Oral Answers to Questions
Matt Western Excerpts(1 week, 3 days ago)
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Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Minister for Food Security and Rural Affairs (Daniel Zeichner)
Let me start by acknowledging just how tough it has been for so many farmers this year, having been faced with the very extreme weather conditions. We have had very hot weather, following on from last year, when many suffered from floods. It is undeniable that we are seeing our climate changing. The Government are responding by tackling flooding, investing a record £8 billion in flood defences to protect homes and farms, helping to tackle problems in rural communities such as mine in the fens through our £91 million internal drainage board fund, and investing in nature-friendly farming, which boosts climate resilience, enhances farming profitability and secures food production.
Matt Western
Three of the UK’s five worst harvests have been in the last five years, and this year is looking particularly concerning, with yields likely to be down and margins for farmers on the brink. Just last month, the Bank of England said that extreme weather is now one of the key factors in driving food price inflation. Could the Minister elaborate on what other steps the Government are taking to mitigate food price inflation for consumers?
Daniel Zeichner
My hon. Friend makes a very important point. Of course, consumer food prices depend on a wide range of factors, including agrifood import prices, agricultural prices in general, domestic labour and manufacturing costs, exchange rates, productivity and the extreme weather we have been seeing, which inevitably impacts growth and livestock feed supplies. I reassure the House that the UK has a very resilient food supply chain, and as our food security report shows, it is well equipped to meet these challenges.
Plastic Recycling in Leamington: Environmental Impact
Matt Western Excerpts(4 months ago)
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Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I will, if I may, start by encouraging you, Madam Deputy Speaker, to imagine being in your own home and unable to eat with your family, unable to leave food for even a minute without your kitchen being swarmed with flies, and unable to sleep in your own bed without flies landing on your face. Imagine flies everywhere, in every room of your house, in business premises, in pubs, in restaurants and in takeaways, and vile odours permeating your life whether at home, walking the streets or driving your car. That is the reality for hundreds of families in one part my constituency.
If that is not sufficiently real for those present, let me try to bring alive just how awful this is with the experience of one resident, who wrote to me saying:
“The day my son asked when mummy was going to stop the flies so he could eat his dinner without flies crawling into his mouth...was when I realised how terrible it had got.”
Imagine children being unable to eat without flies crawling into their mouths.
At a time when so many voters feel disillusioned with politics, it is more important than ever that Government—national and local—as well as their agencies address the everyday problems that impact on people’s lives. And the issue of flies and odours blighting families and whole communities is one such a problem.
I estimate that as many as 10,000—if not more—of my constituents in south Warwick, South Leamington and Whitnash are impacted by this. They have faced swarms of flies and foul odours for three years running. Their houses are infested with flies. They are unable to open their windows for fear of swarms entering their home. They are unable to prepare food in their kitchen without the constant cleaning of their work surfaces to clean off the fly excrement, which also adheres to their walls. Would any Member of this House be satisfied with their family living like that? This is not just a minor inconvenience; this is ruining people’s lives. People are getting ill, and some residents are actually selling up.
Then there is the all-pervasive foul-smelling odour. Constituents describe the smell as being like “raw sewage”. They say it is “sulphuric” and “toxic”. Many have told me that the smell is “utterly unbearable”. I have smelt it myself on many occasions. Again, this is substantially harming people and their lives. Two constituents have told me that their asthma has significantly worsened due to the smell, and, as a result, they have had to increase their medication. This is clearly a public health risk and it should be treated as such.
I hope that I have spelled out—albeit briefly—just how awful this is for my constituents, and it should not have been allowed to continue for three months let alone three years. Some may be thinking that this this sounds not too dissimilar to the plague of flies in the Book of Exodus, but, no, God is not to blame for this. The residents are clear: they believe, and I agree with them, that the source of this problem is the Berry Circular Polymers recycling plant, located less than 200 metres from a significant volume of local housing.
Let me be very clear: I am by no means against recycling. We know that recycling plants have a crucial role to play in sustainability. The issue here is not recycling but how businesses are held to account—and authorities demanding that they take seriously their commitment to their neighbours and their impacts on the local environment.
Jim Shannon (Strangford) (DUP)
I commend the hon. Gentleman for securing this debate on behalf of his constituents. I am almost flabbergasted that the local council has not taken action to address this issue. What has it done and what is it going to do to take away this enormous fly problem? The Book of Exodus does talk about the plague of flies, but I know that the council has been blamed for this one.
Matt Western
I thank the hon. Member—I will call him my hon. Friend—for his intervention. The council does have a role, and I will come on to that in more depth. It has tried to get involved and understand the nature of the problem, and to exercise certain powers, but this is where national Government, particularly the Environment Agency, have a role to play, as I will discuss. The council really does not have the powers that it needs to tackle local environmental health, which is its responsibility.
This is a case of desperately poor planning legislation—approved by the last Conservative Government and locally by a Conservative council—with a new light industrial estate built off a road that is one of the main arteries of south Leamington. The planning issue is not so much in the approval of the building of light industrial sheds—we see them all over the place—but in the failure to realise that a commercial use of the site, such as for recycling food packaging, would have a significant impact on a residential area. No approval was given by the local planning committee for what the actual use of the site would be; it was purely for the building of the sheds.
The local geography could not be worse. Hundreds of homes are on this road and thousands are off it. To have allowed a recycling plant that receives plastic covered in food waste on a daily basis to be built across the road from thousands of residents is absurd. The plant receives food and drink cartons, which we all discard daily and put into our recycling bins, where they can often sit for a couple of weeks. Then they are collected and taken to central processing depots such as the one in my constituency. They are perfect environments for flies to breed in.
It should not have taken a situation like this to make issues with the planning system so clear, but should anyone be in any doubt about the scale of the problem, let me be categorical: I have had reams of complaints and evidence sent to my office. There is a parallel between this site and the dreadful Walleys Quarry in Newcastle-under-Lyme, which many of us will have heard about over many years. Last Friday evening I informed residents that I had secured this debate, and by Monday morning my office had received over 100 complaints, with over 80% blaming the site that we believe to be the source of the problem: Berry Polymers.
When I held a public meeting, over 100 people attended, but hundreds more wanted to be there. That shows the strength of feeling on this issue and hopefully highlights to the Minister how badly it is affecting people’s lives. To further understand the effects on people, I conducted a survey, asking on a scale of one to 10 how badly the flies and smell had impacted people’s lives over the previous two years, with 10 being that it had completely impacted them. The average response was eight out of 10.
