Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps her Department is taking to help tackle organised crime in the waste sector.

This Government is committed to tackling waste crime from the fly-tippers who blight our towns and villages to the serious and organised crime groups who are exploiting the waste sector.

We have increased the Environment Agency’s budget for waste crime enforcement by over 50% this year to £15.6 million. We are making policy and regulatory reforms to close loopholes exploited by criminals - fundamentally reforming the waste carriers, brokers and dealers system, tightening waste permit exemptions and introducing digital waste tracking. The Environment Agency hosted Joint Unit for Waste Crime has nearly doubled in size thanks to our extra funding and its UK-wide partnership work with the Environment Agency, HMRC, National Crime Agency, the police and others continues to share intelligence, powers and resources to disrupt waste criminals. HMRC has also consulted on making mandatory tax checks required for waste sector operators to combat hidden economy activity. In addition, the Environment Agency’s Economic Crime Unit was launched in 2024 and targets the financial motivations behind waste crime using asset freezes and proceeds of crime actions.