Illegal Waste: Organised Crime
Debate between Emma Hardy and Victoria Collins(2 days, 6 hours ago)
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Emma Hardy
I am horrified to hear that such an appalling thing has happened in my hon. Friend’s constituency. He is right, and we should praise the legitimate waste businesses who do a proper job and work within the confines of the law. I reassure his residents that as well as increasing funding, we are looking at increasing the powers available to the Environment Agency and local authorities to ensure that we do not continue to see these appalling acts right across our country.
Victoria Collins (Harpenden and Berkhamsted) (LD)
In my constituency, a 200-tonne illegal dump has left a farmer with a £40,000 clean-up bill and the risk of criminalisation if he cannot afford to clear it quickly, yet a cross-agency meeting clarified that no single agency takes responsibility for investigating these large-scale incidents on private land. When perpetrators are caught, the fixed-term penalty is a pitiful £1,000—that is for a crime that costs the economy £1 billion. Does the Minister agree that the enforcement gap, where victims shoulder the costs of organised crime while the penalties remain pitiful, is completely unacceptable? Will the Government help to establish a single accountable authority to investigate waste crime on private land and ensure that penalties reflect the true cost of these offences?
Emma Hardy
The hon. Lady raises an important point. I am sorry to hear about the impact on a farm in her constituency. One of the most important reforms we can make is to the carrier, broker and dealer regime, to go from the current light-touch system to environmental permitting so that we can better track exactly when waste transfers from one place to another. That will mean tougher background checks for operators and tougher penalties for those who break the law.
Chalk Streams: Sewage Discharge
Debate between Emma Hardy and Victoria Collins(1 year, 1 month ago)
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The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Emma Hardy)
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Efford. I am grateful to be part of this debate, and I thank the hon. Member for Harpenden and Berkhamsted (Victoria Collins) for securing it. Is this the first debate that she has secured in the House?
Emma Hardy
I am very pleased that one of the hon. Member’s first debates is on such an important issue. I do not want to get into a competition over who has the best chalk stream, but I must mention that the one near to where I live featured in “Mortimer & Whitehouse: Gone Fishing” the other day. They were at Driffield beck. We get not only to share stories here about who has the most beautiful chalk streams, but to see them on national television. I share the hon. Member’s love of them: they are England’s equivalent of the Great Barrier Reef. They are amazing things to have and to be able to say are held within our own country. They are so precious to us. They are the rarest freshwater habitat on earth, and in England we are home to 85% of them. That is a remarkable achievement.
The hon. Member is absolutely right to feel outraged and upset about the levels of river pollution. I am sure there are more enjoyable things that she would like to do on a Friday night than go and examine a sewage discharge into the water, but it is good that she was there and able to document it, because where we have evidence of illegal sewage discharges, of course we wish to prosecute.