To exemplify how awful the situation is for residents, I will read some particularly distressing quotes. One resident said:
“I have to have fly nets over my foster babies’ cots and bouncers”.
Another said:
“It is apocalyptic, the flies affect every minute of your day, from waking, to washing, preparing food, working, cleaning, trying to sleep.”
Another said:
“I’ve had to come away from various activities around town including paying my respects in the local cemetery because of the smell. Twice it’s been so bad I’ve vomited while driving my car along Heathcote Road, which could cause an accident”.
I hope that highlights for the Minister and those listening the severity of the problem and the urgent need for action. For clarity, I reiterate that those complaints have come in only in the past three days.
My constituents cannot sleep. Their children cannot play outside. They cannot eat without being swarmed by flies and engulfed in disgusting smells. To avoid any doubt over who the culprit is, I will bring to the Minister’s attention some additional evidence. There are tens of households who say that the problem only began after the plant opened. One family had lived there for 30 years before the plant opened, and they never complained about a smell or flies, but now they say that it is unbearable.
It is not only residents who are complaining but former employees of the site. My office spoke to one former employee, who will remain anonymous. They said:
“Conditions were so poor nobody should have been working there.”
They commented that when staff were walking around on site there were flies all over them, on their clothes, and biting them. Staff were expected to spend their breaks in a room covered in flies, and any food they tried to eat in there ended up with flies all over it. I have seen their evidence, and I have shared it with the Environment Agency and the Government. I have been to the site and seen the piles of thousands of flies lying around in the working area. That cannot be right; it is a health and safety issue for the people who have to work there. There are also flies flying around in the washrooms of that business. I cannot understand why it is still allowed to operate. The employees were in no doubt about the cause. They said that
“Berry was absolutely at fault and clearly the cause of the issue impacting the community.”
Local residents, former employees and I all believe that the Berry Circular Polymers recycling plant is responsible for these issues.
Yet here we are, two years on, with no respite other than in the winter months, when the flies abate but the odours persist. We may ask, have the residents followed the correct complaints process and, likewise, have I? Absolutely. First, I have raised it many times with the Environment Agency on behalf of residents. I have repeatedly conveyed the severity of the situation and the horrific impact on people’s lives. After no success with the Environment Agency, I turned to the Minister under the last Government. After months of correspondence, I finally secured a meeting with that Minister in May 2024, but with the general election, it led to nothing. Following the election, I have twice met the new Minister, who I know fully understands the severity of the issue. The Minister swiftly set up a meeting with the Environment Agency to ensure the best available techniques are being used. I appreciate the pace with which the Department worked, but my constituents need answers now. They cannot be kept waiting.
I again followed up with the Environment Agency just a few weeks ago in April, to which it replied that it had only received two complaints. Yet we have received over a hundred in three days and hundreds over the course of three years, and we hear from residents on an almost daily basis that the problems persist. The Environment Agency is ignoring the complaints it has received over the past couple of years. The residents are busy people who lead busy lives; they cannot keep repeating the same complaint about the same company. They have been reporting these issues for years and have got nowhere, so they can be forgiven for not wanting to spend time every day reporting into a system that they do not believe works for them. They are fed up, and rightly so.
The Environment Agency has written to me to say that it
“did substantiate a strong odour on site”,
and that it is now
“investigating this further and taking appropriate steps to ensure that they (Berry) comply with all requirements to mitigate any potential impact on the local community”.
By coincidence, the Environment Agency came back to me just yesterday—perhaps because I had an Adjournment debate tonight. I have been chasing it for action on this issue for 18 months because my community and its residents’ lives are blighted by it. The EA has said it is happy to meet me and is in the process of setting up a shiny new engagement website—but it misses the point. We have already met on several occasions. In previous meetings, we agreed on the need for officers on the ground to determine the origin of the flies and the source of the odour, and experience how awful the situation is. It now believes us on the source of the odour.
Where are we now? It should not be up to residents to go around with fly swatters and fly traps, which is one of the suggestions, to prove to the Environment Agency how severe the problem is. We did not agree on the need for a new website, as that represents more time-wasting and more faffing around while constituents go into a third summer, facing horrendous conditions at home, in their gardens and on their streets.
The Minister may be new to this topic, but I have heard this all before and yet nothing has changed. Berry Polymers has now declared that it will require advance notice of any unannounced visit by me for “health and safety reasons”. Previously, I visited the site and that visit was unannounced, so I do not understand it. Why should I be prevented from trying to hold businesses like that to account when they cause an environmental hazard to many hundreds, if not thousands, of my constituents? I take their health and safety concerns very seriously, and if I smell foul smells and see swarms of flies blighting my constituents’ lives, I want to see action.
I know that the Minister takes the issue incredibly seriously. I must therefore insist that the Government now take action. Under current legislation, the Secretary of State holds the power
“to agree the Environment Agency’s overall priorities and objectives”
and “to allocate resources” accordingly. The Department has the capability to fix the issue. Now is the time for action.
What am I asking for? I am calling for an urgent review of the Environment Agency’s initial decision; an immediate unannounced visit to the site, as well as repeated visits, with a team of Environment Agency officers to test the odours and count the thousands of flies; and a visit to neighbouring homes to see what my residents have to cope with and to take their concerns seriously.
When the Environment Agency wrote to me in April, it said that it would take appropriate steps after its previous visit, but what exactly has been done? I would appreciate it if the Minister outlined what the EA has done since the last visit to the site on 1 April. I would like to request an urgent meeting with the chief executive of the EA, because it has now got to that level, and I would like the Minister’s support in securing such a meeting. A directive from the Minister and the Government to the EA is needed to get it to act, and to act with authority.
Finally, if the Berry Polymers recycling plant is found to have breached regulations, it should be shut down as a matter of urgency. I am not against recycling—as I say, I am absolutely pro recycling—but I cannot believe this plant was allowed to be sited so close to thousands of homes. I will conclude my speech by making it crystal clear to the Minister, the Environment Agency and Berry Polymers that I will not allow residents to suffer more of this and I will not stop fighting for my constituents until this is resolved.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Mary Creagh)
I congratulate my hon. Friend and neighbour, the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). I know his area well and he has made a powerful and compelling speech on behalf of his constituents. We have a commitment to transition to a circular economy and to try to prevent waste from occurring in the first place, but where it does occur we need to manage it in the most resource-efficient way possible. That is really important for the management of plastic waste. We want to minimise the use of plastics, and it is clear that we need to recycle them to prevent them from being landfilled or incinerated.
