Water (Special Measures) Bill [Lords]

Dave Robertson Excerpts

2nd reading
Monday 16th December 2024 Commons Chamber

[Tim Farron (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)]

It is a great privilege to speak on this Bill on behalf of my party, and a still greater privilege, I dare say, to speak as the Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale, which includes Windermere, Ullswater, Coniston Water, Haweswater, Rydal Water, Grasmere, Elterwater, Esthwaitewater, Brotherswater, the River Kent, the River Eden and much of Morecambe bay. We are a stunningly beautiful part of the country, and also one of the wettest. For us, water is unavoidable and precious. It is precious to our biodiversity, our heritage and our tourism economy.

As the House may have noticed, the Liberal Democrats chose to make water the centrepiece of our election campaign. So much so that my right hon. Friend the Member for Kingston and Surbiton (Ed Davey) spent much of the campaign in the stuff. We continue to champion a radical restructuring of our water industry, because water is the most vital of resources and because we cannot allow a continuation of the poor regulation, wanton pollution and abuse of power that became hallmarks of the water industry under the Conservative Government.

There is much to welcome in this Bill, including criminal liability for chief executives who are responsible for severe environmental failure—a measure that I remind colleagues was proposed by the Liberal Democrats before the last election, and that Labour refused to support at the time because it believed the measure to be unnecessary. We are pleased that Labour now agrees with us.

We are also encouraged by the proposals to increase some of Ofwat’s powers, to introduce a fit-and-proper-person test for chief executives, to institute an automatic fining system that makes sense, to install real-time monitors, and to create greater data transparency. All these measures are welcome, and they will all help, but they do not yet amount to the radical structural transformation that is so obviously needed.

The recent announcement of Sir Jon Cunliffe’s review is welcome, but it is also kind of frustrating. It suggests that the Government might well be up for a more radical change, just not yet. The review will not conclude until next summer, of course, after which many people, including in the Treasury, will need to go over its proposals before it hopefully makes it into a King’s Speech, running the risk that the more ambitious part 2 might not find its way on to the legislative timetable in this Parliament.

Of course, fixing the entire water industry and sewerage system is not an overnight job, but this feels like an especially ponderous way to solve such an urgent and pressing issue.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

The hon. Gentleman talks about the perils of acting too slowly, but given that a Liberal Democrat was in charge of the water industry when it was privatised, does he not think that we might all be paying the price for the error of acting too quickly in that instance?

Oral Answers to Questions

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Thursday 14th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)]

The hon. Lady raises an important question. That is a delicate issue because it has been raised by the European Union, but we are absolutely determined to maintain our position.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

T5. I welcome the record allocation for agriculture in the Budget. However, the simple fact is that that agriculture budget is no good if it stays in the Whitehall coffers. Last year, there was a £300 million underspend in the agriculture budget, worth more than £1,400 on average for every single farm holding in the country. What steps is the Secretary of State taking to guarantee that every single penny of that budget gets to communities such as Lichfield, Burntwood and the villages?

[Daniel Zeichner]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is extraordinary, given all the sound and fury from the Opposition, that they did not even spend the money that was available. This Government will ensure that every penny we have gets to farmers, because we are on the side of British farmers, rather than whipping them up in the kind of irresponsible way that the Conservative party has been doing.

Rural Affairs

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Monday 11th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Phil Brickell (Bolton West) (Lab)]

I thank the Secretary of State for his remarks, and I particularly welcome his warm words on cleaning up our rivers, growing the rural economy and investing in flood defences. My constituents in Bolton West are extremely proud of our rivers, streams, waterways and lakes. They bring life to our countryside, and play a crucial role in preserving our biodiversity and fighting climate change—a danger all too real, given the increase in flooding and wildfires on the moors in my constituency. With that in mind, I wish to focus on access to our waterways and our countryside.

I am sure that colleagues will agree that I have the pleasure of representing the most beautiful constituency in the country, with Rivington, Winter Hill and the west Pennine moors all on our doorstep. That is why I am proud to say that the Labour party has a long history and proven track record of giving people freedom to enjoy our countryside, including through the National Parks Act and Access to the Countryside Act 1949. Indeed, the House will note that 2024 is the 75th anniversary of this seminal piece of legislation, and that Labour Governments also introduced the groundbreaking Countryside Act 1968 and the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. However, more than 20 years after the CROW Act was passed, access to nature is under threat.

