[Dr Andrew Murrison in the Chair]

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.

As my hon. Friend knows—we have discussed this many times—we in Newcastle-under-Lyme know all about the impact that the idea of profit over people can have on the health and wellbeing of communities such as hers and mine, and about the consequences of landfill sites. She is right to say that this is a case of the state going missing in action. I look forward to working with her to ensure that we get the policies needed to keep our communities safe, our air clean and our people living in the situations we want them to live in.

I agree. I hope that we will get that done—or start the battle to do so—today. Absurdly, none of the waste is even from Fleetwood. It seems that waste can be transported from across the country to any landfill site that is happy to take it—a form of waste tourism. The waste comes from outside Lancashire, harming people and the environment in the process. Of course, working-class northern communities such as mine are allowed to be collateral damage. This is not just about Fleetwood; communities across the country have found themselves trapped in the same nightmare that we have experienced.

I congratulate my hon. Friend on securing this debate. She may be aware that we have had a plastics recycling facility in my constituency for several years. Only when it opened did we suffer an awful fly infestation across the town, as well as a horrendous odour. It is on a normal industrial estate, but it is immediately next to a residential area. Surely the Environment Agency should have had some sort of involvement in the decision to allow it to open.

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.

The issue of enforcement is a serious one. An incinerator in south London has breached its air pollution limits almost 1,000 times in 18 months, but nothing has been done by the EA—no court proceedings, no licence suspension, nothing. A similar plant is planned for my constituency. Does the hon. Member agree that the Government must act now to ensure that all operators—be they water companies or waste management companies—are held to account when they break the rules? How am I meant to assure my constituents that they will be safe from health risks?

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.

I thank my hon. Friend for securing this timely and important debate, and for her tireless work on these matters over such a long time. Fourteen years of austerity have meant cuts to important resources in our public services, including the Environment Agency, and those services do not have the funding or resources to undertake the work that is so essential right here, right now. Does she agree?

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.

I will be talking about a waste site in Surrey, where unfortunately we have some very similar issues. I hope the hon. Lady understands that this is a national issue, not one that is confined to certain locations of the United Kingdom.

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.

Order. We are under time pressure, so I will place an indicative limit of four minutes on speeches.

It is a huge pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison, as I know that much of what I am going to say will be familiar to you. I thank the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for securing this debate. Waste facilities provide an essential public service, but communities living alongside them must not be expected to bear the consequences of weak regulation or poor waste handling. Two problems are affecting residents in my constituency: the persistent landfill gas odour around Lower Compton, and the growing fire risk over the last few years caused by lithium-ion batteries entering the household waste system. The Environment Agency has received almost 4,000 odour reports over the last three months. As the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood mentioned, the system is not working. Residents have described an overpowering sulphurous smell entering their homes, disrupting their sleep and preventing them from opening their windows or using their gardens. Many have reported headaches, nausea, coughing and feeling unwell. When I visited the landfill site, I was left with a headache and felt unwell for several hours. Although that is only my experience, it gives me some understanding of what the residents have been repeatedly describing. I have pressed the Environment Agency and the operator for action, raised the issue at Prime Minister’s questions and written to the Environment Secretary. The sustained pressure has secured action for my constituents, but we now need evidence that it has actually produced results. The Environment Agency has managed to trace the principal source to an open landfill cell, requiring permanent capping, improved gas extraction and changes to the type of waste being handled. I welcome the completion of the capping works, but for residents it will be a question of whether they can breathe clean air and live normally, not whether the project is said to have been completed. The UK Health Security Agency found no evidence of actual toxic risk, but its monitoring site is not downwind of the site—it is to the west. Although its finding is welcome, it also found strong evidence of odour annoyance and acknowledged that people may experience headaches, throat irritation, stress and sleep disruption. That exposure, although perhaps not as toxic as we expected, is not acceptable, especially for people with respiratory conditions. The issue seems to be that responsibility is completely fragmented. The Environment Agency monitors permit compliance and the UKHSA assesses the health risk, but the local authority considers statutory nuisance. Residents are having to navigate an institutional maze while the smell continues. Will the Minister introduce a clearer joint response framework, with one lead body responsible for co-ordinating monitoring and health advice? We also need to understand why it is happening. The Environment Agency identified an issue with the trommel fines, which can contain sulphate-bearing materials and contribute to the production of hydrogen sulphide when mixed with organic waste. Although the operators are changing the way they handle those materials, it was extremely worrying that when I asked the Environment Agency, it did not seem to be aware of where the responsibility lies for testing how much of the wrong types of material go into the trommel fines as they go into the landfill site. Will the Minister consider who is responsible for independent sampling and whether compositional controls can be better implemented? The second issue affecting the same constituents is lithium-ion battery fires. Recent fires have, in theory, been caused by the crushing of lithium-ion batteries, which sparks a fire that is very difficult to put out. That is putting waste workers, firefighters and nearby residents at risk. The Government must start to properly enforce the existing retailer take-back duties, make return schemes more convenient and more visible, and ensure that producers meet the full cost of collection and treatment. Finally, drawing on my 20-odd years as an architect and my experience in local government, I believe the planning system must properly assess the risk of building our homes, schools and care facilities near to waste infrastructure, as mentioned by the hon. Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western). Waste sites are necessary, but communities should not be expected to tolerate unacceptable odour and risk of pollution and fire. My constituents have shown extraordinary patience, but they should not have to fight to be heard any more than those of the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood.

Order. Members will have to be brief. I am sure that Adam Jogee will be an exemplar.

