Environmental Protection

I beg to move, That the draft Environmental Permitting (Waste Controlling or Transporting) and Relevant Functions of Primary Authorities (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 20 May, be approved. It is a pleasure to be here on this hot and sultry evening. Despite our late nights or early mornings—whatever we decided to do in order to get over the football—I hope I can entertain the House with this vital piece of new legislation. I would like to acknowledge the important work of the Secondary Legislation Scrutiny Committee in its review of this statutory instrument. Its scrutiny is a vital part of our legislative process, ensuring that the policy intentions behind our secondary legislation are clear and well founded. As Members across the House will know from their inboxes and will have seen for themselves, waste crime blights our constituencies. Criminals who dump waste illegally in our streets, our fields and our woodlands show contempt for our communities and for us, creating eyesores that damage our environment. Under the Control of Pollution (Amendment) Act 1989, a light-touch registration system was set up for those who transport and deal in waste. It has remained pretty much untouched since then. As a result, it has been exploited by waste criminals, leaving the public with a huge clean-up bill. Enforcement, sadly, is only reactive. The system is not fit for purpose, with anyone or anything—a dead dog called Oscar, a fish, or even a cow called Beau Vine—being able to register on the system. That stops today. This Labour Government are scrapping the broken waste system that the Conservatives left behind. Today we are introducing stricter checks and requirements, closing the loopholes long exploited by illegal operators, and the objective of this Government’s waste crime action plan, published in March, is to stop waste crime at its source and to bring pride back to our communities. We are cracking down on the waste criminals, dragging the regime into the modern age and improving waste traceability. These regulations bring those in England who control and transport waste within the scope of the Environmental Permitting (England and Wales) Regulations 2016. They repeal the current carriers, brokers and dealers registration, which is now over: finished, kaput, no more. These regulations introduce tougher checks for waste controllers and transporters. Permitting will now be required for those who control and transport waste, bringing the system in line with site-based waste activities. Those who apply for permits will undergo strict background checks, including tax checks, identity checks and criminal records checks. They will need to demonstrate that they are technically competent to do the job. The Environment Agency will be responsible for managing applications for, and ensuring compliance with, this new permitting system. The fees introduced for permits will also mean that the Environment Agency will be effectively resourced for its compliance work.

My constituents in Rushcliffe have experienced the consequences of waste crime very recently. In April, there was a fire at the Hathernware industrial estate, eight years after a previous fire. This particular fire raged for seven days and caused significant health impacts for the local community. Will my hon. Friend go further and think about how the different agencies with responsibility for waste should be working more effectively together? Although the Environment Agency was involved with this incident, it also thought responsibility lay with the county council and other agencies. I think they all need to come together so that there is proper accountability.

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We inherited a bit of a “pass the parcel” system: “Who is the landowner? Who is the local authority? What is the size of the dump? Is it permitted or not?” That means that waste criminals can fall between the cracks and that there is effectively impunity. We have introduced a digital waste system, but under the current system, enforcement can only be reactive, not proactive. For that reason, we are introducing identity checks, to find out the answers to questions like, “Does this person actually exist, or is it a dog or a cow?”, “Do they have a criminal record?” and “Are they fit and competent to manage the waste?” All those things matter. As my hon. Friend described, we are talking about dangerous materials. We do not want to see them piled high and not moved on, and then, sadly, a fire coming along—whether deliberate or accidental. In all these environmental crimes, including dumping and burning, the profits are privatised, but the costs, and the social and environmental consequences, are socialised.

In my previous role as Lancashire’s police and crime commissioner, the connection between such sites and organised crime gangs was often well documented. As the hon. Member for Rushcliffe (James Naish) outlined, a multi-agency response is often needed, but it is important that we do not forget the role of the police, who often have to escort other agencies to the sites in order to protect them from the people operating them.

The hon. Gentleman makes a very good point. The idea that we can send Environment Agency officials to deal—in some cases—with serious organised crime groups is simply for the birds. People say, “There aren’t prosecutions” or “The penalties are too light”, but the waste is often one part of a multifaceted criminal enterprise—it is just another wing of a business empire. We need to get better at looking upstream, looking at tax checks and looking at the web of companies behind the business, and basically doing the Al Capone method—getting them on tax evasion—and prosecuting them under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. There is a wider point here: we cannot expect council officials who have been denuded and stripped of funds over the last 14 years to suddenly become waste crime enforcers. There may be only one or two trading standards and compliance officers in post in a local council, but this sort of sophisticated crime requires a lot of multi-agency work. Someone from the National Police Chiefs’ Council is now tasked with doing that work; we are doing a review, particularly of local authority competence in this area.

The Minister has touched on organised crime. As I am sure she is aware, modern slavery can be a real issue within the waste crime sector; we have had some powerful debates on that issue in the Chamber. The waste crime action plan sets out that people will be held to account and given community service, but we need to reach further up the chain, because often the people who are caught in the act are the ones being exploited or forced to carry out such activities. I am reassured by what she says, but does she agree that we need to go further up the chain?

