Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of designating waste crime as a national strategic policing priority.

The Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs recently published the Waste Crime Action Plan, which sets out how we will tackle waste crime through prevention, enforcement, and accelerating the clean-up effort. National leadership for tackling waste crime sits with the Environment Agency. Its Joint Unit for Waste Crime (JUWC), which focusses on waste crime linked to Serious and Organised crime, brings together operational partners, such as the police and NCA, with appropriate agencies to ensure a joined up and effective response.

Serious and Organised Crime (SOC) is identified in the Strategic Policing Requirement as a national threat requiring a coordinated, cross‑boundary policing response. As set out in the White Paper, we will introduce new National Strategic Policing Priorities (NSPP) which will bring together strategic priorities for policing, and the national threats and capabilities forces need to respond to these threats, in one place. We will legislate for the NSPP, and set out the specific priorities, when parliamentary time allows.