Mary Creagh MP: speeches 2025

Speeches

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  I will give time at the end but I want to make some progress. The annual growth rate of circular industries is 3%, more than double the UK’s overall growth rate of 1.2%. Extended producer responsibility for packaging—pEPR—moves recycling costs from taxpayers to packaging producers. Think about it: not everybody drinks and not everybody shops online, but we are all paying for the costs of collection. We have had a great tour of drinking places, hostelries and amazing producers, but at the moment everybody in the country is paying for that, through council tax and general taxation. These reforms are creating systematic change, and that is hard. Simpler recycling in England will make recycling easier and consistent. People will be able to recycle the same materials, including glass, whether they are at home, work or school, which will create a step change in the quality and quantity of recyclate streams. That is enabled by pEPR, which will pay for the new costs associated with the change, as my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall (Deirdre Costigan) mentioned. We are also introducing deposit return schemes in England, Northern Ireland and Scotland that add refundable deposits to single-use plastic, steel and aluminium containers. I discussed this with my colleague in Northern Ireland last week at the British-Irish Council environment ministerial meeting at Kew Gardens. We had a two-hour debate about how we would co-operate on the circular economy, in particular looking at the challenges of Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man—island economies with no real reprocessing facilities—and what we can all learn from each other.

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  That number will be published by the end of June and businesses are aware of that timescale.

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  I am grateful for that guidance, Mr Stringer. I did not do that last week, so the Clerks have clearly made a mark against my name. I will do my best, and I have my team on standby to yank me down, as I am sure you will do. It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship today. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Rotherham (Sarah Champion) for asking for this debate. She has been a doughty supporter of Beatson Clark in her constituency and of the glass industry in general. I also thank hon. Members from across the parties who have made valuable points today. The aim of the reforms is to create a more circular and resource-efficient economy. They are the biggest reforms in a generation. The three elements—simpler recycling, DRS and extended producer responsibility for packaging—will turn the dial on recycling rates, which, as the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson) said, have stagnated over the past 15 years and are bumping along at 42% to 44%. Assessments show that getting our household recycling rate up to 65% over the next 10 years will drive £10 billion of new investment in the British economy and create 21,000 new jobs.

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  I will look into that. I know that wool is used in certain packaging situations. In a way, its usage is too small to register, but we will look at all these innovative ideas and how we keep things in circulation for as long as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Burton and Uttoxeter (Jacob Collier) mentioned many pubs—did he mention Greene King?

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  I am going to make some headway. DRSs cut litter, boost recycling rates to more than 90% and create high-quality materials that industry can reuse. Since it launched in 2024, the Republic of Ireland’s DRS has seen over 1 billion containers returned and a near 50% reduction in drinks container litter. Last week, I met Timmy Dooley, the Minister of State for Environment, Climate and Communications in the Republic of Ireland, who he said he had been sceptical of the DRS but now has the zeal of a convert. This challenge is changing the way in which retailers and producers think about eco-design. Walkers is starting to use paper-based packaging for crisp multipacks, and many supermarkets are now using paper rather than plastic trays for fresh food. Our vision is to become world leaders in circular design, technology and industry. These reforms were started by Michael Gove, late of this parish, back in 2018—seven years ago. I remember successive Secretaries of State for DEFRA coming to the Environmental Audit Committee, when I was Chair, and promising these reforms and deposit return schemes. There has been extensive engagement and consultation with business on pEPR, including public consultations in 2019 and 2021. Businesses have had a clear indication, and the scheme has already been delayed twice. My officials run monthly packaging engagement forums, which regularly draw more than 1,000 attendees, to provide updates and test policy development with stakeholders. I have met British Glass several times to hear its concerns. I met Heineken last September. I met British Glass in October 2024, and then in January at a glass reuse roundtable hosted by the British Beer and Pub Association at the Budweiser Brewing Group. On 11 February, the Minister of State, Department for Energy Security and Net Zero, my hon. Friend the Member for Croydon West (Sarah Jones), joined me to discuss the glass sector. We have engaged on this issue. The glass sector lobbied extensively to be excluded from the deposit return scheme. We respected that position, and kept that approach during the final passage of the DRS and pEPR legislation. Legislation on pEPR was supported on both sides of the House, but sadly the DRS was not. My officials have talked with businesses that make and use glass packaging, and we have listened to feedback to ensure that the fees are set fairly. I am very aware of the issues that the glass sector has raised about dual-use items—items that can be disposed of in either business or household waste streams. It has been difficult to find an answer that works for everyone, and because of the issues raised in the debate, I have asked my officials to consult with industry immediately to find the fairest solution. There has been a lot of talk about small businesses. Many international pEPR schemes offer no exemption for small business. We responded to UK small business concerns by putting in place some of the most generous exemptions of any scheme globally. The exemptions mean that businesses with a turnover of below £2 million, or that place less than 50 tonnes of packaging on the market, are not obliged to pay fees. Those exemptions apply to approximately 70% of UK businesses supplying packaging in the UK. There are quarterly payment options to help with cash flow for larger businesses, and we will watch the de minimis thresholds carefully. If we raised the thresholds, that would put costs on to the remaining businesses, because local authority collection costs would remain the same. The pEPR fees for glass are lower than those for aluminium and plastic. Because glass packaging is heavier, it costs more to handle per unit than some other materials. We have worked closely with industry and local authorities to make sure that the costs used to set producer fees accurately reflect the on-the-ground waste management operation costs that every taxpayer currently has to pay. Weight is a driving factor in waste management and it is the most common basis used to determine costs for public and private sector collection; that is why it is central to our approach. But the scheme relies on all producers paying their fair share. As my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing Southall said, there was a range, but there was unhappiness with that, so in December we introduced a set point of £240 per tonne. The fewer free riders there are in the system—

