Waste Management Carriers: Regulation

Question

Asked by

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the use of available regulatory powers to take action against operators or waste carriers that divert waste from the legitimate waste management chain.

My Lords, in the last two months alone, Environment Agency investigations have led to 16 waste crime-related arrests. However, we know we must strengthen the EA’s powers, which is why this Government are committed to do so in our waste crime action plan. We are also prioritising reforms to the carriers, brokers and dealers system, updating waste exemptions and implementing digital waste tracking. These measures will improve oversight, close loopholes and meaningfully tackle criminality in the waste sector.

My Lords, the Makerfield by-election seems to have speeded up action on the horrendous illegal waste dump in Bickershaw, Wigan. First, can the Minister say when it will finally be gone and at what cost to the taxpayer? Secondly, surely it makes sense to turn the taps off at source so that producers pay for clean-up if due diligence is not carried out and their waste is subsequently illegally dumped. This is what my Private Member’s Bill on corporate waste responsibility seeks to do. Will the Government support it? If not, why not?

I am very happy to meet the noble Baroness to discuss her Private Member’s Bill. It is really important that we look at every aspect we can to tackle the increasing problem of waste crime. It is why we have given an extra £45 million to the Environment Agency; it is why we are carrying out some of the measures I mentioned in my initial Answer and it is why the waste crime action plan sets out the toughest crackdown to date, focusing on a number of regulatory loopholes that have allowed criminals to get away with what has been happening. As for the site that she mentioned, I will have to write to her with those details.

My Lords, I have been talking rubbish for many years. This is not just a blight on people’s neighbourhoods but an environmental time bomb ticking away in many communities. It is also a driver of organised crime, with the money used for other nefarious activities. The last Government set up the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. My noble friend just referred to more money for the Environment Agency. Frankly, the Environment Agency is a waste of time on this. It does not have an enforcement culture, and the fact that the Joint Unit for Waste Crime has not secured any successful prosecutions so far shows that it is not working. I urge my noble friend to pull the various agencies across government together to tackle this. Without a Minister forcing this through with vigour, not just closing legislative loopholes that need to be closed but creating an effective culture of enforcement, nothing will happen.

To reiterate, the Environment Agency has secured prosecutions. In the three years to March 2026, there were 234 prosecutions against waste criminals, resulting in more than £2.2 million in fines, 22 immediate custodial sentences and 60 suspended sentences. We are also working with the EA to enable earlier intervention. The EA has implemented a target time of 48 hours for attendance at reported illegal waste sites assessed as potentially significant and is expanding its use of restriction notices. We are taking this very seriously and we are working directly with the Environment Agency to make sure that it does what it needs to be doing.

My Lords, does the Minister not accept that the dumping of illegal waste is a direct result of the quite high charges that are made for dumping legally? Should not some of the money raised from legal dumping be allocated to clearing away illegal waste?

I am not sure that the right expression is “legal dumping”; I think it is “sending things to the correct place for it to be dealt with and managed”. The big problem is that it is now attractive for criminals to make money out of, and that is what we need to stop.

My Lords, when are the Government going to bring in a proper extended producer responsibility? To go back into the history of waste, in 1970, when the environment movements grew up, Keep America Beautiful, followed by Keep Britain Tidy, were campaigns that came from the industry—Coca-Cola, Pepsi-Cola, cigarette companies. They were creating a throwaway world but could not deal with it, so they made it our responsibility to dispose of waste. Fifty-six years later, they are still doing the same thing. Until we say to them, “You are responsible for the waste you are creating, the plastics and the things that do not recycle”, and only 9% of all our waste is recycled, we will carry on having exactly the same problem, certainly until I am dead but probably until all of us are dead.

The noble Baroness raises a really important point. I have met organisations such as Coca-Cola, which I know feels that the money that it has invested should be taken into account when we look at how these things are tackled. Producer responsibility is, again, something that the Government have been looking at. My colleague, Mary Creagh, who has responsibility for these areas, is taking this matter very seriously and, I am sure, will continue to talk to producers about what they need to be doing.

My Lords, these new powers for the EA have been described by the Government as “police-style powers”. Given that this is about enforcing the law and the EA has failed to do so, has the Minister considered that the police themselves would be more effective in enforcement if they were given that responsibility?

The key thing, as I mentioned earlier, is that the EA has made some arrests—since September last year, 22 arrests have been linked to waste crime. However, it is important to note that arrests have to be made by the police—the noble Lord made that point quite clearly—and that is done working very closely with the Environment Agency. One way to increase this is to make sure that the agencies work very well together. One issue is that police arrests are not tracked centrally, and we are continuing to work with the Home Office on how we can improve that joint working.

My Lords, the noble Baroness is quite right when she says that the illegal disposal of waste is attractive to criminals. That is because it is lucrative, so what steps are the Government taking to make it cheaper and easier for people and businesses to dispose of waste legally?

One thing we need to do is to work more closely with local authorities, because waste collection and disposal is the responsibility of local authorities. Much of the problem is that carriers, brokers and dealers can get away with behaving irresponsibly, which is why we are looking at the current registration system. We need to make it harder for rogue operators to find work, fundamentally: if they cannot get the work in the first place, if they cannot get the waste to begin with, they cannot dump it. It needs to be tackled from all sides.

My Lords, I thank the Minister for genuine progress that has been made; there is obviously more to do. My noble friend mentioned Bickershaw, a huge site mere metres from a school and from houses. The Government’s own record shows that there are at least 17 super-historic sites that blight their communities. Does the Minister expect that, under new leadership, more action will be taken to deal with this toxic legacy and clear up these historic sites?

As has been mentioned, Bickershaw and other sites have been an absolute disgrace and a blight on local communities. That is why we are bringing in all the different initiatives I talked about within the waste action plan, why we are trying to give the Environment Agency more power and more ability to make arrests, and why we are looking at how to stop this at source. This is not going to be solved simply; we need to make sure that we tackle it from all sides. Whatever Administration we have going forward will be absolutely committed to do that, I am sure.