We need to take action at every level. For example, the person who does a weekend job for their friend, transporting half a skip of old kitchen waste that suddenly ends up on a lay-by, in a farmer’s field or blocking a lane, will now face up to nine penalty points on their licence; that should make them think twice before doing that job for their friend. They may only be on the periphery of the criminality, but in order to stop it, we have to look right the way along the chain. Anecdotally, I often hear that when these small-time crooks are apprehended, they are only too pleased to pay the fixed penalty notices to the council and to be let away with it, because they can be the front end of a much, much larger serious and organised crime group. So what does this all mean? The Environment Agency is finally going to be effectively resourced to undertake the compliance work. The move to permitting means that the agency can suspend and ultimate revoke permits where conditions are breached. It can also prosecute, and those found guilty will face fines or up to five years’ imprisonment. The regulations will mean that the public should have more trust in the people they hand their waste to. We will require waste controllers and transporters to include their permit number on advertising, whether that is a Facebook ad or a branded van.

I very much support the proposals that the Minister is outlining. One of the groups most impacted by waste crime is farmers. There is a farm in my constituency where more than 200 bales of DIY waste were dumped on the land, at an estimated cost of £250,000 to remove. I welcome the discussion on fines, but does she agree that we need to look at whether those fines can go towards the cost of the clear-up to a greater extent, to match the scale of the crimes committed?

My hon. Friend is right. We are acutely conscious of the issue that farmers face. There is innovative work being done with drones, and I met one farmer who told me that his neighbour turned up with a tractor to block the lane as the criminals were trying to make their exit; they caught them in a trap and then called the police. That was a happy outcome in Hertfordshire, but we cannot have eyes on the ground in every field and back lane, so we are working with insurers to see what we can do to ensure that this type of crime is properly covered under farmers’ business insurance. The regulations will mean that the public should have more trust in the people to whom they hand their waste. The public will be able to look up operators and ensure they have a valid permit. This reform is one of a number outlined in the waste crime action plan. It is nothing new: it was first announced eight years ago by the Conservative party, in the 2018 resource and waste strategy. It was consulted on back in 2022 and the Government gave their response in 2023, but it is this Government that have delivered it. We have introduced digital waste tracking, replacing outdated paper-based methods for monitoring waste movements. We will be tightening the waste permit exemption system by getting rid of exemptions abused by those dealing with end-of-life vehicles, tyres and scrap metal. We will be enabling the Environment Agency to tighten up on exemptions abused in other parts of the waste sector, including the use of waste in construction, preparatory treatments, the treatment of waste wood, manual treatment, burning of vegetation at the place of production, storage in containers and storage in a secure place. Taken together, these measures strengthen the regulatory framework and the Environment Agency’s ability to prevent, detect and tackle waste criminals.

The Minister is being very generous in taking interventions. In my previous role, and from meeting people working in the industry in my Fylde constituency, I discovered that the Environment Agency often regularly visits those businesses that are already abiding by the law and keeping good records, because those records are easy to inspect and the companies are easy to deal with, and it often issues fines for small misdemeanours. Meanwhile the criminal operators, who are flagrantly breaking the law, often evade any inspection because they are difficult to deal with and aggressive. The regulatory framework is important, but the culture of going after those who are flagrantly breaking the law, rather than just checking people’s paperwork, is really important as well.

Under the current system, checking the paperwork is all that the Environment Agency can do; that is the problem. Under the managing public money rules, the Environment Agency is not funded by legitimate operators to go and seek out criminals. We consulted on that during discussions about digital waste tracking. There is an issue with saying to legitimate operators, “We will add a tenner on to your licence so that we can go after the criminals”, because that is not allowed under Treasury rules. There is a chicken-and-egg situation, and I have heard the same anecdotes as the hon. Member. The bottom line is that if someone is controlling or transporting waste, they should be registered, the registration should be clear for all to see, and we should be able to check that they are a true person on the system and that there is nothing in their background that would make us hesitate about whether to issue a licence. To come back to the issue of a multi-agency response, we have an action plan and we are working with the Environment Agency, the national lead for waste crime, alongside His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, which is going after the tax, the Home Office, which is covering the issue of vulnerable workers and exploitation, local police forces and local authorities. We are undertaking co-ordinated cross-Government action. We will monitor the effectiveness and improve metrics so that we get a much better multi-agency waste crime response.

The Minister was just talking about metrics. Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Fylde (Mr Snowden), will she say a little more about organised crime? In assessing the effectiveness of these changes, what key metrics would she apply to prosecutions relating to organised crime?

