Draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026
House of Commons · General Committees · 16 Jun 2026 · 37 speeches · Official Report
The Committee consisted of the following Members:
Chair: † Martin Vickers
† Beales, Danny (Uxbridge and South Ruislip) (Lab)
† Bishop, Matt (Forest of Dean) (Lab)
† Collins, Tom (Worcester) (Lab)
† Creagh, Mary (Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs)
† Eagle, Maria (Liverpool Garston) (Lab)
Farron, Tim (Westmorland and Lonsdale) (LD)
† Gilmour, Rachel (Tiverton and Minehead) (LD)
† Hudson, Dr Neil (Epping Forest) (Con)
† McKinnell, Catherine (Newcastle upon Tyne North) (Lab)
† McMahon, Jim (Oldham West, Chadderton and Royton) (Lab/Co-op)
† Morris, Joe (Hexham) (Lab)
† Pakes, Andrew (Peterborough) (Lab/Co-op)
† Paul, Rebecca (Reigate) (Con)
† Rhodes, Martin (Glasgow North) (Lab)
† Shastri-Hurst, Dr Neil (Solihull West and Shirley) (Con)
† Walker, Imogen (Hamilton and Clyde Valley) (Lab)
† Whittingdale, Sir John (Maldon) (Con)
Aaron Kulakiewicz, Committee Clerk
† attended the Committee
The following also attended ( Standing Order No. 118(2) ) :
Milne, John (Horsham) (LD)
Second Delegated Legislation Committee
Tuesday 16 June 2026
[Martin Vickers in the Chair ]
Draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026
I beg to move, That the Committee has considered the draft Digital Waste Tracking (England) Regulations 2026. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Vickers. I begin by wishing my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle upon Tyne North a happy significant birthday, and I look forward to celebrating with her later and at various points throughout the week ahead. The draft regulations were laid before the House on 23 April this year. More than 200 million tonnes of waste are produced in the UK each year, and there is currently no comprehensive way of tracking it. Legislation relating to the transport, management and description of waste has been introduced in a piecemeal fashion over the last 30 years. Large amounts of waste movement data recorded through the current system are either not collected or are required to be submitted only each quarter and, of course, they are collected on a paper-based system. As a result, at a national level, it is difficult to determine where waste is from and what happens to it. At a local level, it is difficult for waste producers to check that their waste has been handled appropriately. The system’s lack of transparency gives waste criminals opportunities to undercut legitimate waste businesses and to cause harm to our environment and communities. This crime costs the UK economy an estimated £1 billion each year, due to activities such as fly-tipping, deliberate misclassification of waste to avoid paying landfill taxes, illegal...
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship today, Mr Vickers. I thank the Minister for introducing the draft regulations to the Committee. It is good to see the Government building on the progress made by the previous Conservative Government, who laid the foundation for digital waste tracking to be introduced by passing the landmark Environment Act 2021. Additional measures introduced by the Conservatives that sought to tackle waste crime include increasing the upper limit for fixed penalties to ensure proportionate and effective enforcement action. The previous Government also provided 30 local authorities with grants to enhance resources to tackle fly-tipping. The grants supported a range of projects such as CCTV, anti-climb fencing and better waste infrastructure.
Does the hon. Gentleman have any insight into why the previous Government did not follow through and actually implement the regulations they consulted on?
I am very proud of the previous Conservative Government passing the landmark Environment Act. We consulted and brought forward measures to tackle waste crime, and I am very pleased that the Labour Government have taken the baton forward and are enacting some of the measures that we started. Sadly, my constituents have also been faced with the blight of fly-tipping in our communities, with many serious cases caused by shameless criminals who should face the full extent of the law. It not only harms communities and the environment, but threatens the precious wildlife and biodiversity that the forest of Epping Forest is so privileged to enjoy. I must pay tribute to the litter-picking groups across Epping Forest, including the Waltham Abbey community group and Theydon Bois parish council, who regularly roll up their sleeves to fight the scourge of waste carelessly dumped. I have had the pleasure of joining that fantastic community in action on many occasions. When I have joined community groups on litter picks, it has been particularly concerning to see an abundance of discarded large nitrous oxide canisters. They are used illegally for drug misuse and then discarded on the side of roads to be cleared up by those who do the right thing. Any activity to clear up waste, such as the measure we are discussing, needs to address this issue as a priority for urban, rural and semi-rural communities alike. Can the Minister outline what steps the Government are taking to tackle the...
