Lorraine Beavers MP: speeches

Speeches

• 15 Jul 2026 · Waste Management Sites · Hansard source

  More

  My hon. Friend is correct, and I agree with him. I will address that point in my remarks. Communities across the country have found themselves trapped in the same nightmare that we have experienced: living beside waste sites, making complaint after complaint and discovering that the system is better at documenting their suffering than ending it. People have reported headaches, nausea, nosebleeds, vomiting and breathing difficulties, with some requiring hospital treatment. The prolonged stress is also harming my residents’ mental health. Children do not want to play outside, parents have had to keep the windows shut—even during the recent hot weather—and businesses are losing customers. Some residents are considering leaving the town they have lived in all their lives, while others have already left. I take this opportunity to raise the case of my hon. Friend the Member for Carlisle (Ms Minns), who, unfortunately, cannot join us today as she is attending a Select Committee. Her constituents have also had to keep their windows shut and stay indoors because of the awful smell coming from a landfill site. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) has constituents who can smell the landfill site in my constituency, as the odour blows across the Wyre estuary to Knott End and Preesall. Nobody should have to live like that, in Fleetwood or anywhere else. Let me share some of the experiences that residents have reported to me. One wrote to say that the landfill has affected her already severe chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She feels like a prisoner in her own home; when the smell is at its worst, she cannot leave her house for days on end. Like many in Fleetwood, she moved to the area for the fresh sea air. Instead, she says, it has ruined her life. Another wrote to say that their family had to leave Fleetwood because of the smell. One member of the family, who suffers from multiple sclerosis, found the additional strain impossible to cope with, and their adult disabled daughter experienced throat irritation and disrupted sleep. They could not put up with it any longer and had to move away. That meant leaving behind their daughter’s established social and support network, registering with a completely new medical team and changing her care package. Another of my constituents has emphysema. He too moved to Fleetwood for better air, but because of the landfill, he suffers with sore and itchy eyes, has difficulty breathing and feels worse than ever. He asked one simple question: why is this allowed? I ask the Minister the same question. I do not want to hear that it is not allowed, because the fact that the problem continues proves that it is. If a national Government cannot put a stop to it, will the Minister suggest who can? These are not isolated complaints.