The right hon. Gentleman tempts me, but it is a bit too early to say. These prosecutions often take a long time to piece together. We have all seen the pattern where a company goes bust, owing HMRC a vast amount of money—sometimes in the tens of millions of pounds. I do not want to get into saying, “One, three, five or seven,” and setting out those targets; I do not think we are at a stage to talk about that. However, I can reassure the House that my risk appetite for not granting permits to people who may be questionable is very high, and I am very happy to be taken to court by people who think they may have unjustly been denied a waste permit. So far, there have been no cases against us or the Environment Agency for refusing a licence. We are tightening up all the way along the system, but I do not want to get into metrics. We know the sites where we have problems and we see new ones appearing, and the thing is to stop the proliferation of those sites, many of which are simply illegal and are not permitted in any way, shape or form. That is where our difficulty comes in.

I want to go back to the case that I mentioned earlier. For the Minister’s reference, there will be a two-and-a-half-month delay between the Environment Agency wanting to take action and managing to get the court order that will prevent the individual from getting access to the site, where there has been a second illegal fire within eight years. May I put on the Minister’s radar the importance of sorting out the courts so that immediate action can be taken when problems are identified?

I am responsible for many things, from forests and international biodiversity to peat and trees; I am afraid the courts are slightly outwith my jurisdiction, but I will pass that point on. We are working with our colleagues on issues around sentencing. On the metrics, the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire (Steve Barclay) knows, as a former Environment Secretary, that we have a risk-based, intelligence-led approach that directs the greatest effort towards the highest harm illegal operators. By strengthening the regulatory framework and their abilities, alongside these reforms, we are providing those in the joint unit for waste crime, who are responsible for tackling it, with the tools that they need to stamp it out. I was very disappointed to read The Times’s leader today on fly-tipping; I thought it was a little unfair. This Government have doubled the Environmental Agency’s waste crime enforcement budget by committing an additional £45 million over the next three financial years. I believe the budget in 2024-25 was £10 million. We have added £5 million on this year, and then we will add an extra £15 million. Essentially doubling that budget means more boots on the ground and more drones in the air to expand enforcement activities and track down waste criminals. Since March, I believe we have had 18 waste crime prosecutions. I acknowledge the strength of support in the legitimate waste industry for this reform, and its patience over the years as that reform has been developed under the watch of the right hon. Member for North East Cambridgeshire and others. These regulations are a significant change. They level the playing field for all operators and will protect communities and the environment from waste criminals. As I said, this is a really important part of our plan to stop waste crime. These regulations also bring the Environment Act 2021 within the scope of the primary authority scheme by adding it to schedule 3 to the Regulatory Enforcement and Sanctions Act 2008. For those unfamiliar with it, the primary authority scheme allows businesses with operations in more than one area to work with a single local authority that provides consistent, tailored advice on meeting their legal obligations, which can cover areas such as environmental health, trading standards and fire safety. Extending the scheme to include the Environment Act is important, because it will enable primary authorities to support retailers in understanding and meeting their responsibilities under the forthcoming deposit return scheme, which launches next year. That will help to ensure a more consistent and effective approach across the country. I recommend this statutory instrument to the House.

I call the shadow Minister.

We recognise that the current system for regulating those who transport and control waste needs to be updated to ensure the waste sector has a regulatory framework that delivers the safe and responsible management of waste and reduces opportunities for criminal activity without being unduly burdensome to businesses in the sector. The impacts of waste crime are significant, causing damage to our environment and natural habitats and imposing a cost to the taxpayer of nearly £1 billion per year. It undercuts legitimate businesses and undermines public confidence. I am pleased that the Government are attempting to tackle waste crime at source through this SI, but I have some concerns as to how it will be implemented and function, which I will address shortly. Before I come to that, I note that the responses to the consultation were broadly supportive of the proposal to move from registration to permitting, as this SI outlines, with 73% of respondents agreeing that the current waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime should be brought under environmental permitting regulations. The concept of proportionate regulation, in which higher-risk activities receive greater scrutiny while genuinely low-risk operators can benefit from exemptions, is one that makes sense and that we would support in principle. However, recognising the need for reform does not mean burdening legitimate businesses with ever-increasing costs. I want to raise some concerns with the Minister in a constructive manner, in the hope that she can reassure the House that the Government have struck the right balance between stronger regulation and the burdens being placed on businesses already under considerable pressure by the costs and consequences of other policies brought forward by this Government. Over the appraisal period, businesses will face almost £187 million in permit fees, more than £50 million in familiarisation costs, significant application and audit costs, and well over £190 million in additional training and technical competence requirements. The Government are banking on the fact that those costs, which are very significant, will be outweighed by the benefits of reductions in waste crime and of creating a fairer marketplace for legitimate operators. However, as the Minister will know, the impact assessment showed an overall negative net present value from this policy of £340 million over the appraisal period. That is substantial. Even given the potential for a conservative estimate of reduced waste crime and other potential non-monetised benefits and wider social benefits, there is significant uncertainty. In the current economic climate, will the Minister reassure us that there will be appropriate monitoring and evaluation to ensure that the significant costs for businesses do not escalate further and to check that the benefits are fully realised? In particular, how will the Government monitor the cumulative impact of these new requirements on smaller operators? We all want to drive criminals out of the sector, but we must ensure that we do not inadvertently make life disproportionately harder for responsible businesses. Businesses are already dealing with the consequences of this Government’s policies, from the jobs tax to increased costs and ever more burdensome regulations. Against that backdrop, it is entirely reasonable to ask whether businesses have been given sufficient time, support and clarity to prepare for these significant changes to the waste sector. Will the Minister provide further detail on the guidance that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency intend to publish ahead of commencement? What assurances can she give about the resources in place so that any permit applications will be responded to and actioned promptly? While we welcome the intention to strengthen enforcement, what confidence can the Minister give the House that enforcement activity will be genuinely targeted at rogue operators, rather than becoming an additional bureaucratic burden on compliant firms? Finally, the Government intend to evaluate these reforms through the wider resources and waste policy programme, with reporting due in 2029. Given the scale of these changes and the costs involved, will the Minister commit to providing Parliament with earlier updates on implementation, compliance costs and whether the anticipated reductions in waste crime are actually being achieved? Given the Government’s familiarity with U-turns, we may need to revisit this SI sooner rather than later if it is failing to work for the sector. If this SI is implemented well, it should protect the environment while enabling responsible businesses to thrive. We support the objective of modernising an outdated regime and strengthening action against waste crime, but we also believe Ministers must recognise the cumulative pressures facing businesses and ensure implementation is carefully managed. It is in that constructive spirit that we will continue to scrutinise the implementation of these regulations, holding the Government to account to ensure these reforms deliver the environmental benefits that Ministers promise without imposing unnecessary burdens on the businesses that are working hard to comply with the law.