• 14 May 2025 · Glass Packaging: Extended Producer Responsibility · Hansard source

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  I will make some progress and then give way. UK circular industries—those that keep products and materials in circulation for as long as possible—currently deliver £67 billion a year to the economy, up from £44 billion in 2008, and provide 827,000 jobs. My hon. Friend the Member for Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard (Alex Mayer) talked about the innovators in her constituency creating new packaging. I will take away the point about weights and measures and see what we can do in a cross-ministerial way.

• 8 May 2025 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  I am sorry to hear that the SNP Government are not taking firm action, but perhaps where we have led the way, they would like to follow. I congratulate West Lothian Litter Pickers and pay tribute to Keep Britain Tidy, whose Great British spring clean, backed by the Daily Mirror , helped to tackle the 30 million tonnes of litter discarded on our streets each year, including 5 billion cigarette butts. Each cigarette butt can poison 1,000 litres of water. If we are serious about marine litter, we have to pick up our butts—and perhaps a little less talk and a little more action from the SNP.

• 8 May 2025 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  I congratulate the right hon. Gentleman on weaving in a farms question on fly-tipping, but he is right— [Interruption.] Calm down.

• 8 May 2025 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  Thank you, Mr Speaker. We know that fly-tipping is a very big problem for farmers. I have visited fly-tipping sites near Watford in the last month and spoken to farmers about what they have to do to clear them up. It is clear that many Tory-run county councils are not playing their part in cleaning up fly-tipping and making the prosecutions that act as a disincentive to these criminal businesses and their business models.

• 8 May 2025 · Fly-tipping · Hansard source

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  Under the previous Government, fly-tipping skyrocketed by 20%, leaving communities buried under an avalanche of rubbish. This Government are clearing up their mess, tackling the waste cowboys, closing the loopholes that allowed waste crime to flourish and cleaning up Britain. We will hunt down the fly-tippers with the latest technology, including drones and mobile CCTV, introduce new powers to seize and crush vehicles and increase prison sentences to up to five years for those transporting waste illegally.

• 8 May 2025 · Surrey Hills National Landscape · Hansard source

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  I am always happy to meet the right hon. Gentleman. This and the Yorkshire wolds are under active consideration, as I am sure he is aware. There is a legal process to be followed ahead of that, but I know his constituency and will be very happy to meet to discuss the matter further.

