Draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026

Debate between Mary Creagh and Jim McMahon

Tuesday 16th June 2026 General Committees

[Mary Creagh]

It is a pleasure to respond to that short but pithy and valuable debate. I am grateful to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Epping Forest, for his comments. He is beginning to remind me a bit of St Augustine, who was famous for his prayer of, “Grant me chastity, Oh Lord, but not yet”, because, as he said, he laid the foundations for some of this work while in government. That includes the EPR system, which he voted for in 2024 along with all his Conservative colleagues. He now stands loudly lamenting EPR, but I just remind him that it is something that his party developed in government and voted for less than two years ago.

I share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration about NOx canisters. I am still mystified as to why they are on sale in the UK. I know they are useful for whipping cream, but we see when we go on Amazon, as I did a couple of years ago, that people who bought NOx canisters also bought little canisters to sell it for £1, £2, or whatever it is they do to create further litter. It is absolutely clear that there is not a sudden, massive interest in whipping cream across the festivals and parklands of this great nation.

In fact, nitrous oxide is a highly regulated substance and a fluorinated gas that we need for some medical emergencies. I remember the glory days of British dentistry, where any time someone went for a filling they got the happy gas so that they did not really mind what was happening to their teeth. Those of us who are old enough will remember that—[Interruption.] I can see nods of recognition. There were various bans of nitrous oxide, but it is still used for women in childbirth. If we have a quota for fluorinated gas, under various UN conventions, we should keep that quota but reduce it and save it for absolutely medically necessary issues, and not allow a huge black market to proliferate in this thing that is allegedly used for whipping cream.

Last Friday, I was out picking up litter and a variety of other things, including a wendy house, that had been fly-tipped in Willenhall in Coventry, and I picked up three nitrous oxide canisters. The day before that I had been to an incinerator, an energy-from-waste plant, where they had shown me how these canisters can burn at incredibly high temperatures. They told me that the canisters should never be put into any sort of incineration, because that presents a danger to workers both on the journey towards incineration and at the incinerator—even though they can come out of the incinerator safely because they are tested to such a high engineering capacity. I thought, “Right, I will not just leave these canisters for the council to pick up; I will take them to a metals recycling facility.” I took them to European Metals Recycling, which is close to my office in Coventry, where I was told, “We don’t take these.” I am not clear where these canisters are meant to be safely disposed of, and if I am the waste Minister and I do not know, I am not clear what everyone else is supposed to be doing. I will start my little battle on NOS—watch this space.

Let me talk to some of the other points that were raised. First, charities and local authorities will have to pay the fees. With this waste system, we have essentially mirrored what His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs has done through Making Tax Digital. We have done something that is legible and readable through the back end and that can be used by proprietary software providers, rather than building our own proprietary software and making it clunky and rubbish, which is what Government software schemes are famous for doing. We thought, “How can we turn this on its head and do something that can be used and is fungible and readable across other databases?” We watched what had happened with HMRC and fundamentally designed that in.

The system is in beta testing because I believe in making haste slowly. I do not believe in big-bang changes. I believe in working with a coalition of the willing to test, refine and improve. The fee is set at £26. That includes charities, local authorities—anyone operating permitted waste facilities where commercial waste activities are carried out. The fee recovers the cost of establishing, operating and maintaining the services. It includes costs for things like the digital system build, the ongoing hosting cost and the operation of the helpdesk for users, which is run through the Environment Agency.

The total costs were estimated over a 10-year period and averaged over the total number of operators expected to be using the service once it has been fully delivered, ensuring that those in the first phase will not pay more, so people are not penalised for being one of the good guys. That approach has been agreed by Treasury. We intend to review the service charge once the system is fully operational and we have more accurate data about the number of users on the system. Of course, one of the issues is that lots of people are not on the system, and we do not know where they are, so we will amend the service charge through legislation as needed. The service fee is paid annually to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs by users as part of their account registration.

One of the main aims of introducing digital waste tracking is to reduce waste crime. Regulators need to distinguish between someone who is digitally excluded and someone who is deliberately not complying with the regulations. There are provisions in the statutory instrument for the digitally excluded—although in this day and age, if someone is running a company without any sort of computer, we do have to wonder. By not having a criminal sanction for failing to apply for a digitally excluded number or recording that number on written records, it may give the impression that this is less important than digital users applying. It may lead to digitally excluded operators choosing not to comply and there would be gaps in waste movement records, which would undermine the whole system, so we have included that.

On  packaging extended producer responsibility, one of the questions that has been around for at least the last decade—it is not a new one; the hon. Member for Epping Forest will have heard it, as I have—is about the need to reduce fraud in the producer responsibility note and the producer export responsibility note system. We have already introduced a number of measures to address that fraud. All reprocessors and exporters who handle any packaging waste will now have to register, collect and report data on packaging waste received, processed, rejected and exported.

