Natural England: Gamebird Release Licensing

Debate between Lord Beamish and Baroness Hayman of Ullock

Tuesday 21st July 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

As the noble Baroness said, that target was put in place some time ago, which is why, since we came into government, we have tried to make changes and crack on, because it has become more and more challenging to meet every year that passes. It is why we revised the Environmental Improvement Plan and why we have been investing more in sustainable farming and small farming. If we are genuinely going to meet these targets, we will have to be very ambitious in what we are doing.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

My Lords, local shoots are important to many local rural economies. I would be interested to know the view of my noble friend the Minister on the position that National England takes in doing economic impact studies on the effects of its policies on local farming communities.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

I am not aware of the specific policies to which my noble friend refers, because there are lots of different areas where Natural England is involved. If we are talking about shooting licences, which is where this started, Natural England will look at each licence on its own merits and make a decision thereon.

Waste Management Carriers: Regulation

Debate between Lord Beamish and Baroness Hayman of Ullock

Thursday 25th June 2026 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

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

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

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

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

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

Waste Crime

Debate between Lord Beamish and Baroness Hayman of Ullock

Wednesday 15th October 2025 Lords Chamber

[Lord Beamish]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to tackle waste crime.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Baroness Hayman of Ullock) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Government are committed to tackling waste crime. We are preparing significant reforms to the waste carriers, brokers and dealers regime and the waste permit exemptions regime. We are also introducing digital waste tracking to make it harder than ever to misidentify waste or dispose of it inappropriately. We have increased the Environment Agency’s funding, including the amount available to tackle waste crime, to continue to increase the pressure on illegal waste operators.

[Lord Beamish (Lab)]

I thank my noble friend for that Answer. I asked her a Question about what evaluation has been made of the joint waste crime unit. Her reply was that there has been none. I also asked the justice department about the incidence of prosecutions for landfill tax fraud over four years, only to be referred to a website with statistics that does not categorise landfill tax fraud as a crime. The 2022 NAO report into waste crime said that waste crime costs the economy £900 million a year, £200 million of that in landfill tax fraud. It also said that 41 of the 60 organised crime groups in the UK are involved in waste crime. When are we going to get really serious about this? I have been campaigning on this for many years, not only because of the cost of fraud to the economy but because of the cost to the environment.

[Baroness Hayman of Ullock (Lab)]

My noble friend is absolutely right to say that this is a really serious problem, and the Government need to get to grips with it. That is why we are taking specific actions to try to start making a real difference in the amount and impact of waste crime in order to genuinely start to reduce what is a terrible blight on our country. We want to crack down. As I said, we have increased the EA’s budget for waste crime enforcement by over 50% this year. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime has nearly doubled in size due to the extra funding we have given. The Environment Agency has been able to increase its front-line criminal enforcement resource. We are also looking for further recruitment to enable enforcement work in the new duties that they will be given. The Environment Agency’s economic crime unit was launched last year and is specifically targeting the financial motivations behind waste crime, which are often huge, so that we can bring in asset freezing and freeze the proceeds of crime actions. We are looking to do a number of things to genuinely get to the bottom of this and tackle the outcomes.