I welcome the robustness and energy that the Minister has brought to her task—it is very welcome. Inevitably, the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth), wants to revert to some kind of light-touch approach, but we need to make sure the communities we represent are adequately protected—if necessary, by criminal action, as the Minister envisages. Let me briefly describe the small, peaceful village of South Elmsall in my constituency. Like many other communities in Britain, it consists of law-abiding, hard-working, fair-minded people who play by the rules and expect to be able to live a satisfactory life. Many of them have saved hard to take out a mortgage and buy a house or to rent one. Close by, however, there is what is called the ash pit. Many, many years ago, permission was given under licence to do some recycling there, in order to eventually turn it back into arable land. When the people who live there bought their houses or moved in, they had a more than reasonable expectation that that work would be finished within a 10-year period. It has now been 17 years and the work still has not been satisfactorily resolved, which is a great misfortune. I will come to the Environment Agency in a minute, but let me quickly describe what has been happening at the so-called ash pit. Various authorities, including the appeal inspector for the Planning Inspectorate, the EA and the council, have all indicated that what has happened on that site is completely unacceptable. Noxious materials have been placed there. It was intended that 50,000 tonnes would be stored at the facility; that is quite a lot, but almost 250,000 tonnes have been discovered on the site, and much of it consists of material that is not inert, but noxious. That is a problem. Not only that, because of the scale of what has been dumped there, whenever it rains, dangerous and polluted water runs into watercourses and local streams such as Frickley beck. Dust and waste is everywhere, and it escapes from the site whenever there is even a small breeze. Turning briefly to putrefaction—which I am sure we do not want to think about—the level of putrefaction on that site is quite extraordinary. It creates what I will call an odour. In Yorkshire, we would probably call it a horrible stink. It can spread over large distances, and several hundred houses can be affected by that horrible smell. I was a witness to it the other day. When it rains, it is awful; when the wind blows, it is terrible; and when it is hot and the wind is blowing, it is really, really horrible. The other day, I spoke to a gentleman who is a long-term resident of South Elmsall. His birthday was coming up—it is a number with a zero at the end of it, so it is an important one—and he wanted to bring 30-odd members of his family to sit in the garden in the projected heatwave, but in the end they could not do it. The effect of what had been left on the site was so horrible that he could not enjoy his birthday. Lots of people tell me that they cannot have their windows open in summer, and they cannot have their doors open to let a bit of fresh air in because of the problems that site is creating—a site that is five times larger than intended and has run for seven years beyond the original licence. I have spent a long time dealing with this issue, because the people of South Elmsall are decent, and I am sure we would all do the same for any community that came to us. Large numbers of people have been involved, and we quickly latched on to the Environment Agency. The officers who work for the EA are genuine, hard-working, knowledgeable people who understand the impact of a site such as this. They told me that it is probably the worst site in the north of England—other sites are competing for that award, but let us put that to one side for a minute. However, it became clear fairly quickly that the Environment Agency was understaffed and under-resourced and lacked the powers it needed to begin the process of enforcement. That left me worried, because people pay their tax—their council tax and so on—yet we were unable to get action. Eventually, we persuaded the Environment Agency’s enforcement people to begin to take action. The site was then refused permission to continue, but the operator simply abandoned it, or appears to have abandoned it, so no work has been done there for some time. The area is putrid; it is grossly unfair that people who live decent lives should be left in a situation like this. At first, the Conservative Government envisaged light-touch regulation. It seemed to me—this has now been confirmed by the Minister, and I welcome her comments—that light-touch regulation simply does not allow the EA to take the necessary enforcement action when activities such as those I have described take place. Obviously, this case is not the only one in the country, but it is worth raising to justify what is being done. I notice that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has said that the powers that currently exist are reactive rather than preventive. When you are reacting, it is too late—you need to be there at the beginning to prevent things like this from taking place. I am quite sure that a much more proactive operation by the EA will be welcomed across the country. The shadow Minister has said, “Well, we’ve got to be a bit careful. We don’t want to over-regulate these things.” The idea that these activities should be dealt with using a light touch will raise a bitter laugh in the communities I represent, and in communities all across the country who are suffering from the same kinds of problems. We want action. Obviously, we do not want inappropriate action, but action must be taken. That is why I welcome the decision to proceed with this SI. I have two final questions. First, when a licence has been granted to an operator under the new procedure, if things begin to go wrong, does the Minister envisage that the EA will be able to remove that licence if a satisfactory resolution is not reached? It is quite clear that being preventive will not always work—some problems will emerge. Secondly, last Monday, we were having a planning appeal on this site, and the planning inspector went way beyond his brief and said to me—I am a Member of the governing party, but he thought I was the Government—“Will you ask the Government what they are going to do about those operators who deliberately take millions of pounds of profit from a site, then abandon it at the last minute and declare themselves in liquidation?” What happens then is that either we get the putrefaction I have described, or the taxpayer has to pick up the bill. That is happening all over the country. Possibly the planning inspector abused his position—I felt slightly intimidated—but I said there was a debate today and that I would put that question to the Minister. In a situation where a cowboy operator has taken millions of pounds in profit, left the place in a state and then gone into liquidation—or even gone to live abroad, as has been reported to me—what does she envisage will happen to avoid the taxpayer having to pick up the bill? These are serious matters. I will finish with this: those who I have described will welcome today’s debate and today’s action, but what they want to see next is action across the country. In my patch, we want to see some progress so that this site is no longer a horrible mess.