My hon. Friend has described a litany of distressing incidents, including the failure around planning permission being given for this light industrial estate so close to residents’ houses and the dreadful examples of children asking their parents, “How can I eat my dinner without flies flying into my mouth?” That is something we would not wish on our worst enemies, and I am truly sorry that his constituents have had to put up with this terrible situation.
Plastics for recycling come from a wide range of sources across households and industry, and they need to be cleaned before recycling. That is a note to all of us when we chuck our dirty, unrinsed yoghurt pots into the recycling. Someone has to deal with them later on. There is no such place as “away”. If we want the material to be suitable for remanufacture, we have to clean up our own mess before we hand it on for materials reprocessing. It is clear that, in this case, this activity has impacted on my hon. Friend’s constituents.
We have regulations in place to protect communities. Recycling plants are holders of environmental permits. Those permits are issued by the Environment Agency and they impose conditions on operators about waste handling, in order to mitigate—that is, reduce—environmental risks such as odour and noise, as well as other pollution risks. The Environment Agency regulates the holders of those permits by making periodic visits to inspect activities, to ensure that they are in line with the conditions of the permit. I am pleased to hear that my hon. Friend has been conducting his own unannounced visits and I do hope he finds a way to continue them, or finds other people to do them for him in the event that he is barred. The EA works with the operators of facilities to ensure compliance, issuing through guidance and advice and, when necessary, serving notices on an operator to mandate actions to improve compliance, such as changes to how they carry out the work or how risks are managed.
I am really sorry that residents are experiencing odours and flies in South Leamington, Warwick Gates, Heathcote and Whitnash. The Environment Agency and Warwick district council have been working together to investigate these issues, but having heard what my hon. Friend has said tonight, I would advise him—I will do my best with this through my private office—to ensure that the Health and Safety Executive is also made aware of the unhygienic working practices that workers at that site are clearly experiencing. If it is bad in the neighbouring houses, I am keen to hear what it is like for people taking their breaks and eating their packed lunches on that site, because I cannot imagine that it meets modern working condition standards.
I understand that the Berry Polymers plant in Leamington Spa sources its material largely from municipal waste, which it cleans on site before recycling into material to go back into manufacturing. The site permit requires an odour management plan, which controls the treatment for the washing of plastic, as well as several other potentially odorous—that is, smelly—processes. As these activities are included in the permit, appropriate enforcement action can be taken should odours be assessed as contravening the plan. The odour management plan includes details about the storage and handling of incoming materials that are recognised as potentially odorous.
The current permit conditions in relation to the open water treatment plant to treat water used from the washing of plastics are being reviewed by the Environment Agency to ensure that all required conditions are in place to regulate the activity. I have a regular Environment Agency update and will be asking for regular updates on this plant and for it to be added to my risk update reporting.
The Environment Agency was first made aware of residents’ fly issues in July 2023, as my hon. Friend says, with a volume of odour reports also being reported in August. It visited two sites in the area regularly, including the Berry Polymers site, and required action to be taken to prevent risks of odours and flies. The actions were to implement fly monitoring, provide evidence of pest management training for staff, and consistently improve pest and odour management plans. As my hon. Friend says, this has been going on for nearly two years.
In January 2024, an external entomologist—an insect specialist—was contracted to conduct a site inspection. Following their recommendations, an improvement plan was produced with further actions. Fly control boards were installed at the plant to kill flies, and fly traps were also installed inside and out to kill flies and allow species of flies to be monitored.
The Environment Agency also asked for volunteers in the local community to conduct fly monitoring in their homes. I sort of agree with my hon. Friend when he asks, “Whose job is it?” I understand residents’ reluctance; only one person responded. Data collection and evidence are an important part of compliance and permit regulatory activity, so if we want action to be taken, we have to have the proof, so I recommend that he re-engages.
In August and September 2024, the monitoring recorded that numbers of flies were not at levels likely to cause distress. However, the Environment Agency continues to investigate all odour reports received and has undertaken 26 unannounced site inspections where odour has been assessed. An additional 11 odour assessments have been conducted in the local area, where sustained odour at levels likely to cause offence has not been identified. However, I take on board what my hon. Friend says about constituents vomiting in their cars as they drive past—he has given a graphic description of the impacts. An odour assessment was carried out on Saturday 1 March. Multiple locations within the locality were visited. Faint and sporadic odours were identified. However, these were not detected at the site boundary. Since March, odour reports have increased—again, it is a hot weather issue. There were 31 reports in March and 32 in April.
In April, the operator notified the Environment Agency of an issue with an on-site sedimentation tank and maintenance was carried out on 25 April to address it. On 15 April, the EA required the operator to provide further information regarding maintenance of the waste water treatment plant, staff training and odour monitoring. A response has been received and is being assessed. Officers carried out further off-site amenity checks on 25 April. No odour or notably elevated fly numbers were noted. A further site visit was conducted last week on 7 May, and no breaches were identified. There were no off-site amenity issues.
The EA is committed, as am I, to ensuring compliance at the facilities that it regulates and that all appropriate measures are in place. I think my hon. Friend will agree— he was very generous in his speech—that we have taken very swift action to tackle waste issues across the country. The EA will continue to respond to reports of odour and flies, and to proactively inspect Berry Polymers and any other permitted or exempt site in the area that it considers a potential source of flies or odour.
The local environment team and the local council have worked together to ensure that residents are kept up to date with investigations and findings through an online community page and monthly briefing notes, but I understand that residents might feel helpless and hopeless. I encourage them to continue taking action and to report fly, odour or noise issues linked to permitted sites, including Berry Polymers, through the 24-hour Environment Agency hotline on 0800 80 70 60. Those reports help the Environment Agency and partners to investigate and assess the impact of all issues.
Matt Western
I thank my hon. Friend for her comprehensive response. The frustration is that, after two years, there is real fatigue among the community about the district council, the Environment Agency and environmental health not listening and taking this problem seriously, so I do not think that we can just complete online forms and rely on them to respond. If Berry Polymers does not change, this is the last chance for it. We have seen video evidence of its washrooms, with flies flying around. The place needs shutting down if there is one more example of its failing to maintain proper conditions in the workplace or the wider environment.
Mary Creagh
I cannot, as a Minister, pass judgment on any permitted operator, as doing so could be prejudicial to any ongoing or potential enforcement action. My hon. Friend has had a letter from the Environment Agency—I have seen that letter. We must move from a world in which regulatory activity is focused on activity rather than on progress. I am very keen that the Environment Agency should make progress with the fly and odour issues that he has spoken about so eloquently.