The benefits of access to both the countryside and our waterways are well documented. Physical inactivity is associated with one in six deaths in the UK; according to the “Outdoors For All” campaign, it is estimated to cost us £7.4 billion every year. Obesity costs the UK £58 billion, and poor mental health costs the UK between £53 billion and £56 billion. That is why I welcome the Government’s commitment to get 3.5 million more people active by 2030 through their “Get Active” strategy and, likewise, their commitment to give the public access to green and blue spaces within a 15-minute walk of home through the environmental improvement plan, which is highly commendable. Currently, however, 19.6 million people do not enjoy that privilege. I draw the Minister’s attention to the “Outdoors For All” campaign, which is run by a coalition of 51 organisations, ranging from the National Trust and sporting national governing bodies such as Paddle UK to the British Mountaineering Council and the Wildlife Trust. The campaign’s excellent manifesto calls for an extension of the public’s open access rights to the countryside and to water.

When it comes to recreation, the UK is truly a pioneer both in and on the water. Indeed, 7.5 million people were estimated to have gone paddling in 2023. Millions more row, sail and swim. However, access to our nation’s waterways is woefully inadequate compared with almost every nation in Europe and around the globe. The current policy of pursuing piecemeal voluntary access arrangements is plainly unworkable, because a river might cut through thousands of properties. How can one authority be expected to negotiate simultaneously with thousands of landowners and on behalf of the public? How can local arrangements provide the same clarity that our rights-of-way network grants walkers, given that arrangements may differ from river to river, boundary to boundary, and riverbank to riverbank? With more people than ever paddling and swimming for health and wellbeing, we have to reconsider our approach. The Secretary of State has repeatedly committed to expanding responsible access, and the Labour manifesto commits to nine new river walks. I would very much welcome more information on those in due course. It is high time for a White Paper on access to nature, including on our waterways. I hope that the Minister will consider that, and I would be happy to meet him or her to discuss it further.

I am aware of intensive lobbying by some landowners who see access to water or the countryside as an infringement on property rights. To those people I say: these spaces belong to all of us. A strong code of responsible access—such as the paddlers’ code, developed by Paddle UK and Natural England—would mitigate harm and disturbance to our precious environment. After all, look at all the work that recreational users, including paddlers, swimmers, rowers, anglers and sailors, have done to campaign for cleaner water, to clear plastic pollution, and to tackle invasive non-native species. In many cases, recreational users are the custodians of our nation’s waterways. Our ire should be directed at those responsible for the industrial-scale pollution in the water sector, and for the systemic run-off of chemicals into our waterways.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

Does my hon. Friend—like many Members across the House, I am sure—support the idea of a bathing status award for water quality?

[Phil Brickell]

Yes, I think there is considerable merit to making sure that not only our inland waters but our coastal waters are accredited with viable bathing status.

That brings me to my second topic. For years, under the previous Conservative Government, water companies have been pumping sewage into our rivers and lakes with little fear of consequences. We live in a country where parents think twice about letting their children surf, swim or paddle, for fear of them contracting all manner of diseases, some of them life-threatening, and that is frankly unacceptable. Surfers against Sewage has done tremendous work in holding polluters to account, and I draw the Minister’s attention to its “End Sewage Pollution” manifesto.

Since 2019, under the Conservatives, untreated sewage has been discharged into our waters over 1 million times, and that requires real punishment for those who flout the rules. To that end, I very much welcome the Water (Special Measures) Bill, which I hope will introduce new penalties for water companies and block bonuses for water bosses, who have all too often turned a blind eye to the damage that their firms have done to our waterways. To conclude, I ask the Minister for three simple things on behalf of my constituents: clean up our water; give us access to it; and invest to tackle flooding.

Budget: Implications for Farming Communities

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Monday 4th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Daniel Zeichner]

The last farmer I spoke to over the weekend congratulated me on what we were doing.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

There appears to be a lot of discussion about agricultural property relief on inheritance tax today. Could the Minister confirm what percentage of the farms that claimed more than £1 million of agricultural property relief in the past two years actually received any agricultural income in the past five years?

[Daniel Zeichner]

I will have to go away and get the answer to that, and I will write to him.

Independent Water Commission

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Wednesday 23rd October 2024 Commons Chamber

[Steve Reed]

It is always a pleasure to hear from the hon. Gentleman. Of course water is devolved in Northern Ireland. It will be for the local authorities there to make their own decisions about how to correct problems in beauty spots such as Lough Neagh.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

My constituency is made up of 21 local government wards. One of them, Bagots and Needwood, was subjected to 3,000 hours of sewage spills in just one year. Can the Secretary of State assure me that, after 14 years of failure from the Conservative party, the commission will leave nowhere to hide for criminal water bosses?