• 8 May 2025 · Surrey Hills National Landscape · Hansard source

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  On this 80th anniversary of VE Day, I pay tribute to the city of Coventry, which suffered so grievously in the blitz. The commemoration was marked at the old and new cathedrals with the lighting of the torch for peace, a brilliant initiative from the Commonwealth War Graves Commission to mark the contribution of my city to the war effort. Natural England’s work to consider the Surrey hills national landscape boundary variation has reached the conclusion of the second statutory consultation phase. The responses received will be completed shortly and the analysis of those and the results will be published in early summer.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  I am coming to that. Legislation complements the measures I have described. The UK timber regs aim to eliminate demand for illegally harvested timber, and the EU’s timber regulation continues to apply, unamended, in Northern Ireland. Both regs require operators that place timber on the market to implement due diligence and review their supply chains, and a recent review of the UK timber regulations demonstrated that they have led to a reduction of illegal timber in UK supply chains. Over the past 12 years, our delivery partner, the Office for Product Safety and Standards—which, again, is part of the Department for Business and Trade, so not my area—has reviewed the due diligence systems of more than 600 businesses and issued 100 warning letters and 100 notices of remedial action. Recent notable enforcement by OPSS includes the prosecution of luxury yacht maker Sunseeker International, which received a fine of £360,000 plus prosecution costs in relation to illegal imports of timber from Myanmar and Africa. At home, the Government must also abide by the rules we have made. The Government’s timber procurement policy requires all Government procurers and suppliers to prove the legality and sustainability of timber. We will only accept sustainable timber, and we have a wider approach to encouraging legal and sustainable forestry domestically and internationally. We are currently reviewing the timber procurement policy, with the aim of securing better recognition of British certification schemes such as Grown in Britain and FLEGT—forest law enforcement governance and trade—licensed timber. We are at a critical moment for forests, and the international community must go further and faster to deliver our ambition. We need to tackle nature loss and enhance planetary stewardship. We are working to unlock more finance for nature, promote deforestation-free agriculture and reform global supply chains. Supporting indigenous rights and access to finance are also vital, and require targeted efforts across all tropical forest basins. COP30 in Brazil, home to the world’s largest rainforest, will be a pivotal moment. We are working closely with Brazil and other partners to ensure that forests and nature take centre stage. We are partnering with Guyana as co-chairs of the forest and climate leaders’ partnership to build a valuable forum for driving wider ambition. Agricultural expansion, particularly for a few key commodities, is the primary driver of illegal deforestation worldwide. As colleagues have said, the Environment Act made provision for the Government to bring forward legislation to exclude commodities. We recognise the urgency of the task to ensure that UK consumption of those commodities—

