PARLIAMENTARY DEBATE
Waste Crime: Staffordshire - 5 September 2024 (Commons/Westminster Hall)

I thank my hon. Friend for securing such an important debate. Last year the Environment Agency released its national waste crime survey results for 2023, which found that 86% of farmers surveyed were affected by fly-tipping. In my Tamworth constituency, residents have raised frustrations about the damage it causes to the countryside and the harm it can cause to nature. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need more collaboration between land managers, local authorities, police and the Environment Agency to better protect farmers against fly-tipping, which for many of our constituencies is a prolific example of rural crime?

Will my hon. Friend give way?

I thank my hon. Friend for initiating such an important debate on this most pressing issue. Does he agree with me that voluntary organisations such as those in my constituency, Burntwood Litter Heroes and Lichfield Litter Legends, really deserve the support and respect of their Members for all the work they do to keep our communities tidy, alongside the work of Keep Britain Tidy?

It is an honour to be here to support the hon. Gentleman; he and I were friends long before he became an MP. I support his actions on behalf of his constituents, with those who are present today. Does he not agree that the complexity of addressing waste crime means that, in situations in his constituency and other parts of the United Kingdom—including my own—urgent action is difficult? We need new legislation and punitive fines that will hit offenders hard. What must be central is that the hon. Gentleman’s constituents and their opinions are key to any change. We must ensure that their viewpoints are not forgotten.

You never forget your first time.

Will my hon. Friend give way?

My constituency of Stoke-on-Trent South adjoins my hon. Friend’s, and the smell from Walleys Quarry has extended into the Northwood region of my constituency, which itself has experienced repeated fly-tipping that has caused harm to farmers. I want to reiterate the impact Walleys Quarry has had in Newcastle-under-Lyme and further afield on the quality of residents’ day-to-day lives and, crucially, their health, especially that of young children. There is also the impact on the saleability of homes, which means that residents are stuck and cannot move on. That cannot carry on.

Given the difficult economic situation the country is in, does my right hon. Friend agree that although cost and finances are an important consideration, we must be careful of false economies? Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease is a major issue in areas such as Newcastle-under-Lyme and Stoke-on-Trent South, and the impact of poor air quality on the NHS can be expensive, so actions to address air quality and waste can save money in the long run in terms of health. [Interruption.]

I remind Members that they should bob if they wish to speak in the debate.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing such an important debate in Westminster Hall so early in what I know will be a long and illustrious parliamentary career.

Although the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) may have left, I want to pick up the point he made. Waste crime is often seen as an almost harmless activity and as something that does not hurt anybody, so the urge to deal with it does not necessarily manifest itself in immediate action. The hon. Member talked about the necessity of having significant fines that are robustly levied and vigorously collected, which would be a huge deterrent for rogue operators. Whatever form their action took, they would know that there was a penalty for the blight they cause to communities and the damage they do to people.

I will constrain my comments, first, to the Walleys Quarry site, which my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme mentioned. Starting 14 years ago, I had the pleasure of being a district councillor in the neighbouring authority of Newcastle-under-Lyme. The very first piece of casework I had was about Walleys Quarry—the smell emanating from it, the activities happening on site, and the questionable content of lorries driving up Cemetery Road on quiet mornings, with flocks of seagulls feasting on what was deposited. There have been several operators since then, but even at that time it was impossible to get to the bottom of what was going into the site and what was happening there. The situation was opaque, with obfuscation and sleight of hand by people who, I believe, simply tried to tell the community, “It’s all good. It’s all fine. By the way the landfill fund that your community can bid for offsets the fact that we’re here.” One day, they tried to blame the smell on the neighbouring sewage treatment plant, directing me and my ward colleagues to talk to Severn Trent Water about what they said must obviously be a faulty sewerage outlet.

Unfortunately, that attitude summed up any interaction I had with the operating company for many years. The concerns of residents were secondary, and as long as the company was bringing in the waste and able to put it in a hole, cover it with a layer of clay and say that it was capped off properly, it was not particularly worried about the impact. That has gone on for years and years, so I genuinely congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme on bringing the issue to the attention of the House.

I am no longer resident in my hon. Friend’s constituency or the councillor for Silverdale. When I moved to where I live now, my lung health improved dramatically. I am asthmatic. I lived in Silverdale for about 15 years, and every day my Ventolin inhaler was glued to my pocket because at some point I would have some sort of triggering event requiring me to take a reliever. When, about three years ago, I moved a mere three miles away to where I am now, my lung health dramatically improved. I no longer need my Ventolin inhaler as frequently as I did. My lifestyle has not changed; if anything, my burgeoning waistline has put me in a slightly less healthy position. The only common factor that has impacted my health is the air that I breathe daily.

