Waste and Recycling
Debate between Adam Jogee and Mary Creagh(1 week, 6 days ago)
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Mary Creagh
I am very happy to look at that, but I gently tell the hon. Gentleman that after more than a decade of austerity, providing more services with less money is a challenge, and many local councils have not been able to square that circle. Rather than indulging in thinking about what could be done in a perfect world, we have to look at the world we are in and ask, “What can we do?” It is clear that this three-legged stool of reforms will put some much-needed fresh cash into the system, so that the various municipal collections can be ready for the go-live dates, and there may be opportunities in that.
We have had several debates about fly-tipping, and there were more than 1 million fly-tipping incidents in 2022-23, which is 10% more than we had three years ago. As the hon. Member for Stockton West said, Stockton-on-Tees alone has had 1,700 fly-tipping incidents. We cannot allow these incidents to continue, and I pay tribute to the many local litter groups he has met. I will have the enjoyment of meeting the Aylesbury Wombles in Parliament this Wednesday, and there are little groups everywhere.
We want fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created, and we must take back our country from these criminals who blight our communities and undermine legitimate businesses. I look forward to providing details on that.
Adam Jogee
I am grateful to my favourite Minister in His Majesty’s Government for giving way. Notwithstanding any legal action relating to Walleys Quarry, will the former Secretary of State, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay), and the Minister join me in paying tribute to all the hard-working, good and loyal subjects in Newcastle-under-Lyme who campaigned, day in and day out, for clean air, healthier lungs and the kind of change we so desperately want to see?
Mary Creagh
What we saw there was a local community campaigning to stop the stink, and I am pleased that the regulator has taken swift action.
On the point raised by the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire about energy from waste, his Government failed to reach their recycling targets. We do not support over-capacity of energy from waste, and incineration should be an option only for waste that cannot be prevented, reused or recycled, such as medical waste or nappies.
In the waste hierarchy, recovering energy from waste is still preferable to disposing of waste in landfill. It maximises the value of the resources being disposed of, and avoids the greater environmental impact of landfill, which continues for generations, as we have heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee). We cannot solve today’s problems by storing them up for future generations, so we will shortly publish our analysis of the need for further energy from waste development in England, following delivery of our reforms. However, I make it clear that it is for the relevant planning authority to determine the need for proposed developments. Our capacity assessment will help inform decision making on planning.
Mary Creagh
I am very keen to set the record straight, Madam Deputy Speaker. The House will have heard what the right hon. Gentleman had to say. It is important that we do not incinerate recyclable materials. The environmental permitting regulations prevent the incineration of separately collected paper, metal, glass or plastic waste unless it has gone through some form of treatment process first, and, following that treatment, incineration is the best environmental outcome. As I say, we will publish our capacity assessment before the end of this year, and we do not support incineration over-capacity.
If we look at the waste hierarchy, waste incineration does not compete with or conflict with recycling. I think the right hon. Gentleman may have been talking to Madam Deputy Speaker when I was describing my visit to Rugby, where it is possible to see some uses for energy from waste that help with the hardest to abate industrial sectors. The process for cement, for example, requires a furnace that is heated to 1,400°C. In my view, the end result in that case means that it is a good use of incineration. That is what comes out of the municipal recycling facilities—out of our black bins—and it is the very tail end of the waste process I have described.
We have consulted on expanding the UK emissions trading scheme to include waste incineration and energy from waste, in order to divert plastics away from incineration. We are taking on board responses, and we will detail final policy on that in due course. We are including energy from waste under decarbonisation readiness requirements. We believe that any energy-producing waste facility seeking an environmental permit needs to look at how it will decarbonise. Moving to a circular economy is no small task, but we will do so by working collaboratively, and across this House, building on the policy left by the previous Government.
