. I also note the comments of the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on the issue in Amendment 13.

I recognise the financial burden that clearing fly-tipped waste places on landowners. I say to the noble Lord, Lord Davies, that, currently, where there is sufficient evidence, as per the point made by the noble Earl, fly-tippers can be prosecuted. On conviction, a cost order can be made by the court so that a landowner’s costs can be recovered from the perpetrator. If sufficient evidence is not available for a successful prosecution—this is, again, a point mentioned by the noble Earl, Lord Russell—there will not be sufficient evidence to force a fly-tipper to take responsibility for the clean-up either. If there is a prosecution, the clean-up can, in effect, be added to the sentence. It is therefore unclear how Amendment 13, by addressing this in statutory guidance, would help, when a criminal prosecution is already the best route for the desired outcome.

I note that Amendment 21, which was moved in the name of the noble Viscount, Lord Goschen, and had the support of the noble Viscount, Lord Hailsham, seeks in effect to place a duty on waste authorities to clear up waste left by fly-tippers. Again, I fully understand and share the sentiment behind the amendment. It is legitimate to ask why a farmer, landowner or occupier of any land should be liable for clean-up costs. As I have said to the House, where there is a conviction, the courts currently have the necessary powers to make the offender meet the clean-up costs. We encourage local authorities to investigate all incidents of fly-tipping, and the guidance today is clear evidence of the Government’s willingness—

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

Would the Minister be good enough to focus on this argument? If a burden were placed on the waste disposal authority, either by being liable to clear up the mess or by having to pay for it, it would be much less willing to close waste sites, and if waste sites are kept open then fly-tipping is likely to diminish.

[Lord Hanson of Flint (Lab)]

The noble Viscount tempts me down the path of the direct responsibility of local councils, but that goes slightly wider than the amendments before us today. My point is that if there is already a conviction of someone for fly-tipping then the courts have the power to make the offender meet the clean-up costs. We encourage local authorities, as again by today’s guidance, to investigate all incidents of fly-tipping, including those on private land.

We also want to make good the enforcement powers, as I described. Defra is talking to a number of groups, such as the National Farmers’ Union and the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group, to promote and disseminate good practice. However, the problem I come to again is that, where there is no prosecution and conviction, the long-established position currently is that local authorities are responsible for cleaning up fly-tipping on public land, while the landowner is responsible where the offence is committed on private land. I accept that that is unfair, it is a challenge and it is a cost to local taxpayers and landowners alike, but it would be a fundamental shift of responsibility for cleaning up waste on private land to hard-pressed local authorities, from the position where the local individual landowner themselves currently provides that.

Again, I want to put on the record that the Environment Agency does not have a responsibility to clear illegal waste sites, but it does so where—to go back to what the noble Lord, Lord Cromwell, said—there is a potential risk of fire, there is a risk of impact on the watercourse or there are other environmental factors. I come back to what the noble Earl, Lord Russell, said: prevention, better enforcement, and the provisions in this Bill and other actions the Government are taking forward, are the way forward on these issues.

Amendment 19 sought to ensure that penalty points would be added to the driving licence of an offender for fly-tipping. Again, I hope I can help the noble Lord by saying that the Government are currently considering the benefits of adding penalty points to driving licences for fly-tipping offences. I noted the questions from the noble Earl, Lord Russell, on that, but there is still potentially a benefit in this area. However, I cannot accept the amendment at the moment, not least because any amendment would have to be considered under the Road Traffic Offenders Act 1988, which deals with driving licence enforcements, as opposed to the Environmental Protection Act 1990. However, the Government are looking carefully and quickly at the issue of penalty points and, although I cannot accept the amendment today, we will have to look at how we can put that principle into practice in due course.

Amendment 20, in the name of the noble Lord Davies, which was spoken to by the noble Lord, Lord Jackson of Peterborough, and the noble Earl, Lord Russell, would add the offence of fly-tipping to the list of offences for which vehicles may be seized. I understand the sentiment behind the amendment but, as I have said, local authorities already have the power to seize vehicles linked to waste crime under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, and vehicles can be kept, sold or disposed of by local authorities.

I will refer to today’s press notice, which is available on GOV.UK. It says that the new guidance published today

“will provide the first comprehensive overview for councils, offering clear instructions on identifying, seizing, and disposing of vehicles involved in fly-tipping, as well as advice on taking cases to court and securing convictions against vehicle owners”.

I think that best practice is intended to provide, not replace, statutory documentation. It is therefore an important matter to my colleagues in Defra to ensure that we bring forward that statutory guidance on fly-tipping to examine the case for penalty points and how we deal with those matters in due course.