I am glad that we are discussing this issue, and I am glad that we are doing so in a Westminster Hall debate where we can consider it at length. However, I say to the Minister—my friend whom I have known for many years now—that the local debate on it has gone on for a while. What we seek, and I have great faith that she will deliver, is the action that was missing under the previous Government. Although my constituency is three miles away, there are some mornings—particularly cold, crisp weather mornings—when, much like my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner), I can open my front door, walk to the bottom of my street and smell the landfill site three miles away. It is a smell you do not forget if you have lived there and know the area. It does not matter where you are in north Staffordshire, if you can smell it, you can smell it, and you know what it is. It is the same scent wherever it manifests.

Up until only a couple of years ago, my daughter still went to school in Silverdale. If we drove towards the school, the smell would get stronger and stronger. We would get to the crossroads at the bottom of Cemetery Road and Silverdale Road, and we would hope with all our hearts that the lights were on green. The last thing we wanted to do was sit there while the rotation went through at the traffic lights, knowing that we would be stuck in a puddle of foul-stenching air that was almost certainly coming from Walleys Quarry. What may have been only four or five minutes as the traffic lights cycled through would feel like an age as we breathed in what was undoubtedly harmful, somewhat poisonous gas from the operating site. I welcome the fact that we are debating this issue, but, as I said to the Minister, now that we have a new set of Members of Parliament for north Staffordshire and a new Government, I hope that there is an opportunity to reset national action so that we can get the outcome that local people need.

I want to expand my speech to include wider waste crime issues across north Staffordshire. Although Walleys Quarry is undoubtedly a national disgrace, other parts of north Staffordshire have equally found themselves at the mercy of reprehensible individuals who have undertaken to make a fast buck on the back of local communities through the way they have dealt with waste. One such site was the old Twyford factory in the middle of Etruria in my Stoke-on-Trent Central constituency. I first raised the issue with the then Minister back in 2018, when it was quite clear that the factory was stuffed to the rafters with illegally accepted industrial waste. The chief fire officer for Staffordshire at the time, Becci Bryant, made it quite clear that not only would a fire on the site be devastating to the immediate area, where businesses were trying to operate, but, because the site was next to the west coast main line, a fire would shut the line down for months. Significant public investment would be required to make the railway safe, and the untold health implications would not be known for many years.

What waste was in there, nobody knew. How much was in there, nobody knew. All anyone could see as they drove around the A500 in Stoke-on-Trent was this once-proud factory that had such manufacturing history, and, through its graffitied windows, polythene bales of unknown materials stacked one upon the other. I was told by the chief fire officer that a genuine concern was spontaneous combustion, because tightly packed, unknown materials in plastic can sometimes simply set themselves on fire. That was in the heart of my constituency next to a residential housing development of several hundred people.

To his credit, the right hon. Member for Newark (Robert Jenrick), who was the Minister at the time, was happy to look at how we could use funds from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs to try to clear the site. The former Secretary of State, Michael Gove, met us to discuss the matter and we had a plan. To her great credit, my successor and predecessor, Jo Gideon, fought hard to get the site cleared. She made it a priority for her constituency and her constituents. The site was cleared at a cost to the public purse of around £10 million. That is £10 million of public money to clear one site in one constituency. It took a very long time, not because of intervention from the Government or for any local reason, but because every time we got to a point at which an enforcement notice could be raised, the owner would promise to clear up the site and the enforcement notice would not be taken forward. We then went down the cost recovery route for proceeds of crime, which took an inordinately long time. A fine was levied against the owner to have it cleared, and he was given six months to raise the money to pay for that. During all that additional time, the site remained a huge fire, health and safety risk to the neighbouring businesses, one of which closed up and moved for its own safety. The site was an eyesore in the middle of Stoke-on-Trent.

I know the Minister takes a huge interest in our environment and how we can make communities such as mine better, more prosperous and more sustainable. We are talking about a prime development site where development was slowed down because we were wrangling with one individual who had made an obscene amount of money by accepting illegal waste on to the site, and who did not want to use any of that money to clear it up. The fact that we had to clear it up not only represented a waste of taxpayers’ money, but slowed down the economic regeneration and development of Etruria and Hanley in my constituency. To this day, although it has now been cleared, the site stands vacant. The opportunities that it presented would have been game-changing for my constituency. We are talking not just about the cost of cleaning sites up, but about the opportunity costs in cities where huge buildings are misused by individuals who seek to make a fast buck.

I thank my hon. Friend for raising the issue. Around seven years ago, piled-up waste was disposed of in a similar site in Lichfield city—the old GKN site. My understanding is that the waste was fly-tipped. It caught fire, and arson was suspected. It was the fourth such incident in Staffordshire that year, and it took eight appliances and 65 firefighters to deal with the fire. Like the site my hon. Friend is discussing, it has been cleared but still awaits development. This is endemic across Staffordshire.

