Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 June 2022 to Question 18812 on Joint Unit for Waste Crime, how many and what proportion of those associated arrests led to (a) prosecutions and (b) successful prosecutions.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
These arrests were carried out by other agencies for non-waste crime offences so this is not data held by the Joint Unit for Waste Crime.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 June 2022 to Question 18814 on Joint Unit for Waste Crime: Staff, what are the roles of the 14 staff who work at the Joint Unit on Waste Crime as on 29 June 2022.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
1 x Manager
1 x Senior Team leader
1 x Technical officer
8 x Environmental Crime Officers
1 x Digital researcher
1 x Communications and engagement officer
1 x HMRC intelligence officer
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, pursuant to the Answer of 23 June 2022 to Question 18812, on Joint Unit for Waste Crime, what the meaning of associated arrests is.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
'Associated arrests' relates to arrests carried out by other agencies during the investigation, but as a direct result of the activity either at the location of the intervention or as a result of intelligence gained during the intervention. For example, by the police for offences including theft, handling stolen goods, etc.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for what reason the number of prosecutions undertaken by the Environment Agency has declined every year since 2007.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Taking cases forward to prosecution is only one part of the Environment Agency's (EA) overall enforcement activity. Other interventions such as Notices requiring action and civil sanctions are quicker and can be effective in securing good outcomes for the environment in different ways.
The Regulatory Enforcement & Sanctions (RES) Act 2008 made civil sanctions available to the EA to use from 2011. The number of enforcement undertakings accepted by the EA under the RES Act has nearly doubled from 2016 to 2020. This has included, for example, the compensation of £975,000 made by Wessex Water following sewage pollution at Swanage Harbour in November 2018.
The EA focuses prosecutions on the most serious and harmful pollution cases, allowing it to focus resources where the impact is greatest. We still take the most serious cases to court. The size of fines for environmental offences are at the highest they have ever been, and custodial sentences are now being imposed regularly for environmental offences.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the adequacy of the current funding model for the Joint Unit on Waste Crime.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Government has ensured that recent additional funding to the Environment Agency (EA) to tackle waste crime is now part of its baseline, and so, the EA is able to prioritise funding for the Joint Unit for Waste Crime more effectively.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what assessment he has made of the performance of the Joint Unit on Waste Crime since its introduction in combatting (a) waste crime and (b) the increase in the involvement of organised crime in the waste industry.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
In the two years since its launch in January 2020 the Joint Unit for Waste Crime has worked with over 50 partner organisations and engaged in 74 multi-agency days of action. These have resulted in 52 associated arrests. It is the lead responsible organisation for four organised criminal groups. There have been a number of multi-agency interventions against these groups, including refusal of permits, intelligence-targeted waste sampling and spray marking, and intelligence-led road stops.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how many personnel are currently employed full-time to the Joint Unit on Waste Crime.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Joint Waste Crime Team currently employs 14 staff.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he has plans to create a fit and proper person test for people operating waste management companies.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The requirement to demonstrate competence for waste site permits is well established.
In 2019 the Government strengthened the regulators' assessment and enforcement of operator competence to raise the standard of competence across all permitted waste sites. This included expanding the list of convictions to be taken into account when assessing permit applications to include, for example, offences related to organised crime and violent or threatening behaviour as well offences relating to fraud and tax evasion.
The Government also recently consulted on reform of the waste carrier, broker, dealer regime and expect to publish the response in due course.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he plans to assess the cost of waste crime to the UK economy.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Environmental Services Association (ESA) estimates the cost of waste crime to the English economy in the 2018/19 financial year at £924 million. Scaled up to UK-level, the cost is estimated to be a little over £1 billion. The work done on behalf of ESA uses data produced by sources including HMRC, the Environment Agency (EA) and Defra, as well as EA analysis into costs and impacts of waste crime.
We have already taken action by introducing new powers to stop illegal waste sites posing a risk to the environment, including the ability to lock up sites and to force rogue operators to clean up all their waste. Building on this, measures in the Environment Act 2021 give agencies stronger powers of entry and access to evidence in prosecuting waste crimes. We have also set up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime to disrupt serious and organised waste crime and reduce its impact.
Our electronic waste tracking reforms will make it harder than ever to mis-identify waste or dispose of it inappropriately. Planned changes to the Carriers, Brokers and Dealers licensing regime will modernise licensing and make it even harder for rogue operators to escape detection. We will also soon publish our plans for reform of the exemptions regime, removing opportunities for criminals to abuse the system.
Asked by: Kevan Jones (Labour - North Durham)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether he is taking steps to ensure the safe export of e-waste.
Answered by Jo Churchill - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
There are a number of legal mechanisms in place to control the export of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE), and to ensure that when WEEE is exported it is managed safely. These include:
The Basel Convention on the transboundary movement of hazardous waste, to which the UK is a Party, agreed changes on 15th June which will further tighten international controls on the export of WEEE. The UK Government supports these changes which, from 2025, will require exporters to obtain prior consent from the Competent Authority in both the country of dispatch and destination to export all types of WEEE for recycling.
The EA regulates the export of waste in England, including WEEE. EA officers carry out pro-active and intelligence led inspections to stop waste shipments that breach regulations before they leave ports. In 2020-21, 869 containers were stopped, of which 176 were returned to a waste site as they were unsuitable for export; 27 of those containers were found to contain WEEE.
Any UK operator found to be illegally exporting waste can face a two-year jail term and an unlimited fine.