Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, what steps she is taking to ensure effective regulation and enforcement is in place to tackle the environmental and financial impact of waste crime.

This Government is committed to tackling waste crime from the fly-tippers who blight our towns and villages to the serious and organised crime groups who are exploiting the waste sector.  Those responsible for committing waste crime, rather than taxpayers, should cover the cost of cleaning up the mess they create.

We are making policy and regulatory reforms to close loopholes exploited by criminals and have increased the Environment Agency’s (EA’s) budget for waste crime enforcement by over 50% this year to £15.6 million.

The EA hosts the Joint Unit for Waste Crime which brings together the EA, HMRC, National Crime Agency, the police, waste regulators from across the UK and other operational partners to share intelligence and tasking to disrupt and prevent serious organised waste crime. Our extra funding has enabled the EA to double the size of the Joint Unit for Waste Crime. Overall, the EA has been able to increase its frontline criminal enforcement resource in the Joint Unit for Waste Crime and area environmental crime teams by 43 full time staff.