I thank my hon. Friend for his intervention—and I am grateful to be able to call him my hon. Friend; last time I was in the Commons, I never thought I would have the opportunity to call a Member who represented Lichfield my hon. Friend, and doing so fills my heart with glee. He is absolutely right. This debate could easily have been about waste crime anywhere in the country, because duplicitous operators who seek to make money off the backs of our communities without any care or attention are everywhere. I am sure that the new Minister will be clamping down on them hard.

I turn to how we do that. While we can all air our grievances about the sites in our constituencies, I want to spend a few moments focusing on what comes next. I tend to agree with what my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said about the fitness for purpose of the Environment Agency, but I will be slightly more generous to it than he was. He rightly has a grievance with it over the operation of Walleys Quarry, but I think there is a bigger problem about the way we do regulatory enforcement in this country. The Environment Agency is an example that we can use to demonstrate that.

Every so often, Unchecked UK produces a document about the enforcement gap, looking at how regulatory organisations and agencies have done less and less enforcement over time. In its 2020 enforcement gap report, Unchecked UK found that between 2010 and 2020, the number of staff working for the Environment Agency decreased by 32%, so one in three staff disappeared. It also found that over the same period of time, the Environment Agency’s budget decreased by 63%. As a result, the number of prosecutions it could undertake decreased by 88%. The number of enforcement notices it was able to levy went down by 69.5%, and it could only take 44% of them through to prosecution because it lacked the capacity to undertake the necessary regulatory enforcement work.

While we must not excuse the actions of those who perpetrate waste crime around our country, it is not impossible to see why they think it is a lucrative way to spend their time and energy. The likelihood of their getting caught, of an enforcement notice being levied upon them or of a prosecution being brought has gone down and down over the past 10 years.

It is not just the Environment Agency that has had this problem. Local authorities around the country, which have a really important environmental health role and can quite often take small-scale actions in communities to prevent much larger destructive activities, have suffered the same blight. Over the past 10 years, 32% of environmental health staff in local authorities have been lost. That means that many enforcement and regulatory agencies react to problems, but they are unable to take proactive and preventive work to avoid things becoming problems in the first place.

Further to what my hon. Friend has said, we have to think about the involvement of other agencies. In Staffordshire, and I am sure elsewhere, fly-tipping and the illegal dumping of waste are often linked to organised crime. Therefore, the points that he made about local government, the Environment Agency and regulators also extend to preventive policing.

I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. It is almost as if she has read the script in front of me, because she has perfectly lined me up for my next point, which is about the link between illegal dumping, fly-tipping in communities and the wider connection to organised crime and money making. Another report from Unchecked UK, published in 2022, pointed out that enforcement against fly-tipping was at a 10-year low, while the number of incidents of fly-tipping was at a 10-year high. There is a growing chasm between what is happening on the ground and the activities that perpetrators are being punished for and prevented from carrying out.

I am in the neighbouring county of Warwickshire —we share many borders with Staffordshire—and fly-tipping is at an all-time high in my constituency. Much of that is from organised crime from the neighbouring boroughs of Tamworth, Coventry and Birmingham. They come along the M42, the M6 or the A5 and dump waste in the entrances to farms in the middle of the night.

That was the biggest issue that was raised when I recently met the National Farmers’ Union in my area. It is also the No. 1 issue raised by our local rural crime service, but it is not taken seriously by the police and crime commissioner for Warwickshire, and neither is any funding spent on advising people not to use the white vans that parade the streets offering to remove their waste. Reports of fly-tipping are the No. 1 thing I see every day on my local Facebook page. Because no money is spent on publicity, people have no idea where they should report these crimes—whether it is the local authority, the Environment Agency or the police. There has to be more joined-up working, and I would like to see the Minister leading that.

Order. I remind hon. Members that interventions should be a little shorter than that.

I agree with everything that my hon. Friend has just said. We should not think about fly-tipping simply as community blight. It is not just about the sofa abandoned down the back alley; it is about cross-country, cross-border organised crime that is making millions of pounds for people in our communities who, frankly, have no interest in our communities. She made the point rather eloquently about the requirement for our police and crime commissioners to understand that this is an important issue that they must prioritise and tackle.

On the fly-tipping point that my hon. Friends the Members for Newcastle-under-Lyme and for Stoke-on-Trent South raised, I return to its longer-term impact. Fly-tipping is a waste crime that takes place in Staffordshire, and the House of Commons Library note that accompanies the debate gives the rather sad fact from the 2022-23 figures that almost half of all fly-tipping incidents across the whole of Staffordshire took place in Stoke-on-Trent. That is not a record that I am particularly proud of or would want to be associated with my city. That is why I am glad that upon its election in 2023, under the expert leadership of Councillor Amjid Wazir, the deputy leader of the council, the city council launched a clean-up campaign against illegal dumping in our towns under the moniker of “IDIOT”. “Don’t be an IDIOT” was the line. The council said, “Don’t dump in our towns. Don’t allow our community to be used by those criminal gangs that want to ruin our cities.”