You have never said that before, Dr Murrison. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for securing the debate. As I said in my intervention, I know she is committed to working on the same issues that I have spent much of my first few years in this House working on. In my first Westminster Hall speech as the MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, I said I would not stop going on about Walleys Quarry landfill site until it is closed, capped and restored. It is now closed; capping is, broadly speaking, in operation; and soon, all being well, we will be able to get it restored so that local people in my community can use it. I am proud that after almost a year and a half since the closure notice was issued, we finally chased the cowboy operators of that landfill site out of our town and shut Walleys for good As my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood described, and as the Minister knows, because I have told her many times, for far too long, my community was blighted by respiratory irritation, headaches, disrupted sleep, mental health strain and a constant foul odour in the air from high levels of hydrogen sulphide. We were blighted by pollution and constant worry. Children could not play outside, schools could not open their windows and, disgracefully, it reached the corridors of the Royal Stoke hospital. Furthermore, many older people were left housebound. My hon. Friend talked about putting people before polluters. I would say we must also put people over profits. These operators—I am afraid to say this, but I will be as polite as I can—took the proverbial out of my constituents. The sooner we hold those who did so to account, the better it is for all of us. They had no interest in operating safely, no regard for the community and no idea how to be a good neighbour to those who suffered the worst excesses of their criminality. My relationship with the Environment Agency has changed in recent years. With our zero-tolerance approach to waste crime, we finally got Walleys closed—just 147 days after my party won the election. This transformed life for my community. It is a shame to say this, but for years we had a Conservative Government, a Conservative MP, a Conservative county council in Staffordshire and a Conservative Newcastle-under-Lyme borough council, and to quote a Prime Minister, “nothing changed”. It should not have taken a change in Government for action to be taken, for the criminals to be held to account and for the damned site to be closed. I acknowledge the campaigning work of my predecessor; I am just sorry that his colleagues were missing in action. The shadow Minister, the hon. Member for Epping Forest (Dr Hudson), is a friend of mine, and I am not directing this at him personally, but my community was let down by the Conservative Government, and we will not let his colleagues forget it. It is unforgiveable that local people in Blackpool, Newcastle-under-Lyme and other parts of the country are left living in unliveable situations such as this, so I would be grateful if my hon. Friend the Minister touched on the benefits of a fit-and-proper-person test for those seeking a permit to operate a landfill site. I also urge the Minister to engage with her colleagues in the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government regarding planning permissions, as noted by the hon. Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson), for homes being built in the shadows—or should I say fumes—of landfill sites. Until we get a grip of the waste sector and the crime we find in it, we should not be building homes around those sites. As I have done many times, I thank all those who helped to get the job done and close Walleys Quarry, including my colleagues in Government and in the Environment Agency, who worked with us to ensure we could clean our air and give the good people of Newcastle-under-Lyme the quality of life that they deserve. There is more to do, and I look forward to working with colleagues in Blackpool and around the country to ensure that we do it.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) on securing this debate. I have several waste management sites in my constituency. At most of them, we just get the odd problem now and again, and we can deal with it by talking to them, but one causes particular problems. Grunty Fen sits in the heart of the countryside and is accessed from narrow fen roads. In normal operation, the residents of the nearest village, Witchford, suffer large volumes of heavy lorries and litter blowing from those lorries. The fen roads used by the lorries sit on peat soils, which expand when it is wet and contract when it is dry. The combination of the changing subsoil and the regular heavy lorries corrugates those roads vertically and horizontally, breaks the road edges away, and creates ever-growing potholes. The roads are virtually unusable by ordinary cars, let alone cyclists. The residents feel that they have no say in the timing and volume of the traffic, nor do they see extra funding for road maintenance. That would all be bad enough, but there have recently been several fires at the site. One such fire in April burned for about 17 hours, generated significant black smoke that spread over Witchford, and required an extensive fire and rescue response. The Environment Agency recently published the findings of its inspection. It found that the emissions from the fire breached one of the permit conditions. It also found that the fire risk assessment, emergency management plan and cell 11 environmental action plan failed to adequately identify and control the risks associated with fires. The operator, East Waste Ltd, has to rectify those issues, or the Environment Agency says it will take enforcement action. Meanwhile, the residents who have suffered from the fires—especially those with pre-existing respiratory illnesses such as asthma—fear further fires. They would like to see the site closed, at least temporarily, until all the changes are in place. As part of the plans for the new unitary authorities, the Government must ensure that councils have adequate powers and funding to monitor waste sites, and the Environment Agency needs the powers and the funding to enforce their proper management. Will the Minister confirm that there are plans to make sure that the Environment Agency does indeed have those powers and the capacity, and that it will use them?

It is a pleasure to speak under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for securing the debate. As parliamentarians, each of us recognises the necessity of waste facilities and the function that they perform, but local communities should not have to tolerate the conditions that residents of mine in Heywood have been forced to put up with in recent years. Due to the prevailing wind direction in my part of the world, my constituents continue to endure appalling odours emitted from the Valencia Waste Management site on Pilsworth Road. The landfill there opened over 50 years ago. As it has gradually filled, it has become increasingly unbearable for local residents, which has led to the creation of the Heywood Against Landfill group. I take this opportunity to commend them for their enduring activism. The site also hosts a recycling centre, which I understand is also contributing significantly to the current issues. Heywood Against Landfill has made it clear to Valencia, as have I, that the operation of the site has driven so many nearby to the point of utter dismay, with stark implications for their quality of life. Windows had to remain shut, people could not put washing out to dry, and many even began to question the elevated number of respiratory illnesses in the town. Heywood Against Landfill rightly urged members of the public to raise their concerns with the Environment Agency and lobbied for action to be taken. We eventually ensured that the site was closed while remedial action was taken. That lasted about 18 months, demonstrating the scale of what local people had been forced to deal with. In my view, it would be legitimate to say—as we heard from my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood—that working-class communities such as mine are disproportionately bearing the brunt of these impacts. Despite the supposed remedial action that has been taken and the supposed monitoring of the site by the Environment Agency, this is something that my constituents are having to contend with yet again—truly, it is groundhog day for people in Heywood. Following the site’s reopening, the odour from it continued to affect the wellbeing of local people. The tireless campaign group met with Valencia on 1 June, but the company continues to say that no breaches are taking place.

