Fly-tipping: Residential Areas
House of Commons · Westminster Hall · 23 Jun 2026 · 42 speeches · Official Report
Any hon. Members who wish to take off their jackets have permission to do so. I call Melanie Onn to move the motion.
I beg to move, That this House has considered the matter of fly-tipping in residential areas and associated impacts. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer, and to see so many colleagues here to participate in this important debate. I thank the Backbench Business Committee for allowing this debate and colleagues who supported my application. Fly-tipping is often discussed as an environmental or waste management issue and a question of local authority enforcement. It is, of course, all those things, but in communities such as mine and across the country, it is more fundamental. It is about pride, belonging and whether people feel good about the place they call home. Residents often tell me they are tired of seeing mattresses dumped in alleyways, household waste abandoned on street corners and green spaces treated as rubbish tips. Those are not isolated incidents; they become part of the everyday experience of a neighbourhood. The impact goes far beyond the physical waste itself. Surveys on environmental decay reveal that 86% of people living in heavily littered or fly-tipped neighbourhoods feel embarrassed by their area. It is terrible that people should feel that. That statistic ought to concern us all. Environmental degradation damages mental wellbeing, erodes civic pride and fuels a cycle of hopelessness that can leave residents feeling disconnected from the communities around them. People deserve to feel proud when they walk down their street, and...
My hon. Friend is making an excellent speech. Many of my residents are sick of persistent fly-tipping blighting our community. This Government have passed laws that allow us to prosecute fly-tippers, but residents are also frustrated by the cost of cleaning up this mess. Does my hon. Friend agree that it is imperative not only to clean up our communities but to make the fly-tippers pay for it?
My hon. Friend makes an excellent point. Why on earth should everybody else pay for the mess that others create, particularly hard-pressed communities that are already struggling? Adding to their council tax burden or imposing additional costs is not fair.
In my constituency, fly-tipping remains a significant problem for local communities. Waste is dumped, and the council acts properly to remove the waste but it comes back again. As has been mentioned, the problem is even more challenging when waste is dumped on private land, and the landowners have to endure the cost burden of removing sometimes hazardous quantities of waste. Does my hon. Friend agree that we need stronger enforcement, which should include greater use of CCTV to catch perpetrators and tougher penalties for offenders, which seems to be the only way to deal with this serious antisocial behaviour?
My hon. Friend makes a number of excellent points. In every community there are hotspots that people go back to again and again. There is provision for local authorities to use CCTV, but it has to be monitored; there is no point in having CCTV if it is not. Local authorities also have powers to use drones to follow vehicles that are committing the crime of excessive tipping. My hon. Friend is also right about the cost to private landowners. Other hon. Members might talk about more rural communities, the impact of fly-tipping on rural land and the environmental waste their constituents are then required to clean up. It is incredibly challenging to deal with hazardous waste.
On rural and private land, the Environment Agency in my constituency has said that there is a gap in regulation when it comes to privately owned sites that are used for one purpose initially but gradually accumulate waste and become fly-tipping destinations. The Environment Agency has no power to act against that because it is private land, and councils are also struggling to find the right approach. Does the hon. Lady consider that as a significant issue in rural constituencies such as mine?
It is interesting that the hon. Member says there might be a gap in regulations, and I suspect that that is the case for not just rural private land but all private land. I have the same thing in my constituency, where there are alleyways or unadopted areas that are frequently fly-tipped. I was going come on to local authorities later, but I will just repeat myself-why not; this place is all about repetition, isn’t it? In those alleyways and on other private land, local authorities will say, “We don’t have responsibility for that.” I do think that the Environment Agency would be much more concerned about the dumping and fly-tipping of hazardous waste, which has a broader environmental impact and falls into its area of responsibility.
It speaks to the timeliness of this debate that so many people want to contribute. On that specific point, my local authority of Bromley does very well cleaning up fly-tipping, but it is sometimes a bit hamstrung because the waste is tipped on to housing association land. Residents perceive that to be the council’s responsibility, but it cannot do anything about it. Does the hon. Member have any thoughts about that?