The outcome has been spectacular: we now have considerably fewer incidents of fly-tipping. That is not only because the council makes a concerted effort to clear it up, but because it has invested in an environmental crime unit that seeks to prosecute and fine those people who dump waste in our towns and cities. The council has tripled the number of fines it hands out, and it pursues people through the courts where they refuse to pay the fine. It makes it clear that if people wish to undertake illegal activity related to waste in Stoke-on-Trent at a community level, the council is coming for them and will fine them. I personally would like a name-and-shame campaign, but I have not quite won the battle with the council yet; give it time.

What I would not want to be taken away from this debate is the idea that Staffordshire is the nation’s dustbin, and that it is strewn with all these terrible activities; because while we have these incidents, most of the people in our communities who live in Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire want to see clean neighbourhoods. They go out every day and do a little bit of work to make their community better. They clean up fly-tipping, report an illegally dumped sofa, report the smells to the Environment Agency, and report to the police abandoned buildings that suddenly start having industrial waste put near them. They do that because they want—as does everyone else in my constituency, county and city—to live in a clean, tidy and safe place. When the Minister winds up, will she give me some sense of hope to take back to Stoke-on-Trent that this Government, with this Minister, will deliver on that aspiration for clean, safe streets in every community, and that she will let us know how we can help her achieve that?

I congratulate the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on organising the debate. It is an important topic, and I commend the research he has put into his speech, illuminating the scale of the problem. Thirty-four million tonnes, or 18%, of waste being illegally disposed of and £1 billion in costs, with a 55% increase since 2019, shows what a significant problem this is, and it is important that we work collaboratively to tackle it.

The hon. Member also showed the passion that his community has for dealing with waste while working collaboratively. It has been good to hear praise for predecessor MPs of other parties, from him and from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), which again shows the value of working cross-party on this topic.

Some key themes have emerged from the debate. We have heard about the impact on the environment and nature, especially from lithium dumping in landfill sites, with the consequent risk of fire. Indeed, it is not just a risk: fires of a significant nature have been highlighted in a number of contexts.

There is also a health impact on local residents, who are affected by the facilities near residential areas. The hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent South (Dr Gardner) rightly highlighted the benefits and importance of having a healthy workforce, so that our economy can grow and productivity can be improved. Various speakers have highlighted the economic impact of the problem and the issues in various constituencies, including a lack of land available for development because previous waste facilities have not been cleared up. The workforce productivity challenge was also mentioned.

We heard of the importance of cross-party and cross-agency working to tackle waste in Staffordshire and nationally, and many agencies have been cited. Local authorities clearly have a role, as do the police. A number of Members mentioned the importance of strengthening the Environment Agency’s resources, powers and ability to enforce. Many businesses are affected. Within my constituency in Oxfordshire, a landfill operator has been causing problems similar to those discussed, including by producing significant odours and not always being as transparent and proactive in its engagement and communication with local communities as we might wish.

A key outcome of this debate will, I hope, be recognition of the importance of tackling the root causes of the waste problem that we face. Our recycling rates in the United Kingdom remain lower than those of comparable European countries, although they have been improving. The more we can all do to help businesses and households to tackle those root causes, the more it will reduce the need for some of these waste facilities.

I thank the hon. Member for that; it is very good to hear of Welsh good practice in reducing waste demand. It is clearly important that we work to create an economy in which we envisage the whole life cycle of products and produce, including how they will be disposed of effectively and in an environmentally friendly manner.

We have also heard of the impact that waste facilities have on house prices within Staffordshire and how that affects people’s ability to move. The debate has been helpful in highlighting some of these wider impacts and challenges. This is not just about fly-tipping or local nuisance; it has real consequences for people’s lives. We heard very useful comments from the hon. Member for Stoke-on-Trent North about how some operators of these facilities are sometimes inclined to misattribute the cause of odours, trying to blame them on things such as sewage. That is why it is important to have engagement with and listen to local residents. The Environment Agency must have the resources to collate that data and intelligence, so that the problems can be properly mapped and anticipated and interventions can be made.