I absolutely agree, and I would like to see more of that, not least in my constituency. The Environment Agency countenanced the site’s reopening, and it was adamant that it had the means to monitor the air quality and odour levels, yet less than a year down the line, we are back where we started, and my constituents, like many represented here today, are suffering the consequences of the agency’s inability to address the core problems. That is because we do not have the means to handle nuisance concerns around recycling in the same way that we do for landfill. In such situations, lived experience matters. The executives of Valencia would not live anywhere near one of these sites themselves, but our constituents are expected to suck it up and put up with entirely unacceptable conditions. Heywood Against Landfill has now designed an online odour complaint reporting log, which sends each instance directly to the Environment Agency. That is great, but the group would rather not spend its valuable time doing that. The group’s efforts will highlight once again the scale of the issue in Heywood, but it remains clear that there needs to be enforcement action to match the level of ongoing outrage. I understand that the waste strategy is due for review in this Parliament. From speaking with local residents, it is clear that they are desperate for the strategy to give greater consideration to the impact of poorly managed sites that also take recycling. They want legislation to safeguard local people. In many cases, there seems to be no way of scrutinising the operations of these sites, as other hon. Members have said, with much of the so-called enforcement action being toothless and ineffective. What consideration has been given to delivering a bold and transformative waste strategy that protects people in Heywood from living in such conditions—specifically one that factors in poorly performing sites that handle recycling waste? What assessment has been made of the effectiveness of the Environment Agency? I appreciate the point made about successive Conservative Governments cutting its funding and staff, but what consideration has been given to strengthening penalties for the executives of waste operators that pay no mind to the communities in which they function? What consideration has been given to making community engagement mandatory for operators such as Valencia, and the implementation of robust standards in this respect? The people of Heywood should not have to put up with this any longer, and they should not have had to put up with it in the first place. My hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood is right: working-class communities shoulder the burden of regulators lacking the will or the means to engage with the lived experience of those affected by this sort of behaviour by operators. I hope that the Minister can offer some clarity on these points, and will make it clear to residents in Heywood that they are not without a voice, that the Government are listening, and that living in these conditions should not be a collateral consequence that those in power seem all too willing to accept.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for securing this debate. Residents of the part of Calne that is in my constituency have long reported strong and unpleasant sulphurous odours from the Lower Compton landfill. The odours have at times been severe enough for people stuck in their homes to keep the windows shut—not a pleasant situation given the current heatwave—and have been reported by the local BBC as causing illness. This has been a periodic problem in Calne and other towns. I am pleased to report that, with the help of my neighbour, my hon. Friend the Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson), we have got the Environment Agency on the case. The offending landfill vaults are being closed and additional landfill gas wells will be installed to increase gas capture and reduce emissions from the site. Additionally, there has recently been a spate of fires at Lower Compton landfill, caused by batteries in vapes, endangering residents and staff. Every week in the UK more than 6 million vapes are thrown away instead of being recycled. When crushed, lithium batteries can spark, smoke or catch fire, creating a danger to waste facilities, those who work on them and those who live near them. I urge the Government to increase public awareness of how to safely dispose of vapes. Single-use plastic waste is another long-standing issue that needs to be addressed. None of us likes seeing waste plastic in the environment, where it can become a serious hazard to wildlife. It is bad enough seeing plastic waste on our streets and in our countryside, but with the UK exporting around 600,000 tonnes a year, much of it ends up in the developing world, where it can become an environmental hazard of massive proportions. A few years ago, a company in Swindon attempted to address the use of single-use plastic recycling using a pyrolysis process that chemically reduced the waste plastic into its polymer constituents, which could be used again and again to create fresh plastics. Although that company went bust due to the difficult economics, another company, Mura Technology, is investing in a similar process in Newcastle. However, it seems that the holy grail of a cyclical plastic economy will be reached only when the economics are right, so it would be timely for the Government to look at a single-use plastic tax to generate sufficient funds to invest in this process. We need local chemical recycling plants in every county in the UK. In the spirit of “polluter pays”, a tax on the production and use of single-use plastics is a must if we are to make the economics work for plastic recycling and thus stop this scourge on the environment.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) on securing this very important debate. I want to speak about a case in my constituency that shows the problem and, importantly, what the solution can look like. Last July, business owners near the Hurstwood Court recycling centre on Raikes Lane in Burnden contacted me about traffic and road safety. Queues for the site were backing up on to St Peter’s Way and spilling on to Manchester Road. Access to local businesses was being blocked, and there was a real safety risk. That was happening day after day. I brought together Bolton council, Recycle for Greater Manchester and the operator, SUEZ, to address the problem. To their credit, all parties acted. A hatched yellow box has been painted at the entrance and exit to keep it clear. The entrance has been reprofiled so that more vehicles can wait on the site while speaking to the gate attendant, rather than queuing on the public road. A new turning space has been created for vehicles leaving without entering the centre, and cones have been installed to stop the parking that was blocking sightlines. To be honest, those measures have not solved the problem completely, but they have mitigated some of the worst of it and have made real differences to residents and businesses. Alongside the physical changes, Recycle for Greater Manchester has been suggesting alternative, less busy sites, and advising people on when the centre is quiet. There are more than 20 recycling centres across Greater Manchester, and spreading visits across them eases the pressure on individual sites. The wider point is that traffic build-up at waste sites is not a one-off; it is a recurring and entirely foreseeable pattern, particularly at older sites that simply were not designed for today’s volumes of traffic and waste. Too often, the response is reactive: action comes only after residents, businesses or Members of Parliament push for it. Communities should not have to run a campaign to get a yellow box painted on the road. I have three questions for the Minister. First, will the Department encourage joined-up working among councils, waste authorities and operators as standard practice, rather than as something that happens only when it is demanded locally? Secondly, what support and funding are available to councils for physical improvements at older sites, such as the reprofiled entrances and turning space that made the difference in Bolton? Thirdly, will the Government look at establishing a clearer, ongoing channel so that residents and businesses near waste sites can raise concerns and do not have to rely on ad hoc local campaigns? Raikes Lane shows what can be achieved when everyone gets around the table, but we still have a lot further to go. What is missing is a system that acts before communities have to fight for change.