Recycling of Tyres

Mary Creagh Excerpts

Tuesday 29th April 2025 Westminster Hall

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. What a joy it is to be back in Westminster Hall to discuss everybody’s favourite subjects: the materials economy, waste crime, and how we are going to tackle waste crime, after a decade and a half of a lot of talk and very little action—as the Elvis Presley song goes. We will have a little more action under this Government. As part of our plan for change, we will clean up Britain, crack down on waste cowboys and close the waste loopholes. I am keen that we all work together on a cross-party basis to achieve that.

[Leigh Ingham (Stafford) (Lab)]

Waste cowboys have been a big issue around the villages of my constituency, as I have said previously. I appreciate the Government’s focus on the circular economy, particularly from the Minister, because I know that she is incredibly passionate about this issue. Does she agree that the focus on our circular economy is important not only for the environment, but to tackle the criminality around fly tipping and other areas of waste crime?

[Mary Creagh]

I do indeed. The amount of money and resources allocated to tackling environmental crime was steadily reduced over the term of the previous Government. There has been a sense that these are somehow victimless crimes. I listened to the “File on 4” documentary, and it was deeply upsetting to hear about the fire and the death of local people at that plant. There is always a victim. There is no such place as “away”. We have only one world, and we have to stop treating our rivers, lakes and seas as sewers, and stop outsourcing our material problems to other countries.

[Sarah Dyke]

In 2021, Natural England downgraded the Somerset levels and moors Ramsar area and the water quality there to “unfavourable declining”. Somerset Wildlife Trust has attributed the microplastics to worn tyres in the environment. It is obviously a really concerning pollutant. What steps is the Minister taking to make manufacturers take greater responsibility for the contribution that their products make to microplastic pollution on the Somerset levels and moors?

[Mary Creagh]

That is a really interesting fact, and not one that I have come across. I will take that away and look at it. As with many of these things, I am responsible for waste and materials and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice is the Water Minister, so things often fall between the gaps of segmented policy brief allocations, but we will look into that and get back to her.

I thank the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this debate and other hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions. This Government want to be good stewards of our country and planet’s resources, our prosperity, and our economic and environmental resilience, so the loss of any of those resources concerns me greatly.

We have seen the damaging impacts that makeshift furnaces abroad have on people’s health and the environment, and the illegal batch pyrolysis of tyres is linked with other criminal activities that cause harm to the environment, people and communities. It is unacceptable that illegal exportation in this country is part of that supply chain.

We take the reports from “File on 4” and others very seriously. The Environment Agency is working with Indian counterparts to ensure that waste, including waste tyres, is recovered and recycled lawfully. That is a joint UK effort, and DEFRA works closely with all four UK regulators to ensure that there is a consistent approach regarding controls on the export of waste across the United Kingdom. Scotland banned the export of whole tyres back in 2018, so there is inconsistency. What has that meant? It means, possibly, that whole tyres in Scotland have come down to England and Wales for export, but who knows? It is hard to say what the flows are doing.

The Environment Agency is conducting an internal review of how it regulates the export of waste tyres. I and my DEFRA colleagues look forward to that review’s findings, and we will carefully consider its outcomes when it has been completed.

[Tessa Munt]

Will the Minister give way?

[Mary Creagh]

Can I just finish this point? The EA is independent. It is important that we do not prejudice the ongoing review. My understanding from officials is that it will report at the end of June, and I look forward to discussing the outcomes of that review with them. I will ask them to write to the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills with detailed answers to her questions on the scope of the review. And on digital waste tracking, we will launch that from April 2026 and will provide further details on the scope of that in due course.

With tyres, as with other waste, our priority must shift from throwing things away to reusing and recycling more. We will do that by breaking the linear “take, make, throw” model and by seizing the opportunity to become leaders in circular design, technology and industry. We will increase the resilience and productivity of the UK’s economy, create highly skilled new green jobs up and down the country, and help our economy to keep more of the critical resources on which it depends. In doing so, we will fulfil our manifesto commitment to reduce waste and to accelerate to net zero.

We have a Circular Economy Taskforce that includes experts from industry, academia, civil society and beyond to help us to develop a circular economy strategy for England. That is supported by sectoral road maps detailing the interventions that the Government and others will make to drive circular growth and enhance our economic resilience. The Transport Secretary will be responsible for one of those road maps, and the others will concern agrifood, chemicals and plastics, textiles and waste electricals. We have a lot of different sectoral road maps, and I urge the Tyre Recovery Association to feed into that working group.