The responsibilities of housing associations on their land is a similar issue, as they are facing financial challenges of their own. That is why we end up relying so much on communities to come together and do the clean-up. There needs to be a much more holistic solution, but we cannot always rely on communities to step in to do something that has such a fundamental impact on them and the way people live their lives. I am sure that housing associations have an opportunity to work more closely with local authorities to try to come up with an improved solution.
The hon. Member-my Member of Parliament-is being very generous in giving way. Her comment about the community is very relevant. To give one example, there was an action day in Immingham only two or three weeks ago, which involved not only local authority councillors but, in our case, Lincolnshire Housing Partnership. The important thing I want to stress is that the funding was made available by Phillips 66, so does she agree that the private sector can make a contribution by supporting community groups?
I am very grateful for my constituent’s contribution. It is an excellent one, as always. He makes a very valid point; Phillips 66 is a great contributor to community activities across our areas, but I would not like us to rely on that all the time. It is a really welcome contribution and incredibly helpful. We are very grateful and community groups will be very grateful for any funding that they can get, but the fact that we have to rely on it so much speaks to our need to get a grip on this issue. The hon. Member for Brigg and Immingham (Martin Vickers) will know that recently we had a big fly-tipping issue in Weelsby woods. That is just around the corner from where he lives, so he will know it very well. We saw an unauthorised encampment there, with a huge amount of waste left behind. There was no concern for the fact that it is one of our valued green spaces that families regularly attend. The images of what was left behind shocked local residents. What should have been valued green space was turned into a disgusting dumping ground. That demonstrated something important about our local communities and how they pull together, because when the council sent teams to clear the site, volunteers also stepped up to help. It was an encampment for only three or four days, but there were several tonnes of waste from lots of tree work that had been undertaken; all the waste from that had been dumped in the park. Although that incident highlights the scale of the challenge, it also...
Order. I remind hon. Members that if they want to participate in the debate, they should bob at the end of every speech. I will call the Front-Bench spokespeople at 10.30 am. Doing the simple arithmetic, that means there will be a time limit of four minutes on speeches.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank and congratulate the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) on securing the debate. In Manchester alone last year, there were around 15,000 reports of fly-tipping. That is more than 40 incidents every single day. In my constituency the situation is particularly bad. In Levenshulme, there was one fly-tipping complaint for every four households. In Longsight, there were more than 1,000 incidents last year, the highest in Manchester, with Levenshulme close behind on 952. Behind every single one of these reports is a person who cares about where they live and who deserves so much better than having to live with illegally dumped waste in their backyards. The chances are that it is even worse than the numbers show. I regularly speak to constituents who, understandably, have lost all faith in reporting at all, because, too often, it does not lead to any action and the waste remains in our alleyways, in our kids’ parks and on our street corners. This is not about blaming communities. It is about ensuring that people have clean, safe streets wherever they live, regardless of their postcode. Tackling fly-tipping means proper enforcement against rogue waste operators and fraudulent businesses, but it also means giving local authorities the money that they need to actually deal with it, and that is where things just do not add up. In Greater Manchester, we have seen huge development in recent...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for bringing forward this important debate. Fly-tipping is not only damaging to our environment-it makes our communities worse places to live. No one wants to walk past those huge piles of rubbish. I represent Morecambe and Lunesdale, which hosts some of the most beautiful spots in the country. I have a national landscape, a national park, the beautiful Lune valley and of course Heysham and Morecambe, which look out across the beautiful Morecambe bay. Morecambe’s town motto is “Beauty surrounds, health abounds” and I would like to preserve that beauty for my constituents. Rural constituents contact me about this issue, but as the debate is focused on residential areas, I will limit myself to talking about problems raised with me in towns like Morecambe, Heysham and Carnforth. I put on the record my thanks to the local Wombles groups and the litter-pickers, who go out every week in all conditions to help tidy up our community. Residents in Morecambe regularly tell me about their frustration at rubbish left in alleyways and ginnels. They worry about letting their kids go out to play because of broken glass. They are worried about rats-not to mention the expense. Millions of pounds are spent in England every year just to clean up waste. I asked my constituents what more could be done to tackle fly-tipping and an overwhelming number...
