Environment Agency: East of England

Debate between Mike Martin and Steve Barclay

Wednesday 4th June 2025 Westminster Hall

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Gentleman raises an extremely important point, and he is correct. It seems that the Environment Agency is very happy to go after what it may perceive to be easier and more law-abiding targets, but as the most serious environmental harm is caused by serious criminal gangs, there is often a reluctance to take on those organisations in the way that it does an individual farmer. That is why this also points to a need for a much more fundamental reform of the Department’s relationship with its arm’s length bodies, as well as its accountability to Ministers, regardless of which Government is in office.

This debate is focused specifically on the east of England, and I want to give three examples of where that operational performance really illustrates concerns across the boards with environmental damage being caused. Before doing so, given that I have been the Secretary of State, I thought it relevant to touch on a national example to show that this is not simply a constituency or local issue. With that in mind, let me inform the House about Hoad’s wood, which is a site of special scientific interest and an area of outstanding natural beauty that has been covered—as you probably know, Sir Roger—in more than 35,000 tonnes of illegal waste.

We might have thought that a SSSI would be a priority case for the Environment Agency, and one where it would be most certain to take action. However, so concerned was I as a Minister that I had to take the very unusual step of issuing a ministerial direction. No ministerial direction had been issued in the Department in the preceding seven years before I arrived as Secretary of State, so this was an unusual but necessary step to compel the EA to take action on a SSSI. Again, I think that speaks to some of the issues. Even so, the situation has dragged on, with contractors not appointed until November last year, work not beginning until March and completion not expected until at least 2026. That points to some of the issues with the most valuable sites, never mind more routine sites.

[Mike Martin (Tunbridge Wells) (LD)]

I will give another example from Kent. In Tunbridge Wells in my constituency, the River Grom often has very high levels of ammonia due to sewage being dumped in the river. When that is reported to the Environment Agency, it claims a lack of funds, does not send its own investigators and often passes the matter to Southern Water, which is perhaps to blame for the problem in the first place. Does that not contribute to a lack of democratic oversight of our environment?

[Steve Barclay]

The hon. Member absolutely catches the point raised earlier about the lack of accountability and transparency, and the highlights fact that, although the EA has had more money and resource, it is not targeting priority cases or long-standing issues, while often telling Members of Parliament that they are priorities. I will come on to that, because there is a wider issue of which the Minister needs to be aware: the slowness to act and lack of accountability.

Turning to the east of England, and my own constituency in particular, let me give three examples that cover a range of scenarios. The first is the dumping of more than 122,000 tonnes of waste at Saxon Pit in Whittlesey between October 2017 and February 2018. The EA’s initial response was to say that it was totally unaware of 122,000 tonnes of waste being dumped—but, regardless of whether the EA had been asleep at the wheel, we would expect it to then act. In its initial response, the EA said that the operator must dispose of all the non-conforming waste by 10 October 2018; yet seven years on the waste remains in situ. The EA also promised prosecutions, because this was such a serious case. I will quote just one of many letters that I exchanged with the EA over this period. In 2021, the then-chief executive Sir James Bevan promised that

“Saxon Pit is being treated as a priority”.

The EA’s investigation took a further 14 months to complete, but in June 2022 it said that a

“final set of interviews…will take place shortly”.

In October 2022, the chief executive asked me to,

“be assured that my teams are prioritising this work over other competing criminal inquiries”.

Three years ago, the EA said it was prioritising this serious case, with more 122,000 tonnes of waste, over other cases. It was a priority case. Yet three years on, and seven years on from the incident, we still have no prosecutions. To go back to what the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) said a moment ago, what cases is the EA prosecuting with its additional resource, if it is not prosecuting at Saxon Pit?

I thought that the Minister might reflect, “Perhaps that was simply an issue of the past Government. Perhaps things have changed—the Environment Agency has perhaps changed its approach.” I therefore thought it would be helpful to give a second example, from the last year: a very serious pollution incident at King’s dyke, in Whittlesey, the same town as Saxon Pit. I have seen internal papers from the Environment Agency that show that it described the problem, and reported it to the Department, as a category 1 pollution incident. For those not familiar with the term, a category 1 pollution incident is the most severe level, involving a

“serious, persistent…or extensive impact…on the environment, people…or property”.

The BBC reported that an estimated 900 fish were killed in close vicinity to an Anglian Water overflow pipe, and that the pipe had discharged for 23 hours due to a suspected pump failure. When I spoke to Anglian Water and the Environment Agency, no other credible reason was given for the serious incident. I was then told that water samples had been taken and would be quick to establish whether the overflow pipe was the cause of the category 1 incident. I was told on 10 October 2024 that the lab tests were under way, that it would take a week for them to determine the cause, and that an internal decision would be taken on enforcement in November.

November then became December. December became January. We kept chasing, and we were told, “No, it’s no longer January; it’s May.” We chased again in May, and were told September. This is an issue that Ministers say—and I do not doubt for a minute their sincerity—is an absolute priority for the Government. We have the most serious level of pollution incident, a category 1, which happened in September, yet the Environment Agency says it will not tell the public of Whittlesey the cause of it for at least a year—even though I suspect that, internally and within the Department, it is already known whether Anglian Water was the cause and whether, therefore, a criminal investigation should follow. I do not believe that is a sufficient level of transparency or accountability.

Let me give a third example. As a former Minister, I thought I would try to pitch these examples in a way that is constructive across the House. One debate that the Minister may recall was led by one of her parliamentary colleagues, the hon. Member for Derby South (Baggy Shanker). In it, he raised cross-party concerns—indeed, there were a number of the Minister’s colleagues present, though it was one of her colleagues on the Front Bench—around the environmental damage of incinerators. That is something that many charities usually more closely aligned with the left of politics, such as Friends of the Earth, have raised concerns about, but it is also an issue that many on the Government Benches have highlighted, and one that I have consistently raised myself.

We now know that DEFRA’s own analysis suggests that there is enough national capacity for incineration. As more waste is recycled, the requirements for incineration come down. A BBC report highlighted the serious damage caused by these incinerators and by waste being burned because of anaerobic digesters. Most of that is now plastic, and it is the dirtiest way to generate power. No one would have thought a Government committed to the environment would want to see more incinerators being built. Incineration is on a par with coal as the dirtiest form of energy generation, yet we still do not have clarity from the Government on whether environmental permits will remain in force for incinerators that have not yet been built.

One of those is in Wisbech. To put this incinerator in context, it is so big that one half its size in the neighbouring constituency was turned down—so they doubled it in size to make it a national scheme and take it outside local planning. It is sited 700 metres from the largest school in the district, accessed solely by single carriageway roads, with a chimney bigger than Ely cathedral in the flat landscape of the fens. The Environment Agency, in issuing a permit, says it does not consider any of the environmental harm of transporting waste from six different counties to this small market town, because the permit only applies to the curtilage of the site itself. I simply ask, given the cross-party support on this issue, whether that decision by the Environment Agency is fit for purpose.

I will add one further point. Is it not very odd that the decision to grant an environmental permit was made during the general election purdah period, a time when organisations are not supposed to take controversial decisions? I hope the Minister will follow up on that, because I know that many of her own Government colleagues are concerned. Where incinerators have not yet been built, we should not be embedding the environmental damage that so many charities and environmental groups, and so many of our own colleagues have expressed concern about.