Examination of Witnesses (Question Numbers
440-459)
DR PAUL
LEINSTER, MS
LIZ PARKES
AND MR
DAVID JORDAN
4 NOVEMBER 2009
Q440 Paddy Tipping: Has Defra now
responded to this consultation?
Ms Parkes: I believe they intend
to bring in regulations next year.
Q441 David Taylor: Have you been
consulted on that?
Ms Parkes: We do work very closely
with them on the regulation.
Q442 Paddy Tipping: Tell me a bit
more about brokers. What kinds of bodies are brokers?
Ms Parkes: They are bodies that
do not actually ever touch the waste. They just arrange for it
to be sold on. They can be very challenging.
Q443 Paddy Tipping: They are capitalists?
Ms Parkes: I could not possibly
comment on that! We have lots of parties in the chain and there
is a great deal of evidence that, for instance with municipal
waste, local authorities do take their responsibilities very seriously.
In most cases they are using legitimate contractors, and brokers
have always been one of the grey areas around the waste business.
We are interested in whether more controls are needed and how
you build up a body of legitimate brokers and encourage responsible
waste producers to use those legitimate companies.
Q444 Paddy Tipping: That is an area
that needs some further work?
Ms Parkes: It needs some further
work, yes, and to make sure that we do not over-regulate but achieve
the right balance here.
Dr Leinster: As Liz said, one
of the issues with brokers is that they can be operating out of
other countries and managing the waste out of the UK to a third
party country. The jurisdiction on that is quite tricky.
Q445 Paddy Tipping: This is going
to be a tough area to regulate. Presumably you are talking to
colleagues in other countries about this?
Dr Leinster: Yes.
Q446 Paddy Tipping: When you have
been to see us previously, you have talked a lot about fly tipping
and the sanctions that the court can implement. Are you happy
with the fines that are imposed where breaches occur in relation
to illegal export overseas?
Mr Jordan: I think the fines themselves
pretty rarely act as a deterrent to fly tipping. Local authorities
tend to deal with the smaller scale stuff and we tend to deal
with the larger scale stuff. Notwithstanding the fact we have
seen fines for illegal waste disposal increasing over recent years,
we do observe quite a lot of these criminals going back to the
same level of activity. We are trying to get smarter in terms
of the way we use the law, in terms, for example, of enforcement
notices and increasingly focusing on the Proceeds of Crime Act,
which we believe will be a more effective deterrent. Through the
courts, we have obviously had a number of custodial sentences
now, which we welcome.
Ms Parkes: It would be fair to
say that the courts are not sentencing as high around exports
as they are for domestic incidents.
Q447 Paddy Tipping: Why is that?
Ms Parkes: It may be that the
area of illegal export is quite a new area. The courts have more
experience in dealing with domestic tipping. Those that take these
cases can present the experience and impact on local communities.
The impacts of export are perhaps not always readily understood.
It is early days yet and we are hoping that the work we are doing
with the courts and the way in which we bring forward the cases
will help the courts to appreciate the seriousness of these offences.
Q448 Paddy Tipping: To what level
of court does this go and what are the maximum sanctions that
the court could impose? In cases of fly tipping they can confiscate
vehicles these days. Can ships be confiscated? That would be a
way of stopping it!
Ms Parkes: Yes, we do have powers
to stop ships, although obviously seizing a ship is a fairly major
activity!
Q449 Paddy Tipping: Not in Somalia?
Ms Parkes: Once you have taken
a ship, you have to decide what to do with it. The fines depend
on which courts and there are, as David said, custodial sentences
available now as well as hefty fines. We are starting to see the
courts imposing custodial sentences very frequently for domestic
tipping offences but not yet for the export. Those cases are more
recent and they take quite some time to bring forward to court
to prosecute.
Q450 Paddy Tipping: Would it be helpful
if the courts exercised the maximum powers as a deterrent?