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  It is an honour to serve under your chairship, Mr Vickers. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West (Barry Gardiner) on securing this debate on such an important issue, and on taking us to the Amazon forest and its atmospheric river. That was a brilliantly poetic way to talk about the aerial rivers that forests produce, and an important way of explaining ecosystem services. We sometimes talk about the forest as if it is an economic asset, which of course it is, but we are not very good at the poetry. We know that trees bring us peace, shade and joy, as well as all the other stuff. It is important that we talk about the emotional and spiritual connections that trees bring to people and to places, and the threats that they face from deforestation, whether legal or illegal. I very much take my hon. Friend’s point about illegal versus legal deforestation, which is an observation that I also noted about the previous Government’s approach. This nation is afforesting, as my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones) stated. We are planting a new national forest, the Western forest, which the hon. Member for Thornbury and Yate (Claire Young) mentioned. Indeed, I was delighted to go there and plant a crab apple tree as part of the agroforestry part of that. The forest will deliver flood prevention services and, critically, link up ancient woodland, which has become fragmented in the landscape. It will stretch from the Forest of Dean right down to the Mendip hills—a truly massive undertaking. We are here to talk about deforestation, which is an issue that touches on many different Departments, including the Departments for Business and Trade, and for Energy Security and Net Zero—I have a DESNZ official with me in the Box, as well as officials from DEFRA. That three Ministers are responsible for international forestry—those from FCDO, DESNZ and myself—shows the complexity around this issue, and explains why I have about 25 different notes in my hand. I do have a prepared speech, which I will try to deliver, but I will also try to answer questions as we go along. If Members feel that we are getting to five to 11 and they have not had satisfaction, I ask them to intervene on me, but I will try to get through my notes. First, tackling the climate and nature crises is central to the UK’s national interest, for both security and prosperity. Our forests are a strategic asset, and protecting them is fundamental to achieving the Government’s vision for a world free from poverty on a liveable planet. As my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West said, nature is the monopoly provider of everything that we need to exist. It is not a subsection of the economy; the economy is a subsection of nature. More than 1 billion people rely on forests for sustenance and their livelihoods. We have heard, in the many passionate and brilliant speeches from colleagues, that forests provide food, energy, water and medicines worldwide and play a vital role in global economic resilience. They host most of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity, including the slightly terrifying giant otters from the Amazon that we can see at Chester zoo. I have never seen anything like them—they are utterly terrifying animals, like something out of “Jurassic Park”, the size of a Great Dane and quite terrifying for those of us who are used to the more manageable British otter. Forests contain rare and endangered species and, of course, plants that are essential for modern medicines. Almost everything we have, whether aspirin from willow or heart medicines from foxglove digitalis, has come from ancient herbal and medical practices. The biodiversity COP’s Cali fund is an important statement and an important way for the pharmaceutical, cosmetic and beauty companies—who profit from those discoveries and now have access to the data sequenced internationally —to make a contribution to protecting and preserving the future discoveries of medicine and the beauty and cosmetics industry—because their future innovations are literally on fire. I am pleased that UK officials led the establishment of the Cali fund, as hon. Members know. We will officially launch it at London Climate Action Week in June. I hope we will be able to say more about that in due course. We are also hosting the conference of the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—IPBES, the equivalent of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change for nature—in England in February 2026, and we hope to make an official announcement about that. Next year will be a very big year for nature. We know that forests are major carbon sinks: 662 billion tonnes of carbon, equivalent to 15 years of human-made emissions, are stored in them. They cool our planet, providing up to 1° of cooling at mid latitudes. Hon. Members have made brilliant speeches, so they do not need to hear from me about the problems of deforestation, but time is running out. Deforestation is pushing critical biomes such as the Amazon towards potentially catastrophic tipping points, from which they will not recover. We are seeing annual Canadian wildfires, and even wildfires in our own country, with peat fires. All that is putting a massive strain on forest ecosystems. I am just as concerned about the collapse of the Russian and Canadian boreal forests, to use another slightly jargonistic word; those northern forests are as important to our ecosystem services and our wildlife as the tropical mega-forests. It is essential that we protect, restore and manage forests in a cost-effective way to tackle climate change while supporting livelihoods. Often, the forest is seen as less economically valuable than other land uses such as cash crops, agriculture, infrastructure and urban development. I remember, on a visit to the eastern Congo in 2008, seeing the Batwa forest people living in a tea plantation. Their forests had been cut down as a cash crop, and they were living among those tea bushes because of the disastrous security situation obtaining in South Kivu at that time. To halt deforestation, forested communities and countries need money to conserve forests. It must become more positive to conserve them than to clear them. That means three changes: an economic shift that values forests and rewards sustainable practices, governance reforms that support effective forest stewardship and tackle illegal activities, and market transformation here in this country to grow green enterprises, protect nature and enhance local livelihoods—not only livelihoods in forested countries, but changing the way that we as consumers purchase. We have heard about consumer demand leading to 35,000 hectares of forest loss overseas. We import 45% of our food and 80% of our timber; we are the second largest importer in the world after China. That creates resilience problems for the future. Many sectors are underpinned by forest goods and services. A loss of forest will disrupt UK supply chains and businesses, pushing up prices for consumers and undermining our national resilience. On the point my hon. Friend the Member for Brent West made about the financial industry, I had a meeting yesterday with Sacha Sadan of the Financial Conduct Authority—not specifically on deforestation, but about the sustainability branding of investment managers. I am pleased to say that the FCA, as the regulator, is taking strong and firm action to clean up greenwashing. If they are called sustainability funds, they have to comply with a series of rules and recommendations. That is why many funds have pivoted to “stewardship”, because they can no longer use “sustainability”. I say that for us all to understand what is happening in the financial context. We are setting significant steps to protect and expand our domestic forests. Our key achievements include a legally binding target to increase tree cover to 16.5% of England’s land area by 2050, and planting more than 21,000 hectares of woodland across the UK between 2023 and 2024, including 5,530 hectares in England, the highest rate in a generation. When we see this year’s figures, they will be even higher. That is good news on the England tree-planting target. There has been some fallaway in Scotland and a slight change in the mix. I take on the board the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Kilmarnock and Loudoun (Lillian Jones) to increase our conifer planting, because that is the productive forest we need. I am going to visit a factory constructing timber housing in Kenilworth and Southam on Friday; I am coming to the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hexham (Joe Morris) for a three-day visit, because it is so difficult to get to, and to see the brilliant timber production that is going on there, as well as enjoy a midsummer night sky. I have much to do and look forward to. Internationally, the previous Government persuaded partners to commit to halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. We want a just transition for forest-positive economies. That means securing development and the livelihoods of indigenous peoples and local communities, while tackling climate change and protecting nature. Through overseas development assistance, we support stronger forest governments. I have been asked about ICF. We continue to support Brazil in its development. To begin with the TFFF, we are also supporting Brazil in its development. We cannot commit to an investment while work is still being done to develop the mechanism, but we will, of course, consider it in due course. Forests are a pillar of the UK-Brazil partnership, and we will support Brazilians ambitions for COP30, including through co-chairing the forest and climate leaders’ partnership, which I believe is covered by my colleague, the Minister for climate change. On UK-China relations, we continue to work with key partners, including Indonesia and China, to support the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change global stocktake objective to halt and reverse forest loss by 2030. On TFFF, we are providing technical assistance. We are involved in all the technical workstreams on environmental criteria, financial mechanisms and governance. From what I have seen, that seems to be similar to the Cali mechanism, which tries to crowd in funding from the private sector as well as public finance, because there is a limit to how much public finance can support this.