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) on securing the debate. It is so important that I speak on this issue, as in my constituency we have an incinerator operated by a company called Viridor, which has been in operation for the last 12 years. Like the example in Fleetwood, it processes waste from all around the country, very little of which is produced by the actual residents of Runcorn. Local residents have to live with the problems that hon. Members have talked about this afternoon, including dreadful smells at times and rubbish strewn around the approaching roads from the heavy goods vehicles that deliver the waste. There is noise 24 hours a day—the HGVs have an operational licence for 24 hours a day, and there is the mechanical noise from the plant itself. Every day, 275 HGVs are allowed to go in and out of the plant. I have stood there, endlessly watching one after another. The noise and smell are horrific, with 3,000 tonnes of waste processed in the plant every day. The air pollution at times is a disgrace. As we have heard, people cannot hang out their washing. There are even layers of dust on cars. There is a physical and mental effect on health. Local residents cannot sleep or open their windows. Light pollution from the headlights of HGVs coming down the road is constant through the night, which is worse in winter, of course. As a consequence, local house prices are severely devalued. Why should residents have to move, when some have lived there all their lives? Now, even if they wanted to move, they cannot sell their homes because of the incinerator and they feel trapped. On that note, I ask the Minister to consider offering financial support to those families who are unable to move because they cannot sell their homes due to the proximity of incinerators such as the one in Runcorn. To return to the operator, in December 2023, Viridor paid out £1 million across 180 local households to keep them quiet. They signed a non-disclosure agreement so they could never talk to the press about the conditions they live in. That £4,500 per household is a lot of money for some of my residents, and would have been especially welcome at Christmas. It was meant to keep them quiet and it is a disgrace. I would like to echo the points made about the Environment Agency. It should be timely in its response; it is no good residents ringing and the Environment Agency coming out a week later, when the smog or smell has gone. There are now also issues with vermin such as rats and flies, and concerns about diseases spread by birds flying in and out of operating doors left open. Those doors are meant to shut between each delivery but are left open for birds to fly in and out, potentially spreading disease. The burden of proof is always on the residents to clock and document all this. Why should it be that way? I again ask the Minister to shift the burden of proof from the residents and give the Environment Agency the power to shut down the operation until the complaint or issue is sorted. It is often not just one major incident, such as a fire—it is a continual build-up, wearing down residents until they are desperate. They feel forgotten and unheard. Deprived towns such as Runcorn have been used as a dumping ground for the nation’s rubbish. The least the Government can do is listen to residents, let their voices be heard and compensate them for what is happening to their day-to-day lives.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for securing this timely debate. Two separate areas in my constituency are suffering difficulties. The first is West Heath in Congleton, where there is an awful fly problem. Residents report they are unable to have barbecues, and do not wish to open their windows or doors. It appears that the problem may be associated with a local metal recycling plant. The plant has issued a statement that it is co-operating with the council and the Environment Agency and does not believe the problem emanates from it. Although the long-standing feeling among local people is that it may very well be an issue with the recycling plant, they would also like the Environment Agency to investigate nearby standing water and other possible sources. I do not want to pin the blame too specifically on any one factor at the moment, but it is important that the Environment Agency has the resources, the powers and inclination to investigate thoroughly as soon as possible. My residents report similar experiences to those described by many people in the Chamber, talking about how it is making their houses difficult to enjoy, particularly in the summer months. They are worried about disease and about opening their children’s bedroom windows at night, which in the current environment is straightforwardly dangerous. I absolutely call on the Minister to encourage the Environment Agency to take steps rapidly, because this is a significant, ongoing problem. The other area of concern in my constituency is a former landfill site, which is now a golf course. It was set up as a golf course by Cheshire East council. Again, I want to be circumspect in what I say here, because Cheshire East council says absolutely, adamantly, that the site is safe for its current use and that there is no reason to doubt that the operators are operating appropriately. I do not want to do or say anything that might damage their business, but The Guardian has reported significant dumping, not only conventional landfill dumping during the 1950s and 1960s, but chemical dumping by ICI and Shell in the 1970s with forever-type chemicals. Again, there has been extensive testing, and the set of facts is clearly disputed. What I am really concerned about, however, is that Cheshire East, when asked, apparently stated—I have not seen the documents myself—that remediating the whole site fully would cost more than £1 billion. Although Cheshire East is trying to manage the problem, properly it seems to belong with the Environment Agency and, potentially, central Government. That scale of a problem—if the scale of the problem is as alleged by some parties—is absolutely massive, and beyond the capacity of a local authority properly to investigate and manage. We need to be very sure about what exact chemicals enter the water system. It is believed that they are retained within the site and do not enter the wider water system—I do not want to create alarm—but I want to ensure that this is being properly investigated for my local residents, so that either their minds can be put at rest or appropriate steps can be taken to remediate if necessary. I want to emphasise, however, that there is nothing to suggest that the golf course is not safe for use as it is at the moment. None the less, the lack of proper landfill capping is noted and this does not feel like it has been investigated in the way that I would hope it to be. The Minister is passionate about the environment, water courses and all such topics, but I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood said: it is so important that we put people before polluters.