I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for not just securing this debate, but articulating each and every point that impacts the agenda of fly-tipping. It is prevalent not just in my constituency, but across the whole city of Birmingham, and, as has been said, across the whole country. The hon. Member said that repetition makes any argument more persuasive, but she has touched on all the key points that I was going to speak about. Fly-tipping is an eyesore. It damages the appearance of streets, parks and green spaces. It attracts vermin, impacts on health and obstructs pavements. Children and vulnerable adults are all impacted. Within certain parts of my constituency of Birmingham Perry Barr specifically, there is an ageing community. While they take pride in their neighbourhood, unfortunately the fact that they are old and vulnerable means that they cannot deal with the issues like fit and able people can. The ageing community owns properties that have private land at the rear, and unfortunately that has been abused. Not by them-they have been very proud of their back spaces-but by rogue waste collectors who have identified that particular location and regularly fly-tip there. Unfortunately, the local council cannot deal with it; they simply say that it is private land and that they are not able to touch the dumped rubbish. Local councillors have not been receiving any community chest award money to spend, so the rubbish is simply piling up,...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. Fly-tipping in residential and rural areas is a blight across the communities that I represent, whether it is the most rural communities, such as Belsay and Kirkley Hall, or areas such as Throckley, Newburn and Walbottle on the more urban side of my seat. I pay particular tribute to community organisations, such as the Ponteland Anti-Litter Squad and the Hexham Wombles, that take action to clear up local litter and against fly-tipping, most of which do excellent jobs. There are other groups in the 200 towns and villages throughout my constituency, but I would detain everyone for quite a long time if I named them all. I welcome the waste crime action plan. It sets an excellent foundation for taking action to tackle fly-tipping, which blights communities across the span of my constituency. However, I am slightly concerned that on the more rural side of my seat, there is a growing problem of individual areas becoming magnets for mega fly-tipping. While those areas are not hyper-residential, like the areas that many of my wise and well-informed colleagues have spoken about, mega fly-tipping is nevertheless a blight on the communities that live around them, use those green spaces, and enjoy the countryside and their surroundings. I have been really heartened to see statistics coming out of Northumberland and Newcastle that show the hard work of council workers in addressing fly-tipping. Unfortunately, I think there is a...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for setting the scene incredibly well. I welcome the Minister, who we are very fortunate to have. She is committed to the very things that we are asking for. I wish her well as she pursues these matters. We are not talking about a minor inconvenience or a bit of harmless litter; we are talking about deliberate, criminal environmental vandalism that directly devalues people’s homes, attracts vermin to their doorsteps and robs law-abiding citizens of their hard-earned money. I am going to give a Northern Ireland perspective, which will not be a big surprise to anybody, but it is important that we put on record where we are. The Northern Ireland environmental statistics report confirms that public anger has reached a boiling point. A staggering 73% of citizens are deeply concerned about our environment. For the first time, air and water pollution has been officially overtaken as the single greatest environmental anxiety for households in Northern Ireland by illegal dumping and littering, which was chosen by some 34% of respondents. When I am at home, I live in Greyabbey. The main town is Newtownards, where my office is. I drive up and down that road two to three times a day-maybe more. People litter their KFCs, their McDonald’s, their sandwiches and their tins. They go out the window and are usually hidden in the grass until the grass is cut. When...
I feel honoured to intervene on the hon. Gentleman; it is often the other way around. Fly-tipping is a big issue in my constituency, as it is in his. There is frequent fly-tipping around the cemetery in Carmunnock, for example. Does he agree that part of the problem with tackling this is a lack of proper funding for local government? In Glasgow, for example, the Scottish Government have not properly funded Glasgow city council. Does he agree that tackling this requires resourcing for local government?
