Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)

I thank noble Lords for their contributions and comments. I shall go through and try to pick up the questions asked. As usual, we will go through Hansard and write if there is anything I miss or on which I cannot provide information. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked about EPR and how the regulations underpin other regs. The SI underpins the system, in that it is not intended to put any further burdens on operators. The idea is to use the data, such as on waste tonnages, to help with calculations on local authority payments. It is designed to work with it, rather than create the kind of difficulties that the noble Baroness talked about. All noble Lords mentioned waste crime, so I will go through some of the issues around that. The noble Lord, Lord Roborough, talked about farmers having to deal with excessive fly-tipping, which we have seen increase in recent years. Obviously, it is mainly local authorities that deal with fly-tipping, but we recently secured powers in the Crime and Policing Act to provide statutory fly-tipping enforcement guidance to support councils so that they consistently, appropriately and effectively exercise their powers. We have also obtained powers for courts to award between three and nine penalty points on the driving licences of those found guilty of fly-tipping. It will make it harder for offenders to keep dumping illegally if they end up being disqualified from driving, but it also sends out a clear signal that we are just not tolerating this kind of behaviour. On illegal waste sites, we are working in collaboration with other departments to develop the criteria to objectively identify the sites with the most compelling cases for clearance, because we have to look at operational, community and environmental factors in order to target the sites that are currently the most damaging. The EA steps in when there is an untenable risk to the environment or the public. Site-specific assessments are conducted to determine feasibility and whether clearance is the right course of action at the time. We also need to secure access and look at contamination, safety risks and the engineering design for clearing the site. We do not have a duty to clear all illegal waste sites, as noble Lords are aware, but we are absolutely determined that this is the turning point to try to sort out a lot of the problems we have been facing in recent years. One of the questions that the noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh of Pickering, initially asked was: how will this actually stop illegal waste activity? As I said before, we will lay a second statutory instrument next year, which will require information about the full end-to-end journey of waste to be recorded. Information about that waste movement will be required to be entered into the digital system before the waste is moved, followed by confirmation that a waste carrier has collected the waste and that it has actually been received at a waste-receiving site. If those confirmations are not provided, that will tell the regulators that the waste has potentially been lost and that they can act accordingly to investigate that. Each entry will generate a unique ID number, and it will be required to be given to the waste producer, so that it can check that the waste has gone to a legitimate site. This transparency and near real-time data will reduce the opportunities for organised waste criminals to operate, and it will make it much harder to commit waste crime through deliberate misdescription, illegal exports and fly-tipping. This will make it as hard as possible for people to want to do this in the first place. In March, we published our Waste Crime Action Plan to crack down on illegal dumping. It sets out a zero-tolerance approach, which is built around three objectives: prevent, enforce and remediate. We are also looking to strengthen the regulatory regime in order to pursue the criminals responsible, with more people actually doing the work and looking for them, using our advanced technologies and stronger punishments and trying to accelerate the clean-up effort, so that we can get to grips with this. Up until March 2025, over a three-year period, the Environment Agency secured 211 prosecutions against waste criminals. Recent individual successes since July of last year include a serial waste criminal paying over £1.4 million for widespread illegal waste dumping, and four individuals were arrested over the Kidlington illegal tipping incident. We are determined to ramp this up. The Waste Crime Action Plan also includes new police-style powers for Environment Agency officers, including exploring powers under the Police and Criminal Evidence Act and Proceeds of Crime Act. The Environment Agency is also expanding its use of restriction notices, fixed penalty notices and permit suspensions, so that high-risk sites can be stopped earlier. We will go after the tax evaders and expand HMRC tax check rules to the waste sector. The noble Baroness, Lady McIntosh, asked me about the Environment Agency’s funding, and a number of noble Lords asked about enforcement. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, was particularly interested in enforcement. Just looking at the Environment Agency’s resources, the EA’s total budget for 2025-26 was increased, and that includes £15.6 million for waste crime enforcement—a more than 50% increase. It has gone up by £5.6 million. That has enabled the Environment Agency to nearly double the size of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. It will also receive £45 million to spend on waste crime enforcement over the next three financial years; that is on top of the increase to the waste crime enforcement budget I just mentioned. This will enable the expansion of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime, with an increase to 20 specialists. It will also enable additional investment in front-line activity, intelligence and operational capacity in the EA’s core waste crime teams. To show what that looks like, it will include 31 operational field-based staff, the equivalent of 10 and a half operational analytical staff, and further managerial staff. This should enable earlier and more proactive interventions. Also, the EA is receiving 37.5% of the Proceeds of Crime Act income back into it, which will then be invested specifically in fighting waste crime. For example, since 2024, we have recouped more than £1.5 million through that route. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked about communications and engagement with businesses, particularly small businesses. To inform the design and development of the service, we have carried out extensive user research with software vendors and industry operators across the full range of sectors in the waste industry. I assure the noble Baroness that we are not talking about just the largest operators: we have talked to people right down to the micro level and tried to reach those who are harder to talk to. We have been very thorough in covering that, and we are continuing that user research as we move towards the expansion of the service next year, so those ongoing communications will continue. Service fees and the charge were mentioned. The fee covers the costs of establishing, operating and maintaining the service. It includes things such as the building of the digital system, the ongoing housing costs and the operation of the help desk. The service charge was determined as follows: it was estimated over a 10-year period and averaged over the total number of operators expected to use the service once it has been fully delivered, ensuring that those in the first phase will not pay more. HM Treasury has agreed that approach. However, to answer the noble Baroness’s question on review, we intend to review the service charge once this system is operational and we have more accurate data on the number of users of the system. If needed, we can amend the service charge. Resources were mentioned by all noble Lords, I think. We have increased the Environment Agency’s funding, as I have just detailed. The Environment Agency will also adopt a risk-based approach to regulation by assessing the waste data entered on to the service. We need to make this much more efficient, effective and targeted, which is what we are looking to do. Also, through the implementation of digital waste tracking, officers will save time because they will no longer be looking at manual document checks, which will help; they will not have to carry out time-consuming audits or constantly issue repeated information notices. Overall, we should be able to use Environment Agency resources much more efficiently and effectively than previously. As I mentioned before, the fact that we will have earlier visibility of waste movements will mean that we can identify and investigate potential problems much more quickly, in order to reduce the time and resources spent dealing with huge pollution incidents. The noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, asked about mandatory requirements. All remaining sectors of the waste industry, including those that transport, broker and deal in waste, will be included when we get to the second phase. Waste producers who arrange their own waste movements directly will also be captured in those requirements, but we will give out the full details of that nearer the time. Phasing was also mentioned. Because this is one of the biggest transformations of the waste sector, involves such a large number of operators and is such a complex area to turn around and change, we decided that it was best to introduce things incrementally—starting with the creation of the firm foundation, which we are looking at now. There are approximately 12,000 operators of permitted waste receiving sites, which will all be impacted by the requirements. There are approximately a further 100,000 waste operators who are going to be impacted by the planned expansion of the system and the requirements that they will have to meet. By doing this in a phased way, we can learn from the first phase as we move into the next phase, so that we can better identify all the active waste carriers whom we will need to ensure we have on board when we go into that second phase. That brings me on to the question from the noble Baroness, Lady Sheehan, about when phase two will happen. From this autumn, the expanded service will be available for initial testing with an invited group of users. Then, from spring next year, it will be made available publicly for voluntary use. We plan to lay the next set of regulations at the same time, with requirements coming into force from October 2027. I hope that is helpful for the noble Baroness. I can also confirm that regulators will have visibility of waste movement data and be able to share data among themselves.