It is a real pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. We owe a big thank you to the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for setting the scene and addressing a matter that has been an overwhelming source of anxiety and frustration for my constituents—the physical, environmental and social effects of waste management sites on our local communities. I welcome the Minister to her place. We are very fortunate to have her here, and I am sure that she will have all the answers that we seek. I hope she will give us some encouragement. I wish to give a Northern Ireland perspective. Northern Ireland is not the Minister’s responsibility, but I would like her help, and my request to her would be to enter discussions with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland, Andrew Muir at the Northern Ireland Assembly, to ensure that we can work together on such things. In this House, in debates on waste management strategy, we often get bogged down in talking about percentages, targets and EU-aligned frameworks. I will bring something from ground level to this Chamber, however, from the Ards and North Down borough council, in my beautiful constituency of Strangford. Let it be known that the people of Ards and North Down are not against recycling. For example, recycling rates of nearly 56% have been reached through the commitment of nearly every house—indeed, of every house—in Ards and North Down. Households separate their glass, they compost and they wash their plastics, but there is a tipping point, and that is what we are talking about today. The hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood has brought forward the question of what happens when, literally and metaphorically, the burden placed on local communities by waste management sites becomes entirely unsustainable. The Department of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs has submitted clearly that Northern Ireland simply does not have enough waste infrastructure to handle what we throw away. I know that the Minister is always amenable to my requests, and everyone’s, but will she have some discussion with the relevant Minister to see how the actions, methods, experience and knowledge gained here can be used for us back home? Whether this is a waste transfer station, a commercial heavy-recycling depot or a landfill site boundary straight up against residential lines, the community pays the price. My concern is that areas such as ours, Comber and parts of the Ards peninsula are dealing with the harsh reality of those limits every day: excessive heavy goods, with vehicle traffic pounding down narrow rural roads that were never built to handle 30-tonne waste trucks; persistent issues with odour; airborne litter; and the psychological strain of living next to the expanding footprint of regional refuse. The Arc21 waste management plan has faced years of delay in delivering modern infrastructure. Local sites have been pushed to their absolute limits to manage the waste. Many of our local facilities are hydrologically linked to the uniquely sensitive ecosystem of Strangford lough; I live on the edge of that, so I understand what it means: an immediate ecological threat to a globally recognised marine conservation zone. In an effort to curb waste tourism and management costs, the council has had to introduce rigid online booking systems. It has taken many steps to try to address the issue, including residency identity checks at our nine household recycling centres. When councils make local centres too complicated to use and restrict their hours, it becomes a knock-on crisis, resulting in fly-tipping in the rural countryside and agricultural fields with farmers left holding the bill. Environmental protection and planning policy is devolved to the Northern Ireland Executive, so we need a planning framework that respects the proximity principle—the very thing that the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood mentioned. What discussions will the Minister have with the relevant Minister in Northern Ireland to help local councils like Ards and North Down when it comes to moving towards hyper-local, lower-carbon circular economies that do not require massive, sprawling, intrusive regional depots. If we can work hand in hand, we can find a solution that perhaps helps us all.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairship, Dr Murrison. I thank the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) for securing this very important debate. I must emphasise that this is a nationwide issue: it affects not just working-class constituencies but leafy Surrey, including Epsom and Ewell. I will set the scene. It is a peaceful early morning in the residential community on the edge of Epsom Downs, a picturesque, 600-acre area of unspoiled chalk downland with panoramic views of London. We are right next to the Chalk Pit, a waste-processing site in Epsom in Surrey. Crash! Bang! Boom! Residents are suddenly awoken. It is 6 o’clock on 20 July. They hear the scraping, clanking and banging of metal, the humming of industrial machinery and the roaring of the trommel. Workmen shout loudly. Car horns honk. Dust chokes the air. Lorries speed up and down the road. It does not end until late in the evening, and this goes on and on all day, every single working day. Could the Minister, and all those in the Chamber today, live with that constant noise, dust and disruption? Would the Minister be willing to accept this lack of action and change? My residents have no choice. Their homes are here. Their lives are here. This site was never meant to become what it is now when it went to planning 10 years ago, moving from a waste transfer site to a waste processing site. The management of this site is unacceptable, and my constituents—the residents—have long deserved better. Action must be taken, and it must be taken now. There are four systemic failures: planning by Surrey county council; enforcement by Epsom and Ewell borough council; the environment, whether dust, noise or the potential contamination of water, which is the responsibility of the Environment Agency; and accountability, because there is no single lead on this and one agency passes the buck to another. This has disrupted my residents’ lives for more than 10 years. On excessive dust, the atmosphere average is 10 micrograms per cubic metre; the Chalk Pit has an average concentration of 40 micrograms. On multiple occasions, it has exceeded the quality standard of 50, but let us remember that 10 is normal. There has been persistent noise, as well as breaches of permitted operating hours, with lorries leaving the site as early as 5.40 am when the operational hours should be 7 am until 6 pm. Then there is the impact of heavy vehicles: lorries regularly exceed the speed limit of 30 mph on roads that are simply not designed for them. Tests cannot fully capture the human impact and the unintended disruption to daily lives, for years. A constituent said to me: “Hoped for a peaceful afternoon in the garden—no chance with the Chalk Pit at full throttle”. Another wrote: “So much for a quiet relaxing Saturday morning. My day off ruined.” One constituent said that it feels “like the trommel is at work in my living room”, And another said: “Our garden table, covered in dust—no chance of going outside.” When there has been monitoring, I have been told that operators are informed in advance when it will occur, so we can guess what happens: there is suddenly no noise or dust and the site does not operate. How is that effective monitoring or true accountability? There have been planning conditions, environmental permits, monitoring equipment for noise and dust, thousands of complaints, multiple inspection reports, and statutory guidance, yet the same problems continue. The issue is not a lack of legislation; it is the repeated failure of enforcement, of leadership—there is