[Steve Reed]

That is absolutely the intention.

Waste Crime: Staffordshire

Dave Robertson Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[Adam Jogee]

My hon. Friend rightly speaks of the importance of cross-agency working to get those issues addressed. I represent a number of farmers in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I know that my farmers will share her farmers’ concerns. I thank her for raising that point. We all have examples of waste crimes that have taken place, yet there are plenty of examples where there is no enforcement or prosecution. Has the Minister assessed the adequacy of the long list of offences, and if so, is she happy with them? If she is not, what is the plan to ensure that we get that right?

The impacts of waste crime are widespread, with adverse effects on our constituents, businesses, public services, the environment and the economy. For example, illegal waste sites can pollute the environment through the release of noise, dust, surface or groundwater contamination, or through unauthorised fires and burning. This applies to Walleys Quarry, formerly Red Industries RM Ltd, in Newcastle-under-Lyme, both in terms of dangerous and unacceptable levels of hydrogen sulphide being pumped into my community and of the fire that took place on the evening of 4 August 2024. Sites such as Walleys and other relevant landfills are unlikely to treat the waste in compliance with environmental best practice. Those companies divert waste from legitimate businesses, reducing their potential income streams, viability and competitive advantage. The cost of ameliorating fly- tipped waste falls to public services and our constituents.

I am grateful to Keep Britain Tidy for its helpful briefing ahead of this debate—I suspect that colleagues who are here would have enjoyed that briefing, too. I acknowledge all the work that Keep Britain Tidy does to reclaim our green spaces, to clean our streets and roads and to keep our communities safe and clean.

[Dave Robertson (Lichfield) (Lab)]

Will my hon. Friend give way?

[Adam Jogee]

I will give way to another Staffordshire friend.

[Dave Robertson]

I thank my hon. Friend for initiating such an important debate on this most pressing issue. Does he agree with me that voluntary organisations such as those in my constituency, Burntwood Litter Heroes and Lichfield Litter Legends, really deserve the support and respect of their Members for all the work they do to keep our communities tidy, alongside the work of Keep Britain Tidy?

[Adam Jogee]

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I, too, pay tribute to the organisations in his constituency that do so much important work. I very much like the alliteration of Lichfield Litter Legends, so he can pass our collective best wishes on to them.

Fly-tipping is the top environmental challenge faced by many communities, not least in Staffordshire, as we have heard from my hon. Friends the Members for Lichfield (Dave Robertson) and for Tamworth (Sarah Edwards)—neighbours, in fact. Despite resources going into tackling fly-tipping—education, monitoring, enforcement and removal—incidents of fly-tipping continue to increase. The education point for real people in the real world, as opposed to rich criminals in the waste crime world, is so important. This must be about pride—pride in our communities, in our homes, towns and villages—and this new Government, our Government, must lead by example and help to restore that.

In a previous life, I worked for the then shadow Minister for waste crime, my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones). She often raised in debates—I know, because I wrote many of the speeches—the high levels of recycling in Wales, so what discussions has the Minister had with the Welsh Government about best practice, and what lessons can we learn from the Labour Government in Wales? I see that my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of Glamorgan (Kanishka Narayan) is here.

This issue is of particular concern to residents on The Paddocks in Cross Heath in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and I am working with Councillor John Williams and Councillor Gill Williams on how we can hold the borough and county councils to account. Fly-tipping is also an issue for many residents in Bradwell. I thank one particular resident, Jane Rushton, for her tenacity and her commitment to keeping her community clean and free of fly-tips— I was at her house quite recently; she makes a very good cheese sandwich and an even better date loaf. I know that she is working with Councillor Andrew Fox-Hewitt, Councillor Lesley Richards and Councillor Annabel Lawley to do just that.

The Environmental Services Association—the trade body representing the UK’s resource and waste management industry—published back in 2021 a report entitled “Counting the cost of UK Waste Crime”, and these figures are relevant to now. It broke down the estimated financial impact of waste crime in England from 2018 to 2019 as follows: fly-tipping cost £392 million, illegal waste sites £236 million, misclassification £120 million, exemption breaches £87 million, illegal exports £42 million and waste fires £22 million. That was then and this is now. They are extraordinary sums, so can the Minister let us know what assessment has been made of the financial impact of waste crime in the last year, 2022-23? I suspect that she will have to write to me; I do not expect her to have all those figures now, but I will appreciate a written response.