I will, as I say, keep a close eye on this matter. I will push officials for clear and unambiguous action to ensure that, if we have another warm summer, my hon. Friend’s constituents are not suffering in what can only be described as utterly horrible and unacceptable living conditions.
Question put and agreed to.
Oral Answers to Questions
Matt Western Excerpts(1 year, 7 months ago)
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Mark Spencer
Bass stocks are still recovering from poor spawning periods and overfishing. The bass fisheries management plan commits to review existing commercial access, including gear types such as drift nets, which pose a higher risk to sensitive species and bass fishes. A careful balance must be struck between increasing fishing opportunities and protecting vulnerable bass stocks, but I assure my right hon. Friend that these matters will remain open.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Since April last year, thousands of homes in my constituency have suffered from a fly infestation assumed to originate from a recycling plant. Will the Minister meet me and the Environment Agency to get this resolved?
Robbie Moore
I am more than happy to meet the hon. Gentleman to try to deal with these issues, because for this Government dealing with waste and recycling is incredibly important. If the challenges are having an impact on householders, we need to get on top of this, and I am to meet him to discuss it.
Water Quality: Sewage Discharge
Matt Western Excerpts(2 years, 4 months ago)
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Dr Coffey
Quite clearly, the answer is no. There would not have been the scrutiny that there is today, nor would there have been the investigations that are already under way. The Hamble is a very precious sailing river that goes out into the Solent, so it is important that people can have confidence. That is why our plan has investment behind it so that we can continue to ensure that our waters are cleaner than ever before.
Dr Coffey
No, I will try to make a bit of progress.
After the many press releases, it is good finally to see a little bit of detail about what the Labour party would do about sewage, but to some extent it is already being done. Frankly, today feels like another gimmick, if not a sham, from the Labour party.
I understand that the shadow Secretary of State’s Bill, which has been hastily prepared—I believe it was published last night—is pulling Wales into this. We have already somewhat covered that issue, but based on his logic, I am not surprised that he is embarrassed about the Welsh record. Of the longest sewage discharges in Britain in 2022, the top two were in Wales. Three of the top five constituencies for hours of sewage discharged were in Wales, according to Top of the Poops. In 2022, the average number of spills per outflow in England was 23; in Wales it was 38. As I say, I am not seeking to blame the Welsh Government, but—speaking candidly—facts are our friends. Instead of fudge and obfuscation, we will keep going with our credible plans, because we are determined to clean up our waters.
Dr Coffey
I absolutely agree. We exercised the necessary foresight in drawing up the legislation that became the Environment Act. We listened to the regulators, because we wanted to understand what was happening. Ofwat asked us to give it powers that would allow it to link dividend payments to performance, including environmental performance, and that is being done. We have completed the consultation, and we now need to review it, but we intend to ensure that the Environment Agency can impose unlimited penalties, which I think will be welcomed by my hon. Friend’s bill payers.
Matt Western
I have been listening intently to what the Secretary of State has had to say, and I admire her confidence, but that confidence is not shared by my constituents and many other members of the public when it comes to the condition of our rivers. May I invite her to come to my constituency and look at the River Avon? Perhaps she will don a cozzie, do a Gummer, and get in the water and see just how terrible it is.
Dr Coffey
I think I will be in Stratford-on-Avon in a few weeks, and I may well be able to find time to visit the hon. Gentleman. I have a lot of rivers, and of course the sea, in my own constituency, Suffolk Coastal, which stretches from the River Orwell in the south to the Hundred river in the very north, with many rivers in between. I am very conscious of the importance of this issue to our constituents, and I am proud of the fact that beaches in Felixstowe have had excellent bathing water status pretty much since the qualification arose. I am also aware that the Denes beach in Southwold lost that status, which is why, as a local Member of Parliament, I intervened, along with Anglian Water, to clean up the treatment works in Southwold. I am delighted to say that the beach is now back to a three-star rating. There is a case for ensuring that we have targeted activity, but overall, what I expect as Secretary of State is to receive the plans for every storm overflow that I have requested from the water companies by June.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
It is a pleasure to follow the hon. Member for North West Norfolk (James Wild). Let me start with some facts. In 2021, we saw a 67% increase in sewage discharges in my constituency across the River Leam and the River Avon. Of course these are discharges that are sanctioned by this Government. We have heard that there are now discharges every two and a half minutes. Let us also remember that the Conservative Government voted against the Duke of Wellington’s amendment 45 to the Environment Bill, which would have put a new duty on sewerage undertakers to improve the sewerage systems and to demonstrate progressive reductions in the harm caused by discharges of untreated sewage.
A year on, nothing has changed. The public are extremely disgusted by what they see and hear. In 2022, we had 824 sewage dumps a day across the country. Meanwhile, billions are being paid out in dividends, as we have heard, and the Severn Trent Water CEO’s pay is increasing by 25% to 27% locally. Not enough is being invested in the network, in sustainable drainage systems, or in greywater storage. One of the great hits to the situation was the change in the legislation on new builds and new housing—we have problems with rainwater runoff and the storage on those new developments has not been improved.
I am seeing and hearing real concerns from the community. I have had 52 letters from the public just in recent months. Concerns have been expressed by leisure users such as Warwick Sea Scouts, the Royal Leamington Spa Canoe Club and Warwick Boat Club, which has rowing teams using the lengths of the rivers. I have also heard from businesses, such as Warwick Boats and Leam Boat Centre, which I contacted and which told me they are really concerned about damage to the river’s ecosystem and about public health. Of course, this has an impact on those businesses.
Let us not forget that this also impacts on wildlife. There is a desperate need to take remedial action and focus on river ecologies to protect and preserve plant and animal life. That is why Labour’s plan would impose automatic fines, set legal requirements for monitoring stations throughout our rivers and set legally binding targets. After 13 years, it is clear that the Government have failed our rivers, our canals and our beaches. The Government are out of touch with public opinion. That is why the motion is important and why I will be voting for it.
