Waste Industry: Criminality and Regulation

Debate between Deidre Brock and Kevan Jones

Tuesday 1st February 2022 Westminster Hall

[Deidre Brock (Edinburgh North and Leith) (SNP)]

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairship, Sir Gary. I commend the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Aaron Bell) for securing this really important debate.

It is clear from everything that has been said by Members across the Chamber that illegally dumped waste is a massive scourge that is blighting communities across the UK, with huge environmental, social and economic cost. Indeed, as our Justice Secretary and chair of Scotland’s serious organised crime taskforce, Keith Brown, said recently, this is not a victimless crime. Waste crime causes pollution and increases public health risks. It places enormous strain on legitimate operators, and serious and organised waste criminals have a considerable impact on the economy of all the nations of the UK.

Every year in Scotland, 250 million easily visible items are dropped as litter, and an estimated 26,000 tonnes of material is fly-tipped. According to research by Zero Waste Scotland, at least £53 million of public money is spent on addressing that.

[Mr Kevan Jones]

Is the hon. Lady aware that operators get around Scotland’s zero waste strategy by transferring waste over the border, much of it to the north-east? That has been raised with the Scottish Government, but nothing seems to be being done about it.

[Deidre Brock]

I am going to talk about a co-ordinated approach that all four nations of the UK can take to address those sorts of issues. I will also go on to mention a programme aired by BBC Scotland last night, “Disclosure Scotland”. I highly recommend that all Members look at it, because it focused on waste criminals heading over the border to Scotland, which is the exact opposite of what the right hon. Gentleman said. Of the £53 million I mentioned, I believe that it costs Scottish councils £11 million to remove waste from council-owned land alone.

A high proportion of individuals and organisations involved in illegal waste dumping are also associated with other organised crime, including violence, drugs, weapons and money laundering. Last night’s episode of “Disclosure Scotland”, which can be found on iPlayer—it is entitled, aptly enough, “Dirty Business”—exposed the scale and severity of that waste criminality. It highlighted a wide range of illegal activities, from man with a van fly-tipping and waste being burnt in a drum, to much larger-scale operations such as enormous illegal landfills and, increasingly, abandoned lorry trailers overflowing with waste that is simply left to rot.

The programme showed investigations by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency, including on a site where a criminal gang had buried large amounts of waste, which released harmful gases and liquids as the deposit degraded. Some of that waste was brought from outwith Scotland by the gang and is believed to include hazardous clinical waste from hospitals. The programme revealed that threats and intimidation have been made against landowners who refuse to allow waste to be buried on their land; others spoken to by the BBC were too scared to go on the record.

I believe that the majority of viewers—and, indeed, those listening to this debate—will have been shocked by those activities. They show that waste criminality goes far beyond small-scale fly-tipping. That is why Scotland’s serious and organised crime taskforce, chaired by the Scottish Justice Secretary Keith Brown, has made waste crime a top priority. The Scottish Government and their partners on the taskforce will use every means at their disposal to stop such illegal practices and ensure that those who dump waste illegally are held accountable. Although offenders risk criminal convictions, fines of up to £40,000 and/or imprisonment for 12 months, only a fraction of those responsible are prosecuted.

As we have heard today, criminals operate across borders and with similar methods. Collaboration and intelligence sharing across the UK is extremely important. The joint unit for waste crime, established in 2020, already brings together law enforcement and environmental protection agencies from across the UK. The Scottish National party wants to see that built upon via the introduction of mandatory electronic waste tracking and a UK-wide database of registered brokers—another recommendation of the independent review—which will make it easier to find these culprits and ensure they are brought to justice. I am sure the Minister will speak about that shortly.

Viewers of last night’s programme will have been completely shocked by the huge amounts of waste revealed —waste that, for far too many of us, is out of sight, out of mind. Across the UK, particularly since the UK has been prevented from exporting much of its waste by other countries quite rightly tightening their rules on imported waste, we are starting to drown in waste. It is essential that we find means of dealing with it much more effectively.

Scotland has committed to building a circular economy, meaning that we reduce demand for raw materials. We want to support and make the system fairer for those operating legally whose businesses are being drastically undercut by criminals. We support the UK Government’s plans to introduce waste monitoring. The consultation on the proposals to ensure that they work for Scotland will be of great importance to us. We certainly look forward to the outcomes, with our preferred outcome being for mandatory electronic monitoring. It is imperative that we work together to root out waste crime and bring perpetrators to justice.