The pERP regulation will place requirements on accredited reprocessors and exporters, including monthly reporting of packaging waste reprocessed or exported and monthly data on packaging recovery notes/packaging export recycling note prices by material. Exporters will need to provide proof of receipt at the final overseas destination site to issue a PERN and retain records of the recycling of the packaging waste. Critically, there will also be a new fit and proper person test for operators as part of the accreditation process. In addition, DEFRA has recently consulted on further proposals to enhance the PRN system, target fraud and ensure that packaging waste is managed in an environmentally sustainable way. The results of that consultation will be published shortly.

Digital waste tracking is being introduced in phases, but we intend to mandate the recoding of information about exports of green list waste, also known as article 18 waste, in the system from 2027. So it will come here in April next year and we will look to introduce it from October 2027. The increased visibility of export data will also help to combat fraud in the system.

On litter, local authorities already have powers to take enforcement action. We have been encouraging them to make good use of those powers, because under the previous Government they did not have the cash to pursue prosecutions and actions against offenders. We have published new statutory litter enforcement guidance: “Litter enforcement powers—when and how to use them”. Local authorities now have a legal duty to have regard to that guidance, which will lead to a more consistent approach to tackling litterers across the country.

We have also published a refreshed code of practice on litter and refuse, which sets out the standards expected of local authorities and other duty bodies with regard to keeping land clear of litter and refuse. I pay tribute to the many Wombles and clean-up squads across the country that are doing such great work, but we want to get to a stage where there is no littering and people understand and respect the areas around them.

I will add a final thought on fly-tipping: councils already have powers to seize and search the vehicles of suspected fly-tippers. Again, to support them making better use of that power, we have published best practice guidance and case studies on the website of the National Fly-Tipping Prevention Group. We have also secured powers in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 to provide statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance on using their powers and powers for the courts to award between three and nine penalty points on the driving licences of those found guilty of fly-tipping. Often, we find that fly-tippers are doing a little job for their mates on the weekend. They might be drivers in the week, and this is a little weekend side-hustle. The penalty points would make it harder for offenders to continue dumping illegally if they are disqualified from driving and send a clear warning: fly-tipping is not to be tolerated.

[Jim McMahon (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)]

I congratulate the Government on the efforts being made on fly-tipping. We can quite often skirt over just how important these issues are, but in areas where fly-tipping is common, it absolutely ruins the local community. I put on record our appreciation for the work that is being done.

[Mary Creagh]

I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. I also pay tribute to his council in Oldham, which wrote to me about a very thought-provoking motion that the council passed. The leader of the council—I am sorry; his name escapes me—said that environmental justice goes hand in hand with social justice. These environmental crimes are predominantly perpetrated against poorer communities. There is a kind of social injustice there that we must not lose sight of. There are certain parts of Coventry that are spotless and have no litter or fly-tipping, and other areas, like Foleshill, the ward where my office is, where fly-tipping is absolutely endemic.

I will conclude by talking about our manifesto commitment to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up their mess. We will soon consult on giving local councils the powers to issue fly-tippers with conditional cautions, one of a range of pre-court community-based sanctions that could see offenders completing up to 20 hours of unpaid work cleaning up streets and parks and paying back the cost of cleaning up the waste that they have dumped on public land. If an offender admits to the crime, agrees to the caution and complies with those conditions, they will not face prosecution. Anyone who spends a couple of hours cleaning up litter and sweating in the hot sun, as I did on Friday in Willenhall, will be very keen not to repeat the experience.

Nationwide waste tracking does not exist, so the costs are uncertain at the moment because we do not have a baseline to go from. However, we have used HMRC’s Making Tax Digital as an assumption as it is a similar digital delivery policy. We have put in a 400% optimism bias to account for underestimation because we do not know what we do not know—the unknown unknowns. There are more firms in scope for Making Tax Digital compared with digital waste tracking—obviously, because not everyone is doing waste. Therefore, economies of scale will differ.

With that, I thank the Committee for its attention, good humour and positive comments this afternoon. I commend the fact that the legislation is widely supported by stakeholders for whom it could not come soon enough and who have been begging for it since the previous Government’s waste and litter strategy was published back in 2019. The hon. Member for Epping Forest asked about the circular economy growth plan. That is going through the normal Government channels and processes. I am sure he will be very excited when it is eventually produced, because that is our whole economy plan: to be a resilient, clean and highly efficient materials nation. The legislation has been highly anticipated by our stakeholders. I am delighted that it is supported by Members on both sides of the House and am thrilled to have been able to present it here today.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the Committee has considered the draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026.