In conclusion, today’s debate has been useful for highlighting the problems of waste management within Staffordshire, but it has also highlighted how these themes are relevant across the country. I look forward to hearing the Minister’s thoughts and remarks on how the new Government will attempt to tackle these problems.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I thank the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) for securing this important debate, and I welcome him to the House. I also send him and his father best wishes following his father’s surgery yesterday. It is good to see the Minister in her place for our second debate this week. I would like to use this opportunity to put on the record my thanks to all the officials who worked with me when I was lucky enough to be in what I think is the best Department in Government, specifically on the waste and resources strategy. I should be grateful if she would not mind passing on my thanks, particularly to Emma and Clare in the waste resources team.

I shall start my speech by echoing comments made by colleagues throughout this debate on the dangers of the costs of waste crime to local communities, which are undoubtedly huge. The Environment Agency’s national waste crime survey 2023 report stated that,

“the waste industry estimate costs to the English economy total £1 billion annually through evaded tax, environmental and social harm, and lost legitimate business.”

That impact is of course not only monetary; waste crime in its many forms poses a significant threat to our environment. Illegal dumping and the improper disposal of hazardous waste contaminate our land, water and air. Those pollutants can take years—if not decades—to break down, causing long-term damage to ecosystems and biodiversity. They poison our water supplies, degrade our soils and harm wildlife, leaving a legacy of destruction that future generations must deal with. Most pressing is the extremely negative impact on communities up and the country that are forced to deal with the damaging consequences that harmful pollutants and emissions can have. As we are all constituency MPs, we know that we have residents who are being directly impacted in our constituencies, whether that be from fly-tipping or waste crime of a more serious nature. That is something that my constituents unfortunately experience in Keighley, Ilkley, Craven and the wider Worth valley.

I shall devote the rest of my speech specifically to Walleys Quarry in Newcastle-under-Lyme, on which I completely sympathise with the residents, businesses and wider community of not just Newcastle-under-Lyme, but Silverdale and the wider Stoke-on-Trent area. They have been fighting this issue for a significant number of years—far too many years—and I commend the predecessor of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme, Aaron Bell, on his tireless campaigning, over the four years that he was lucky enough to be in this House, in search of a solution. Aaron Bell worked with his constituents to seek a way forward by trying to hold to account not only the operator of Walleys Quarry but the regulator and enforcer, the Environment Agency. He was also instrumental in working with the Stop the Stink campaign, and I am sure that the new hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme will continue the good work of his predecessor, as he has done by securing this very debate.

I was lucky enough to be a Minister in what is probably the best Department in Government for a short time, from November 2023 to the general election. In that time, I visited Newcastle-under-Lyme and Silverdale to meet campaigners, local councillors, residents and the previous MP, to hear directly from them about the negative consequences that Walleys Quarry was having, and I deeply sympathised with the points that they made. As a result of those meetings, I made it clear that the Environment Agency over a period of time had failed in its duties and failed local residents. On the strength of what has been said today and despite the, to be frank, repeated warnings given to the Environment Agency by many, including myself when I was lucky enough to be in the Department, it seems that the agency’s attitude is that the operator will clean up its act by itself—which is simply not the case. Residents’ concerns about toxic fumes have been raised since 2012, albeit largely ignored by the Environment Agency as the regulator, meaning that the ongoing situation continues to have a substantial negative impact on the community, not just economically but on its health and wellbeing.

The reality is that the Environment Agency’s actions have gone nowhere near far enough, and in my view the landfill site needs to be closed altogether. The Minister will know that those are exactly the points that I was trying to put across to the Environment Agency during my short time in the Department. As she will also know, given that she seems to have been sufficiently briefed on the previous meetings, I was so disheartened by the Environment Agency’s actions that I requested weekly meetings with its team to understand sufficiently what actions it was taking as the regulator and the enforcer. Public hearings held in July demonstrated the serious public health issues arising from fumes from the site, with Staffordshire’s director of health and care highlighting the negative impact on public health and the risk that the noxious gases pose for health, both in the short and long term.

When I met residents, one of the other huge concerns they rightly raised, along with the direct negative impact on them, was the impact on the local economy, not just in Newcastle-under-Lyme but across the wider Stoke-on-Trent area. Businesses, cafés, shops, a sports centre, a sports club that I was lucky enough to visit and even a local school are all being negatively impacted. Again, had the Environment Agency taken robust action, it could have reduced the financial, environmental and social impacts.

I distinctly recall saying from the Dispatch Box that no options were off the table, and that specifically meant that, in my view, the site should be closed. Officials will know that those points were being made to officials in the Department and at the Environment Agency, but officials will present other challenges, to do with legal implications and the processes that need to be followed. I am sure that the current Minister will have to deal with those challenges before the Environment Agency is able to take any further action, but there was clear advocacy from the previous ministerial team that Walleys Quarry should be closed. I wish the Minister well and am prepared to work with her to ensure that that solution can be reached.