We have lots of ideas about how to reuse materials for a different purpose and they are all coming to the fore. The problem is that some ideas will win and some will lose, and we are in the stage where we are not quite clear about what is the right thing to do, and there are lots of good counter-arguments.

In the case of tyres, the rubber crumb produced by recycling them has a range of applications. The hon. Member mentioned, for example, that it can be used to produce asphalt, but it can also be used as a surfacing material in children’s playgrounds. The hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) mentioned a responsible and long-standing business that is doing the right thing, but is looking around the landscape, thinking, “Hang on, why are we doing the right thing when the cowboys are undercutting us?” The principle of fairness is important, as is enforcement of the law as it stands—before we make new laws, we should look at enforcing the laws we already have.

We have a competitive market in the UK for waste management services. New people and innovators are always welcome to join the field. There are a lot of management options available to waste handling operators; they need to be selected according to market conditions and local needs. Operators need to look at the waste hierarchy and the need to ensure the best available outcome for the waste. I am very interested in the Australian model and the Australian experience. I know that my officials have been in contact with Australian Government officials.

[Sarah Dyke]

The Minister mentioned Tyre Renewals in Castle Cary. I would very much like to welcome her to Glastonbury and Somerton to meet Tyre Renewals so that the company can show her what it does.

[Mary Creagh]

I will do a deal: I will come as long as we can go to The Newt, which I understand is the sponsor of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. I have been reading all about The Newt, so I have been looking up Castle Cary and seeing how easy it would be to get to—my private office will not be very happy with me for saying that.

[Tessa Munt]

Will the Minister also meet Henry Hodge, who is part of Black-Ram Recycling and one of the people who informed me about this particular problem with tyres? That is in the constituency just next door, so it is an easy trip.

[Mary Creagh]

We can never spend enough time in Wiltshire, Dr Murrison, so we will see what we can do.

On the T8 exemption, we need to ensure that the UK’s house is in good order. The impact that waste criminals have on people’s lives is terrible, but poor performance in the waste industry is also a massive problem. It undermines the many excellent operators and responsible waste businesses in the UK, of whom we should be rightly proud.

We are determined to reform the way that the sector is regulated to mitigate environmental impacts, and we are considering plans. The hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills mentioned the review in 2015, and there was a consultation in 2018. I have been pressing my officials as to why, a mere seven years later, nothing has happened. But she will have noticed that I have not followed in my predecessor’s footsteps; inertia is not my middle name. I have been very demanding of officials on this issue and I recognise the importance of removing the T8 exemption for the industry and the wider benefits of doing so. I am happy to tell the House that DEFRA’s intentions in this area, along with our priorities in the waste and recycling space, will be announced very soon.

I will close by thanking the hon. Member for securing this debate—but let me just check that I have answered her questions. I have covered the review, digital waste tracking and the retention of the circular economy. She asked about the Environment Agency review. The EA is looking at its own regulation. As part of that review, it will check its understanding of its powers and legal duties and ask, “Are we doing the right thing?” It will look at how it manages information and intelligence received from third parties. If people have evidence of waste crime, I encourage them to report it anonymously through Crimestoppers—so people do not have to give their name and address and worry about reprisals. That intelligence sharing is really important.

That review might also make recommendations for amendments to the EA’s legal and regulatory powers. The hon. Member can be reassured that I will not sit around twiddling my thumbs when I get that report.

[Tessa Munt]

It is really helpful of the Minister to ask people to contact Crimestoppers, but I wonder whether the Department can do more to demonstrate how it is prosecuting people who break the law. Enforcement is incredibly important—

[Mary Creagh]

We are not the regulator; it is for the Environment Agency, as the regulator, to do those prosecutions.

[Tessa Munt]

We need to tell people when it is doing this stuff.

[Mary Creagh]

That is a very good point, but that is not the Department’s responsibility; we have the regulator and it is its job to do the prosecutions. There is a correct separation of power.

We have engaged with the Indian authorities, including the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, to help to ensure that this waste is recovered and recycled correctly, because small-batch pyrolysis is also illegal in India. There will be a delegation to meet officials in the autumn to strengthen relationships and discuss this matter further—

Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).