In my constituency, we have already paid dearly the price of waste crime and seen its impacts on our city and the surrounding area, so I really welcome this measure. I think most people would expect that we use digital tools these days to track, trace and gather data on the movements of value streams like this one. As we move forward into a more circular economy and see higher energy waste streams being handled, that becomes all the more important. As an officer in the all-party parliamentary group on critical infrastructure and heritage crime, it is good to see measures coming into place to tackle those areas of crime as well. I note that the regulation introduces a fee and I am interested in the future value for money of that fee. In particular, I note that the Secretary of State has responsibility for the operation of the digital waste tracking system, but it is not clear how that will be administered in practice or to whom the fee will be paid. Can the Minister explain the Secretary of State’s intention on the day-to-day administration of the waste tracking system? Will that be done by the Environment Agency, some other public body, or will it be contracted out to a private entity? Will the Minister also comment on the development of the software? I note from the accompanying papers that it is currently in a private beta test stage, but the optimism bias being used is 400%. Does that indicate a problem or some very high uncertainty on the final areas of development of...
I rise to speak on behalf of the Liberal Democrats, who broadly support the establishment of a digital system to track the movement of controlled waste. We have long campaigned-as people would expect us to-for stronger waste regulation and enforcement to protect our environment and tackle waste crime after years of inaction by the Conservative Government. As waste is a devolved matter, with separate legislation and systems being developed in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland, the Government must work closely with the devolved Administrations to ensure that these digital systems are interoperable and provide effective coverage across the whole UK. Although we support the draft regulations, we urge the Government to go further in tackling the waste crime national emergency by taking up our calls to increase fixed-penalty notices for fly-tipping to £2,500, transferring responsibility for investigating major waste crime to the National Crime Agency, and introducing rewards of more than £5,000 for information leading to a successful prosecution of criminal gangs.
It is a pleasure to respond to that short but pithy and valuable debate. I am grateful to the Opposition spokesman, the hon. Member for Epping Forest, for his comments. He is beginning to remind me a bit of St Augustine, who was famous for his prayer of, “Grant me chastity, Oh Lord, but not yet”, because, as he said, he laid the foundations for some of this work while in government. That includes the EPR system, which he voted for in 2024 along with all his Conservative colleagues. He now stands loudly lamenting EPR, but I just remind him that it is something that his party developed in government and voted for less than two years ago. I share the hon. Gentleman’s frustration about NOx canisters. I am still mystified as to why they are on sale in the UK. I know they are useful for whipping cream, but we see when we go on Amazon, as I did a couple of years ago, that people who bought NOx canisters also bought little canisters to sell it for £1, £2, or whatever it is they do to create further litter. It is absolutely clear that there is not a sudden, massive interest in whipping cream across the festivals and parklands of this great nation. In fact, nitrous oxide is a highly regulated substance and a fluorinated gas that we need for some medical emergencies. I remember the glory days of British dentistry, where any time someone went for a filling they got the happy gas so that they did not really mind what was happening to their teeth. Those of us who are old enough will...
I congratulate the Government on the efforts being made on fly-tipping. We can quite often skirt over just how important these issues are, but in areas where fly-tipping is common, it absolutely ruins the local community. I put on record our appreciation for the work that is being done.
I thank my hon. Friend for his kind words. I also pay tribute to his council in Oldham, which wrote to me about a very thought-provoking motion that the council passed. The leader of the council-I am sorry; his name escapes me-said that environmental justice goes hand in hand with social justice. These environmental crimes are predominantly perpetrated against poorer communities. There is a kind of social injustice there that we must not lose sight of. There are certain parts of Coventry that are spotless and have no litter or fly-tipping, and other areas, like Foleshill, the ward where my office is, where fly-tipping is absolutely endemic. I will conclude by talking about our manifesto commitment to forcing fly-tippers and vandals to clean up their mess. We will soon consult on giving local councils the powers to issue fly-tippers with conditional cautions, one of a range of pre-court community-based sanctions that could see offenders completing up to 20 hours of unpaid work cleaning up streets and parks and paying back the cost of cleaning up the waste that they have dumped on public land. If an offender admits to the crime, agrees to the caution and complies with those conditions, they will not face prosecution. Anyone who spends a couple of hours cleaning up litter and sweating in the hot sun, as I did on Friday in Willenhall, will be very keen not to repeat the experience. Nationwide waste tracking does not exist, so the costs are uncertain at the moment because we do...
Committee rose.