The Environment Agency also singularly failed to find a solution to sufficiently safeguard the local community against the hazard presented by hydrogen sulphide, a gas released when waste breaks down on the site. For far too long, residents have had to put up with a strong eggy smell, which I experienced for myself when I visited the site. In my view, urgent and decisive action from the Environment Agency is required right now. I certainly made those frustrations known when I was in the Department, as I have indicated.

The Environment Agency has expressed its sympathy for local residents, but now is not the time for sympathy; it is time for action, not words. The Environment Agency put in place regular inspections to monitor levels of hydrogen sulphide. However, the latest data suggests mass under-reporting of the extent of the gas, and that the levels at the site were on average 80% higher than reported by the Environment Agency over a two-year period. The Environment Agency’s response to that latest failure on its part has been to apologise again and to announce another public meeting—yet again, words not actions. We all know that data collection is incredibly important for an enforcer to be able to take action, but the Environment Agency has failed in this simple task and, in my view, has failed to put monitoring points in appropriate locations around the Walleys Quarry site.

Further to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee), there have been 10 years of data. I know because I used to ring the EA frequently in 2010, when I was in my constituency surgeries in the library in Silverdale and we could smell the smell. What more does the former Minister believe he would have needed in order to give a closure notice? Given that we all seem to agree that there has been a decade of failure by the Environment Agency, when he was Minister, what did he do to try to work out what the internal failings were, so that other communities that may have these problems do not have the long period of terribleness that we have had?

As I said, monitoring is incredibly important, because we need the data to be able to hold those who pollute to account, and the regulator needs the data to be able to take appropriate enforcement action, as the Environment Agency should do. But that data has to be collected appropriately, which the EA has not done, in my view, and the datasets have to be accurate. Looking back, there was a calibration issue with the datasets that were being collected, which meant that the Environment Agency had to issue a further apology. In my view, it is completely unacceptable.

That raises the bigger question, which the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme has already asked, whether the Environment Agency is fit for purpose in its current format. All the challenges that I am laying out today are things that I experienced in my short months at the Department. This is simply not good enough action by the Environment Agency. As I have stipulated, the site should be closed. Again, that is something that I advocated while in the Department. As the hon. Member said, this leads to the bigger question: is the Environment Agency fit for purpose?

In the debate earlier in the week I put some questions to the Minister and sought a response, and I will do so again today. If she is not able to give me an answer now—I quite appreciate that she may not be—I kindly ask that she puts her responses in writing, for the benefit of all of us in the Chamber and the residents of Newcastle-under-Lyme. I note that I have previously put similar questions to officials.

Will the Minister update the House on the current situation at Walleys Quarry, and is she content with the advice that she is being given by the Environment Agency? Does she agree that Walleys Quarry should be closed with immediate effect, as has been strongly advocated by previous Ministers in the Department?

The hon. Gentlemen is in a position of unparalleled knowledge compared with all of us, having been the Minister, at which time he advocated for immediate closure. I think the quarry should be closed immediately, and he has said that he does. What was he missing as the Minister? What lever that was just out of reach would have immediately brought about the closure of the site? If legislative change is needed then we can write that Bill here and now and take it to the House and try to get it passed, but the hon. Gentleman has been there and knows why it could not happen. What else would he have needed to get the job done?

In my view, it came down to process. There is a process that needs to be followed, with a suspension notice being served in the first instance to reasonably give the operator the chance to sort itself out. In my view, that process is not sufficient to satisfy residents, businesses and the wider community, but it was advocated to me that the process needed to be adhered to before we could get to the position of issuing a closure notice. I wish the Minister extremely well, and she will have my full support in trying to achieve a closure notice at speed. That is the only way of issuing a clear warning to the operator that if it pollutes, it cannot get away. The taxpayer should not have to pay for it.

Coming back to my questions, how many other landfill sites are being impacted by illegal waste dumping? How many other sites are there where local residents are being negatively impacted by pollutants and emissions?

I will not, because I think the Minister needs 20 minutes to sum up, and it is only fair to give that to her.

Does the Minister agree that when landfill sites, or sites of a similar nature, are given initial planning permission, a bond should be put in place to deal with remediation costs and compensation payments, for example, so that if a dodgy operator like the one we have seen at Walleys Quarry does not adhere to the conditions it has signed up to or goes bust, local residents in Newcastle-upon-Lyme or elsewhere are not exposed to the costs?

I apologise—it is because I worked in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for a long time.

I believe that such a bond was not put in place when John Prescott awarded the initial planning consent for the site. Does the Minister agree that the taxpayer should not have to pay a penny towards the costs associated with the remediation or clean-up works, or indeed the enforcement programme that the Environment Agency should carry out when we know an operator is in the wrong? It must be the polluter that pays, not the constituents of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme or the local council. Further, does the Minister agree that when we talk about “polluter pays”, any fine that the EA imposes should include an element of compensation for those who have been impacted? Finally, does she think that the Environment Agency is fit for purpose in its current format as a robust regulator and enforcer?

