Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask the Secretary of State for Justice, how many scrap metal operators were prosecuted for (a) not holding a licence and (b) paying cash for scrap metal in the last three years; and how many and what proportion of those prosecutions resulted in a conviction.
Answered by Edward Argar - Minister of State (Ministry of Justice)
The Ministry of Justice publishes information on the number of defendants prosecuted and convicted for offences under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 (offence code 19534) within the last three years, in the following tool:
A breakdown of the prosecutions and convictions for (a) not holding a licence and (b) paying cash for scrap metal for year ending June 2020 to year ending June 2022, issued at all courts in England and Wales, has been provided in Table 1 on a principal offence basis.
Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, whether she has made an estimate of the economic cost of metal theft to the UK economy.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Scrap Metal Dealers Act (2013) was introduced to reduce metal theft by strengthening regulation of the scrap metal industry.
The most recent assessment of the cost of metal theft was at the time of the 2013 Act’s enactment with an estimated cost of £228 million in England and Wales.
Scrap Metal Dealers Act 2013 (publishing.service.gov.uk)
Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Home Office:
To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the number of visits that were carried out by local authority licensing officers to licensed scrap metal dealers in the last 12 months.
Answered by Chris Philp - Minister of State (Home Office)
The Home Office does not compile data on the number of visits carried out by local authority licensing officers to licensed scrap metal dealers.
Asked by: Bill Esterson (Labour - Sefton Central)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, how much and what proportion of Environment Agency’s time is dedicated to (a) tackling permitted scrap metal operators acting illegally and (b) tackling unpermitted operators in the scrap metal sector accessing Grant-in-Aid funding.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
The Environment Agency spent a total of 32,446 hours on compliance activities at 7,070 permitted sites across all waste treatment sectors (Hazardous Waste Treatment, Non-Hazardous & Inert Waste Treatment and Metal Recycling) in 2022.
For the metal recycling sector specifically, the Environment Agency undertook 1,762 compliance related activities across 2,152 permitted sites. These compliance activities include site inspections, site audits, check monitoring, procedure reviews and report/data reviews. As part of these compliance checks we recorded 1,396 separate permit breaches. The Environment Agency spent a total 8,811 hours on compliance work in the Metal Recycling Sector. 7,878 of those hours were spent undertaking site inspections.
The Environment Agency does not have data available on the proportion of time spent tackling unpermitted operators in a specific sector. However, we can state that in the financial year 2021/2022 the Environment Agency spent approximately 130,000 hours or 108 FTE tackling illegal waste sites, including illegal scrap metal sites. During that same financial year, a total of 561 illegal waste sites were stopped by the Environment Agency. As an indicator, 94 of these sites were in the scrap metal sector, which represents 17% of all sites stopped. Activities to tackle illegal waste sites are currently funded through government grant-in-aid.
Asked by: Jonathan Edwards (Independent - Carmarthen East and Dinefwr)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, if he will make an assessment of the potential impact of deploying depleted uranium shells to Ukraine on (a) the environment and (b) civilian health.
Answered by James Heappey
Depleted uranium rounds obviously have a high impact upon those in the target armoured vehicle. Beyond that the effects are limited, primarily to the remains of the targeted vehicle and some potential heavy metal contamination localised around the impact zone. Radiation from depleted uranium is not discernible from natural background radiation at impact sites.
The use of depleted uranium munitions have been investigated by the Royal Society, World Health Organization (WHO), the United Nations Environmental Program, the International Atomic Energy Agency, NATO, the Centres for Disease Control, the European Commission, and others. None of these inquiries has documented long-term environmental or health effects attributable to use of these munitions. The WHO's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) places depleted uranium in 'group 3' - not carcinogenic to humans.
Asked by: Paulette Hamilton (Labour - Birmingham, Erdington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an estimate of the number of (a) occasions that schools in Birmingham, Erdington constituency have screened pupils using metal detectors and (b) weapons that have been recovered as a result of screening pupils in each of the last five years.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The Department does not collect data on how many schools use screening or how many weapons are collected as a result of screening.
The Department updated its guidance, ‘Searching, screening and confiscation’, in July 2022.
Headteachers are encouraged to consult with local police who may be able to advise on whether installation of screening devices is appropriate. Any weapons that are found as a result of screening or a search must be passed to the police.
