Oral QuestionDepartment for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

If he will make a statement on his departmental responsibilities.

Tabled: 1 May 2025Answered: 8 May 2025

Asked by

Ben Maguire

Liberal DemocratNorth Cornwall

Answering Minister

the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Answer from Hansard

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Steve Reed)

Fly-tipping scandalously shot up by over a third under the previous Conservative Government, and the public are rightly furious when they see their communities buried under an avalanche of rubbish. This Government will clean up our streets, towns and villages. We will support councils to identify, seize and crush waste criminals’ vehicles by closing the Tory fly-tipping loopholes that prevented tough action. We will increase sentences for dumping waste to up to five years, and we will make fly-tippers pay the cost of impounding their vehicles before they are crushed, because we believe that the polluter, not the public, should pay. This Government will call time on fly-tippers so we can restore people’s pride in their neighbourhoods.