Water Company Performance
Matt Western Excerpts(2 years, 6 months ago)
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Rebecca Pow
I thank my hon. Friend for that important point. I think the incident she refers to turned out to be one of not sewage but soil. That is another issue we face and we now have targets to reduce soil sediment run-off. We do not want all that soil in our water; we need soil on the land because it is so precious. She is absolutely right about having the right data. Now, because of the increased monitoring that the Government have set under way, every storm sewage overflow will be monitored by the end of this year. It is a phenomenal project that has happened at great speed, ramping up over the last few years. It will provide us with the clear data we need, as well as monitoring upstream and downstream. Real-time monitoring will come into play. That is what we really need, so we can go on to a website, look at our home area and say, “That storm sewage overflow should not be emitting. It is not heavy rain. We have not had a massive downfall. It should not be emitting.” We will be able to go on there and truly hold the water companies to account.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
I am sure the Government are well aware that the public are really upset about this issue. In my constituency people are very much disgusted by it and they do not see a market in operation. We had a 67% increase in discharges locally in the River Avon and River Leam. In Worcestershire, there was an increase of 80,000 tonnes of discharge into rivers which led to a £1.5 million fine for Severn Trent Water. Yet the chief executive got a 27% pay increase to £3.9 million. Can the Minister confirm whether chief executive pay is index-linked to discharges?
Rebecca Pow
I am not going to disagree with the hon. Gentleman that the discharges are unacceptable, but I would also like to say that it is because of what the Government are doing and because we have made this such a priority that it has come to light—a great deal more than it did under previous Governments. We are taking action. It is now a top priority through all the measures we have in place. The strategic policy statement to Ofwat, the targets in the Environment Act and our storm sewage overflows reduction plan—all that cumulative work—will take us on the trajectory we genuinely want and need. We still have clean and plentiful water coming out of our taps. We should not underestimate the fact that that is what the water companies are also delivering.
Oral Answers to Questions
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 1 month ago)
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Rebecca Pow
I thank my hon. Friend for that, and I do realise the challenges that people are facing in his constituency. Repairing and replacing leaking pipes is, as he points out, absolutely critical; obviously, it is particularly critical to maintaining clean, safe, reliable drinking water to our homes and businesses. Identifying those leaks is challenging, and water companies are looking at innovative ways to improve outcomes. It is really for the companies to decide how to maintain their infrastructure, but we are pushing them with the targets that have been set. To minimise the disruption caused, they are required to provide notice of planned work to customers and local authorities.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (George Eustice)
Over the past 18 months, key workers in our food supply chain have worked incredibly hard to keep the nation fed during the difficult context of the pandemic. The recent hot weather has increased demand for some items, such as bottled waters, and staff absences have increased, but remain lower than seen earlier in the pandemic. We are working with colleagues across Government to support businesses in the food supply chain, and I take this opportunity to thank all those key workers working on farms, in food factories, in the distribution system and in our food retail sector for their extraordinary efforts.
Matt Western
In the past two years, we have seen tragic floods in Yorkshire, Cumbria and south Wales. We have seen the floods in Europe and now in China. The Government have cut spending on flood defences by 10%. Why?
George Eustice
The hon. Gentleman is incorrect in that the capital spending on floods is increasing to £5.2 billion. That is almost a doubling of the previous programme. We have held meetings around the Yorkshire area, and Yorkshire will be one of the key beneficiaries from that investment we are making.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The Second Church Estates Commissioner (Andrew Selous) [V]
The Church believes strongly that it does not make sense to put value added tax on the repair and restoration of listed buildings. While the Church is grateful that the Government have extended the listed places of worship grant scheme to refund this VAT for another year, we cannot continue with these short-term, sticking-plaster measures. We need to put the maintenance of our listed buildings on a sustainable basis.
Matt Western
I thank the hon. Gentleman for his response. I am sure he will be aware that, in 2019, Historic England commissioned a report into the economic value of and repairs to a sample of 30 churches and discovered consequential costs of 26% to those projects. Obviously, if VAT is charged, it can be claimed back under the listed places of worship grant scheme, as he said. In two cases in my constituency—St Mary’s church, Warwick, and All Saints parish church in Leamington—that consequential cost could be up to £750,000 for both. Does he agree that we should just be scrapping VAT on these projects?
Andrew Selous
The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that when regular maintenance is not done, the final costs are much higher. We have had other one-off grants in the past, such as the roof repair fund, which we have been grateful for but which have not provided a long-term solution. Having left the European Union, the Government have gained new tax freedoms and could use them to permanently reduce or, even better, zero-rate value added tax on the repairs and restoration of listed buildings.
Environment Bill
Matt Western ExcerptsTuesday 26th January 2021
(4 years, 7 months ago)
Commons ChamberRead Full debate Environment Act 2021 View all Environment Act 2021 Debates Read Hansard Text Read Debate Ministerial Extracts Amendment Paper: Consideration of Bill Amendments as at 26 January 2021 - (26 Jan 2021)
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab) [V]
I will be supporting amendment 24, but due to time I will focus my comments on new clauses 8 and 2.
The fact that the Bill has taken so long to progress through Parliament is enough to know that it is not, and never has been, a real priority of this Government. As my hon. Friend the Member for Huddersfield (Mr Sheerman) reminds us, think back to the 1970s and 1980s when we were the dirty man of Europe: the dirtiest air, the dirtiest rivers and the dirtiest beaches. Thankfully, we aligned ourselves with European legislation and higher standards. It is with that in mind that I want to address the new clauses this evening.
New clause 8 relates to the waste hierarchy, starting with the absolute priority action of prevention. I am reminded of the importance of international legislation and co-ordination. I will hold the Government to account on whether they meet EU legislation and I will press them to exceed it. Addressing waste was an important part of EU policy, establishing as it did global leadership by creating robust frameworks of different regulations and directives to improve the management of waste in EU and European Free Trade Association countries. EU policy can be separated into product-related regulations such as the waste electrical and electronic equipment directive, the end-of-life vehicles directive and the batteries directive, and legislation including the landfill directive. However, plastics are a particular concern, and it is important that we commit pre-manufacture to how parts will be recycled and address producer responsibility, as well as that of the distributors and retailers. We need to encourage supermarkets to do more; I am reminded of the Grüne Punkt, or green spot, approach in Germany. It started back in the 1990s, and it meant that supermarkets would have to take back packaging. I want to see the UK leading in this area, because it is critical.
Agricultural Transition Plan
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 9 months ago)
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George Eustice
My right hon. Friend makes a very important point and I can confirm that that will be possible. We made some changes to the Agriculture Bill that was brought through this Parliament to ensure it could support farm diversification projects to help farmers add value.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
Many farmers in my area of Warwick and Leamington and the villages around are really concerned. As far as they are concerned, they are in business—they have been farmers for generations to look after and steward the land, but also to look after their herds and to produce the grain and crops that we depend on. Their real concern is to do with livestock, where 80% of their income has come from the BPS—basic payment scheme—payments. They see the proposed changes as being all about preserving a landscape, not about preserving food resilience and their businesses.