Back in January 2018, the last Conservative Government published their 25-year environment plan, which set an ambition to eliminate waste crime and illegal waste sites over the lifetime of the plan, so by 2043. There is no evidence of that in Newcastle-under-Lyme, and while I urge the Minister to commit to eliminating waste crime and illegal waste sites, I urge her to give us deeds and not just words. Can she confirm that the Government will update the 25-year environment plan to make it fit for purpose?

In 2018, the Environment Agency was given new powers to tackle the problem of illegal waste sites. That included the power to lock up sites, to block access to them and to require rogue operators to clean up their actions, so I ask the Minister the following questions: how many illegal waste sites have been locked up since 2018? How many illegal waste sites have had access to them blocked? What does the requirement on rogue operators actually look like?

Turning to the disgraceful story of Walleys Quarry, I pay tribute to every local who has expressed their concern and tried to fight for the clean air and safe environment that everyone in our country and our constituencies deserves. I thank all who have campaigned to “stop the stink”. I first met Dr Scott, a GP in Silverdale, back in 2021. The situation facing local people has only got worse since then, when he made the health impacts clear, as he did last month at the public inquiry that the council held. I also acknowledge Dr Mick Salt for his tireless commitment and sheer tenacity—the theme here is that there are tenacious people aplenty in Newcastle-under-Lyme—and every local person who cares about getting the issue resolved.

I am pleased to welcome two of my constituents, Sheelagh and John, who made it down from Newcastle-under-Lyme to be in the Public Gallery for this debate. We are also joined by the deputy mayor of Newcastle-under-Lyme—the shadow Minister will be pleased to know that Councillor Robert Bettley-Smith is a Conservative —and Councillor Jacqueline Brown, a good friend of mine and an excellent Labour councillor in Silverdale.

Finding a way through on Walleys cannot be party political. For too long, the previous Conservative Government refused to engage meaningfully with the Labour Opposition— I know, because I worked for the shadow Minister at the time. For too long, in the council chamber at Castle House in Newcastle-under-Lyme, good ideas tabled by Labour councillors were voted down by the Tories purely because they were Labour ideas. That is no way for us to deliver for the people who sent me here. I welcome both members of the council to this debate, and I appreciate their support for my efforts to get the blight that is Walleys closed, capped, and safely and securely restored.

That will not be easy—if it were, surely to God it would have happened already. My constituents have had enough. They want to know what actually has to happen for action to be taken. How bad do things have to get? How many people need to be stuck in their homes, unable to open their windows, sit in their gardens or breathe without inhaling toxic fumes? They want to know why Newcastle feels like a dumping ground for other people’s waste. They want to see real action from those with enforcement powers to clean their air, to hold the operators to account and finally to rid our town of the disgusting, disgraceful and toxic levels of hydrogen sulphide.

My first words in the House after taking my oath were on Walleys. I promised local people that I would hit the ground running and that I would champion their determination for clean air and healthier lungs, heads and hearts. I have tried to do exactly that.

In August, Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council held a two-day public inquiry into Walleys Quarry. I share my opening remarks with the House. These words were said on behalf of those who live, learn and work in my constituency:

“Like so many of the people who live, learn and work in Newcastle-under-Lyme, I am angry—angry that nothing has changed, angry by the failures of the Environment Agency to give local people what they need—which is action not words.

I have been the MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme for almost 6 weeks”—

or had been then—

“and there isn’t a day that this disgraceful situation isn’t raised with me. I will work every day to get justice for local people and give us the chance to finally move on.

Just this morning, I was with local businesses and heard the impact and pressures they face.

Over the last week, I have heard from many local people terrified by the fire that took place on Sunday 4th August.

And I note that we still wait”—

or at least we did then—

“for the results of the fire investigation—we need to know what happened, why it happened and what lessons will be learned to make sure that it doesn’t happen again.

And hours after the fire, the site was accepting waste again—that is completely and utterly unacceptable in my view. No operator who wants to be a fair and good neighbour, who had regard for the impact on residents would have accepted waste so quickly.”

--- Later in debate ---

[Gareth Snell (Stoke-on-Trent Central) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing such an important debate in Westminster Hall so early in what I know will be a long and illustrious parliamentary career.

Although the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) may have left, I want to pick up the point he made. Waste crime is often seen as an almost harmless activity and as something that does not hurt anybody, so the urge to deal with it does not necessarily manifest itself in immediate action. The hon. Member talked about the necessity of having significant fines that are robustly levied and vigorously collected, which would be a huge deterrent for rogue operators. Whatever form their action took, they would know that there was a penalty for the blight they cause to communities and the damage they do to people.