none—and of accountability. Why are my residents forced to continually fight this? Why are the authorities not taking action? There are three agencies responsible for the issue: Surrey county council, Epsom and Ewell borough council and the Environment Agency. The unending buck-passing must stop; someone must take the lead and act now. The governance is completely divided, with Surrey county council responsible as the waste planning authority, the Environment Agency responsible for dust and noise and for making sure water is safe to drink, and Epsom and Ewell borough council responsible for enforcement. The result? We have no single authority taking the lead, no organisation accountable for resolving the overall problem, separate investigations instead of co-ordinated action, and residents forced to navigate multiple regulators. It is a planning system that rewards non-compliance. Lack of enforcement leads to retrospective planning applications, which encourages operators to build first and apply later. That leaves planners mitigating impacts rather than deciding whether a development should occur in the first place, and creates the perception that compliance is optional. How can compliance be optional when it impacts my residents daily? In the case of planning, economic growth is often given greater weight than things such as residential amenity, environmental impact, long-term public costs and community wellbeing. Local views and the experience of my residents have been overridden since the site changed its use over 10 years ago. Residents and local councils have objected. Planning officers have raised concerns. Elected representatives have opposed proposals. And the Environment Agency described the site as “wildly out of character in a residential area”. Despite that, permissions continue to be granted, undermining confidence that local views and feedback carry any meaningful weight at all. Let us talk about enforcement. There are many planning conditions that could have been regulated, such as the operating hours. However, as we have heard, my residents are continually woken up at 6.06 am or even earlier, even though the operator is not meant to start before 7 am. There is continual noise nuisance, with the operator flouting the abatement notice. There is dust on a regular basis, which residents see on their tables and chairs outside or on their washing out hanging on the washing line. There are regular vehicle movements before 7 o’clock, and the number of lorries going in and out sometimes exceeds the permitted amount. However, enforcements work only if they are actually enforced. To help with that, residents have provided complaints, photographs, videos and witness evidence. Authorities have gathered noise monitoring data, CCTV, site inspections and monitoring reports, yet residents continue to report the same again and again. Breaches happen again and again, over and over, but the repeated breaches do not lead to action. Understandably, residents believe that breaches do not lead to consequences. All their efforts are just in vain. They feel like giving up. Why should they continue if there is no action? There are repeated findings without resolution. Those who are meant to regulate have repeatedly identified concerns—dust, noise, operating hours, site management and residential impacts. Instead of action, the response has included more inspections, more monitoring, more meetings, revised management plans, additional planning conditions and permit reviews—and still nothing changes. The same complaints continue. How many complaints are needed to trigger change? How many reports need to be conducted? How many dust tests and noise tests do we need? The lives of my residents are affected every single day, and all the authorities keep showing them is their unwillingness to improve their lives. A regulatory system should not simply document non-compliance; it should enforce compliance. Success must be measured by improvements in people’s quality of life. Effective performance is not the number of meetings held, reports produced or warnings issued. A high number of ongoing complaints highlights the need for urgent action. The true measure of successful site management is whether conditions and outcomes are actually improved for the people affected. Residents rightly expect and deserve that their elected representatives will help resolve persistent problems. In practice, councillors have limited to no influence. MPs cannot direct regulators, and residents cannot demand action; that creates a democratic gap. Those making enforcement decisions are not directly accountable to the communities affected by them, so there is understandably a loss of public confidence. Over time, residents question whether planning conditions have real value, whether environmental permits provide meaningful protection, whether complaints make any difference at all and whether regulators are measuring activity rather than results. Residents become exhausted and stop reporting incidents, yet the reduced number of complaints is sometimes treated as evidence that the problem has been sorted; it has not—residents are just exhausted and fed up of dealing with this issue day in, day out. The Liberal Democrats believe that community engagement in waste management is an essential part of the journey towards a more sustainable and circular economy. That means ensuring that local councils can operate waste management sites effectively, without unnecessarily impacting the lives of nearby residents. Residents should not experience excessive environmental effects, health impacts or disruption. We also believe that local communities must have a genuine stake in planning decisions that affect them. Proper consultation and community engagement must be at the heart of proposals for new waste management sites. Full consideration must be given to the environmental health impacts of waste management sites on local residents. We must go further, as the best waste management system is one that generates less waste in the first place. That is why we support embedding circular economy principles across the UK’s industrial strategy and product design, reducing the amount of waste that communities and councils need to manage. Effective regulation of waste management sites also requires a properly resourced oversight body, ensuring that our environment is protected and health risks are mitigated. That is why we support increased funding to the EA to ensure that it can enforce environmental standards and hold operators to account where sites cause harm to local communities, as in Epsom. The Government must also commit to an independent review into the entire waste crime system. In conclusion, the Chalk Pit in Epsom exposes wider weaknesses within the planning and environmental regulatory system: fragmented governance, no single accountable authority, poor co-ordination between regulators, retrospective planning reducing the consequences of unauthorised development, appeals that weaken local decision making, enforcement powers that are not consistently exercised, and residents whose concerns are not listened to. This is not just an issue of the absence of legislation; it is an issue of leadership, accountability and enforcement. Without effective enforcement, planning conditions and environmental permits become protections that exist only on paper, not in practice. The EA, Surrey county council and Epsom and Ewell borough council can conduct their site visits and tests and go home, and the contractors can clock in, do a day’s work and then clock out and go home, but my residents do not have that privilege. Their lives and their homes are there. They are entitled to a higher quality of life in their community. I urge the Minister to listen to the contributions made by myself and others today and to take action to end the suffering of my constituents in Epsom.