George Eustice
It is important to note that since the advent of area-based payments the subsidy payments have been totally decoupled from production. Indeed, had we had our time again a better way to have done it might have been to introduce conditionality to the old payments that were there before. It is already the case that there are people who own a plot of land and claim on it but who are not actually producing food. The logic of our policy today is to focus the payments towards what farmers do with the land, not just dole out money based on how much land they own.
Fly-tipping: Penalties
Matt Western Excerpts(4 years, 11 months ago)
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Paul Bristow (Peterborough) (Con)
Thank you, Madam Deputy Speaker, for granting me the opportunity to have this Adjournment debate. I am also grateful to the Minister for coming to the House to respond.
Fly-tipping is an issue that blights too many of our communities. It happens in cities, in towns and in the countryside. Those dumping range from selfish individuals to criminal operators, but the effect is the same: the law abiding suffer, and on private land the law abiding are made to pay. Peterborough is a proud city. My constituency also takes in the fens around Eye, Thorney and Newborough, so I see fly-tipping in all its forms, and, quite frankly, I have had enough of it. The people of Paston, Bretton, Werrington, Ravensthorpe and Millfield have also had enough.
At the 2019 election, I put tackling fly-tipping at the very top of my list of priorities. Some argued that this was a local council issue, but I make no apology for demanding action. I know that Peterborough City Council is working hard to tackle the problem, but we all need to do more to help, including the Government. I regularly report fly-tips as I walk around the streets of Peterborough, and on several occasions I have even rolled up my sleeves and cleared up the fly-tips myself.
The village of Newborough regularly has to put up with fly-tips and mess on roads and around the community. The junction of Norwood Lane and Newborough Road is a particularly bad hotspot that many election candidates visited in the run-up to the 2019 Peterborough by-election. Rubbish piles up high and many have stories of travelling for miles to dump rubbish in this spot. It costs Peterborough City Council tens of thousands of pounds to clear up, and even the Daily Mail called it the most fly-tipped road in Britain.
This problem does not stop with rural locations. In the city of Peterborough itself, we are sick and tired of people making our neighbourhoods dumping grounds. People have even said to me that seeing fly-tips, especially during the isolation of lockdown, affected their mental health. The council does a good job and often clears up after 24 hours, but people are beginning to think that this is almost a service. We need more CCTV and stricter fines.
I could talk for hours about specific problems in Peterborough, but I want to return to the overall picture and what the Government should be doing about it at a national level. There are three acknowledged drivers of fly-tipping, large and small: cost, because dumping waste means not having to pay for it; facilities, which can sometimes be difficult to access; and attitude, of the lazy and selfish who want to make their waste somebody else’s problem. I would add a fourth driver, which is acceptability. When some people regularly see fly-tips, they think it is acceptable. Almost half of recorded fly-tips occur on pavements and roads, and these are often carried out by copycat offenders.
Certain locations become hotspots where fly-tipping becomes the norm. I will refer to private land, which the figures do not properly capture, but I am talking now about the cases recorded by councils. A third of cases are classified as equivalent to a small van load, which are often little white vans of illegal operators. Another third of cases would apparently fit in the boot of a car or less. That is the description in the official statistics. I do not know whether our statisticians regard a mattress as fitting a car boot, but mattresses are definitely among the most common items dumped in my city.
When mattresses are dumped and are not removed, other people take the opportunity to add their own rubbish. The mattress is joined by a broken buggy, a dilapidated table, an old fridge, boxes and bags. As the council’s contractors will be coming anyway, why not? It beats the hassle and cost of the tip or arranging a proper collection. That is why we should alter our approach and treat fly-tipping like we do antisocial behaviour; I call it zero tolerance. Obviously innovations help, including advertising dates for bulky waste collection, and improving access to other facilities and services. But above all, we need a quick removal blitz from hotspots and proper punishments.
I want to acknowledge that the Government recognise there is a problem. I welcome previous actions, particularly the introduction of fixed penalty notices for small offences, along with the power to seize vehicles. The ability for a householder to be fined if waste can be traced back to them was an important change, and the Environment Agency has also been given more funding.
However, an emphasis on localism and local approaches must not become an excuse. It may be tempting to think that fly-tipping is now down to local authorities to combat, but what they need is the right guidance, the right support and the right tools—and those are still limited. The work to secure tougher penalties is not in place, nor is a zero-tolerance approach being promoted or resourced, so we cannot say it is just down to councils. It is not clear to me that any council has had notable success on this. The reality is that fly-tipping is with us just as much as ever, and it appears to be getting worse.
Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
The hon. Gentleman is making an important point, and I congratulate him on bringing forward this very important debate. I am sure he agrees with me and those around the Chamber that one of the pressures on local authorities has been a significant increase during lockdown of people fly-tipping because of their inability to access recycling and other centres. Does he agree, however, that the cost to local authorities such as Warwickshire—£650,000—when budgets are already under huge pressure, is just too much?
Paul Bristow
The hon. Member makes a very important point about the national lockdown and the impact this has had, as well as about the cost associated with clearing up these fly-tips, and I will come on to those specifics. The national lockdown has had very different effects and, unfortunately, life is far from back to normal. My own anecdotal evidence in Peterborough does not lead me to expect any drop in numbers of fly-tips over time; if anything, the reverse is true.
Paul Bristow
Again, my hon. Friend makes an incredibly important point. In Peterborough, my experience is that fly-tipping dropped almost by a quarter when a new super-recycling centre was opened. Huge progress was made, but I fear that a lot of that progress has been lost. There is a clear distinction between clearing fly-tips and enforcement, and I hope the Local Government Association is wrong when it concludes that the unfortunate reality is that enforcement will not be prioritised at this time, and this is likely to have a long-term impact on waste management services.
Sometimes evidence is easy to find. One fly-tip on the site of a local Peterborough business was actually traced back to a Peterborough City Labour councillor not because of rooting through the fly-tip, but because of the enormous “Vote Labour” poster that featured front and centre of it. However, to their credit, the family of the councillor in question cleared up the mess personally when it was pointed out to them that that might be a decent thing to do. It was revealed that they had paid an unlicensed trader to dispose of it. Unfortunately, this is becoming too much of a business for people who would profit from this disreputable way of clearing rubbish.