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  Is it the Plate?

• 30 Apr 2025 · Global Deforestation · Hansard source

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  I am afraid I have absolutely no idea; I will have to write to my hon. Friend. That is genuinely not my area. We welcome the positive conclusions to the COP in Rome. The key outcome is the launch of the Cali fund, which will drive benefit sharing from the use of DSI—digital sequence information—on genetic resources, allowing companies using this information to direct funds towards indigenous people and local communities who safeguard biodiversity. At the biodiversity COP, for the first time we created the process by which IPLCs now have a seat at the table, which is very important. My hon. Friend the Member for South East Cornwall (Anna Gelderd) mentioned the UK-Indonesia joint energy transition. As I have said, we will continue to work with key partners, including Indonesia and China, on the stocktake that supports the objective of halting and reversing forest loss by 2030. Future ICF is subject to business planning this year and to the spending review from next year. I am meeting the Minister for International Development this afternoon to discuss our approach on that; this is all work that is happening at the moment. The Democratic Republic of the Congo is a particularly important region, but it has received less attention and less climate finance than the Amazon and south-east Asia. We are committed to working with others to secure the next phase of support, which will be announced at COP30, for the forests, people and biodiversity of the Congo basin countries. That will sit alongside the pledge for IPLCs’ land tenure. We know that communities are better able to protect ecosystems when their land rights are secure, and that areas managed by IPLCs are better protected than any other areas. The Foreign Secretary has already announced that the UK will lead on this IPLC land tenure pledge.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  We are not the regulator; it is for the Environment Agency, as the regulator, to do those prosecutions.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  Can I just finish this point? The EA is independent. It is important that we do not prejudice the ongoing review. My understanding from officials is that it will report at the end of June, and I look forward to discussing the outcomes of that review with them. I will ask them to write to the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills with detailed answers to her questions on the scope of the review. And on digital waste tracking, we will launch that from April 2026 and will provide further details on the scope of that in due course. With tyres, as with other waste, our priority must shift from throwing things away to reusing and recycling more. We will do that by breaking the linear “take, make, throw” model and by seizing the opportunity to become leaders in circular design, technology and industry. We will increase the resilience and productivity of the UK’s economy, create highly skilled new green jobs up and down the country, and help our economy to keep more of the critical resources on which it depends. In doing so, we will fulfil our manifesto commitment to reduce waste and to accelerate to net zero. We have a Circular Economy Taskforce that includes experts from industry, academia, civil society and beyond to help us to develop a circular economy strategy for England. That is supported by sectoral road maps detailing the interventions that the Government and others will make to drive circular growth and enhance our economic resilience. The Transport Secretary will be responsible for one of those road maps, and the others will concern agrifood, chemicals and plastics, textiles and waste electricals. We have a lot of different sectoral road maps, and I urge the Tyre Recovery Association to feed into that working group. We have lots of ideas about how to reuse materials for a different purpose and they are all coming to the fore. The problem is that some ideas will win and some will lose, and we are in the stage where we are not quite clear about what is the right thing to do, and there are lots of good counter-arguments. In the case of tyres, the rubber crumb produced by recycling them has a range of applications. The hon. Member mentioned, for example, that it can be used to produce asphalt, but it can also be used as a surfacing material in children’s playgrounds. The hon. Member for Glastonbury and Somerton (Sarah Dyke) mentioned a responsible and long-standing business that is doing the right thing, but is looking around the landscape, thinking, “Hang on, why are we doing the right thing when the cowboys are undercutting us?” The principle of fairness is important, as is enforcement of the law as it stands—before we make new laws, we should look at enforcing the laws we already have. We have a competitive market in the UK for waste management services. New people and innovators are always welcome to join the field. There are a lot of management options available to waste handling operators; they need to be selected according to market conditions and local needs. Operators need to look at the waste hierarchy and the need to ensure the best available outcome for the waste. I am very interested in the Australian model and the Australian experience. I know that my officials have been in contact with Australian Government officials.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  That is a very good point, but that is not the Department’s responsibility; we have the regulator and it is its job to do the prosecutions. There is a correct separation of power. We have engaged with the Indian authorities, including the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, to help to ensure that this waste is recovered and recycled correctly, because small-batch pyrolysis is also illegal in India. There will be a delegation to meet officials in the autumn to strengthen relationships and discuss this matter further— Motion lapsed (Standing Order No. 10(6)).