I call the Liberal Democrat spokesperson.

I thank the Minister for setting out this statutory instrument, which the Liberal Democrats support. For too long, the system regulating who can transport and manage our waste has relied on a simple registration scheme, scarcely able to distinguish between reputable operators and rogue ones. That simply cannot continue. Replacing carrier, broker and dealer registration with an appropriate and robust permitting regime is the right call. Distinguishing waste controlling, waste transporting and waste controlling-transporting means that regulation can finally be risk-based, rather than having a one-size-fits-all free-for-all. Giving the Environment Agency the power to check before granting a permit, rather than after damage is done, is exactly what the Liberal Democrats have long called for. We therefore back this statutory instrument, but supporting it does not mean we accept that it is job done. Permitting who is allowed to move waste does nothing for what happens when criminals move it anyway. Earlier this year, a space outside the Red Brick Building alongside a key gateway into Glastonbury was blighted by a mountain of fly-tipped waste. No single body was able to or wanted to take responsibility for its clean up, so local residents stepped in and raised £1,500 towards clearing this eyesore. After a full day of volunteers shifting rubble by hand, and a local firm sending a biohazard specialist to safely handle and remove what had been dumped there, it was finally cleared. Although it is a great example of people power and coming together to solve a problem that could not be solved otherwise, it should never have been necessary for local people to be forced into intervening. That is what enforcement failure looks like on the ground. It is not an abstract statistic, but ordinary people left to clean up after the criminals, simply because nobody else would. The scale of the problem stretches far beyond Glastonbury. Council figures show that 3,000 fly-tipping incidents were reported just last year in Somerset alone. Across England, there were 1.26 million reported incidents but just 1,377 initiated prosecutions. The average fine was a meagre £539, while fewer than 0.2% of incidents ever saw the inside of a courtroom. That is just the start of the problem. A BBC investigation at the end of last year identified 517 active illegal waste dumps across England. Eleven of them are what investigators call “super sites”. The largest is in Northwich and holds an estimated 280,000 tonnes of illegally dumped waste. That is not fly-tipping; that is industrial-scale organised crime happening in plain view. Just 13 custodial sentences were handed down for fly-tipping offences in England last year, while a massive 35% of waste crime is attributed to organised criminal gangs. The former chief executive of the Environment Agency called waste crime “the new narcotics”. While this SI fixes the front door, it is silent on who it brings to justice. That must be the criminals committing serious waste crime. A permit regime has the ability to stop a rogue operator registering, but it will never stop a criminal gang that were never going to register in the first place. Why would they, when they are making their millions in the knowledge that there is no fear of being caught? What assessment has been made of how this new permitting framework will improve detection and enforcement against the organised gangs already operating illegally, outside any system that the Government could permit them into? The Liberal Democrats have consistently set out what genuine reform looks like. It is not more law stuck on the statute book, when the powers to fine, seize vehicles and imprison for up to five years already exist and are barely used. What we require is proper resourcing and co-ordination to actually use those powers. That is why we call on the Government to go further. First, they should raise each fixed penalty notice for fly-tipping to £2,500, so that the penalty better reflects the profit being made. Secondly, the National Crime Agency or the forthcoming national police service must be given clear and unambiguous responsibility for investigating serious organised waste crime. There must be no more gaps in co-ordination among local police, the Environment Agency and our hard-stretched local authorities. Thirdly, we must introduce rewards of more than £5,000 for information leading to the successful prosecution of the criminal gangs behind sites such as Northwich. Fourthly, we must establish a single national reporting route for rural and waste crime, with one number and one point of contact, with automatic triage to the correct enforcement body. As it stands, the system gives a farmer in Somerset who finds waste dumped on their land no clear direction as to whether to call the unitary council, the Environment Agency or the police. That confusion is actively suppressing reporting, and with that comes the lack of enforcement. This SI is a genuine and welcome step. Risk-based permitting is well overdue. The Liberal Democrats will back the SI today, but my constituents in Glastonbury and Somerton and rural communities the length and breadth of the country need to know that criminals are not able to act with impunity, illegally dumping waste across the country. I hope that the Minister will confirm that today’s reform marks the start of that reckoning, not its conclusion.