I genuinely wish the Minister well on this issue. She has my full support in seeking a closure notice for the site.

It is an honour to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) on securing this debate and on his ongoing work for his constituents. I extend my best wishes to his father and wish him a speedy recovery. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend for the work he did on this issue before coming to this place, alongside my hon. Friend the Member for Newport West and Islwyn (Ruth Jones).

Everybody’s environment starts outside their front door. We have heard today of issues outside the front doors and on the school playing fields and sports grounds of Newcastle-under-Lyme, Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire more widely. We have heard some powerful speeches and interventions, in particular from my hon. Friend the Member for Stoke-on-Trent Central (Gareth Snell), whom I am delighted to see back in this place.

The Government will ensure that those who illegally dump their waste are brought to justice. Waste crime and poor-performing waste sites threaten our environment and, in some cases—as my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme said—our health. The truth is that the system we inherited is broken. We have heard of the perfect storm of cuts to councils, police officers and the Environment Agency, and a system that has had no new policy for 14 years and is based on paper-based notes kept in people’s drawers. That is an anachronism in the 21st century and, as we have heard, it is being exploited by waste criminals up and down the country.

Waste crime costs this country £1 billion a year. We know that 18% of waste may be handled illegally at some point in the waste supply chain. We have to plug the gaps and fix the system—we pretty much have to rebuild it. At the end of March 2024, there were 320 known active illegal waste sites, and 141 of them are high risk.

Waste crime is hugely under-reported: only 25% is reported. The Environment Agency deals with a huge number of reports of waste—it received 9,000 in 2022—and has only 240 officials to process them. We do not need to do the maths—we have some young people in the Public Gallery, and I am sure they are better at maths than me anyway. It is impossible for the agency to follow up every single crime. We need to start tightening up the system and seeing the patterns, and we need different agencies to work together.

This situation cannot continue. In our manifesto, as part of our crackdown on antisocial behaviour, we committed to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up the mess they have created. We will take our country back from the fly-tippers and waste criminals who disgrace and despoil our communities, damage our environment and undermine legitimate businesses that do the right thing, play their part and fully comply with the regulations.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme asked me whether the system is fit for purpose. My answer is that it is not, and we will take action at pace to tackle this. As a mission-led Government, we will achieve our aims by focusing on ambitious, measurable and long-term objectives that will provide our driving sense of purpose. We will be publishing a circular economy strategy to move us to a future in which we keep our resources in use for longer and reduce waste. That will increase investment in critical infrastructure and green jobs. Of course, waste crime, whether in Staffordshire or elsewhere, threatens that circular economy because it takes out resources and undermines businesses that are doing the right thing.

There is an important distinction to be made between waste crime, which is often associated with serious and organised crime and organised crime groups, and permitted but poorly performing waste sites, of which Walleys Quarry is the pre-eminent example in this country. The approaches to mitigating the impacts are very different. Over the past four years in Staffordshire, the Environment Agency has ensured that four illegal, high-risk fire sites have been cleared of waste—more than 40,000 tonnes of baled waste—which was sent to suitably permitted facilities, reducing the fire risk and protecting more than 12,000 properties from the impact.

I must also say something about batteries. Every supermarket has a battery collection point, but the little lithium-ion batteries are tiny, and we cannot be bothered, we do not want to collect them or we just forget to take them to the supermarket; it is very easy just to chuck them in the bin. The problem, however, is that when the waste is crushed in the machinery, the battery can spark. When thinking about such issues, it is incumbent on every single person in this room or watching at home online to ensure that we do not put our batteries into our household waste.

There is a big education piece to be done on that. I pay tribute to the councils that have taken that to heart. I was reflecting as I was listening to the speech about Stoke-on-Trent Central and what had happened there. I asked for fixed penalty notice stats from all the authorities in Staffordshire. In 2022-23, Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council issued only three fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping, with zero prosecutions, but under Stoke-on-Trent city council’s “Don’t be an IDIOT” campaign, there were 875 fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping and nine prosecutions. That probably puts that city council at the top—certainly in the top half, maybe the top 10%—among local authorities in the country. I pay tribute to the work of that Labour-led council.

We all have a lot to learn from each other. I offer those statistics in the spirit of co-operation and encouraging good practice.

Between January 2023 and 2 August 2024, there were 21 substantiated illegal waste sites in the Staffordshire area, and all 21 of them have been stopped from operating, the vast majority within three months of being reported to the Environment Agency. Five have been fully cleaned up, while the risks posed by the remaining sites are being managed and monitored.

