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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will publish the correspondence received by his Department from Newcastle-under-Lyme Borough Council on the Walleys Quarry Landfill Site in each of the last five years.

The Hon Member has requested a significant amount of information. Some of this correspondence may be subject to the conventions regarding access to papers of a previous Administration. Publishing some items of this correspondence could also risk prejudicing ongoing regulatory or criminal investigations in relation to the site. To fully review all of this correspondence would incur disproportionate cost. With this in mind I would like to offer a meeting with the Hon Member to discuss the issues at the site and actions underway.