I certainly do. It is an absolute disgrace that, across Northern Ireland, we see fewer than six successful illegal dumping prosecutions per year. Criminal fly-tippers are treating minor fixed penalties as nothing more than a business expense. That must change. We need to back our local authorities in Ards and North Down with the statutory teeth that they need. If a person is caught destroying a residential neighbourhood with illegal waste, the authorities should have the immediate power to crush their vehicle and publicly name and shame them. Our communities deserve clean, safe and dignified places to raise their families. It is time to stop mollycoddling these criminals, clean up our streets, and restore pride to residential areas in the whole of this United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. I support the comments from the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes, and look forward to the Minister’s response and the other contributions.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing the debate and for her excellent speech outlining all the issues our residents face with fly-tipping. Nothing makes me more fed up and deflated than walking round the community where I raise my kids and seeing litter and piles of rubbish everywhere. Fly-tipping is a blight on my city. Portsmouth is a beautiful place, yet a few lazy and selfish criminals can cause enormous damage and make my city look a mess. I have been contacted by countless residents about illegal waste dumping across my constituency. Commercial waste has been dumped behind businesses in North End, attracting rats and harming legitimate local shops and the work they do to serve the community. This is not just a low-level or cosmetic issue; it is serious because fly-tipping puts my constituents at risk. These piles of rubbish create environmental hazards, increase fire risks and endanger public health. Unfortunately, the problem has been made worse by the failure of Liberal Democrat-run Portsmouth city council to act effectively and use all the levers available to it, be that swifter collections, the use of CCTV or drones, number plate recognition or the crushing of vehicles. They must take some ownership and some accountability, instead of sloping their shoulders and saying it is “not on our land”. I will give some examples. Outside the charity bins...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this important debate on an issue that affects almost everybody in this room. The waste crime action plan put forward by the Government contains several promising measures to tackle the persistent issue of fly-tipping in our communities. I welcome the additional £45 million allocated to the Environment Agency for waste crime enforcement, which will go a long way to strengthening investigations and addressing the problem at source. However, the measures proposed could go further, because residents like mine in Broxtowe have reported that rubbish is not only being left in the alleyway behind their property but being thrown over their fence and left in their garden. After reporting the incident, they discovered that as the landowner, they were responsible for clearing the waste themselves, as well as the associated costs. I am sure we would all agree that that just cannot be right. Victims of fly-tipping should not be left to bear the cost of the crime committed against them, yet this widespread injustice continues across the country. The legal framework already allows for significant penalties, including unlimited fines, vehicle seizures and even custodial sentences. However, these powers are too rarely enforced. In fact, despite more than 1.26 million recorded incidents, enforcement action remains astoundingly low....
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. We have heard some meaningful contributions so far, and I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for giving us the opportunity to praise our communities for the extremely hard work they are putting into our areas, but also to call out the situation that has got us here. In my constituency of North West Leicestershire, I am proud to have some incredibly dedicated litter picking groups. Their commitment to keeping our towns and surrounding areas clean is amazing, but it should not be necessary. I want to thank a number of them today, including the locally known Belton Sam, Coalville CAN for its recent litter pick of Coalville, and the regular litter pickers, including those in Hugglescote and Market Street in Ashby-de-la-Zouch. There are so many more who help from a much wider area and who travel to litter pick across Leicestershire, including my good friends Gibbo and Bob. They tell me that they are reporting an increasing number of fly-tips and have seen an increase in the amount of litter dropped in their local communities. For this speech, I reached out to Carly Hosker, a constituent and member of Castle Donington Litter Wombles. Carly said: “Fly-tipping affects everyone who lives nearby. It’s an eyesore, can attract even more rubbish, is a danger to wildlife and often leaves local people feeling ignored and very frustrated when nothing gets done about it. For me, it’s...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) on securing this important debate. Scotland is not immune to fly-tipping, which has a significant and often underestimated impact on our communities, affecting not only the physical environment but residents’ mental health and sense of wellbeing. In truth, it is a serious criminal act that damages our streets and neighbourhoods and places a growing demand on already overstretched local authority cleansing department budgets. There have been incidents where rogue traders have lured consumers with cheap cash-only rates to clear household waste, only to illegally dump it on our roadsides, countryside and lay-bys to avoid paying commercial fees. I have seen at first hand the impact of fly-tipping in my hometown and across my constituency: furniture, mattresses and even drug paraphernalia dumped on public footpaths and street corners and even at children’s play parks. Residents complain of waste piling up in the streets, bringing their area down. They cannot understand why the local authority fails to keep on top of this scourge on our communities. I know that local councils are trying, but they are dealing with the financial hand they have been dealt amid some of the severest cuts to local government since devolution. Budgets have been cut in real terms year after year, and as a result Scottish councils are merely managing...
