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

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps he is taking to help ensure the effective prosecution of people who commit environmental crimes.

The Environment Agency (EA) is the main regulator responsible for the enforcement of environmental law and the prosecution of environmental crime in England. Other regulators responsible for environmental compliance and prosecution in England include local authorities, Natural England and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Natural Resources Wales is the responsible authority for Wales and the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency in Scotland.

Supported by Defra the EA must follow the requirements of the Regulators’ Code and prosecutes in accordance with its published Enforcement and Sanctions Policy. Prosecutions are directed towards the activities that cause the greatest risk of serious environmental damage, where the risks are least well-controlled, the regulatory framework is undermined and where deliberate or organised crime is suspected. The EA delivers the equivalent constitutional check with prosecutions that the CPS provides to the police. The EA reviews whether evidence is adequate and whether a prosecution is in the public interest in accordance with the Code for Crown Prosecutors.

Natural England (NE) has enforcement powers and views enforcement as an essential tool to ensure that the natural environment is protected. A key element of NE’s wider regulatory role involves helping people to comply with laws that protect wildlife and the natural environment, but where laws are broken and impacts on wildlife or the natural environment have occurred, or are likely to occur, NE will take enforcement action to ensure that the environment is protected, and environmental harm is restored. Where enforcement action is taken, NE will apply established principles of good regulation to ensure fairness and transparency for those we regulate.

NE has access to a range of enforcement sanctions available to secure the right level of environmental protection. Where an offence has resulted in significant harm NE’s enforcement response will be robust, aiming to correct and deter further non-compliance. NE aims to apply the polluter pays principle in all cases to ensure that the public purse does not bear the burden of enforcement and clean-up costs. In appropriate cases, NE works collaboratively with other regulators to ensure appropriate enforcement goals are met.

The conservation of wildlife is an area in which the police play an investigative and enforcement role and where the CPS are called upon to prosecute in accordance with the provisions of the Code for Crown Prosecutors. The CPS sits on a number of working groups to tackle wildlife crime including the National Wildlife Crime Unit’s (NWCU) UK Tasking and Coordinating Group (UKTCG) and the Partnership for Action Against Wildlife Crime (PAW UK). In some cases, the Director of Public Prosecutions may be able to take over a prosecution brought by another organisation.