It is a great pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I congratulate the hon. Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) on securing this important debate. As she strongly articulated, she has had significant issues with sites in her constituency. This debate is an excellent opportunity for her to share her concerns with the Minister. We have heard powerful contributions from across the House and from places across the country—urban, rural and, as ever, in Northern Ireland—about the important health and human impacts. The hon. Member for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) talked about fire issues related to batteries. The hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee) discussed the health impacts affecting people young and old. The hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane) also discussed the fire issue. The hon. Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) discussed odour and wellbeing issues. The hon. Member for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) also discussed odour issues, as well as the hazards posed by plastics to wildlife and the environment. The hon. Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi) discussed access issues in terms of traffic build-up at sites. The hon. Member for Runcorn and Helsby (Sarah Pochin) powerfully articulated the mental health impacts of some of these sites. The hon. Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) discussed issues relating to flies. The hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) discussed the heavy traffic and the knock-on consequences of these sites, leading people into fly-tipping. I am very proud of the previous Conservative Government’s record on this issue. We introduced the 2018 resources and waste strategy, the 2023 waste prevention programme and a statutory target to halve residual waste per person by 2042. It is essential that the current Government build on that record, with an approach that remains sensible and pragmatic, by taking account of the concerns of local residents while ensuring that the UK reuses more and wastes less. Although all types of waste sites can affect local communities, the worst harm comes from those operating illegally, whether they were illegal from the outset or drifted into illegality over time. Those sites degrade local environments, create safety hazards, can be damaging to health and, in some cases, cut off access to community spaces altogether. Sites that are managed poorly and left to get out of hand by the authorities can lead to a vicious cycle where unscrupulous operators move in, fly-tipping is exacerbated and local communities and the environment are negatively impacted. The Countryside Alliance’s recent report on waste crime is useful here. It identifies major illegal fly-tips, such as the horrendous 150 metre-long dump beside the River Cherwell and the A34 near Kidlington. It also highlights Walleys Quarry, which was closed in 2024 after years of complaints. I pay tribute to the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme for his efforts on that; he has followed the good work of his predecessor. The report also finds that compliant waste sites can drive fly-tipping if they are made too costly or inconvenient to use. I would be grateful if the Minister confirmed whether she has looked at the report’s recommendations on vehicle owner liability and access to municipal sites. Turning to incineration, prior to the general election, the previous Government issued a moratorium on new environmental permits for waste incineration. That gave the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs the chance to properly consider the role incineration should play in managing residual waste in England. That moratorium applied regardless of whether a site already held planning permission, though it rightly excluded hazardous and clinical waste facilities, small incinerators and sites seeking permit variations for carbon capture. In December 2024, the current Government announced that new waste incinerators would receive planning approval only if they met strict new local and environmental conditions. As the Minister may be aware, Friends of the Earth opposes incinerators for environmental reasons. They contribute to climate change through carbon emissions, destroy materials that could be reused and fail to provide an incentive for reducing waste. Moreover, it is important to consider the human element of incinerators and the consequences they can have on local residents’ physical health—including respiratory conditions—but also on their mental health. Does the Minister accept that even a small rise in local air pollutants can affect residents’ mental health? Studies suggest that environmental contamination can bring “heightened stress and anxiety to the point of dread”. The UK Health Security Agency found that “it is not possible to rule out adverse health effects from MWI completely”, which will offer little reassurance to constituents living near one. What are the Government doing to support the health—both mental and physical—of those communities? You are by some quirk of fate in the Chair for this debate, Mr Murrison, but you have long campaigned on the issue of waste incinerators, and I note a point that you raised: “Not only does the incineration of plastic produce 175 times as much CO2 as landfill, but the emissions per unit of energy produced from burning mixed waste is the same as coal and nearly double that of gas.”—[Official Report, 25 November 2025; Vol. 776, c. 263.] On the issue of energy, which is pertinent, given that incinerators provide around 3% of the UK’s total energy generation, much of Britain’s total energy needs are still met by oil and gas. Both the Government and the Climate Change Committee have admitted that we will still need oil and gas for decades to come. It is vital, therefore, that we make the North sea an investable basin. Reducing domestic production will not mean that we consume any less oil and gas; it will simply make us more dependent on imports. That will mean that we do not benefit from more jobs and investment or higher tax revenues. It will also increase our carbon footprint if we import liquified natural gas from countries such as the US or Qatar. It is therefore much better for both our economy and the environment that we harvest our own oil and gas. Regrettably, we will now not hear from the incoming Prime Minister for many, many weeks about what his new Government’s approach to domestic oil and gas might be. I turn to recycling, which we have heard about today. It was disappointing to see London’s recycling rate show no improvement in 2024-25. It has gone down 0.9% since 2020 and, at 32.7%, is the lowest rate since 2016. It is welcome that the Government have continued the simpler recycling measures begun by the previous Conservative Government. What can and cannot be recycled should not be a postcode lottery. His Majesty’s most loyal Opposition support a more consistent and streamlined system. Put simply, waste that is not recycled is destined for incineration or landfill. The Government should follow the lead of the previous Government in carefully assessing the need for new incinerators so that we do not end up with more capacity than we need. The Government must also ensure that waste site operators are operating legally and with due regard to their environmental responsibilities so that they do not blight local communities, as we have heard powerfully from across the House and across the country.

