Lorraine Beavers MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Jul 2026 · Waste Management Sites · Hansard source

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  I beg to move, That this House has considered the impact of waste management sites on local communities. It is a pleasure to serve with you in the Chair, Dr Murrison. For nearly three years, the people of Fleetwood have been forced to live with an intolerable smell from the Jameson Road landfill site. They have complained, protested and reported the effects on their health to the council, the Environment Agency, the Government and to me, their Member of Parliament. Over the past two and a half years, the Environment Agency has taken increasingly severe action against the operator of the site. Each time, the operator has breached its permit and acted unlawfully in the process, and still the smell remains. At times recently, it has been worse than ever. In March of this year alone, more than 4,000 complaints were made. The central point that I wish to make is that this is proof of a broken regulatory system. Residents can make thousands of complaints, and people and businesses can be forced to leave an area because of an operator acting unlawfully, and still they are left breathing the same foul air. If our system cannot prevent that from happening, it is broken. If the regulatory system’s purpose is to record suffering, issue notices and hold meetings, but not to prevent suffering for the local community, its purpose and objectives are the wrong way around. In Fleetwood, it is as simple as this: a private company is making money from stinking out the entire town and damaging livelihoods, breaking the law in the process, while the British state appears too weak, too slow and too broken to stop it.

• 15 Jul 2026 · Waste Management Sites · Hansard source

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  Thank you for your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I also thank all hon. Members who have spoken and intervened, and the Minister for her response. I again pay tribute to the tireless campaigners who have never given up in their struggle against Transwaste’s disdain for our community. Over the coming months, I will keep pushing in Parliament for the closure of that site once and for all, and for the enforcement needed to tackle the epidemic of waste crime across this country. I will work with the new Prime Minister to ensure that working-class communities such as mine and his are no longer an afterthought for those in Westminster. Delivering on issues as fundamental as this is a mission of the Labour Government; it is a test of our ability to change things for the better. I came into politics to fight for justice at every level. Social and environmental justice are part of the same struggle, and I will not stop fighting until we deliver both for the British people. Question put and agreed to. Resolved, That this House has considered the impact of waste management sites on local communities.

• 15 Jul 2026 · Waste Management Sites · Hansard source

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  I agree. I thank the Environment Agency, which has worked tirelessly despite massive staff shortages and everything else. It has worked with me and my community to resolve this problem. The passing on of responsibility while communities suffer cannot continue. The regulators point to the limits of their powers; the operators point to the weather; Departments point to the regulators. Meanwhile, residents are told to make another complaint and keep filling in their diary sheets. That is how faith in Government is destroyed, especially when that pattern is so recognisable in other aspects of the way the country is run. A private company is making money from stinking out an entire town, damaging people’s health and livelihoods, and the British state has so far been incapable of stopping it. I have dedicated much of my time as an MP to working out why. The children of Flakefleet primary school understand the injustice. A year ago, they wrote to the Prime Minister and handed a petition into 10 Downing Street. The smell from Jameson Road dominates their life at school, and those pupils believe that when something is clearly wrong, those in power will listen and act. That is why I invited this Prime Minister to come to Fleetwood, and I will be inviting the next one to do so as well. My constituents are tired. They feel ignored and forgotten. Many believe this situation would never have been allowed to continue for so long in a wealthy commuter town in Surrey, and I agree with them. Working-class communities should not be expected to tolerate lower standards because they have less political and economic power. Fleetwood’s health, dignity and future cannot be treated as less important than the financial interest of the private waste companies. No community should be treated in this way.

• 15 Jul 2026 · Waste Management Sites · Hansard source

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  I apologise for naming Surrey. The wider enforcement framework must change. Regulators need clear powers to suspend operators quickly, stronger tests of operators’ competence and the ability to consider the cumulative impact of sites on communities. Penalties must change behaviour, rather than become a cost of doing business. The financial consequences must fall on the polluters, and we must make sure that companies cannot take the profits while leaving residents and taxpayers to carry the costs when things go wrong. We need a system that learns from the crisis in Fleetwood rather than one that waits for the same crisis to unfold elsewhere. A Labour Government should not stand by while private operators profit from the suffering of working-class towns. We were elected to show that government can work and that the state can protect people and stand up to private interests when they cause harm. Jameson Road is a test of that promise. It is also a test of whether we are prepared to fix a national regulatory failure. Reforming the system would show communities across the country that they will not be abandoned when the same failures occur on their doorstep. The next community to face this problem should not have to start from the beginning—keeping diaries, gathering medical evidence and begging regulators to act, while the operators continue to profit. The British state must prove that it is not too broken to stop this. With that in mind, I have several questions for the Minister. Does she acknowledge that the reality of the situation in Fleetwood is that a private company has made profit through unlawful activity at the expense of the health and wellbeing of an entire town, and that that is unacceptable? Will she commission a full review of the current waste management framework, taking into consideration the following questions. Does the Environment Agency have sufficient powers to take decisive action quickly enough? Is it not fully using the powers it already has? Does the Minister believe that the Environment Agency is adequately resourced, and if not, how will the Government increase its funding to deal with the scale of these challenges? Will she legislate to ensure that new environmental permits must be sought when the ownership of a site changes? How does she plan to address the scrutiny gap, whereby companies do not have to prove their ability to run a site properly before operating it? Fleetwood needs action, communities across Britain need protection and this country needs a regulatory system that puts people before polluters.

• 15 Jul 2026 · Waste Management Sites · Hansard source

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  I agree. The problems began following the transfer of ownership from SUEZ to Transwaste Recycling and Aggregates, and the resumption of tipping in January 2024. SUEZ proved that sites like Jameson Road can be operated properly without a detrimental impact on the local community, but across the country more operators are cutting corners and operating outside of the law. Meanwhile, our enforcement framework has not kept up. It is designed around the assumption that operators will do the right thing, often with local authorities in mind. As we have learned in Fleetwood, we cannot afford to make that assumption any longer. The nature of waste management has changed. Small waste management firms are now operating sites that were previously considered economically unviable. As the Jameson Road debacle suggests, to make such sites profitable, companies are now operating them poorly, breaching the terms to their permits and ignoring planning conditions. Local people are left to bear the brunt of their corner cutting. The issuing and transferring of environmental permits needs to be more robust. Perhaps a new environmental permit should be issued with each change of ownership. If an economically unviable site has been closed, any prospective operator should surely be asked how they will overcome the financial issues. The way in which operators plan to make a site profitable without cutting corners should be scrutinised, and permits should not be carried over if operators cannot produce credible plans. Instead of the company bearing the burden to run a site properly, the burden has fallen on residents to prove that the operator has no such ability. That demonstrates that the weight of scrutiny in the system is in the wrong place. How does the Minister plan to address that? At present, the regulation is self-evidently ineffective. As the local Member of Parliament, I meet representatives of the Environment Agency every Friday morning. My team and the wider community have pursued every possible avenue to stop the smell and get the site closed. Over the course of those meetings, I have concluded that one of two things must be true: either the Environment Agency does not have sufficient powers to intervene quickly enough, or it is not using the powers it has with the necessary urgency. Which does the Minister think it is? Either explanation demands Government action. If the Environment Agency lacks the powers to suspend activity before further harm is caused, Parliament must provide such powers. If existing powers are unusable because of legal tests, internal processes or fears of legal challenge, those barriers must be removed. The agency must also have the resources to enforce the law. The issues at Jameson Road have resulted in the Environment Agency needing to pull experts in from all over the country.