Environmental Protection

Neil Hudson Excerpts

Tuesday 18th July 2023 Commons Chamber

[Dr Coffey]

The purpose of these instruments is to strengthen environmental civil sanctions, so that our environmental regulators can apply an unlimited penalty to companies that break the terms of their permits and do damage to the environment. We are also making it easier for such penalties to be applied rather than having to resort exclusively to taking polluters to court for fines to be applied.

Rightly, the Government care about the environment, as do the public. In January, we published our environmental improvement plan, which set out an ambitious five-year blueprint for action to make our country cleaner and greener, to restore nature and to improve the state of our environment. In April, we set out our comprehensive integrated plan for clean and plentiful water. Both plans demonstrated our ambition and the action that we would undertake to have a laser-like focus on cleaning up the environment, including enabling our regulators to enforce the law effectively and efficiently.

Let me turn to the enablers that we are debating today. First, the current provision for variable monetary penalties under the Environmental Civil Sanctions (England) Order 2010 is capped at £250,000. Possible penalties are supposed to be an effective deterrent to poor performance. Unfortunately, it seems that some operators may have priced in the fact that it can be cheaper to pay the current penalty than to fix the problem and tackle the pollution. Of course, people who breach their permits and pollute can be taken to court facing a criminal conviction and be faced with an unlimited fine and the prospect of going to prison. However, we know that such investigations and court cases can take years to accomplish such an outcome. Therefore, I am clear that we must provide a strong deterrent, particularly for large operators with significant turnover.

[Dr Neil Hudson (Penrith and The Border) (Con)]

I very much welcome these Government measures. Last week, we on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee had an emergency session with Thames Water, Ofwat and the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. We received strong confirmation that the regulators and the Environment Agency now have the teeth that they need to hold polluting water companies to account with unlimited fines or by stopping dividends being paid out. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this Conservative Government are the first Government to take clear and strong action, and that this is in strong contrast to some of the toxic rubbish that comes out especially from the Liberal Democrats, who, I notice, are not in the Chamber today? They seem to forget that, when they had a water Minister during the coalition, they did nothing on this.