The hon. Gentleman mentioned the Countryside Alliance. The Countryside Alliance is, of course, a country sports organisation, but it is a very credible and influential organisation that highlights things such as rural crime and waste sites as well. Does he recognise that it has an important role to play in the countryside and that should be commended for doing so?

It is always a huge pleasure to be intervened on by the hon. Gentleman. He has been very kind to me over the years. After my maiden speech, he came across the Chamber to speak to me and was very kind, so I will always take an intervention from him, as I am sure everyone else will. I totally agree. The Countryside Alliance is a powerful organisation. The report that I cited earlier shows that it is a powerful voice and that it does its research. The rural voice does need to be listened to in this debate; the report highlighted some of the key issues across the country such as waste crime and fly-tipping, including in the constituency of the hon. Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme. The issue affects the whole country—urban, suburban and rural—and we need to recognise that. Finally, the Government should look hard at what can be done before waste ever reaches these sites. Above all, they should listen to local residents and take seriously the effect that these sites have on people’s mental and physical health. The Government must, through all their authorities, keep monitoring health data closely and act to help people in their daily lives.

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Dr Murrison. I begin by apologising to my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood (Lorraine Beavers) and to the rest of the House for my late arrival to the debate. I thank my hon. Friend for securing the debate. She may have noticed that I am not the Minister for Nature, my hon. Friend for Coventry East (Mary Creagh), but I hope to do her justice in responding to this debate because I know how hard she has worked on this issue and how seriously she takes it. I thank hon. Members from across the House, who have made valuable points today. This debate reminds me why it is so important to deal properly with rubbish and why all Members of the House support bins, whether they are Counts or not—sorry for my throwaway comment. People rightly expect their community to be a safe, clean and pleasant place to live. They expect clean air, thriving natural spaces and confidence that waste is being managed responsibly. Most importantly, they expect environmental regulation and waste management to be working in the interests of local people. I absolutely agree, and so do the Government. I will quickly summarise some of the actions that the Government have taken, led by my hon. Friend the Minister for Nature, and the achievements of the waste crime action plan commitments. My hon. Friend has already reformed the carriers, brokers and dealers regime, which was debated in the House of Commons just last week. She introduced digital waste tracking, the legislation for which was debated on 16 June. In March, she published updated statutory guidance and a code of practice for local authorities on litter enforcement powers and how to use them. She has also published best practice guidance for local authorities on using their powers to seize vehicles related to fly-tipping. As well as that, the Minister has overseen the doubling of the Environment Agency’s waste crime enforcement budget, with an additional £45 million over the next three years. As my hon. Friends have rightly pointed out, it has been difficult for the Environment Agency to do its job given that it has faced 14 years of austerity and cuts, but it is now getting additional money to carry out its duties. The Environment Agency is building a new waste intelligence and analysis unit and has already started interviewing new staff for it. It has also secured access to key land registry data sets, allowing for quicker identification of the landowner when new illegal waste sites appear. Courts can use their powers in the Crime and Policing Act 2026 to put points on the driving licences of those guilty of fly-tipping. We will make fly-tippers clear up their own mess, and we will consult on how to make that commitment a reality. We have also started clearing up some of the worst illegal waste sites that blight communities up and down the country. We are moving quickly for the clear-up of the site at Bolton House Road in Wigan and installing fire and security mitigations. This is not time for reviews of waste; it is time for more action, and that is exactly what this Government are doing. In that context, I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood for her tireless efforts in drawing attention to the Jameson Road landfill in her constituency. Her constituents made a fantastic choice at the last election in voting for a tireless champion for their community and someone who —I know this from experience—does not let an issue go once she gets on to it. When it comes to my hon. Friend, we know that we have to do exactly what we are told. As my hon. Friend set out, too many of her constituents have struggled with persistent odour complaints for far too long. Nobody should feel trapped in their homes, workplaces or schools because bad smells mean that they cannot go outside or even open their windows. We are obviously keeping a very close eye on sites such as Jameson Road, and we are using our regulatory powers through the Environment Agency to ensure that operators are held accountable for poor compliance. The Environment Agency has already served enforcement notices to mitigate the worst effects of the odour at Jameson Road. My hon. Friend knows that because, as she mentioned, she meets with the Environment Agency every week; she is doing a brilliant job of holding them to account. In May earlier this year, the Environment Agency varied the permit to restrict the site to accepting only low-risk waste such as soil, concrete and bricks. A regulatory notice is also in force, which requires the operator to remediate the site, including temporary covering and subsequent permanent capping works. Those measures, alongside enhanced inspections and expanded monitoring arrangements, are expected to lead to a reduction in the incident reports associated with the site. The Environment Agency will continue to maintain close regulatory oversight of the site and hold the operator to account—I know that my hon. Friend will, too—for delivering improvements that local communities rightly expect. The operator must continue to deliver the required improvements, and local communities should be confident that regulatory intervention will follow if standards are not met. Let me be clear: where compliance falls short at any waste site, the regulator is prepared to take further action as necessary, and it will work closely with the Government to ensure that communities are protected from serious harm. I recognise that many other hon. Members in attendance today have poorly performing waste sites in their constituencies, and I will do my absolute best to answer as many questions as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Lancaster and Wyre (Cat Smith) raised concerns about what is happening at the landfill in her area. As she will know, we already have the extra £45 million, which should help in her area. My hon. Friend the Member for Warwick and Leamington (Matt Western) and I have had a meeting about the flies; flies were also mentioned by a couple other people. It is awful when we see a huge swarm of them, and they can enter people’s homes. We have had a number of meetings about the issue and we are staying in close contact. To answer another of my hon. Friend’s questions, I should say that our analysis is that the Environment Agency needs better enforcement powers, which is why we have committed in the waste crime action plan to give more powers to the EA as a priority for the teams. It is also why we are giving an extra £45 million, as has already been mentioned. I have to pay tribute to the campaigning of my hon. Friend the Member for Newcastle-under-Lyme (Adam Jogee). He has not missed an opportunity in the voting Lobby or when seeing me around Parliament to raise what is happening in Walleys Quarry. The latest information I have for him is that, following the operator’s liquidation, the Environment Agency is managing the site to prevent pollution risks. Work is focused on site stability, maintaining capping, managing leachate and developing longer-term engineering solutions. Although the odour reports remain very low, the Environment Agency is continuing to monitor the site to see if there is any increase in the odour. I know that my hon. Friend is on the case and will mention it to me if anything changes there. The hon. Members for Chippenham (Sarah Gibson) and for Melksham and Devizes (Brian Mathew) mentioned the Lower Compton landfill site. The latest I can tell them about that site is that permanent capping of the operational area has been completed, and new gas infrastructure is due to be installed. The monitoring identified occasional exceedances of odour annoyance guidelines, but no exceedance of the World Health Organisation’s human health guidelines. The waste permits specify acceptance controls, and those can include sampling and testing. Let me see who else I have on my list: to respond to the hon. Member for Ely and East Cambridgeshire (Charlotte Cane), I should say that the site she mentioned has had 30 fires since reopening in February 2025. I believe most of those to be due to arson, and most to be outside the site. The Environment Agency is working closely with the operator and other partners on investigating the fires on the site. I turn to what my hon. Friend the Member for Heywood and Middleton North (Mrs Blundell) said. The Government committed in our manifesto to moving the UK towards a circular economy. We will be publishing our circular economy growth plan soon. On the Pilsworth site in my hon. Friend’s constituency, the Environment Agency continues to closely monitor odour issues, which remain below World Health Organisation levels of concern, although that is not sufficient to reassure my hon. Friend’s constituents. That is why we are investing in the EA, with new enforcement powers and new funding. I absolutely champion the local constituents whom my hon. Friend mentioned, who have come together to campaign on this issue. I reassure them and her that they absolutely have a voice with this Government. We are listening to them and taking them seriously. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend the Member for Bolton South and Walkden (Yasmin Qureshi). We know each other from previous campaigns together, so I know what a brilliant campaigner she is. I am pleased that some mitigations have been made and that things are starting to show improvements. I support her call for more joined-up work across the different agencies. If I can support her in helping to get that joined-up work, I absolutely will.

Could the Minister say a few words about a plastics tax, or a tax on single-use plastics, to make the recycling of plastics economic?

I am conscious that I am speaking outside my brief in responding to this debate, but I will ensure that my hon. Friend the Minister for Nature hears the hon. Member’s comment and gets back to him with her thoughts on that one. I do not want to miss anyone out. My hon. Friend the Member for Congleton (Sarah Russell) raised the work that the Environment Agency is doing and—again—the problems that people have with flies. I totally agree with her point about putting people before profit—it should never be the other way round. A land remediation pathfinder scheme is launching this autumn, and support is available for local authorities’ work if needed. That will fund additional local authority resources, so additional money is coming in for some local authorities. I want to give my hon. Friend the Member for Blackpool North and Fleetwood time to respond, so I will speed up. I say to the hon. Member for Strangford (Jim Shannon) that although waste policy is devolved and the Northern Irish circumstances are unique, we enjoy a strong relationship with our colleagues in Northern Ireland. We are soon to commission new research on the drivers and regulatory factors underpinning waste crime, and are actively working with Northern Ireland colleagues on the design of that research. I hope I have responded to most of the comments made by hon. Members. I know that they will continue to speak to my hon. Friend the Minister for Nature where necessary and make sure that the issue continues to be a priority for her and the rest of the Government. Just in case this is my last time addressing everyone in this role, Dr Murrison, can I say thank you to my wonderful officials? Thank you to all the team I have worked with; it has been an absolute pleasure. Hopefully I will be back in the new term, but we never know. For the moment, over and out.

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.