I thank the Minister for her opening remarks. This is an overdue and welcome attempt to curb a problem blighting a number of communities. I acknowledge the comments from my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett). I worry slightly that we are at risk of entering into some sort of terrible British waste tip competition, but I definitely challenge him, as the one that I am experiencing in my constituency of Carlisle would probably rival the one that he described. No one relishes living next to a landfill site. However, my constituents in the village of Rockcliffe, a couple of miles to the north of Carlisle, have done so largely without issue for decades. I am particularly glad that the shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson), is in his place. He will be able to testify to the fact—having been the Member who represented Rockcliffe before he moved to Epping Forest—that bar the odd incident, the Hespin Wood site was largely compliant for over four decades. However, that changed last year when the site was sold. In less than 12 months, the new operator, Seletia, has in no short order turned a once compliant site into a towering mountain of fetid and probably non-compliant waste. Debris from the mountain has been blown on to the adjacent M6. The heap dominates the skyline. The liquid run-off trickles into a beck that runs through adjacent farmland. The smell is stomach-churning and can be smelled on the other side of the city, more than 10 miles away. I will just read some of the comments that the villagers of Rockcliffe made when the BBC asked them about the site a couple of months ago. One said that the odour was so dreadful he could almost taste it. He said: “You can’t get away from it, even with the windows shut…It woke me up at one o’clock in the morning once and I was tasting it, not just smelling it.” Another said that she had become more and more concerned as the landfill had grown in height, and she was especially worried about the fact that the pupils at Rockcliffe Church of England primary school could see the mountain when they played outdoors. Another local resident said that her migraines, she believed, were linked to the smell: “Migraine sufferers can be sensitive to smells and I’m realising now that that’s what’s triggering it.” In response to the BBC, Seletia said that it was one of four operators on the site and did not believe that its landfill site was causing the problem. In response to that, I would say that the other three operators on the site have been there over the same period. The only thing that has changed at Hespin Wood is the takeover and management of the site by Seletia. Moreover, people living at the nearby sister site, another Seletia site at Flusco in Newbiggin—in the constituency of the hon. Member for Westmorland and Lonsdale (Tim Farron)—have, over exactly the same period, experienced an increase in problems, to the point at which the Environment Agency has now suspended operations on the Flusco site. Thanks to action by the Environment Agency at the Hespin Wood site, it seems to have temporarily stopped accepting new waste, although local villagers doubt that somewhat. The bottom line is that the actions of Seletia and other rogue operators require a new approach, which is why I welcome these new regulations. For too long, our landfill sites and local communities have been targeted by rogue operators. Driven by the evasion of landfill tax and disposal fees, waste crime has evolved into a highly profitable and organised enterprise. It undercuts legitimate businesses, pollutes our soil, and leaves taxpayers with staggering clean-up bills. The current system for registering waste carriers, brokers and dealers is broken. It relies on a basic tick-box exercise with minimal background checks—a vulnerability that criminals have systematically exploited. That is why I believe that the regulations represent a massive regulatory shift, dismantling the old registration model and pulling these rogue operators directly into the robust environmental permitting regulations framework. When these laws take full effect, they will tighten the net on waste criminals at landfill gates in three distinct ways. First, operators will no longer just be able to sign their names on a register; they will have to actively prove that they are fit to handle waste. The Environment Agency will enforce strict background checks, mandatory identity verification, criminal record screenings and technical competence assessments before a single permit is issued. Those with a history of illegal dumping will and should be locked out of the system entirely. Secondly, there is the issue of transparency. Bad actors frequently use anonymous white vans and misleading online advertisements to trick the public and smuggle illegal loads into disposal sites. Under the new regulations, operators must prominently display their unique permit numbers on their vehicles and in all advertising. That simple change turns each one of us into an enforcement officer and enables us to target and identify rogue traders, who will be instantly visible. Thirdly, heavy penalties are needed. Previously, illegally transporting or brokering waste carried no custodial sentence, which was unacceptable. The draft regulations change that, introducing a maximum penalty of five years’ imprisonment for those who flagrantly break the law and ruin people’s lives. Furthermore, the Environment Agency is being granted expanded, decisive powers to revoke permits instantly and issue immediate enforcement notices to freeze rogue operations on the spot. As the residents of Rockcliffe know, non-compliance and waste crime are not a victimless nuisance; they constitute an assault on our environment and on our economy, and an assault on people’s homes. By transforming the way in which waste is controlled and transported, the regulations will ensure that only legitimate, heavily scrutinised operators can move material through our supply chain and through our communities. I welcome the closing of loopholes and the crackdown on criminality in the waste sector, and I look forward to a day when the likes of Seletia are forced out of the waste sector altogether.

