Contribution
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this very well attended debate. Let me also thank hon. Members from across the House who have made valuable points. It is great to hear from the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople about everything that this Government need to do, but it was under the coalition Government and their cuts that the beginnings of this public squalor occurred. In the so-called big society of David Cameron, we did not realise we were all going to have to become litter-picking Womble troops, set up our own food banks to feed our communities and end up being lollipop crossing wardens as well, because of the severe cuts that happened to local government on the coalition Government’s watch.
It is fitting that we are having this debate at the beginning of London Climate Action Week. Everybody’s environment starts at their front door—it is not something out there in the oceans and forests; it is about stuff that is literally in the streets where we live. As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) said, this is a matter of social justice. It is about environmental justice, but also about the poorest people bearing the consequences of environmental crime. It is an epidemic that proliferated under the coalition and it became a pandemic from 2015. The failure to implement any new policy and the starvation of local government that saw local tips close led to this criminal activity and this waste crime epidemic.
Fly-tipping scars our streets and parks and takes pride away but it also robs us, as taxpayers. In the 2024-25 financial year alone, waste criminals—they are not cowboys; they are criminals—evaded at least £1 billion of landfill tax. Every fridge and bit of kitchen equipment dumped as a result of a refurb has not been disposed of correctly in either landfill or incineration; that is unacceptable. We are determined to take back control of our streets, parks and countryside from those criminals.
The hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson) talked about setting up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. Since coming into office, we have boosted the Environment Agency’s enforcement budget for the current financial year by 50%, from £10 million to over £15 million. Over the next three years, we will give the Environment Agency an additional £45 million, so that budget is going up from £10 million to £15 million this year and then up to £30 million—we have trebled it. We are not producing action plans, but putting our money where our mouth is. That will mean more boots on the ground and more drones in the air.
We have pursued major regulatory reforms and boosted the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. Since the Government came to power, the EA has stopped illegal waste activity at over 1,500 sites and has achieved 125 prosecutions, with 10 people going to prison. Crimestoppers has launched a national campaign encouraging the public to play their part by calling 0800 555 111 to anonymously report suspicious activity. I encourage all hon. Members to amplify that campaign, which is running on social media at the moment. Our waste crime action plan is the next step and it is a scale-up. First, we are preventing illegal activity before it starts; secondly, we are strengthening enforcement so that offenders are caught and punished; and thirdly, we are cleaning up the most harmful sites. Let me take each of those points in turn.
First there is prevention. Stopping waste crime means putting legislation through Parliament that will replace the outdated paper systems, an issue neglected under the previous Government, with mandatory digital waste tracking: a single UK-wide platform that will monitor waste movements in real time. Regulators will be able to spot diversion away from legitimate pathways and spot fraud, such as misdescription of waste, at a much earlier stage in the chain.
We have laid secondary legislation that will overhaul the regulation of the waste carriers, brokers and dealers system so that there will be no more Beau Vines registered as waste dealers. We are moving from a light-touch system to full environmental permitting. We are removing widely abused waste permit exemptions on tyres, end-of-life vehicles and scrap metal, and tightening up seven other waste permit exemptions. We are also going after the tax avoiders. HMRC is expanding tax check rules to the waste sector, so if someone’s tax record is questionable, we will ask them questions before renewing their licence.