Adam Jogee
The Minister talks about the importance of working across Government, across this House and across our communities. Notwithstanding her position as my favourite Minister in His Majesty’s Government, I gently put to her the importance of looking at councils that give planning consent to developments in and around landfill sites. In Newcastle-under-Lyme, a number of housing developments have been built right around Walleys Quarry. That has a material impact on the health and wellbeing of the people who move there, and more generally on how our community is viewed. I urge her to have the appropriate conversations with colleagues across Government to ensure that the 1.5 million homes that we all want are built in the right places, with the right communication and consultation when decisions are taken.
Madam Deputy Speaker (Ms Nusrat Ghani)
The Minister may wish to check Hansard to see how many times the hon. Member has mentioned his “favourite Minister”.
Mary Creagh
Indeed, and how many times my hon. Friend has mentioned Walleys Quarry.
Mary Creagh
I think the kindest thing that we can say is that the experience of Walleys Quarry is a learning experience for us all. I have a former landfill site in my constituency that has been properly remediated and covered over, with housing built alongside it. It started out as a clay quarry for brickmaking. Then it became a landfill site for the council, and now it is housing, but the site has been properly remediated. I think the problems have come through a lack of guidance and regulation about where housing can and should be built, an understandable keenness to build the homes that people desperately need, and a failure to understand that things should not be placed 30 metres away from a landfill site. It is simply not acceptable. Certainly, that is a learning point that we are bringing into the planning and infrastructure Bill.
Moving to a circular economy is no small task, but we are committed to playing our part, building the UK Government’s reputation at home and abroad, and driving green jobs, green growth and the green shoots of recovery in every nation and region of our country.
Question put and agreed to.
Fly-tipping
Debate between Adam Jogee and Mary Creagh(3 weeks, 5 days ago)
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Mary Creagh
I think there is a really interesting philosophical reflection there, because one person’s rubbish is another person’s treasure. I remember leaving a beautiful Italian leather bag outside my house—it had a hole in it, and had come to the end of its life with me—and I thought I would put it on the doorstep and see what happens. Someone knocked on my door and asked if that bag was to go, and I said yes, and she was so pleased. Maybe she was going to take it away and sew it. There was also a tradition when I lived in Belgium of the braderie, where people put their stuff out—got rid of things from their granny’s attic, got rid of different things, like a massive car boot sale, because people like to get a bargain—and I do think there is a role for people to do that. We do not want to stop people putting things out for other people that might be useful, but I encourage people to ask, “Is it going to rain? Is the item going to be destroyed?” It needs to be done in a sensible way. On the council clearing things up, one often finds that other people come along and clear it up before the council even gets there.
Councils have enforcement powers to punish those who harm our communities and to deter other would-be offenders, and I encourage them to make good use of those powers, including their power to prosecute. I pay tribute to the council in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford for their actions. Fly-tipping can lead to a fine, community service or even imprisonment.
Sentencing is a matter for the courts, but the national fly-tipping prevention group, which is chaired by officials from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, has produced guidance to support councils to present robust cases to court. I urge colleagues to encourage their councils to join that group, because there is no monopoly on wisdom in this area and it is good to share initiatives such as the wall of shame.
Instead of prosecuting, local authorities can issue fixed penalty notices of up to £1,000 to those who fly-tip or of up to £600 to those who pass their household waste to someone who does not have the proper licence. They also have powers to stop, seize and search the vehicles of those suspected of fly-tipping. They have the powers; whether they have the finances and resources after losing almost two thirds of their budgets after years of cuts to local authorities is a different question. Ahead of the previous fly-tipping debate, I wrote to those councils that reported no enforcement actions in 2022-23, and I will consider what further action is needed to encourage more councils to increase their efforts to bring them all up to the level of the good.
We are under no illusions about the scale of the funding pressures that local authorities face, and I know that many colleagues have served on local councils. We are committed to resetting the relationship between local and central Government, and we will get councils back on their feet by providing multi-year funding settlements, ending the competitive bidding for pots of money and reforming the local audit system.
My hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford raised the issue of rural fly-tipping, as did my hon. Friend the Member for Halesowen (Alex Ballinger). Some 80% of farmers have been affected by fly-tipping on their land. We will continue to work with the National Farmers Union and others to promote and disseminate good practice on how to prevent fly-tipping on rural land.
The public have a vital role to play in tackling this, because 60% of fly-tips involve household waste. Householders must check the register of waste carriers to avoid giving their waste to rogue operators who promise quick, cheap waste collection.
Adam Jogee (Newcastle-under-Lyme) (Lab)
The Minister will not be surprised to see me in a debate on waste, which I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Tristan Osborne) for securing. Will the Minister join me in paying tribute to constituents of mine like Norma in Red Street and Jane in Bradwell for their commitment to safe and clean streets and for their consistent reporting of fly-tips to both me and the council? I assure the Minister of my complete commitment and support for her zero-tolerance approach in tackling fly-tipping and waste crime in our communities.
Mary Creagh
It is good to see my hon. Friend. I have been travelling in Azerbaijan where I could not get his texts and phone calls, so I have had a week off, but I am glad to see that he is back, as an almost permanent shadow. I have not had my latest Walleys Quarry update, but I am sure that will come shortly after the debate. I pay tribute to the persistence of his constituents, Jane and Norma; from their Member of Parliament, I see that the Newcastle-under-Lyme persistence is contagious, and I pay tribute to him for everything he has done on behalf of his constituents in this area.
It is important that we educate householders about their duty of care in this area. I am considering reform to the waste carrier, broker and dealer regime to make it easier to identify rogue operators. I have met representatives of the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management to talk about how we can introduce qualifications around licensing. I am keen to do as much as we can in that area.
Whether they live in the countryside, a town or a city, people should walk through their community feeling proud of a clean environment that is free of rubbish and litter. That is why, with councils, communities and local authorities, we will work together with regulators to force offenders to clean up their mess, put a stop to the waste criminals and keep our communities clean.
Waste Crime: Staffordshire
Debate between Adam Jogee and Mary Creagh(3 months, 2 weeks ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this debate and on his ongoing work for his constituents. I extend my best wishes to his father and wish him a speedy recovery. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he did on this issue before coming to this place, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones).
Everybody’s environment starts outside their front door. We have heard today of issues outside the front doors and on the school playing fields and sports grounds of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire more widely. We have heard some powerful speeches and interventions, in particular from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), whom I am delighted to see back in this place.
The Government will ensure that those who illegally dump their waste are brought to justice. Waste crime and poor-performing waste sites threaten our environment and, in some cases—as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said—our health. The truth is that the system we inherited is broken. We have heard of the perfect storm of cuts to councils, police officers and the Environment Agency, and a system that has had no new policy for 14 years and is based on paper-based notes kept in people’s drawers. That is an anachronism in the 21st century and, as we have heard, it is being exploited by waste criminals up and down the country.
Waste crime costs this country £1 billion a year. We know that 18% of waste may be handled illegally at some point in the waste supply chain. We have to plug the gaps and fix the system—we pretty much have to rebuild it. At the end of March 2024, there were 320 known active illegal waste sites, and 141 of them are high risk.
Waste crime is hugely under-reported: only 25% is reported. The Environment Agency deals with a huge number of reports of waste—it received 9,000 in 2022—and has only 240 officials to process them. We do not need to do the maths—we have some young people in the Public Gallery, and I am sure they are better at maths than me anyway. It is impossible for the agency to follow up every single crime. We need to start tightening up the system and seeing the patterns, and we need different agencies to work together.
This situation cannot continue. In our manifesto, as part of our crackdown on antisocial behaviour, we committed to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created. We will take our country back from the fly-tippers and waste criminals who disgrace and despoil our communities, damage our environment and undermine legitimate businesses that do the right thing, play their part and fully comply with the regulations.