Cannock Chase knows all too well the impact of waste crime, and especially that of fly-tipping. Residents of Norton Canes and Little Wyrley in particular find that our country lanes, easily accessible from Walsall and Wolverhampton, are blighted by illegal dumps that are often huge and dangerous. I know that the Minister is passionate about tackling these vile crimes, and she is right to say that the current system is simply not fit for purpose. I am glad that she highlighted the case of Beau Vine, the Charolais-cross cow owned by Ann Maidment, the director of CLA South West, which, although humorous, highlighted the stark holes in our current system. I very much welcome the robust new system, which will be in line with much of the rest of the waste sector. The public have rightly been calling for background and competence checks so we can have confidence in those whom we trust with our waste. In this context, I am always reminded of an elderly constituent who came to me when I was a district councillor in Norton Canes. She had contacted a waste carrier, checked his licence to make sure that—as she saw it—he was legit, and handed over her waste and her money. A few weeks later, she was contacted by the council because her waste had been dumped, along with that of others, not 3 miles away in a rural part of our community. She was distraught, and told me that she would never have been intentionally careless about who she gave her waste to. Thankfully, in the end she was able to help identify the criminal who had exploited her and he was prosecuted, but many of our constituents end up paying the price under the current system. I pay tribute to the environmental protection team at Cannock Chase district council. As a cabinet member, I saw at first hand the brilliant work that they do. They are more effective than those in many Tory-controlled neighbouring councils. I hope that the new Reform administration continues Labour’s long-standing backing for their work, and that local government reorganisation brings others up to their top-notch standard. The regulations will give us the structures that we need to root out waste criminals, from sole traders all the way up to organised crime groups, which, as we have heard, are increasingly moving into waste crime as a whole business model. I welcome stronger powers for the Environment Agency, particularly the ability to revoke permits, which I hope will act as a powerful disincentive—something that we lacked before this Government came to office. I am particularly happy to see the requirement for the visibility of permit numbers—on vans, for example. This weekend, I met business owners who run high street shops in Hednesford and Rugeley to discuss various illegal practices happening on the high street. The Minister will not be surprised to hear that among them was waste crime. One told me of a business that regularly dumps its waste “out the back” in black bags—probably including electrical waste, because the business sells vapes. It is picked up by an unmarked van, and goes who knows where. Meanwhile, the business owners I spoke to have bins that are fully compliant, because they take their responsibilities seriously, and they want to know that others who do not will be hauled over the coals. This is not just about fly-tipping at beauty spots in protected landscapes like Cannock Chase and idyllic hamlets like Little Wyrley; it is about fly-tipping in our high streets and town centres. Wherever waste crime occurs, the regulations will be another plank in the Government’s strategy to crack down on this vile criminality, so that our constituents can see the back of these blights on our communities.

I call the Minister to wind up.