One positive this year was the Budget, in which the Chancellor announced £2 million to improve the evidence about where fly-tipping happens and the best ways to deter it. I would welcome an update from the Minister on how that work is progressing.
The law makes fly-tipping a criminal offence. The sentencing guidelines were updated several years ago. They allow courts to hand out a maximum fine of £50,000 or a maximum sentence of 12 months. The problem is that this rarely happens. To date, there have only ever been a handful of maximum fines issued to fly-tipping criminals.
Matt Western
I fully agree with all the points that the hon. Gentleman is making. I have taken photographs of fly-tipping at the roadside where there has been a broken number plate from a car tipped with other rubbish and asked the authorities to follow it up. The trouble is that all the other demands on the police and local authorities mean that they really struggle with that. Even before the pandemic, there was a significant increase in the number of cases of fly-tipping in 2018-19 versus 2017-18, with up to 12,200 cases in Warwickshire alone.
Paul Bristow
I accept what the hon. Gentleman is saying. In fact, a lot of this problem comes down to guidance. Councils should be given much clearer, much stricter guidance from Government in order to tackle these issues. I will mention that at the end of my speech, which I promise Members is coming soon.
Some 95% of sentences issued are fines of less than £1,000, and the most common penalty is £400. We badly need tougher sentences, not just in terms of the maximum punishments but, more importantly, in terms of those typically handed out. Sentences are not currently acting as a deterrent. I know the Government are committed to reviewing the sentencing guidelines. I appreciate that this is not directly in DEFRA’s hands, but I hope the Minister can give some reassurance that it is coming, and soon.
Although the council’s ability to hand out fixed penalty notices is limited to the less serious offences, it still managed to achieve 76,000. However, only 12,000 were for small-scale fly-tipping. That compares with 37,000 for littering and 26,000 for other offences. It comes back to the ability to catch people and the willingness to enforce. This is where the guidance needs improving. If an aggrieved constituent examines the Government’s guidance, “Fly-tipping: council responsibilities”, they will find nothing resembling the zero-tolerance approach that we need. I want to see a much tougher approach. I am sure that that view is shared by many hon. Members.
Much of this needs guidance from the centre. The guidance issued for local authorities, “Household waste duty of care: fixed penalty notice guidance”, was updated in December 2018. It encourages what it calls a “proportionate” response and says:
“Individuals should not be penalised for minor breaches”.
I understand why that is, especially when dealing with vulnerable people, but the tone and language is unhelpful. I would want guidance to reflect the language of zero tolerance, which I believe the people of Peterborough and the rest of the country are crying out for. Fixed penalty notices, as they stand, are inadequate. When the minimum penalty is just £150, many unlicensed traders, individuals and landlords will consider that a penalty worth taking a risk for. The level of fines should be considerably higher. Upping the penalties may require legislation, but I urge Ministers to consider it. In doing so, they would have the overwhelming support of the people of Peterborough and, indeed, Members of this House.
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Rebecca Pow)
I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Paul Bristow) on securing this debate and raising this issue. That there is such a good turnout for a Thursday Adjournment debate demonstrates how fired up people are about this issue. My inbox demonstrates that, too; it is one of the top issues I get letters about as a constituency MP and now as the litter Minister.
I agree with all Members who have contributed to the debate that fly-tipping is unacceptable, and it is worth pointing out at the outset that it is illegal. I want to give assurances that I am committed to tackling what is basically a blight on society in every way, as has been outlined by so many so vociferously in this debate.
Of course, I sympathise with the victims of fly-tipping, plenty of whom contacted me during the lockdown, among them my own father. I grew up on a farm and he has to go out weekly to tackle incidents of fly-tipping. He recounted one again this very week, when he had to get the low-loader out and drive to a very remote track—I do not know how anybody ever found it—to retrieve another load of stuff that had been dumped there, so I certainly understand the frustrations. We all want to live in a lovely environment, and lockdown has highlighted how much we value our green space and our nature.
The Government remain absolutely committed to preventing fly-tipping, and I hope that what I am going to say will give some reassurance that measures are in place. Lots of measures have been strengthened, but there are lots more measures coming on track that I believe will help. Indeed, many of them have been mentioned by my hon. Friend, and I will touch on those shortly. Equally, however, I have discovered that, as with most things we touch in government, nothing is as straightforward as it initially appears, and it is not just a simple question of raising fines. It is more complicated than that, as I have discovered, and a lot of levers need to be in place if we really are to get to grips with this—and I really hope we do get to grips with it.
The role of central Government is very much to support local action, providing the legal framework of rights, responsibilities and powers, setting the national standards, and, where possible, making sure that the costs of dealing with fly-tipping are passed on to those responsible. I thank my hon. Friend for acknowledging that the Government have already acted. Over the past five years, the Government have given new powers to local authorities to tackle fly-tipping and strengthened those already available to them, and those include enhancing powers to search and seize vehicles of suspected fly-tippers and granting the power to issue fixed penalty notices of up to £400 to those guilty of fly-tipping and, as of January 2019 to those householders whose waste is found fly-tipped.
The levels of fixed penalty notices were set following a call for evidence, and the value of fixed penalty notices for those whose waste is found fly-tipped was confirmed during a consultation in 2018. So a lot of work went into fixing those penalties when they were raised. Fixed penalty notices provide local authorities with an efficient mechanism to hold fly-tippers to account without having to go to court, which can be time-consuming, resource-intensive and expensive.
Should a local authority take someone accused of fly-tipping to court, the sentences available to the court are severe. Upon conviction in a magistrates court, fly-tipping is punishable by a fine of up to £50,000, 12 months’ imprisonment or both, and the punishments increase to an unlimited fine, up to five years’ imprisonment or both if convicted in a Crown court. Sentences for fly-tipping offences are handed down based on the environmental offences sentences guidance published by the independent Sentencing Council.
The guidance includes, however, a requirement to consider the offender’s ability to pay. Sometimes we get the criticism that the courts are not setting high enough sanctions or fully using the penalties and fines within their powers, but there is a requirement when deciding on the severity of the sentence that consideration be given to whether the accused can afford to pay the penalty, and that sometimes leads to slightly lower penalties being imposed.
In 2018-19, 2,397 prosecutions were brought against fly-tipping offenders, which was an increase on the number for 2017-18. Of those brought to court, 2,052 were issued with a fine, which was an increase of 6% compared with 2017-18. The total value of fines issued by magistrates courts also increased to just over £1 million, which was an increase of 29% compared with 2017-18. So the figures are going up and the measures are starting to work. I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough will say that is not yet enough, but we are on the right trajectory.