The Environment Agency regulates more than 10,000 waste permits, the majority of which are in the top compliance bands. However, I am aware that 3%, or about 300, of those permits attract public interest because they are not in compliance. Those disproportionately take up resource, energy and regulatory activity. I stressed to the Environment Agency officials whom I spent time with today ahead of this debate that my top priority is to take action to bring those sites back into compliance and, where necessary, to embark on criminal investigations.

Walleys Quarry, one such non-compliant site, has been a source of concern for residents over several years, as we have heard. This morning, I was informed that it is the worst-performing waste site in the country. My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme asked for a meeting with me, and I am only too happy to meet him. I shall ask Environment Agency and Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs officials to be in the room for that meeting, so that we can have a full discussion and get to the bottom and the heart of what is going on.

The Environment Agency has carried out significant activity since 2021—more than for any other regulated site—and a criminal investigation is also under way, about which I cannot say more for fear of prejudicing those inquiries. However, the local residents and councillors who are in the Public Gallery today have had to put up with unacceptable levels of hydrogen sulphide. Interestingly, that substance comes from the plasterboard that we all have; it happens when it is broken down and smashed up. As we try to design in a circular economy, we must think about what materials we use in our home and what happens to them, because there is no such place as “away” at their end of life. It is not acceptable for odours to reach a level that causes serious offence to local communities. I am pressing the Environment Agency to keep all regulatory options under review and look at its enforcement and sanctions policy.

Could the Minister pick up my specific question about the closure of the site? In his shadow role before the election, I believe the Secretary of State wanted to advocate for closure, as I do. What is the Minister’s view on that?

I have not had specific advice on closure. It is clear that there is a criminal investigation under way, and we have to let that take its course.

Let us look at waste crime. In recent years there has been an increase in the involvement of serious and organised criminal gangs in the waste sector. That is of the greatest concern to me; it goes back to the perfect storm of a broken waste system. The joint unit for waste crime brings together the Environment Agency, His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs—because in our experience, criminals never break the law in just one area; they always break it in several areas—the National Crime Agency, the police, waste regulators from the UK and other partners to share intelligence, and disrupt and prevent serious organised waste crime. There has been progress to target organised crime groups, and this model is respected internationally. The issue is not unique to the United Kingdom.

The unit has supported or led more than 90 operations since April 2020 and has worked with 133 partner organisations. It has had 301 days of action, which have resulted in 174 associated arrests by other agencies. The Environment Agency recently announced the formation of its national enforcement service—a new economic crime unit that targets the money and assets of waste criminals. It will target the financial motivation behind offending and use financial mechanisms to inhibit the ability of offenders, including OCGs, to operate. It has all gone a bit “Line of Duty” there; I will crack on.

I also urge members of the public: it is incumbent on every one of us to report waste crime where we see it in our communities. It is under-reported. When someone comes and says, “I can take that waste away for you for 20 quid,” it is so important that we ask to see their waste permit. When someone asks a farmer or a landowner, “Can I store these bales on your land?” and says it is just a bit of plastic or a bit of soil, I urge them to be curious: have they actually got a permit? Is it really soil or is it shredded down plastics? The money is moving from legitimate waste operators and going to these organised crime groups.

We know the impact that this issue has on people’s lives. We are determined to reform this sector. That starts with reform of the waste carrier, broker and dealer regime, which means those transporting or making decisions about waste must demonstrate that they are competent to make those decisions, face background checks when applying for permits and display permit numbers on their advertising. We will make it easier for regulators to take actions against criminals, and easier for us as householders to identify legitimate waste businesses.

The reform will remove three exemptions, which is critical because these are the highest problem areas. Those exemptions are for dismantling end of life vehicles, treating end of life tyres—again, the risk of fire is huge—and recovery of scrap metal dealers. I remember a case in my former constituency of Wakefield where a scrap metal dealer went bust owing His Majesty’s Revenue and Customs £60 million. To my grievous disappointment, not a single person was prosecuted or went to prison for essentially theft from the taxpayer. We will introduce greater record-keeping requirements for all waste exemption holders, and impose limits and controls on how exemptions can be managed on site.

To conclude, this Government are clear: we are committed to bringing waste criminals to justice. We have long-term ambitions to rebuild the waste sector and to create a circular economy, and we are committed to tackling both waste crime and, as exemplified by Walley’s Quarry, poor performance at regulated sites.

I know that the Environment Agency is committed to continuing its work with partners nationally and locally, and I thank it for working against the odds and in a very difficult funding environment over the last 14 years. The crime that we are discussing today is predominantly an urban crime and I think that under the previous Government there was a neglect of urban areas.

My hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme asked for deeds not words. We will follow the principle that the polluter pays. We will find the polluters; we are coming for them and we will track them down.

I call Adam Jogee to sum up.