I will be brief and try not to detain the House for too long, but what a rich and insightful debate we have had. Let me begin by addressing the question of costs, which was raised by the hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury (Aphra Brandreth), who speaks for the Conservative party. Legitimate waste businesses are highly supportive of these regulations, as they raise standards and level the playing field across the industry. There is a tiered approach to the new permitting regime, which will ensure that those carrying large amounts of the most at-risk types of waste will be distinctly identified and charged accordingly. If we do the maths—I stopped doing maths when I finished O-levels, which was quite a long time ago—we are providing £186 million over the 11-year appraisal period, which will be offset against businesses incurring costs from increased tax. In other words, they will be brought into compliance and begin paying tax—£183 million. So yes, they will have to pay more. The ones that do not pay anything at the moment are going to be paying their tax. One of the reasons they have moved into this space is that they can take mixed household waste and charge people £125 for landfill, then move it on to somewhere else and say, “It’s only soil.” They are making £120 profit on every tonne that they take. Let us do the maths: if we have 300,000 tonnes here and 100,000 tonnes there, pretty soon we are talking about tens of millions of pounds from one illegitimate landfill site. I am not crying any tears about that and I think that, outside this place, our constituents will be cheering and clapping. As I have said, legitimate companies know that they are being undercut by the rogues and the criminals—and why should they not have to learn how to do this? We have heard about vapes, industrial waste and all sorts of stuff turning up in landfill sites, and at the moment we are saying that it is absolutely fine—that anyone with a pair of gloves and a van can just come along and take the waste. No, that was the old way. We want to protect the environment and protect people as well, and we are also interested in protecting businesses. The impact assessment for the regulations says that businesses will “benefit from reduced waste crime”, to the tune of £159 million, so I hope that most businesses will be better off. There are exemptions for charities, but we do not exempt small businesses and microbusinesses from complying based on their size; we have heard about all the small businesses and microbusinesses in this space, and exempting them would undermine the policy and our risk-based approach. Some of these businesses pose a significant waste crime risk, so we will be rolling this out. The hon. Member for Chester South and Eddisbury asked about monitoring and review. We have an independent resources and waste policy programme evaluation, which will assess the impact of the major reforms that we are bringing in. That will report in March 2029, but as with anything, if stuff is not working, we will listen and take action. I turn to the comments made by my hon. Friend the Member for Normanton and Hemsworth (Jon Trickett). I know his neck of the woods very well, having served as one of the four MPs for Wakefield until 2019, and he is right to say that our constituents have the right to the peaceful enjoyment of their home. I was really saddened by the story of his constituent who was unable to celebrate his birthday with his family in his own home because he was ashamed of where he lived. I was also saddened to hear of constituents waking up with migraines and tasting the smell, and of kids feeling sick at school. It is absolutely disgusting. Mineral processing at the site has significantly exceeded its permitted waste volumes, which has resulted in approximately 320,000 tonnes of misdescribed inert waste containing biodegradable fines—the little bits that are chipped down. The site permit has been revoked but the waste remains, and we have heard the persistent and worsening concerns about the odour. We have had warmer weather recently, and there were 18 reports over 24 hours on 24 and 25 June. There is increasingly dissatisfaction with the persistent impact, so the EA is monitoring the site, and it has installed an additional air quality and odour monitoring facility to provide further data. The EA is carrying out proactive odour monitoring in the area, requiring the operator to submit an odour management plan to address odour pollution. It is studying air quality impacts by using mobile monitoring facilities installed in the area and handheld gas analysers, and it is continuing to inspect the site and record permit breaches when it finds them. The EA is also monitoring the water quality in Frickley beck, because we do not want persistent and potentially organic pollutants to end up in our water supply, only for taxpayers and bill payers to be responsible for the clean-up further down the river. We are acting on intelligence received about vehicle movements at the site and are working closely with partners, including colleagues at the UK Health Security Agency and Wakefield council. The site permit has been revoked, and the site is no longer operational. Members have asked questions about how we prosecute people for the misdescription of waste. The first thing we have to do is bring them into this regime, so that we are not reacting when there has been an accidental overloading and breach of permit conditions—I do not want to say it is a crime, because I would not want to prejudge anything. I have had a long and very interesting conversation with my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns) about the issue of the landfill gases at the Seletia sites at Hespin Wood and Flusco. As I say, these are horrible gases, and it too, with the same model, has breached the permitted waste, with massive over-dumping at those sites. My hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Josh Newbury) told the story of his constituent, who was aghast at being dragged into this, and potentially criminalised by an innocent act of trying to do the right thing and get her waste dealt with properly. I thank everyone for their valuable contributions to the debate. I have issued statutory guidance to councils on how to use their powers to seize and crush vehicles, because we are aware that, although they have the powers, they may not feel confident about using them. We are also working with CrimeStoppers to get the public to be part of the army of people tackling waste crime. If people do see something suspicious, I would ask them please to report it on 0800 555 111—I say that from memory, but I think it is the correct number. These regulations are vital if we are to tackle waste crime. This change is long overdue for those moving and controlling waste. I thank all my departmental officials in the Box—James Cruddas, David Read and Freya Ballard—and Leena from my private office. The regulations are widely supported by our stakeholders and highly anticipated by our constituents. I thank all those working at the Environment Agency and in police forces across the country on tackling waste criminals and this new form of organised crime. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That the draft Environmental Permitting (Waste Controlling or Transporting) and Relevant Functions of Primary Authorities (Amendment) (England) Regulations 2026, which were laid before this House on 20 May, be approved.