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  I will do a deal: I will come as long as we can go to The Newt, which I understand is the sponsor of this year’s Chelsea Flower Show. I have been reading all about The Newt, so I have been looking up Castle Cary and seeing how easy it would be to get to—my private office will not be very happy with me for saying that.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  I do indeed. The amount of money and resources allocated to tackling environmental crime was steadily reduced over the term of the previous Government. There has been a sense that these are somehow victimless crimes. I listened to the “File on 4” documentary, and it was deeply upsetting to hear about the fire and the death of local people at that plant. There is always a victim. There is no such place as “away”. We have only one world, and we have to stop treating our rivers, lakes and seas as sewers, and stop outsourcing our material problems to other countries.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. What a joy it is to be back in Westminster Hall to discuss everybody’s favourite subjects: the materials economy, waste crime, and how we are going to tackle waste crime, after a decade and a half of a lot of talk and very little action—as the Elvis Presley song goes. We will have a little more action under this Government. As part of our plan for change, we will clean up Britain, crack down on waste cowboys and close the waste loopholes. I am keen that we all work together on a cross-party basis to achieve that.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  That is a really interesting fact, and not one that I have come across. I will take that away and look at it. As with many of these things, I am responsible for waste and materials and my hon. Friend the Member for Kingston upon Hull West and Haltemprice is the Water Minister, so things often fall between the gaps of segmented policy brief allocations, but we will look into that and get back to her. I thank the hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills (Tessa Munt) for securing this debate and other hon. Members for their thoughtful contributions. This Government want to be good stewards of our country and planet’s resources, our prosperity, and our economic and environmental resilience, so the loss of any of those resources concerns me greatly. We have seen the damaging impacts that makeshift furnaces abroad have on people’s health and the environment, and the illegal batch pyrolysis of tyres is linked with other criminal activities that cause harm to the environment, people and communities. It is unacceptable that illegal exportation in this country is part of that supply chain. We take the reports from “File on 4” and others very seriously. The Environment Agency is working with Indian counterparts to ensure that waste, including waste tyres, is recovered and recycled lawfully. That is a joint UK effort, and DEFRA works closely with all four UK regulators to ensure that there is a consistent approach regarding controls on the export of waste across the United Kingdom. Scotland banned the export of whole tyres back in 2018, so there is inconsistency. What has that meant? It means, possibly, that whole tyres in Scotland have come down to England and Wales for export, but who knows? It is hard to say what the flows are doing. The Environment Agency is conducting an internal review of how it regulates the export of waste tyres. I and my DEFRA colleagues look forward to that review’s findings, and we will carefully consider its outcomes when it has been completed.

