Rural Crime

Kevin McKenna Excerpts

Thursday 27th February 2025 Westminster Hall

[Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)]

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Ms McVey. I thank the hon. Member for North Cornwall (Ben Maguire) for securing this debate and for comprehensively outlining many of the problems. It was good to hear his insights and the work that he has already done, particularly around rural thefts and thefts of farm equipment, which are a big issue in my constituency. I will focus on fly-tipping, which is a huge blight in Sittingbourne and Sheppey and across the whole of Kent, where it costs about £1.8 million annually.

One of my problems with fly-tipping is the name; it is too cutesy. It makes it seem so unimportant—“Fly-tipping? Well, fine.”—but it is a massive environmental scourge and a massive scourge on the people who live near it. In an urban setting, it is often small scale, with lots of people doing it on housing estates and in back alleys— I have that in bucketloads in my constituency—but there are also huge, illegal dumping tips. I have one in my constituency on Raspberry Hill Lane near Iwade. Yesterday morning, a BBC documentary showed drone footage of the site, with a real investigation from BBC journalists into the problems.

Fly-tipping has been going on there for a long time. Residents have raised the issue repeatedly, and they have struggled to understand what has been going on to challenge it. Some of what has been looked at very much involves cross-agency working that has frequently failed. One of my biggest concerns about fly-tipping is whether we have the structures in place to investigate it: are the right organisations doing the investigations, and do we have the right level of punitive punishments for the people who are destroying vast swathes of countryside?

The site that I am discussing is right next to a site of special scientific interest. It is an extremely vulnerable area. It is also right on the edge of a village. The smell, the noise and the disruption is obvious to everybody as they go past it.

At root, this is an organised crime issue. Whether the sites are big or small, it is not just a man in a van dumping stuff in someone’s bins or back alley or on the street. At multiple sites, such as the one that I am talking about in Kent, truck after truck brings along its loads of unprocessed waste, which is dug into the ground and left for the birds to eat and spread around nearby farmland.

I do not think people understand the significant impact that it has on local people, or how frustrated many of them are at not getting a response from the authorities about what is going on. When they have reported fly-tipping, it is hard to understand where investigations have got to or whether anyone is looking into them at all. Because organised crime is involved, many of my residents are afraid to raise the issue publicly.

[Patrick Spencer (Central Suffolk and North Ipswich) (Con)]

The hon. Gentleman is making an interesting point about fly-tipping as an issue of organised crime. I suppose that Opposition Members would also include casual littering in the same bracket. We see that every day in towns and villages, but also on the side of motorways. Does he want to say something about that also being a real scourge of society?

[Kevin McKenna]

I am very happy to say that. We have a lot of casual littering, with things thrown out of cars as going up the A249 between Sheppey and Sittingbourne, so it is an issue. We also see articles from time to time about middle-class fly-tipping, with people—apparently benignly—leaving furniture out on the street in front of their house for people to pick up. Honestly, I can see that that is well-meaning—or thoughtless. That level of littering needs dealing with in one way, but it is the organised criminal side of it that we really need to look at in a much more systematic way.

Does the Minister think that the Environment Agency is the right organisation to be doing the investigating? It is not really set up as an investigative organisation, but that is where the bulk of the digging and detective work is now falling. That is similar to some of the other issues regarding the Environment Agency, such as with land drainage, where it is pulled into operational matters when that is not really what it is set up for. I would like to hear the Minister’s thoughts about whether we need to look at how the Environment Agency operates, what its real function is, and whether it should be the investigating agency.

I would also like to look at what the actual penalty for the crime is, where it is provable that those people are organised criminals. Frankly, where landowners have been using land to create organised illegal dumps, I would question whether they should retain the assets—not just the land, but the vast fleets of trucks and lorries that they are using for that. It is being done on an industrial scale and it needs to be addressed, not with fines of a few tens of thousands of pounds, but by looking at actually seizing the assets of those organised criminals.

Finally, the most important thing that I want to talk about is that, at its root, organised crime is a market issue. Those people are criminals, but they are serving a market need, and a lot of that is down to regulation. Are the regulations around the licensing of waste removal and waste processing incentivising criminal gangs to get involved in this “business”—obviously in scare quotes—rather than other areas of crime? Honestly, as with many areas of organised crime, we have to look at the market forces behind that crime and see how we could use regulation to disincentivise criminals and then hopefully get them as they move into other areas.

Oral Answers to Questions

Kevin McKenna Excerpts

Monday 25th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Becky Gittins (Clwyd East) (Lab)]

2. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle antisocial behaviour on high streets and in town centres.

[Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)]

6. What steps her Department is taking to help tackle antisocial behaviour on high streets and in town centres.

[Danny Beales (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)]

23. What steps she is taking to improve safety in town centres.

--- Later in debate ---

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend is exactly right, and I congratulate her on standing up for her town centre. When town centre crime gets out of control, it impacts on local businesses and local confidence, and it impacts badly on communities. That is why we are bringing in respect orders, under which repeat perpetrators can be banned from town centres, and setting out our plans to have 13,000 more neighbourhood police and police community support officers back on our streets.

[Kevin McKenna]

I thank my right hon. Friend for that helpful answer. Many residents in my constituency flag up the real problems with antisocial behaviour in both Sheerness and Sittingbourne town centres. Windows have been smashed in church halls, and shop windows were smashed when the Christmas lights were being put on—I am seeing this all the time. Can she please tell me what help she is offering Kent police to support my residents facing this behaviour?

[Yvette Cooper]

My hon. Friend makes a really important point. As well as our plans to increase neighbourhood policing and introduce respect orders, we are going to get rid of the ludicrous £200 rule that we inherited from the Conservatives, which means that shoplifting is very often not properly investigated. That needs to be taken much more seriously.

Small Boat Crossings

Kevin McKenna Excerpts

Wednesday 6th November 2024 Commons Chamber

[Dame Angela Eagle]

Yes, my hon. Friend’s constituents can be assured that a great deal of work is going on and more resources are being applied. A lot more intelligence is being gathered, much of which cannot be discussed publicly. We are on it.

[Kevin McKenna (Sittingbourne and Sheppey) (Lab)]

I strongly welcome the Government’s focus on tackling the root causes of organised crime behind the small boats, rather than the gimmicks of the previous Government. Across Kent, the criminal gangs are fuelling a rise in organised crime, and in my constituency that is pushing up rural crime, street crime and antisocial behaviour. Will my hon. Friend ensure that the new Border Security Command works closely with Kent police to deal with the effects across the whole of Kent and the wider country?

[Dame Angela Eagle]

I can give my hon. Friend that assurance. Some areas have suffered particular pressure from this phenomenon over the years, and Kent is one of them, so I am acutely aware of the pressure that he and the local authorities in that area are under.