It is a pleasure, as always, to see you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing the debate, because fly-tipping affects every community in this country. Stevenage was the country’s first post-war new town, which is great, because our forefathers and mothers planned a great new town, but there are many green spaces and woods between residential developments. I also have four villages in my constituency-Knebworth, Codicote, Datchworth and Aston-and each has similar issues to the town of Stevenage. Most of us are rightly proud of our communities, but a few people, who are not necessarily from our communities, wreck all that. Many of us go out week in, week out to clean up our streets. We have our Stevenage Wombles; just like Wombles across the country, they do sterling work, and I have joined them in the old town. Stevenage Labour party also has its own action team, which goes out once a month. We do our bit, and we go into the woods and clear them out, but do you know what? It is sometimes an impossible task. You try moving a fridge with just a few volunteers; it is just not possible. We have also found suitcases with things in them that I cannot possibly mention here. All of that is just not acceptable. People are reporting fly-tipping incidents. Just yesterday, on one of our Stevenage Facebook groups, a diligent citizen spotted an address on a TV licence letter and reported it straightaway. I...
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this incredibly important debate. I pay tribute to the South Park Users Group in Ilford South. Come rain or shine, they dedicate their time to keep our parks and streets clean through regular community litter picks. I also put on record my appreciation for the River Roding Trust, whose members collectively cleaned up 200 bags of rubbish from the River Roding, picking up the slack when Thames Water and the Environment Agency should have acted. I commend them for their dedication to ensuring that the residents of Ilford South live in a cleaner and safer environment. Fly-tipping is a scourge that repeatedly comes up in conversations with residents. Recently, I visited a local school where children as young as 10 interrogated me about the fly-tipping that blights our area. The fly-tippers may think that they are invisible and that they can dump their waste and get away with it, but fly-tipping is one of the most visible crimes in our communities. When people see it on their way to work, on the school run or while walking their dog, it drains local pride, chips away at social trust and sends a message that our streets, parks and rivers do not matter.
As a fellow east Londoner, I know that fly-tipping blights our streets and neighbourhoods; it shows a real lack of respect for our communities. Does my hon. Friend agree that we should commend the Government for putting the onus on fly-tippers by making sure that they pay-if they do the waste crime, they do the waste time-and making sure that they are responsible for cleaning up their own mess?
I absolutely agree. I have been saying for the last 10 years that that should be done. The Government finally acting is a real positive; we are going in the right direction. Fly-tipping blights our area, but when the council removes it quickly, people feel it is okay to dump rubbish on our streets because someone will pick it up. We cannot win either way; it becomes a vicious cycle. The more that people see the local area as a dumping ground, the more some feel enabled to fly-tip, meaning that the problem spirals unless it is fully tackled. I know from working with my local council that decisive steps are being taken to tackle this blight on our communities. For instance, it maintains free bulky waste collection, removing a lame excuse for fly-tipping. It is cheaper to pick up from people’s doorsteps in a controlled manner than from the streets once the waste has been dumped. Redbridge council has implemented not only that policy, but the wall of shame, which is an approach that has been adopted by other councils: naming and shaming to expose the waste cowboys who impose their mess on us. That sends a clear message that such behaviour is unacceptable in Ilford South and that those who fly-tip on our streets will be held accountable. I welcome the decisive actions the Government have already taken to support local authorities battling fly-tipping, from expanding council powers to crushing the vehicles of serial fly-tippers and making offenders clean up the very streets and...