• 29 Apr 2025 · Recycling of Tyres · Hansard source

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  We can never spend enough time in Wiltshire, Dr Murrison, so we will see what we can do. On the T8 exemption, we need to ensure that the UK’s house is in good order. The impact that waste criminals have on people’s lives is terrible, but poor performance in the waste industry is also a massive problem. It undermines the many excellent operators and responsible waste businesses in the UK, of whom we should be rightly proud. We are determined to reform the way that the sector is regulated to mitigate environmental impacts, and we are considering plans. The hon. Member for Wells and Mendip Hills mentioned the review in 2015, and there was a consultation in 2018. I have been pressing my officials as to why, a mere seven years later, nothing has happened. But she will have noticed that I have not followed in my predecessor’s footsteps; inertia is not my middle name. I have been very demanding of officials on this issue and I recognise the importance of removing the T8 exemption for the industry and the wider benefits of doing so. I am happy to tell the House that DEFRA’s intentions in this area, along with our priorities in the waste and recycling space, will be announced very soon. I will close by thanking the hon. Member for securing this debate—but let me just check that I have answered her questions. I have covered the review, digital waste tracking and the retention of the circular economy. She asked about the Environment Agency review. The EA is looking at its own regulation. As part of that review, it will check its understanding of its powers and legal duties and ask, “Are we doing the right thing?” It will look at how it manages information and intelligence received from third parties. If people have evidence of waste crime, I encourage them to report it anonymously through Crimestoppers—so people do not have to give their name and address and worry about reprisals. That intelligence sharing is really important. That review might also make recommendations for amendments to the EA’s legal and regulatory powers. The hon. Member can be reassured that I will not sit around twiddling my thumbs when I get that report.

• 3 Apr 2025 · Waste Incinerators · Hansard source

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  In law, as I understand it, it is for local planning authorities to decide on planning applications. The hon. Gentleman will be surprised to hear that I have not memorised the full 60 pages—I do my best, but I am just not that good. I am very happy to write to him about the Cambridgeshire point, but he can see it online. The consultation proposed aligning the ETS with the extended producer responsibility for packaging to allow local councils to pass the emission trading costs from the incineration of plastic packaging waste to the producers of plastic packaging. It also sought views on how best to support local authorities in managing ETS costs. It is not for the Environment Agency to decide where an energy-from-waste plant is built, or whether it is the right solution for treating waste. It can revoke environmental permits only where there is clear evidence of ongoing non-compliance. I have discussed simpler recycling, and we heard some excellent examples from the hon. Member for Sutton and Cheam (Luke Taylor) about food waste, including Too Good To Go. The Government have set up a £15 million food waste grant to tackle on-farm food surplus. We have also set up the circular economy taskforce, bringing together experts from the Government, industry, academia and civil society. It will work with businesses on what they want to see to create the best possible conditions for investment. We are developing a new circular economy strategy for England, which will mean an economy-wide transformation in our relationship with our precious materials. It will kick-start the Government’s missions to have economic growth, to make us a clean energy superpower and to accelerate the transition to net zero. Through our efforts to tackle waste crime, of which there is a great deal in the waste sector, we will take back our streets. On our capacity announcement, we know there is a need to minimise waste incineration, but it is still a better option than throwing rubbish into landfill. Energy-from-waste facilities provide around 3% of the UK’s total energy generation. They can support the decarbonisation of heating our homes and businesses, helping to cut customers’ bills. Energy from waste can both maximise the value of resources that have reached the true end of life and avoid the greater environmental impact of landfill, which creates its own problems. I will conclude to give my hon. Friend the Member for Derby South time to respond. I encourage investors, financiers and businesses to invest in infrastructure that supports the movement of resources up the waste hierarchy. Our recycling infrastructure capacity analysis, published in partnership with the Waste and Resources Action Programme, alongside our packaging reforms identified forecast capacity investment opportunities of 1.7 million tonnes a year for paper packaging reprocessing and 324,000 tonnes a year for plastic packaging reprocessing by 2035. We want to unlock investment, and last week my officials met the Lord Mayor of London, Dutch officials and members of the UK and Dutch financial sectors to agree to form a circular economy finance coalition to boost investment in the transition to the circular economy to which we are committed. That is no small task, but by working together we will keep our resources in use for longer.