I will constrain my comments, first, to the Walleys Quarry site, which my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme mentioned. Starting 14 years ago, I had the pleasure of being a district councillor in the neighbouring authority of Newcastle-under-Lyme. The very first piece of casework I had was about Walleys Quarry—the smell emanating from it, the activities happening on site, and the questionable content of lorries driving up Cemetery Road on quiet mornings, with flocks of seagulls feasting on what was deposited. There have been several operators since then, but even at that time it was impossible to get to the bottom of what was going into the site and what was happening there. The situation was opaque, with obfuscation and sleight of hand by people who, I believe, simply tried to tell the community, “It’s all good. It’s all fine. By the way the landfill fund that your community can bid for offsets the fact that we’re here.” One day, they tried to blame the smell on the neighbouring sewage treatment plant, directing me and my ward colleagues to talk to Severn Trent Water about what they said must obviously be a faulty sewerage outlet.

Unfortunately, that attitude summed up any interaction I had with the operating company for many years. The concerns of residents were secondary, and as long as the company was bringing in the waste and able to put it in a hole, cover it with a layer of clay and say that it was capped off properly, it was not particularly worried about the impact. That has gone on for years and years, so I genuinely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme on bringing the issue to the attention of the House.

I am no longer resident in my hon. Friend’s constituency or the councillor for Silverdale. When I moved to where I live now, my lung health improved dramatically. I am asthmatic. I lived in Silverdale for about 15 years, and every day my Ventolin inhaler was glued to my pocket because at some point I would have some sort of triggering event requiring me to take a reliever. When, about three years ago, I moved a mere three miles away to where I am now, my lung health dramatically improved. I no longer need my Ventolin inhaler as frequently as I did. My lifestyle has not changed; if anything, my burgeoning waistline has put me in a slightly less healthy position. The only common factor that has impacted my health is the air that I breathe daily.

I am glad that we are discussing this issue, and I am glad that we are doing so in a Westminster Hall debate where we can consider it at length. However, I say to the Minister—my friend whom I have known for many years now—that the local debate on it has gone on for a while. What we seek, and I have great faith that she will deliver, is the action that was missing under the previous Government. Although my constituency is three miles away, there are some mornings—particularly cold, crisp weather mornings—when, much like my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), I can open my front door, walk to the bottom of my street and smell the landfill site three miles away. It is a smell you do not forget if you have lived there and know the area. It does not matter where you are in north Staffordshire, if you can smell it, you can smell it, and you know what it is. It is the same scent wherever it manifests.

Up until only a couple of years ago, my daughter still went to school in Silverdale. If we drove towards the school, the smell would get stronger and stronger. We would get to the crossroads at the bottom of Cemetery Road and Silverdale Road, and we would hope with all our hearts that the lights were on green. The last thing we wanted to do was sit there while the rotation went through at the traffic lights, knowing that we would be stuck in a puddle of foul-stenching air that was almost certainly coming from Walleys Quarry. What may have been only four or five minutes as the traffic lights cycled through would feel like an age as we breathed in what was undoubtedly harmful, somewhat poisonous gas from the operating site. I welcome the fact that we are debating this issue, but, as I said to the Minister, now that we have a new set of Members of Parliament for north Staffordshire and a new Government, I hope that there is an opportunity to reset national action so that we can get the outcome that local people need.

I want to expand my speech to include wider waste crime issues across north Staffordshire. Although Walleys Quarry is undoubtedly a national disgrace, other parts of north Staffordshire have equally found themselves at the mercy of reprehensible individuals who have undertaken to make a fast buck on the back of local communities through the way they have dealt with waste. One such site was the old Twyford factory in the middle of Etruria in my Stoke-on-Trent Central constituency. I first raised the issue with the then Minister back in 2018, when it was quite clear that the factory was stuffed to the rafters with illegally accepted industrial waste. The chief fire officer for Staffordshire at the time, Becci Bryant, made it quite clear that not only would a fire on the site be devastating to the immediate area, where businesses were trying to operate, but, because the site was next to the west coast main line, a fire would shut the line down for months. Significant public investment would be required to make the railway safe, and the untold health implications would not be known for many years.

