Waste Management Sites
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.