Order. Your time is up. Before calling the Front-Bench spokespeople, I remind hon. Members that although there are often good reasons for being late to a debate, it is a courtesy to both the Chair and other hon. Members participating in the debate to put in a note explaining those reasons. I call Sarah Dyke.
It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this important debate. The Government estimate that there were 1.26 million fly-tipping incidents across England last year and that waste crime costs the economy more than £1 billion a year. Such incidents represent an upward trend, with 3,000 incidents reported to Somerset council alone. However, those figures exclude incidents on private land and cases involving large-scale illegal dumping. Moreover, as is always the case, a substantial number of waste crimes are never recorded. I want to recognise the work being done in Somerset to tackle the problem head-on. Somerset council’s Recycle More initiative handles more than 170,000 tonnes of household waste every year. Major infrastructure investment in 2020 upgraded facilities and introduced more frequent collections. Somerset’s flexible plastics trial-now concluded-demonstrated clearly how targeted local innovation can reduce fly-tipping in residential areas. That trial is proof of what is possible, yet without sustained national funding to back such local initiatives, progress stalls. The will is there, but the resources are not. Waste crime has been dubbed the “new narcotics” by the former chair of the Environment Agency. That simply cannot go on. We must recognise it for what it is: a national emergency. We need to hold the perpetrators of these crimes to account. That is why...
It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank the hon. Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for bringing us this important debate. We have heard many contributions about the impact on local pride, sense of belonging and importantly mental health, but it was uplifting that pretty much all Members spoke about the great work that volunteers do to tackle litter and fly-tipping in their area. It seems that everyone has some Wombles in their area-I am not 100% sure of the collective noun for Wombles, but I think it might follow the wombat and be a wisdom of Wombles. I am very pleased to say that in Epping Forest we have the Loughton town council Wombles.
They are not Wombles, but the Strangford Lough and Newtownards Wildfowlers clear the foreshore at Strangford Lough every Sunday-they did it this Sunday past. Their work as volunteers is very much admired.
I thank the hon. Member for that intervention. We have heard great contributions from across the House today. Let me turn to some of the figures, which speak for themselves. Councils in England dealt with 1.26 million incidents of fly-tipping in 2024-25. That was a 9% increase on the previous year, and both the fifth successive annual increase and among the highest figure on record. The majority of those incidents, 62%, involved household waste. The most common sources were not lorry loads from organised criminals, although that is an issue I will come to, but car boots and small vans-everyday domestic dumps. Across the country, our constituents have sadly become all too familiar with the sight of dumped bin bags, mattresses and white goods including fridges, freezers, washing machines and dishwashers. The effects are serious. As well as the obvious awful environmental consequences and the effects on nature and wildlife, fly-tipping is a public health problem, as dumped waste attracts vermin, creates fire risk and can contaminate soil and local watercourses. The harm is not only physical. Antisocial behaviour such as fly-tipping causes real anxiety and distress to residents who live with it. Sadly, my constituents in Epping Forest are not immune to the blight of fly-tipping and its harmful impacts, with many serious cases across our area caused by shameless criminals who should face the full extent of the law. Fly-tipping threatens the precious wildlife and biodiversity that...
Order. I ask the Minister to leave a couple of minutes for the proposer of the debate to wind up.
