Crime and Policing Bill

Viscount Goschen Excerpts

Wednesday 25th February 2026 Lords Chamber

Tabled by

[Viscount Goschen]

14: At end insert—
“(1C) The guidance must specify that reasonable measures under subsection (1B) include requiring the waste collection authority to collect all waste resulting from the offence.”

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

I do not wish to move the amendment.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

My Lords, I do not think it inappropriate that, although Amendment 14 was not moved, it should be spoken to.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

For the administrative ease of the House, I have not moved Amendment 14, but I do have another amendment in this group, Amendment 21, which I do intend to talk to, if that is in order.

[Viscount Hailsham (Con)]

I do not want to intrude unnecessarily, but I did have a brief word to say about Amendments 14 and 21, both of which I welcome very much. This arises from a particular problem I had in my own area. We had a very efficiently run waste disposal area, which was closed—and the consequence was that we had a lot of fly-tipping. The advantage of Amendments 14 and 21 is that they would impose on the waste disposal authority certain obligations: obligations to pay and obligations to clear away the mess. The advantage of that is that it may make the waste disposal authorities much less willing to close sites. If the sites remain open, the prospect is that fly-tipping will not be as great. I was going to support Amendments 14 and 21, because what they would do is valuable, in the sense that it would encourage waste disposal authorities to keep sites open, and not to close them.

[Viscount Goschen (Con)]

My Lords, I am grateful for the support of my noble friend.

This is an important issue. I have campaigned for many years around fly-tipping and the importance of having a stronger regulatory settlement, so I very much support my noble friend’s amendments in this group. It is a very large-scale problem: the noble Lord, Lord Katz, I believe, referred at an earlier stage to an estimate of some 1.15 million fly-tipping events reported to local authorities. That is a huge number, and I expect that that thoroughly underreports the true scale of the problem.

The noble Lord, Lord Katz, was kind enough to write to me in response to a question I raised on 17 November in Committee, when I inquired as to the number of cost recovery orders that had been successfully made by the courts. It appears that the Government do not hold that information. I looked at the manifesto, about which we have heard an awful lot in this Parliament, and indeed today, and there was a commitment to make the fly-tippers pay for the clear-up, yet the Government do not hold the statistics. I am slightly puzzled as to how the Government are going to make progress on that without holding the relevant information. The noble Lord, in his letter to me, did say that 1,378 fines had been made in respect of fly-tipping. That is a tiny number: it is 1 in 1,000, or 0.1%. It is quite clear —the noble Baroness, Lady Hayman of Ullock, in response to a question about the Kidlington outrage, agreed—that the current regulatory position is not working. This is a particular issue in the countryside, where there is a heavy burden on farmers, as we have heard. Here, I declare an interest of sorts, as the owner of a farm.

I have Amendment 21 in this group. Its effect is simple: it would place a duty on local waste authorities to remove waste and then to attempt to pursue cost recovery from the culprits. It builds, really, on Amendment 13, in my noble friend’s name, which seeks to amend the guidance. Both have a similar intent. In my view, it is simply unfair that the victim of the crime should be responsible for clearing it up. There are many factors that drive this crime, but at least two are within the direct control of public authorities as a whole—namely, the pricing of the landfill tax and, as my noble friend referred to, the accessibility of waste disposal facilities, and the Environment Agency and police enforcement effort.

My noble friend referred to the incident reported of a farmer who recently had 200 tonnes of rubbish dumped on his land. This is a perfect illustration of the problem that landowners, and indeed community trusts and others—for example, sports grounds and football clubs and so forth—can face. This individual faced a bill for some £40,000. Now, I understand that the council and the police had failed to identify the culprits and had failed to protect him after repeated previous incidents. Indeed, he alleges that he had also been the victim of intimidation. Why should he face financial ruin for the failures of public authorities to protect him from the actions of a criminal gang?

I would argue that it is simply not realistic, nor is it fair, to expect landowners to take on the role of detective to identify offenders and then to pursue them for the recovery of costs. They do not know how to make the various agencies involved work more effectively, they are vulnerable to intimidation and they do not have the resources.

The time has now come for the responsibility for protection, clear-up, investigation and prosecution to sit with the appropriate and relevant public agencies. To my mind, the arguments for doing this are clear, as it would create a complete system where public sector agencies control landfill pricing, access to legitimate waste disposal sites, identification and prosecution of culprits, and recovery of costs. This would incentivise the Environment Agency, the police and local waste authorities to be much more proactive in pursuing the culprits, facilitating their prosecution and recovering their costs. It would allow for faster removal, which is a very important factor. With waste lying around on farmland, private land or any open ground, one thing follows another, and more suddenly turns up. It would also give much fairer treatment to landowners.

It is clear that the current system is not working. On the one hand, we have had a member of the public being fined for pouring the dregs of her cup of coffee down the drain, but, on the other hand, no one seems to have noticed or done anything to stop at least 300 heavy goods vehicles dumping upwards of 10,000 tonnes of rubbish illegally in Kidlington. How can that possibly have happened? How can we have confidence in the system? If it cannot catch 300 trucks, what chance does the poor landowner have in this type of situation? This is a failure of the whole government system in the broadest sense of the term—central agencies and local—to protect victims. They now need to take responsibility.

I support my noble friend Lord Davies of Gower’s other amendments, all of which are designed to strengthen the regulatory settlement to tackle fly-tipping. I look forward to the Minister’s response.

[Lord Carter of Haslemere (CB)]

My Lords, I strongly support the intention and spirit of Amendment 13. Fly-tipping shows a shocking disregard for other people, the local community, society and the environment. It is not right that the cost of removing the consequences of it fall on the victims, as has been said, at huge expense.

My point is a technical one about the way that this amendment is drafted. I do not think that imposing this liability in guidance is the right way to go about it. Guidance is not normally legally binding. Those to whom it is addressed have to have regard to it, simply—even if it is laid before Parliament with a stronger procedure, as I think the Government are proposing. In my view, the right way to do it is by an amendment to Section 33(8) and (9) of the Environmental Protection Act, where the penalties for the offence are set out. That would be the correct place to put it. That is the approach taken in Amendment 19, tabled by the noble Lord, Lord Davies of Gower. While I strongly support the amendment, and would vote for it in any Division, I think the way it is drafted is not quite right.

--- Later in debate ---

Moved by

[Viscount Goschen]

21: After Clause 9, insert the following new Clause—
“Fly tipping: English waste collection authority dutyWhen an offence of fly-tipping has been committed, the local waste authority must collect all waste resulting from the offence committed and then seek to recover the costs from the offender.”