My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme asked me whether the system is fit for purpose. My answer is that it is not, and we will take action at pace to tackle this. As a mission-led Government, we will achieve our aims by focusing on ambitious, measurable and long-term objectives that will provide our driving sense of purpose. We will be publishing a circular economy strategy to move us to a future in which we keep our resources in use for longer and reduce waste. That will increase investment in critical infrastructure and green jobs. Of course, waste crime, whether in Staffordshire or elsewhere, threatens that circular economy because it takes out resources and undermines businesses that are doing the right thing.
There is an important distinction to be made between waste crime, which is often associated with serious and organised crime and organised crime groups, and permitted but poorly performing waste sites, of which Walleys Quarry is the pre-eminent example in this country. The approaches to mitigating the impacts are very different. Over the past four years in Staffordshire, the Environment Agency has ensured that four illegal, high-risk fire sites have been cleared of waste—more than 40,000 tonnes of baled waste—which was sent to suitably permitted facilities, reducing the fire risk and protecting more than 12,000 properties from the impact.
I must also say something about batteries. Every supermarket has a battery collection point, but the little lithium-ion batteries are tiny, and we cannot be bothered, we do not want to collect them or we just forget to take them to the supermarket; it is very easy just to chuck them in the bin. The problem, however, is that when the waste is crushed in the machinery, the battery can spark. When thinking about such issues, it is incumbent on every single person in this room or watching at home online to ensure that we do not put our batteries into our household waste.
There is a big education piece to be done on that. I pay tribute to the councils that have taken that to heart. I was reflecting as I was listening to the speech about Stoke-on-Trent Central and what had happened there. I asked for fixed penalty notice stats from all the authorities in Staffordshire. In 2022-23, Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council issued only three fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping, with zero prosecutions, but under Stoke-on-Trent city council’s “Don’t be an IDIOT” campaign, there were 875 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping and nine prosecutions. That probably puts that city council at the top—certainly in the top half, maybe the top 10%—among local authorities in the country. I pay tribute to the work of that Labour-led council.
Adam Jogee
I thank the Minister for her initial remarks in response to this debate. I echo the point she made about the leadership being shown by Stoke-on-Trent. I dearly wish that Conservative-led Newcastle borough council would follow that example of cleaning up the streets and the “IDIOT” campaign, which would give my constituents the benefits they deserve.
Mary Creagh
We all have a lot to learn from each other. I offer those statistics in the spirit of co-operation and encouraging good practice.
Between January 2023 and 2 August 2024, there were 21 substantiated illegal waste sites in the Staffordshire area, and all 21 of them have been stopped from operating, the vast majority within three months of being reported to the Environment Agency. Five have been fully cleaned up, while the risks posed by the remaining sites are being managed and monitored.
The Environment Agency regulates more than 10,000 waste permits, the majority of which are in the top compliance bands. However, I am aware that 3%, or about 300, of those permits attract public interest because they are not in compliance. Those disproportionately take up resource, energy and regulatory activity. I stressed to the Environment Agency officials whom I spent time with today ahead of this debate that my top priority is to take action to bring those sites back into compliance and, where necessary, to embark on criminal investigations.
Walleys Quarry, one such non-compliant site, has been a source of concern for residents over several years, as we have heard. This morning, I was informed that it is the worst-performing waste site in the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme asked for a meeting with me, and I am only too happy to meet him. I shall ask Environment Agency and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs officials to be in the room for that meeting, so that we can have a full discussion and get to the bottom and the heart of what is going on.
The Environment Agency has carried out significant activity since 2021—more than for any other regulated site—and a criminal investigation is also under way, about which I cannot say more for fear of prejudicing those inquiries. However, the local residents and councillors who are in the Public Gallery today have had to put up with unacceptable levels of hydrogen sulphide. Interestingly, that substance comes from the plasterboard that we all have; it happens when it is broken down and smashed up. As we try to design in a circular economy, we must think about what materials we use in our home and what happens to them, because there is no such place as “away” at their end of life. It is not acceptable for odours to reach a level that causes serious offence to local communities. I am pressing the Environment Agency to keep all regulatory options under review and look at its enforcement and sanctions policy.