It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Stringer. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Great Grimsby and Cleethorpes (Melanie Onn) for securing this very well attended debate. Let me also thank hon. Members from across the House who have made valuable points. It is great to hear from the Opposition Front-Bench spokespeople about everything that this Government need to do, but it was under the coalition Government and their cuts that the beginnings of this public squalor occurred. In the so-called big society of David Cameron, we did not realise we were all going to have to become litter-picking Womble troops, set up our own food banks to feed our communities and end up being lollipop crossing wardens as well, because of the severe cuts that happened to local government on the coalition Government’s watch. It is fitting that we are having this debate at the beginning of London Climate Action Week. Everybody’s environment starts at their front door-it is not something out there in the oceans and forests; it is about stuff that is literally in the streets where we live. As my hon. Friend the Member for Morecambe and Lunesdale (Lizzi Collinge) said, this is a matter of social justice. It is about environmental justice, but also about the poorest people bearing the consequences of environmental crime. It is an epidemic that proliferated under the coalition and it became a pandemic from 2015. The failure to implement any new policy and the starvation of local...
Will the Minister give way?
I will make some progress. We are matching prevention with tougher enforcement and pursuing the criminals with every tool in the box. We are increasing the Environment Agency’s budget, as I mentioned, and giving it new police-style powers to intervene earlier, disrupt the criminals and bring them to justice before their illegal operations become established. We have to nip this in the bud when it happens; that is what we know works.
Will the Minister give way?
No, I will finish my point. The Joint Unit for Waste Crime is strengthening its hand. It is bringing together environmental watchdogs, police forces and the National Crime Agency to dismantle the serious organised crime networks that blight our communities. The penalties for waste crime must match the harm it causes. The carriers, brokers and dealers reform will increase penalties for offenders to up to five years in prison. We know that sometimes those offenders will not be prosecuted for environmental crime but potentially for money laundering because they are not just criminals in one area; they have an entire criminal enterprise of which waste crime is just one branch. On the clean-up, we are going after the criminals to make sure that they pay. We have worked with other Departments to publish criteria for cleaning up those sites where intervention is most needed. We are currently funding clean-up for Bolton House Road in Wigan, Alan Ramsbottom Way in Hyndburn and Worthing Road in Sheffield. We will go much further to prevent land owners picking up the bill in the future and work with the insurance industry to explore new models to shield farmers, business and land owners from bearing the cost of waste in their areas. We recognise the role that councils have and the different challenges that they face. Thanks to this Labour Government, they have more powers at their disposal than ever before: issuing fixed penalty notices, prosecuting offenders and launching...
Will the Minister give way?
I will not. I went back on Saturday and already someone had littered their Burger King wrapper out of a car. The issue is about people and it is very annoying. As a cyclist, I remember posting a cigarette box back through the window of a motorist who had just littered it right in front of my bike; that was one of my more fruity exchanges. We need to follow Coventry city council’s lead and have a wall of shame and CCTV, as there is in areas such as Clements Street in my constituency. Regarding the situation in Hexham, there is Waste and Resources Action Programme guidance on the accessibility of household waste and recycling centres. I urge my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) to bring that guidance to the attention of his council. It is also important that we have more tidy Fridays. Assistant Commissioner Louisa Rolfe has been seconded from the Metropolitan police to the National Police Chief’s Council to co-ordinate this work between police forces across the country. I am disappointed to hear about the Lib Dems in Portsmouth. It is really important for us to work with National Highways and crowd everybody into this space.
I thank the Minister for that response. I welcome the news about the tax checks and greater intervention of HMRC and the Organised Crime Task Force. Perhaps it would help to bring Louisa Rolfe into Parliament for a roundtable to discuss how police forces are co-ordinating on this matter across the country; there would be widespread interest, judging by the number of people who have contributed today. I am very grateful to colleagues for turning up and supporting this debate. I am keen to explore what the point about councils having the funds but not the will or the skills means in practice. Fundamentally, the issue is about an agreement between the people and the state. We pay our taxes with an expectation that services will be provided. The social contract is quite fragile at the moment and easily undermined. It is disappointing that so many of our fellow citizens are undermining it for the majority in the country. It is worth remembering that the social contract remains and continues; perhaps we should focus on the positives, given that so many people believe in it, reinforce it and give their time. I thank Members for their time and contributions. It was all incredibly thoughtful. I look forward to continuing discussions with the Minister. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the matter of fly-tipping in residential areas and associated impacts.