What waste was in there, nobody knew. How much was in there, nobody knew. All anyone could see as they drove around the A500 in Stoke-on-Trent was this once-proud factory that had such manufacturing history, and, through its graffitied windows, polythene bales of unknown materials stacked one upon the other. I was told by the chief fire officer that a genuine concern was spontaneous combustion, because tightly packed, unknown materials in plastic can sometimes simply set themselves on fire. That was in the heart of my constituency next to a residential housing development of several hundred people.

To his credit, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who was the Minister at the time, was happy to look at how we could use funds from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to try to clear the site. The former Secretary of State, Michael Gove, met us to discuss the matter and we had a plan. To her great credit, my successor and predecessor, Jo Gideon, fought hard to get the site cleared. She made it a priority for her constituency and her constituents. The site was cleared at a cost to the public purse of around £10 million. That is £10 million of public money to clear one site in one constituency. It took a very long time, not because of intervention from the Government or for any local reason, but because every time we got to a point at which an enforcement notice could be raised, the owner would promise to clear up the site and the enforcement notice would not be taken forward. We then went down the cost recovery route for proceeds of crime, which took an inordinately long time. A fine was levied against the owner to have it cleared, and he was given six months to raise the money to pay for that. During all that additional time, the site remained a huge fire, health and safety risk to the neighbouring businesses, one of which closed up and moved for its own safety. The site was an eyesore in the middle of Stoke-on-Trent.

I know the Minister takes a huge interest in our environment and how we can make communities such as mine better, more prosperous and more sustainable. We are talking about a prime development site where development was slowed down because we were wrangling with one individual who had made an obscene amount of money by accepting illegal waste on to the site, and who did not want to use any of that money to clear it up. The fact that we had to clear it up not only represented a waste of taxpayers’ money, but slowed down the economic regeneration and development of Etruria and Hanley in my constituency. To this day, although it has now been cleared, the site stands vacant. The opportunities that it presented would have been game-changing for my constituency. We are talking not just about the cost of cleaning sites up, but about the opportunity costs in cities where huge buildings are misused by individuals who seek to make a fast buck.

[Dave Robertson]

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue. Around seven years ago, piled-up waste was disposed of in a similar site in Lichfield city—the old GKN site. My understanding is that the waste was fly-tipped. It caught fire, and arson was suspected. It was the fourth such incident in Staffordshire that year, and it took eight appliances and 65 firefighters to deal with the fire. Like the site my hon. Friend is discussing, it has been cleared but still awaits development. This is endemic across Staffordshire.

[Gareth Snell]

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—and I am grateful to be able to call him my hon. Friend; last time I was in the Commons, I never thought I would have the opportunity to call a Member who represented Lichfield my hon. Friend, and doing so fills my heart with glee. He is absolutely right. This debate could easily have been about waste crime anywhere in the country, because duplicitous operators who seek to make money off the backs of our communities without any care or attention are everywhere. I am sure that the new Minister will be clamping down on them hard.

I turn to how we do that. While we can all air our grievances about the sites in our constituencies, I want to spend a few moments focusing on what comes next. I tend to agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said about the fitness for purpose of the Environment Agency, but I will be slightly more generous to it than he was. He rightly has a grievance with it over the operation of Walleys Quarry, but I think there is a bigger problem about the way we do regulatory enforcement in this country. The Environment Agency is an example that we can use to demonstrate that.

Every so often, Unchecked UK produces a document about the enforcement gap, looking at how regulatory organisations and agencies have done less and less enforcement over time. In its 2020 enforcement gap report, Unchecked UK found that between 2010 and 2020, the number of staff working for the Environment Agency decreased by 32%, so one in three staff disappeared. It also found that over the same period of time, the Environment Agency’s budget decreased by 63%. As a result, the number of prosecutions it could undertake decreased by 88%. The number of enforcement notices it was able to levy went down by 69.5%, and it could only take 44% of them through to prosecution because it lacked the capacity to undertake the necessary regulatory enforcement work.

While we must not excuse the actions of those who perpetrate waste crime around our country, it is not impossible to see why they think it is a lucrative way to spend their time and energy. The likelihood of their getting caught, of an enforcement notice being levied upon them or of a prosecution being brought has gone down and down over the past 10 years.

It is not just the Environment Agency that has had this problem. Local authorities around the country, which have a really important environmental health role and can quite often take small-scale actions in communities to prevent much larger destructive activities, have suffered the same blight. Over the past 10 years, 32% of environmental health staff in local authorities have been lost. That means that many enforcement and regulatory agencies react to problems, but they are unable to take proactive and preventive work to avoid things becoming problems in the first place.