Baroness McIntosh of Pickering (Con)

My Lords, I welcome the Minister to her place and thank her for introducing the regulations before us. I say at the outset that they are extremely welcome; obviously, I welcome them. I declare that I recently joined the Environment and Climate Change Committee of this House, so ably and excellently chaired by the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, who I think may refer to some of our report’s conclusions, so I do not want to duplicate that. Having read the reference to which the Minister referred in the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee’s report, I would like to touch on the relationship between these regulations and the extended producer responsibility for packaging scheme. The Minister said that these regulations underpin that responsibility; I wonder if she could elaborate. Is she saying that there will be no sort of double whammy for operators that are under these regulations, as well as the new extended producer responsibility for packaging scheme? That is not entirely clear. I would like to focus my main question to the Minister in this way, if I may. This instrument is all very well and good; it is inviting those who we know are legal operators to comply with a new set of rules on what will, I think, be excellent digital waste tracking. How is her department going to tackle those illegal operators that we identified clearly in the excellent and recently published report—having joined the committee lately, I cannot take much credit for it—from the Lords Committee on Environment and Climate Change on illegal waste? The problem is that it is quite cheap to apply for an initial licence. Here, again, there is going to be only a £26 fee. What we found was that the operator was then going along to collect and gather what was, in many instances, building material that reappears as fly-tipping, probably often on land such as that owned by my noble friend Lord Roborough and others. I am sure he will be in good company in this regard. What is unacceptable regarding toxic waste, such as building waste, is that people pay for a licence, gather that material up and then dispose of it illegally. My real concern, while this system may work well for those who are in the system legally, is how the department intends to operate on those illegal operators who are currently not operating within the remit of the law. How will the Minister’s regulations tend to address that from the digital tracking point of view?