Ms Parkes: As David has said,
they are unlikely to act as a deterrent but it would certainly
be good to see the courts leveraging the highest rate of penalty
that they can.
Q451 Mr Williams: When I contact
court authorities about the seriousness of certain offences, I
am told that I should not be trying to influence magistrates or
judges in the execution of their duty. Does the Environment Agency
have a different relationship with the criminal justice system?
Ms Parkes: We do undertake training
exercises for magistrates and try to help them understand not
just the offences but the consequences of the offences, the amount
of money that can be made from these criminal activities.
Mr Jordan: The chances of a magistrate
coming across environmental crime are relatively low, as you will
imagine. That is the education role we play, which they very much
welcome. Clearly, of course, for the more serious offences, we
try to get them to the Crown court where the penalties are much
higher.
Q452 Chairman: Can I clarify a couple
of points arising out of the last two areas of questioning? You
were talking about Defra having committed itself to new legislation
next year. Next year is quite a long, elastic piece of time. Are
we talking about the first half of next year or an aspirational
second half?
Ms Parkes: We have common commencement
dates now for all legislation and it will depend on whether they
have concluded their deliberations in time for the April commencement
date.
Q453 Chairman: I see. To make certain
we have it exactly right, could you drop us a note as to what
legislation is proposed to be changed, the route and the timing?
Obviously that is something we would like to follow up. The other
point arises out of Paddy Tipping's line of questioning. I am
aware that you are able to use the Proceeds of Crime Act to recover
monies for example to help the cost of repatriation of materials,
but are you not able to go further with the Proceeds of Crime
Act in terms of taking away for example those assets which could
be directly attributed to the exercise of illegal waste moving
and/or not just the physical assets but also the financial gains?
Mr Jordan: Yes, very much so,
and we would try to secure the cost of repatriation through our
costs in courts as opposed to the proceeds of crime. The Proceeds
of Crime Act gives us the power to seize assets, including financial
assets, potentially to a very high level indeed. The law then
requires us to make use of that in our enforcement activities.
There is a sort of circle here. We have started to develop the
expertise within the last two years. We have had a number of successful
Proceeds of Crime Act cases. Another area of success is the way
in which we have joined up with other authorities, not just the
police but also local authorities, tax authorities, Vehicle and
Operator Services Agency (VOSA) and so on. In some cases, for
example, we have had the vehicle licences removed through VOSA.
We try a variety of tactics to disrupt the overall illegal activity,
which of course is the classic way of addressing criminal activity.
Q454 David Lepper: I want to ask
about the resources that you have to carry out this work. Could
I come back to the question of brokers for a moment? I think you
told us earlier that in this country at least there is no real
sign of highly organised crime involved in these activities. You
have also suggested that there is something a bit shadowy or grey
about the issue of brokerage—and I forget which word you
used. Are you telling us that there are connections or suspected
connections between organised crime and the brokerage business
elsewhere in the world?
Mr Jordan: The organised crime
element has not appeared in the recovery of very strict hazardous
waste import and export that is regulated under the Transfrontier
Shipment Regulations. We do believe there has been evidence of
organised crime in the green list. We have looked at a number
of cases where we believe the origins are in Ireland; we have
actually passed on the information to other authorities. So there
has been evidence of organised crime engaged in some green list
activities. There is probably a fairly serious organised component
in the case of the export of waste electrical and electronic equipment
of which we are still gaining understanding. I am not familiar
with any direct link between organised criminal activity and brokers.
I am simply unaware of it.
Q455 David Lepper: Can I come to
the question of resources then? I think you told us in evidence
in the past at the first stage of our inquiry that there were
some problems about the funding of this element of the Environment
Agency's work. I think you received an additional £4 million
worth of funding last year. Can you tell us what the funding is
in terms of pounds and pence spent on this work? There are two
elements to what you want to do. One is looking at the source
of where stuff is being recycled and gathered for recycling, et
cetera, and your work at the ports. What is the division of resources
between your work before the ports and then what goes on at the
ports and so on?
