Waste Crime: Staffordshire

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Thursday 5th September 2024 Westminster Hall

[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.

[Robbie Moore]

Could the Minister pick up my specific question about the closure of the site? In his shadow role before the election, I believe the Secretary of State wanted to advocate for closure, as I do. What is the Minister’s view on that?

[Mary Creagh]

I have not had specific advice on closure. It is clear that there is a criminal investigation under way, and we have to let that take its course.

Let us look at waste crime. In recent years there has been an increase in the involvement of serious and organised criminal gangs in the waste sector. That is of the greatest concern to me; it goes back to the perfect storm of a broken waste system. The joint unit for waste crime brings together the Environment Agency, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—because in our experience, criminals never break the law in just one area; they always break it in several areas—the National Crime Agency, the police, waste regulators from the UK and other partners to share intelligence, and disrupt and prevent serious organised waste crime. There has been progress to target organised crime groups, and this model is respected internationally. The issue is not unique to the United Kingdom.

The unit has supported or led more than 90 operations since April 2020 and has worked with 133 partner organisations. It has had 301 days of action, which have resulted in 174 associated arrests by other agencies. The Environment Agency recently announced the formation of its national enforcement service—a new economic crime unit that targets the money and assets of waste criminals. It will target the financial motivation behind offending and use financial mechanisms to inhibit the ability of offenders, including OCGs, to operate. It has all gone a bit “Line of Duty” there; I will crack on.

I also urge members of the public: it is incumbent on every one of us to report waste crime where we see it in our communities. It is under-reported. When someone comes and says, “I can take that waste away for you for 20 quid,” it is so important that we ask to see their waste permit. When someone asks a farmer or a landowner, “Can I store these bales on your land?” and says it is just a bit of plastic or a bit of soil, I urge them to be curious: have they actually got a permit? Is it really soil or is it shredded down plastics? The money is moving from legitimate waste operators and going to these organised crime groups.

We know the impact that this issue has on people’s lives. We are determined to reform this sector. That starts with reform of the waste carrier, broker and dealer regime, which means those transporting or making decisions about waste must demonstrate that they are competent to make those decisions, face background checks when applying for permits and display permit numbers on their advertising. We will make it easier for regulators to take actions against criminals, and easier for us as householders to identify legitimate waste businesses.

The reform will remove three exemptions, which is critical because these are the highest problem areas. Those exemptions are for dismantling end of life vehicles, treating end of life tyres—again, the risk of fire is huge—and recovery of scrap metal dealers. I remember a case in my former constituency of Wakefield where a scrap metal dealer went bust owing His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs £60 million. To my grievous disappointment, not a single person was prosecuted or went to prison for essentially theft from the taxpayer. We will introduce greater record-keeping requirements for all waste exemption holders, and impose limits and controls on how exemptions can be managed on site.

To conclude, this Government are clear: we are committed to bringing waste criminals to justice. We have long-term ambitions to rebuild the waste sector and to create a circular economy, and we are committed to tackling both waste crime and, as exemplified by Walley’s Quarry, poor performance at regulated sites.

I know that the Environment Agency is committed to continuing its work with partners nationally and locally, and I thank it for working against the odds and in a very difficult funding environment over the last 14 years. The crime that we are discussing today is predominantly an urban crime and I think that under the previous Government there was a neglect of urban areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme asked for deeds not words. We will follow the principle that the polluter pays. We will find the polluters; we are coming for them and we will track them down.

[Martin Vickers (in the Chair)]

I call Adam Jogee to sum up.