Matt Western
Those figures are really interesting and pleasing to hear, but 3,000, which is the national figure, when compared with 12,200 for the number of cases in Warwickshire, obviously represents a very small percentage indeed. I hear the points being made across the Chamber, but of course we cannot bash local authorities because they have had significant budget cuts and face huge pressures. I would like to see them do more, as I am sure the Minister would too.
Rebecca Pow
The hon. Gentleman makes a good point, but there are other measures that I believe will help local authorities, and there are certain reasons why they have been unable to tackle all the incidents he mentions.
We have previously worked with the Sentencing Council to amend sentencing guidance for magistrates, but I acknowledge that the sentences handed down do not always reflect the severity of the crime committed or the costs borne by the victim. It is for this reason that the Government committed in our manifesto to increasing penalties for fly-tipping, and we acknowledged in our waste and resources strategy that there is more to do to strengthen sentences, especially in magistrates courts.
Therefore, working with our partners in the national fly-tipping prevention group, which is chaired by DEFRA, we will continue to work with the Sentencing Council and the Judicial Office to explore ways of ensuring that the penalties handed down for fly-tipping are appropriate and proportionate to the offence committed. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough raised this issue, and we are working on the sentencing, so this is in train.
The national fly-tipping prevention group has previously published a series of fly-tipping prevention guides, which include a recommendation for private landowners to consider installing appropriate deterrence signage and CCTV cameras, in recognition of the part that such measures can play. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough for his suggestions. It is important to note that increasing the penalties for fly-tipping is not the only approach that can be used to tackle this unacceptable crime. As he alluded to, our waste and resources strategy sets out our commitment to prevent, detect and deter waste crime, including fly-tipping.
The Government have been significantly impacted by coronavirus, but my officials are working hard to deliver on those commitments. Even during the lockdown we continued working on the strategy and on the waste measures. This includes developing a web-based fly-tipping toolkit to help local authorities and others, working in partnership, to tackle fly-tipping. In Hertfordshire, such an approach, using measures suggested by the toolkit, has seen incidents of fly-tipping fall by 10% in the first year. I have been asked whether this is working anywhere, and this shows that some local authorities are being successful in tackling fly-tipping. Lots of those ideas have been copied. The toolkit is still being worked on but will be available shortly. We think that it will help local authorities, for example by allowing them to follow best practice from other local authorities.
I am aware that in some instances, where a fly-tipper is taken to court, it is felt that the penalty does not always reflect the crime. Therefore, the toolkit also provide advice to local authorities taking fly-tippers to court on how to present a robust case, because often they take them to court but still they do not get the correct fine. So help and advice is out there for the local authorities too, to go armed with the right data and so on, so that the magistrates or the Crown court will give out the correct penalty or fine.
We are aware that a significant proportion of fly-tippers are those who masquerade as legitimate waste carriers before illegally dumping their customers’ waste. We are therefore working to reform the waste carrier, broker and dealer regime, and the Environment Bill, which we hope will come to Committee very soon, will contain powers to introduce the mandatory electronic tracking of waste, which will obviously be subject to consultation. That will, among other things, reduce the ability of waste criminals to hide evidence of the systematic mishandling of waste, and deter illegitimate operators from entering the sector. It will help to ensure that waste is dealt with appropriately, reducing instances where waste is not tracked and drops out of the system, which unfortunately does happen. We intend to consult on these proposals in 2021.
The Bill, which we hope will receive Royal Assent in 2021, includes a number of other measures to help tackle waste crime. As well as granting the power to regulate for the creation of a mandatory electronic waste-tracking system, it will simplify the process for enforcement authorities to enter residential or abandoned premises under a warrant without having to wait seven days. The current requirement to wait seven days enables the evidence to be hidden, removed or destroyed, so that change will be genuinely helpful. A new power will also be introduced to search for and seize evidence of waste crime. So there is a lot going on.
The Bill will reduce costs and bureaucracy when the police seize vehicles involved in waste crime on behalf of the Environment Agency. It will do so by removing the current practice whereby that is automatically done on behalf of the relevant waste collection authority unless an Environment Agency officer is present, and it will allow the police to seize a vehicle on behalf of the regulator. It should speed up the process and make it quicker and more proactive.
In addition, the Bill will allow for the level of fixed penalty notices to be amended through secondary legislation, so the calls in this place for higher penalties could become a possibility through secondary legislation. So we are listening to all these comments.
These extensive new powers, which have been widely discussed with stakeholders, will aid us in our fight to ensure that waste criminals, such as illegitimate waste operators reliant on fly-tipping for income, are held accountable for their actions.
I am pleased to update my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough on the Budget, which allocated half a million pounds in 2021 to support innovative approaches to tackling fly-tipping. We are exploring those funding opportunities and priorities right now. We are considering the role that mobile and web-based applications and research projects could play in tackling fly-tipping. As my hon. Friend mentions, our annual fly-tipping statistics currently report fly-tipping incidents recorded by local authorities, but they exclude those incidents on private land. He makes an extremely good point, which has been raised by many other people. We are therefore exploring ways that we could plug that data gap by potentially using mobile digital apps to record information. That could be extremely useful.
Before I wrap up, I want to acknowledge the incredible pressure that local authorities have been under during the coronavirus lockdown. It has been mentioned by many people, but in all honesty, I and DEFRA have been working really hard with the waste industry to get those household waste and recycling centres open—which they have done pretty quickly, considering what had hit them. They shut down initially, but they are pretty much all up and running now. I pay tribute to the whole sector, which has worked so hard.
As you can tell, Madam Deputy Speaker, I fully sympathise with hon. Members on this issue. I recognise that there are a lot concerns. The case has been very well made. I hope it is clear that extensive action is under way to cut down on unacceptable waste. There is a lot in the waste and resources strategy and the Environment Bill, and the national fly-tipping prevention group is working on all these measures. I hope that that gives a bit of reassurance that we are trying to crack down on this problem. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough for bringing the issue to us today.
Oral Answers to Questions
Matt Western Excerpts(5 years, 2 months ago)
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Matt Western (Warwick and Leamington) (Lab)
George Eustice
The hon. Gentleman makes an important point. Food labelling can improve transparency, particularly in the retail sector, but of course there are limitations in that around 50% of food goes into the food services sector. That is why we will be addressing these matters in our trade agreements.