Contribution
My Lords, I congratulate the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, the chair of the environment committee, on securing this timely debate and raising the issue in Committee this afternoon. I have only recently joined her committee, but I am delighted to join such an excellent scheme under her skilful leadership. On this occasion I will limit my remarks, as I was not privy to the evidence, though I entirely support the conclusions reached: in particular, the need for greater resources and for a review, which I will come to in a while.
Like the noble Lord, Lord Beamish, I have followed this issue closely both as a constituency MP for the Vale of York, and subsequently for Thirsk and Malton, but also in my privileged position of chairing the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee in the other place, where we also learned of the issues from landfill sites being full to busting.
For the Environment Agency to tackle waste crimes in rural areas successfully will require resources on a huge scale. The agency already uses the tools at its disposal—cameras, drones, radar and light detection—but its resources are limited and severely stretched. I would like to raise two issues this afternoon: first, how the Environment Agency can hope to address widespread rural crime and the particular offence of waste crime, given its limited resources, without support from police forces, HMRC and local authorities; and, secondly, how and why waste crime is treated differently, depending on whether it is perpetrated on public or private land.
In terms of the scale of the crime, the evidence submitted by the Environment Agency to the short inquiry demonstrated that 24,625 crimes were committed between 1 April 2022 and 31 March 2025, ranging from the burning of waste, illegal waste sites and fly-tipping through to waste carriers and unauthorised waste management activity. The enforcement actions taken were varied, ranging from 1,037 advice and guidance letters through to 685 warning letters and 156 prosecutions.
Early intervention is probably the most effective response to waste crime, and acting promptly to warnings from residents, councils and others. However, the sheer size of the crime and the area to be policed, especially across open countryside, makes it a nigh-on impossible task. Differentiating between where the crime is perpetrated, especially in relation to fly-tipping and the dumping of highly toxic waste, often building materials left by serial criminal offenders, I can see no logical argument for treating the crime differently depending on whether it is conducted on public or private land. Are the Government prepared to review this and equate the offences of and sanctions for waste crime, regardless of where it takes place, on either public or private land?
I am grateful to the City of London Corporation, which states in its briefing for today’s debate that the strategic implication is clear: without stronger alignment between police activity, local authority enforcement and the Environment Agency, organised waste crime will continue to flourish. In a Times article yesterday, it was reported that an elderly farmer in his 80s “simply cannot afford” the £40,000 bill to remove 200 tonnes of rubbish fly-tipped on his land, close to a busy main road. It is not as though farmers do not have enough to worry about at the moment without this additional expense.
There are many other examples of this; I put it to the Minister that, behind each one, there is very human distress and suffering. I hope that, in summing up the debate, the Minister will address these anomalies. I hope in particular that he will implement the very first recommendation of the report, for a root-and-branch review and more integrated working between the Environment Agency, HMRC, the National Crime Agency, policing and local authorities in order to address this scourge of the offence of waste crime, particularly in rural areas.