Schools are advised that any search for a prohibited item by a member of staff or police officers should be recorded in the school’s safeguarding reporting system. This allows the designated safeguarding lead to identify possible risks and initiate a safeguarding response if required.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department has made an assessment with Cabinet colleagues of the potential impact of (a) illegal scrap metal operators on the metals recycling sector and (b) waste crime on (i) the waste and recycling sector and (ii) UK economy.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Waste regulation is a devolved matter. Following our consultation on reform of the waste exemptions regime in England and Wales we plan to remove the T9 exemption for the recovery of scrap metal and the U16 exemption for using vehicle parts dismantled from end-of life vehicles. These operations will now require an environmental permit.
My Department has made no assessment of the potential impact of waste crime on the waste and recycling sector or the UK economy. Research for the Environmental Services Association (Counting the Cost of UK Waste Crime, 2021) estimated that waste crime costs the economy in England £924 million in 2018/19.
The Government has provided an additional £10 million per year for the Environment Agency to tackle waste crime. This additional funding has been invested into three key areas of waste crime – tackling illegal waste sites, illegal dumping and illegal exports.
Asked by: John McNally (Scottish National Party - Falkirk)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if she will increase funding to the Environmental Agency to help tackle illegal operators in the (a) metals recycling and (b) waste and recycling sector.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Waste regulation is a devolved matter. Following our consultation on reform of the waste exemptions regime in England and Wales we plan to remove the T9 exemption for the recovery of scrap metal and the U16 exemption for using vehicle parts dismantled from end-of life vehicles. These operations will now require an environmental permit.
My Department has made no assessment of the potential impact of waste crime on the waste and recycling sector or the UK economy. Research for the Environmental Services Association (Counting the Cost of UK Waste Crime, 2021) estimated that waste crime costs the economy in England £924 million in 2018/19.
The Government has provided an additional £10 million per year for the Environment Agency to tackle waste crime. This additional funding has been invested into three key areas of waste crime – tackling illegal waste sites, illegal dumping and illegal exports.
Asked by: Julian Knight (Independent - Solihull)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, whether her Department is taking steps to help make it easier to recycle packaging waste.
Answered by Rebecca Pow - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
Following support at public consultation, the Environment Act 2021 introduced new requirements for all local authorities in England to make arrangements for a core set of materials to be collected for recycling from all households: paper and card; plastic; glass; metal; food waste and garden waste. All businesses in England must make ar-rangements to recycle the same set of recyclable materials, with the exception of garden waste. In 2021 we consulted on the detail of this policy, including implemen-tation dates and materials in scope of collection – we will publish a consultation re-sponse shortly.
Additionally, we intend to increase the amount of packaging that can be recycled. By March 2027, the government will require the collection of plastic film packaging for recycling from all households and businesses.
To make recycling easier, packaging producers will be required to label packaging as ‘Recycle’ or ‘Do Not Recycle’ adopting a single label format which incorporates the Recycle Now symbol. All primary and shipment packaging (except for plastic films and flexibles) will be required to be labelled by 31 March 2026. An additional year will be permitted for plastic films and flexibles (31st March 2027) to align with the re-quirement for local authorities and businesses to have recycling collections in place for these materials.
Asked by: Lord Bishop of St Albans (Bishops - Bishops)
Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:
To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to improve water quality in Hertfordshire.
Answered by Lord Benyon - Minister of State (Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office)
Improving water quality remains a government priority. We have set new targets under the Environment Act to address major pressures on water. This will significantly reduce pollution from agriculture, wastewater treatment works and abandoned metal mines pollution.
In August 2022 HM Government launched the most ambitious plan to reduce sewage discharges from storm overflows in water company history - £56 billion capital investment over 25 years. We have increased the number of storm overflows monitored across the network from 10% in 2015 to almost 90% now monitored, and we will reach 100% cover by end of this year. It is this increase in monitoring which has revealed the extent of the sewage discharge problem, rather than the problem becoming worse over the years.
Water company investment in environmental improvements has been scaled up to £7.1 billion over the period 2020-25. This includes £3.1 billion invested in storm overflow improvements on approximately 800 storm overflows, 8 of which are in the Hertfordshire and North London area. In Hertfordshire, actions water companies take during this planning period will improve or protect over 200km of watercourse and support meeting Water Framework Directive objectives.
HM Government has doubled the budget of the Catchment Sensitive Farming partnership to £15m per year and provided new funding to the Environment Agency (EA) to increase farm inspections to at least 4,000 inspections a year in 2023. The EA works with local farmers across Hertfordshire to mitigate and prevent agricultural pollution. EA teams have visited 15 farms in the Hertfordshire and North London area already this year.