Dr Leinster: The outcome that
we are trying to drive in this is to stop illegal waste exports,
and therefore what we are looking at is the overall chain of events
and the transfers that happen. The work on ports that we carry
out has to be seen in that context. What we have found is that
we are much more successful in our work at ports if it is informed
by intelligence around what is going on so that we are able to
target those activities that we think might be a problem rather
than just randomly going to ports. One of the things that we have
discovered is that as soon as there is quite a high level of activity
in a particular port, then people start using a different port.
It does not take all that long for the information to pass round
the network of people who are exporting material in this way.
That is just some context around the total sum involved, which
is around £16 million and that includes the £4 million
of additional money that we received, particularly to deal with
free riders and also waste exports.
Q456 Chairman: Free riders?
Dr Leinster: Free riders are people
working illegally so that they do not come under the regulatory
burden and they do not apply for permits; they do not apply for
transfers. These are people who are managing waste illegally.
That £4 million of additional money has been very helpful.
What we would hope is that that can carry on as we go forward.
To put it in context, the £16 million is about 5 per cent
of our non-flood risk management money or about 15 or 16 per cent
of the money that we spend on waste in total. At present, we most
probably spend about 5 to 10 per cent on work at ports within
that, but all of the intelligence work that we do in the background
really is helping us understand where it is that we should go
when we do go to a port.
Q457 David Lepper: In terms of staff,
what is that?
Dr Leinster: In terms of staff,
about 350 staff would be doing this, but that includes staff,
as David was describing earlier, who are looking at the legitimate
sites and helping them improve the quality of the outputs from
those sites. Those sites are under waste management regulation
and those are our people on site who are looking at working with
those operators to improve their performance and improve their
compliance.
Mr Jordan: We have had £4
million worth of temporary funding which is for a three-year period.
We have created two small temporary teams which are highly specialised
and very skilled at using crime analysis, the same types of intelligence
materials and analyses as the police force, and indeed the teams
are heavily populated by police assigned from their existing forces.
So we have some very good skilled people as well as some of the
top environmental crime people from within our own organisation
in those temporary teams. That has enabled us to get a proper
grip on this in a way that we could not have described as recently
as 18 months ago.
Q458 David Lepper: Let us get this
clear: that is not £4 million a year over three years; it
is £4 million over a period of three years?
Mr Jordan: It is a total of £4
million over a three-year period.
Q459 Lynne Jones: We have in this
country a very complicated system for collection and disposal
of waste, which has largely arisen historically. To what extent
is the complexity a problem for you in relation to enforcement?
Are there any comments you would like to make about whether a
more common framework for collection and disposal across the different
areas would actually make enforcement easier?
Ms Parkes: I think one has to
look at the challenges that local authorities have needed to meet—and
even going back five years most of our domestic waste was just
put in a bin and land-filled and so out of sight, out of mind—moving
towards meeting the landfill targets and the need to recycle and
separate out more waste. I think local authorities have had to
strike the balance between making it simple and easy for householders
to recycle by just collecting mixed recyclables and those that
have chosen to go down a more complex route of actually requiring
more sorting at the kerbside or in the household. It depends on
the types of property you have; it depends on whether you have
temporary residents or a large transient population. We do have
a mixture of collection methodologies. In many cases we still
have collection and disposal authorities. It does make for a more
complex picture. What we try to do is to focus, as Paul has already
said, on outcomes. Provided the quality is right, we really do
not mind how local authorities achieve that quality, and obviously
they have to balance maximising uptake of collection and recycling
with actually making sure that they are collecting quality materials.
The evidence shows that as long as you employ the right technology,
you can produce quality outputs. The challenge we have found in
the past is whether that is actually being achieved in practice,
and hence we are working with the waste management industry, with
their trade body, with Waste & Resources Action Programme
(WRAP) and with local authorities to drive up the standards at
the material reclamation facilities.
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